Whosoever then shall do away with one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of the heavens; but whosoever shall practise and teach [them], *he* shall be called great in the kingdom of the heavens.
Jesus has just said that not one stroke of the law will pass away. Now He turns from His own work to what His hearers must do: keep and teach even the smallest commands. That raises two questions. Which commandments are the "least"? And what does He mean by least and great in the kingdom of heaven?
Jesus speaks to people still living under the law of Moses — before the cross, and before anyone preached the gospel.
So in verse 19 He still speaks to them as the godly remnant — those who heard His voice and clung to Him. They were born of God, but under law, and still on this side of the cross and the blessings it brings to faith. He insists on obedience, first and last. Here He begins with the law. But even in this chapter He goes on to what He is saying to them, which people of earlier times never heard.
Older versions read "break." The word means to loosen a command's hold — to weaken its authority. Read this way, the verse is one of the strongest claims anywhere that the law came from God.
According to our Lord's teaching, the Law is so entirely divine that "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one dot of the Law to become void" (Luke 16:16-17). So no one is to violate it: "Whoever relaxes [the Greek word is luo — to loosen, to weaken the authority of] one of the least of these commandments ... will be called least in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:19). To assert the divine authority of the Law more strongly is impossible.
The teachers of Jesus' day sorted the commands into grades of importance. Jesus also draws a distinction. What He attacked was their choice of which commands to rank low.
The scribes counted 613 commandments in the Old Testament in all. They divided them into laws they thought were important and laws they thought were less important. The Lord also points out a difference when He calls the command to love God the great and first commandment. Yet He at once puts the command to love your neighbour on the same level (Matt. 22:36-40). In Matthew 23:23 He accuses the scribes and Pharisees of leaving aside the more important matters of the law — judgment and mercy and faith. Meanwhile they put great emphasis on applying the law of tithes to little things like garden herbs.
Commentators differ over which commandments are meant. Some take them as the law of Sinai; others notice that verse 19 drops the word "law" and says "these commandments."
It is also possible that the Lord, when speaking here about "commandments," was not thinking of the law of Sinai. He may have meant His own new commandments, which He was just about to announce in the "sermon on the mount"... They might still have seemed "least" to His audience. Yet they were the guidelines for how the disciples of Christ should behave in the kingdom of the heavens.
The verse joins doing and teaching. That pairing points straight at the religious leaders.
The end of verse 19 again shows the contrast with the scribes and Pharisees. The Lord later says of them: "So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practise" (Matt. 23:3). In Matthew 5:19 He links His promise to the agreement between actions and doctrine.
One writer takes "least in the kingdom" as a description of people whose place there is outward only.
The law was still valid then. So He says to the Jews here that anyone who thinks he can do away with any of it would be called the least in His kingdom. Comparing the two Scriptures we see that He speaks of people who only claim a place in the kingdom of the heavens outwardly. They have not really "entered in" (v. 20). When He appears in glory He will remove them from His kingdom in judgment (Matt. 13:41).
Taking the law this seriously does something to the person who tries.
This very attitude — doing and teaching the commandments — would of course lead a person to recognize his own need of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus. He would realize that he comes short when measured by the rule of law.
This verse is sometimes set against the teaching that believers are not under law. One writer answers that the two do not clash.
Teaching that we are not under law, and teaching men to break the commandments, are not the same thing. On the other hand, I can teach the commandments as part of the revealed mind of God. At the same time I can hold that I am not under the law.
- Authority. To "relax" a command is to loosen its grip on people — and no one may loosen what God has spoken.
- Smallness. The scribes put tithing herbs above justice and mercy. Jesus lets no one label any word of God unimportant.
- Agreement. Jesus ties the promise to doing and teaching. The leaders of His day preached without practising.
- Ranking. Least and great are places in the kingdom. Being "least" may expose someone who never entered it at all.
- Direction. Measured by this rule, everyone comes short, and that discovery is what sends a person to the grace of Christ.
For I say unto you, that unless your righteousness surpass [that] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of the heavens.
Jesus has just said He came to fulfil the law. Now He sets a bar that would have stunned His hearers. The most respected religious men in the nation did not have enough righteousness to get in. Two questions follow. What righteousness does He mean, and how could anyone ever have it?
These were not careless men. They were the recognised experts, and no one in Israel knew a higher standard.
Since the Babylonian captivity the Talmud has added a large collection of interpretations and rules on top of the law. The New Testament calls these "the tradition of the elders." The scribes knew the law and these human rules best, and the Pharisees kept them most strictly. In Matthew 23 the Lord Jesus pronounces a sevenfold "woe" over these men and their behaviour. It was marked by self-centredness and a concern for outward appearance. They might look devout and righteous to people, but before God their attitude could not stand.
Their fault was not carelessness with Scripture but the way they placed human tradition alongside it.
As undoing the word justly sunk one to be "least" in the kingdom, faithfulness to it raised to a great place there. Clearly then the righteousness of those who entered must exceed and excel that of the Pharisee (v. 20), who honoured tradition, the word of man, and so necessarily belittled God's word.
The disciples looked up to this religion. Jesus says it will not survive God's inspection.
They looked up with ignorant eyes to the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Our Lord declares that this righteousness will not do. It goes up to the temple every day. It prides itself on long prayers, large gifts to the poor, and broad phylacteries. It will not stand in the sight of God. There must be something far deeper and more in keeping with the holy, loving nature of God. For with all that show of outward religion, there might still be no sense of sin and no sense of the grace of God — and usually there was none.
(Phylacteries were small boxes of Scripture worn on the body. The Pharisees made theirs wide so people would notice.)
The answer is not a longer list of duties but reality on the inside. The rest of the chapter shows what that looks like.
The Scribes and Pharisees were especially ritualist and external. This was letter, not spirit. Our Lord condemns a righteousness of mere outward acts. He insists on inward reality as essential for the kingdom of the heavens... As the Pharisees fatally narrowed the scope of Scripture, the Lord gave its fulness as none but He could. The first of these references is to the law of murder. But the Lord goes immeasurably farther for the kingdom.
Commentators differ on which righteousness the word "your" points to. Some read it as the righteousness lived out by those who already believe:
He does not mean the righteousness of God which He credits to those who believe on Him. The Lord Jesus, in the "sermon on the mount," does not preach the gospel to the lost, but speaks to His disciples. So "your righteousness" means practical righteousness. It shows in the lives of people He has justified through faith in Him, who follow Him by doing God's will.
Others read it as pointing the hearer straight to faith:
The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was mere self-righteousness, an attempted cover-up of their true character. We must have a righteousness that exceeds this. This is not explained for us here, but Romans 4:5 makes this far more clear.
Both readings agree on one thing. The verse gives the requirement but never says where to get it.
There is a great secret that does not come out in this sermon. First of all, there is a load of unrighteousness on the sinner. How is that to be dealt with, and the sinner made fit for the kingdom of heaven and brought into it? Through faith he is born again. He receives a new nature, a life that flows from the grace of God just as truly as Christ's bearing of his sins on the cross. There is the foundation of practical righteousness. The true beginning of all moral goodness in a sinner is the sense and confession that he has none — that he is bad. Nothing is ever right with God in a man until he gives himself up as all wrong.
The verse ends with the question of who actually gets in.
The question was raised: who is going to get into the kingdom? The answer is, "Unless your righteousness…" That is the character which suits the kingdom — not the Pharisees with their legal righteousness... We are born again, and so we see and enter the kingdom.
- Standard. The scribes and Pharisees kept the law and the tradition of the elders strictly. They looked righteous to people, but their attitude could not stand before God.
- Deeper. Jesus condemns religion of outward acts and asks for inward reality. He goes far beyond the letter of commands like the law of murder.
- Debated. Commentators differ. Some take "your righteousness" as the daily righteousness of those already justified. Others say it points the hearer to righteousness received by faith.
- Source. The sermon gives the requirement, not the remedy. New birth through faith gives a new nature — the foundation of practical righteousness.
- Entrance. The verse describes the character that suits the kingdom — and the first step into it is confessing you have none of it.