Flight Paths

…the Sermon on the Mount is not a soporific sentimentality designed to induce a kind of feeble-minded do-goodism.  Nor do these chapters tolerate the opinion that Jesus' views on righteousness have been so tempered with love that righteousness slips to a lower level than when its standards were dictated by Law.  Instead we discover that the righteousness demanded by Jesus surpasses anything imagined by the Pharisees, the strict orthodox religious group of Jesus' day.  Christ's way is more challenging and more demanding—as well as more rewarding—than any legal system can ever be.  Moreover, his way was prophetically indicated before it actually arrived; as Paul says, But now a righteousness from God, apart from the Law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify (Rom 3:21). 

The Sermon on the Mount, An Evangelical Exposition of Matthew 5-7, by D. A. Carson