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1) Jesus' authority
as the teacher
If he did not teach like the scribes, he did not teach like the Old
Testament prophets either. They did not share the scribes
addiction to the past. They lived in the present. For they
claimed to be speaking in the name of Jehovah, so that the living voice
of the living God was heard through their lips. Jesus also
insisted that his words were God's words: 'My teaching is not
mine, but his who sent me' (John 7:16). Yet there was a
difference. The commonest formula with which the prophets
introduced their oracles, namely 'Thus says the Lord', is one Jesus
never used. Instead, he would begin 'Truly, truly I say to you',
thus daring to speak in his own name and with his own authority, which
he knew to be identical with the Father's. (cf. John 14:
8-11). This 'Truly, I say to you' (*amen lego humin*) or 'I tell
you' (*lego humin*) occurs six times in the Sermon on the Mount (5:18;
6:2, 5, 16, 25, 29). On six more occasions, namely in the six
antitheses of chapter 5, we find the even stronger assertion with its
emphatic *ego*, 'But *I* say to you' (*ego de lego humin*). Not
that he was contradicting Moses, as we have seen, but rather the scribal
corruptions of Moses. Yet in doing this he was challenging the
inherited tradition of the centuries and claiming to replace it with his
own accurate and authoritative interpretation of God's law. He
thus 'stood forth as a legislator, not as a commentator, and commanded
and prohibited, and repealed, and promised, on his own bare word'.
So certain was he of the truth and validity of his teaching that he said
human wisdom and human folly were to be assessed by people's reaction to
it. The only wise people there are, he implied, are those who
build their lives on his words by obeying them. All others by
rejecting his teaching are fools. He may even have been applying
to himself those words of personified wisdom which occur in Proverbs
1:33, 'He who listens to me will dwell secure'. It is by paying
heed to him who is the wisdom of God that man learns to be wise.
2) Jesus' authority as Christ
There is evidence in the Sermon on the Mount, as in many other
parts of his teaching, that Jesus knew that he had come into the world
on a mission. 'I have come', he could say, (5:17; cf. 9:13; 10:34;
11:3,19; 20:28), just as elsewhere in Matthew's Gospel he referred to
himself as having been 'sent'. (10:40; 15:24; 21:37). In
particular, he had not come, he insisted, 'to abolish the law and the
prophets', but he had come 'to fulfil (*plerosai*) them'.
The claim sounds innocent enough until one reflects on its
implications. What he is asserting is that all the adumbrations
and predictions of both law and prophets found their fulfilment in him,
and that therefore all the lines of the Old Testament witness converged
on himself. He did not think of himself as another prophet or even
as the greatest of the prophets, but rather as the fulfilment of all
prophesy. This belief that the days of expectation were now over
and that he usered in the time of fulfilment was deeply imbedded in the
consciousness of Jesus. The first recorded words of his public
ministry were: 'The time is fulfilled (*peplerotai*), and the
kingdom of God is at hand' (Mark 1:15; cf. Matt. 4:17). In the
Sermon on the Mount there are five direct references to God's
kingdom. (5:3,10; 6:10,33; 7:21). They imply = though with
varying degrees of clarity - that he himself had inaugurated it, and
that he had authority to admit people into it and to bestow on them its
blessings. All this means, in a word, that Jesus knew himself to
be the Christ, God's Messiah of Old Testament expectations.
Next: (3) Jesus' authority as the Lord |
