Dana 527

They both begin in the same place - the heart. Adultery is taking action on the **** in your heart. According to Jesus, there is no difference in **** and adultery. **** breaks the 10th Commandment because the whole basis of **** is wanting something that is not yours and is not meant to be yours.

The overarching theme is love and reconciliation. We should not harbor anger and unforgiveness because these can lead to deeper heart problems, which can in turn lead to distance in our relationship with God. Jesus is trying to get us to not only change our outward actions, but to let Him change our heart attitudes.

It's better to settle disagreements and hurts with others now instead of waiting until we stand before God with unresolved sin in our hearts. We are supposed to settle with the one we've offended by asking for forgiveness and offering reconciliation. The longer we wait to repair damage we've done to someone else, the more we and the other person are hurt, and the more the distance grows between us and God.

To give honor and worship to God, we need to come before Him with a clean heart; otherwise we are not giving ourselves completely to God as He desires. When there is a situation where we need to either forgive or ask forgiveness, that puts a blockage between us or God until the situation has been resolved. We should do everything we can to reconcile with someone we've offended, including humbly asking for forgiveness and taking any action to right the wrong we've caused. If the other person is unwilling to forgive or reconcile, we should go as far as we can with the person, and then we can have peace that we have been obedient to God.

Jesus is saying that anger towards someone and murder both stem from the same seed within the heart. It doesn't seem "fair" in our eyes, but I guess God does see murder and angry insults as both equally sinful, since He sees our heart attitudes even more than our outward actions, and both of these actions come from the same root in our heart. If we actually believed that God sees angry attitudes as murder, we would not be so quick to get angry over insignificant things.

I see the attitude in some churches that since it's impossible to keep the law of the Old Testament, we'll just ignore it and do our best. In the past, I've attended a church where I think grace was almost over-emphasized. God never meant His grace to be a free pass to a life of sin. I think God meant His grace to apply as a balance where we fail at keeping His law; it was not meant to abolish His law or to excuse us from trying to live up to God's standards. Christian legalism in a church puts all the emphasis on our outward behavior, without addressing the real attitudes of the heart. Anybody can conform to certain behavior standards with a strong enough will, but only God can change a heart. It's much easier to look like a Christian than it is to actually live like one! A church where there are no moral standards and no obedience expected is filled with hypocrisy. There is an attitude that you can live it up all week and ask (and receive) forgiveness on Sunday morning. The people don't realize that they are so far from the freedom they think they are living in - they are actually in bondage to sin. Spiritual growth is impossible without an expectation of obedience to Christ.

When we let our light shine and live our lives as "salty" Christians, we can expect the persecution Jesus talks about in verses 10-12. Persecution can be evidence that we are shining the light of Jesus into the world around us. If we hide our light for fear of persecution, we are taking away from God's glory; we are cheapening the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus by hiding away what he died for. Jesus' suffering was necessary to satisfy the penalty that had to be paid to bring us into relationship with a completely just God. His suffering also proved his great love for us. I don't think our suffering at the hands of the world is necessary for salvation (it does strengthen faith and grow us), but I know we must at least suffer over our own sin before we can see our need for a Savior. Romans 12:2 tells us that we shouldn't conform to the ways of this world, even if that may bring about persecution and suffering. At the same time, we are given the promise that we will be renewed and rewarded by God even in the midst of persecution and suffering.

If we hide the light that Jesus has put into our hearts, or if we let the light go out because we neglect to keep it lit, then we are of no use to God or to His kingdom. As Christians, we already have the light, and our purpose is to let it shine so that others can see the way to Jesus. A light hidden under a bowl eventually dies and goes out for lack of oxygen. I don't want the picture of a hidden, dying flame to represent my witness and my life as a Christian!

A Christian who has lost their saltiness is characterized by compromise. They give a little on their standards here and make an excuse there until finally they are living one way on Sunday morning and a different way the rest of the week. I think it is possible to detect this symptom in yourself if you are paying attention. You would begin to notice that God is slipping from first place in your life to second or third or ninety-ninth. Secular people pick up on any hint of hypocrisy in a Christian - they can definitely see if Christianity is only surface-deep in a person's daily life. Other Christians who only see you in church may not even notice, since we have all gotten so good at wearing our "church masks" around each other. They would eventually notice that your talk is not matching up with your walk. This is where accountability and close friendships with other Christians are so important! You can definitely resaltify your life by admitting your failure and your need to God and returning to Him with your whole heart.

The presence of Christians in the world help preserve it against God pouring out His wrath upon the earth. We also preserve the very presence of Christianity, which different groups of people have been trying to destroy and obliterate since it began. Hopefully, we "sprinkle" God's message through society by our words and actions, and by Christians representing God to our culture through books, movies, music, teaching, and standing up for what we believe. As the salt of the earth, we are not called to clump together and ignore the rest of the world. Like salt stirred into food, we are to spread out and mix in (while not losing our saltiness) until our flavor is spread throughout the whole world.

When we are persecuted, we know that we have been marked by the world as belonging to Jesus. This should bring joy and peace that triumphs over the pain of the persecution. This is where we have to fix our eyes on Jesus, not on this world. The persecution will be temporary, but the blessing of belonging to the kingdom of heaven will last eternally.

God and sin don't mix. Sin builds a wall in our hearts, brick by brick, until we are finally blocked off from hearing and seeing God. He is the only one that can knock the wall down. The only way to receive a pure heart is to ask God to wash it clean. I think we often fail in that we try to do the cleaning ourselves, but we wind up only surface cleaning - sweeping our sin under the rug to make us look good on the outside. God is concerned with cleaning out the deep-down dirt that gets lodged in our heart, the dirt our own self-efforts can never wash away no matter how hard we try.

The world looks down on those who desire righteousness as close-minded prudes. I don't think Jesus is talking about striving for our own righteousness, but about entering into real relationship with Him so that we take on His perfect righteousness. We are to thirst for being in right relationship with God and to hunger to become more and more like Him, not through our own efforts, but through staying connected to Him. This Beatitude promises that our hunger and thirst for His righteousness will be satisfied through His presence within us.

The world sees the kind of meekness Jesus talks about as a weakness, not a strength of character to strive for. The world is saturated with a "me first" attitude, while Jesus' attitude was just the opposite: "others first, me last". We can't be Christlike as long as looking out for "number one" is our main aim in this life.

If we are not aware of our spiritual poverty, we won't be looking for Jesus as the answer. If we don't see our need for a solution to our problem of sin, we won't be looking for a Savior. To become a Christian, it is necessary to mourn over our own personal sin, past, present, and future. We need to see how we fall short of God's standard and understand that God made a way to bridge that gap. We need to mourn over the price Jesus paid to cover our sin and bring us into right relationship with God. A common mourning experience for Christians is mourning over lost people, especially those in our family or who are close to us. I think we also mourn when we cannot see the logic, reason, or benefit of a situation God allowed into our lives. I have personally mourned over the sin still in my life even though I am a Christian.