In every era, human revolution begins with a bonfire. The seductive demand is always the same: Out with the old—Burn it down. Leave it layin’ in ashes. Clear it out, leave nothing to see. In with the new!
Human History is filled with bonfires. The French tore down throne & altar, (the Crown and the Church, the twin pillars of European society!) to invent the abstract “New Citizen.” The Soviets purged centuries of heritage and slaughtered hundreds of millions to manufacture the synthetic “Soviet Man.” The Nazis burned books, waged mass genocide, and ignited world-wide war to engineer the “Neuer Mensch”—the “New Human.” In China, Mao unleashed Red Guards to obliterate the “Four Olds”—old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits.
History is cyclical. To remake the world, man always believes he must scorch the earth—first abolishing, then killing off, finally replacing every vestige of the past. Therefore, every revolution requires an arsonist, an executioner with an axe.
Why? Because man cannot redeem what is broken—he can only burn it down. His only hope is to try to sever its root, plant anew, and roll the dice that something better rises from the ash heap.
This appetite for demolition today is just as fiery. In Militant Islamism we witness ideological purges literally by sword. “Allah Akbar! Tear down throne and altar. Compel the infidel submit or die!” Likewise, in modern secularism, we witness the systematic deconstruction of our nation’s moral foundations, revision of history. The underlying mechanism of revolution is unmistakable. Abolish, Burn Down, Replace.
So many people all around us are disillusioned in life. They’re told to blame God “God’s way has failed you… let’s be done with the God! Out with the ancient order of things. Eradicate the Ten Commandments from the public sphere. Erase the timeless authority God’s Word (Its Law, Prophets, Teachings) from this generation’s memory. Out with archaic distinctions, male and female! Out with covenantal marriage—one man, one woman for a lifetime. Out with sexual purity, faithfulness? Out with moral restraint. Out with prayer, fasting, and charity. Abandon the ancient paths. Heave them overboard! Let vigilante justice roll! Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Mean tweet for mean tweet. Forget lowering the bar. Let’s discard God’s commands altogether as relics of an unenlightened bygone age. Declare all the Law, all the Scripture, all the Prophets, the Old Ways… a threat to progress. Come, let’s reason together… let’s clear the way for new humanity, new man, new society, new rule… one unconstrained by archaic notion of a Creator God.
Into our spiraling world enters Jesus of Nazareth. His rallying cry, “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near!” Every revolutionary instinct would expect Messiah Jesus to tear down Israel’s storied past (her Laws and Prophets). . . and like other revolutionaries, build a radical new regime on the ruins of all that came before. YET Jesus arrests this impulse before it so much as utters a syllable. Matthew 5:17: "Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish them but to fulfill."
Pause and consider how truly distinctive Jesus’ revolution and ours is: Fulfill.
Instead of severing Israel’s ancient root, Jesus has come that it may bear its long-awaited fruit! His revolution is a call to take up His inside-out call to be “Be Salt” and “Be Light.” Not to abolish… but live more deeply “into” God’s Way than ever before… to fulfill God’s design for humanity dared imagine.
Every single beatitude is a counter assault to our violent urge to dominate, kill, and burn everything down. Every single paragraph in Jesus’ Sermon the Mount is not an invitation to abolish, replace, remove, water down, qualify, soften, emasculate God’s ways… but to sharpen, deepen, clarify, magnify, more profoundly APPLY them. “You have heard that it was said … but I tell you!”
Consider Jesus’ first act of public revolution. In Matthew 3, Jesus presents himself to be baptized by John the Baptist. But John is confused. In fact, Matthew 3:13 says, “John tried to stop Jesus, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?” But in Matthew 3:13 Jesus answers him, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness…”
What way is Jesus talking about? His way is to fulfill. Nothing is to be set aside. Baptism was Jesus public declaration, “I’m here to fulfill God’s way in the deepest, most fullest way possible. I’m here to fulfill God’s way down to the most minute of commands! The jot and tittle. “Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of the pen” shall pass away. I’m here to fulfill God’s way in the seemingly tiny things (like letting your yes be yes, and your no, no… not looking upon a woman lustfully… not being angry, insulting people, condemning them, withholding mercy or generosity to those in need). I’m here to fulfill God’s way in the very biggest of things. All the Law and Prophets… the greatest of all commandments, is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul and the second, is to your love neighbor as yourself.
The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ Kingdom manifesto. Revolution not by demolition, abandonment, replacement—revolution by obedience. Go into all the nations, baptizing people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you! It’s so surprising to me that so many Christians find Jesus first act of public revolution optional! Baptism. But what does Jesus say? Matthew 5:19, “Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
If one’s first act of revolution is to break or dismiss one of Christ’s commands—even as elementary a step as baptism… what other liberties might be taken? Jesus’s revolution is a summons not to rationalize or defer, but to obey and fulfill!
As Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount unfolds, he raises the scepter of righteousness to impossibly high standards. Matthew 5:20, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.” This statement shatters any confidence we might have, of muscling our way to righteousness, through the sheer force of our own willpower. If the Pharisees—who dedicated every waking hour to external hedge-building around the Law—if they failed to cross the threshold, redoubling human effort is a dead end.
Jesus is not raising the bar to a higher notch on the human scale; He is revealing that the bar was never on the human scale to begin with. “I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”
**There are two ways we should take this statement: First, Jesus came to fulfill in Himself, every aspect of righteousness… the very thing the Pharisees strived for, but never achieved. Second, and even more profound, Jesus indicated he didn’t just come to fulfill righteousness in and of Himself. .. but to fulfill righteous for and on behalf of us!**
Consider how the Apostle Paul was once a Pharisee himself. In Philippians 3 Paul points out if anyone could have put confidence in the flesh and boasted in self-made righteousness, it was him. He says in Philippians 3:4-6, “If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; regarding the law, a Pharisee; regarding zeal, persecuting the church; regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless."
If righteousness was only a matter of out-measuring other men, he was at the top! But righteousness is about measuring up to God Himself. “Be holy as God is Holy.” It’s about measuring up to Christ Jesus, who by the Spirit of Power, flawlessly fulfilled all the Law and Prophets--every jot and tittle, from the least to greatest stroke of pen.
This leads to Paul’s decisive revelation in Philippians 3:7-9, “But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith."
What’s makes Jesus revolutionary? He didn’t just come to fulfill righteousness in Himself, but also for us! Thus righteousness comes to us as a gift, a gift we cannot attain in or of ourselves. Romans 3:21–22 Paul says, "But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction."
Where then does this leave us? In Philippians 2:12-13 Paul says, “Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose." Though we receive righteousness as a gift, we do not abandon righteousness as our goal. God’s goal remains. Be Holy as God is Holy. Be imitators of Christ. But now we’re coming about righteousness in an entirely new way… by grace, trusting, and inviting inner working of God’s Holy Spirit in our life!
As we pour over Jesus’ Revolutionary manifesto, and marvel at the depth and height, breadth and length of its call… let us remember God’s promise to the Prophets. “Not by power, nor by might, but by my Spirit says the Lord God.”
God has given the Church two public signs of revolution: First, Baptism. revolution begins not with the death of our enemies, but with us dying to ourselves. In baptism we bury the old, fleshly arsonist beneath the water, trusting Christ to wash our guilt away. We emerge to walk in newness of life, clothed in Christ’s righteous, offering ourselves to the Spirit of God to transform and heal what human willpower could never fix.
Second, Communion. At the absolute center of our revolution stands a King who chose lay down His own life rather than take that of another. He offered His body to be broken and His blood to be poured out, so that a broken world might be reconciled and redeemed. “Thank You, Jesus, for not abandoning the way of love, but living it to the very end. May we follow in Your footsteps!” Take and eat. Take and drink.
“FATHER … Every other human revolution demands a bonfire to burn down the past. Our revolution gathered around a cross where our King bore the ash heap of our brokenness Himself. Every other revolution unleashes executioners with axes to slaughter their rivals. Our King stretches out His hands to die for His enemies. Man’s way is to abolish, demolish, and replace. Christ’s way is to redeem, resurrect, and fulfill. Let us go from this table not to burn the world with fire, but to fill it with Christ’s life-- to Be his salt, his light, a people marked by His enduring love. Amen”