Matthew 5:17-19 is a signature expression of the primary accents of Matthew’s gospel:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks on of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

This paragraph situates Jesus squarely in the Torah tradition of Judaism; is insists on scrupulous and attentive honoring of the commandments. And it articulates Jesus as the one who “fulfills-completes-perfects” Jewish Torah.   This testimony refuses to distinguish between gradations of commandments and embraces all of them. Matthew is easily the “most Jewish” of the gospels and invites us to discern Jesus as a decisive performer of Jewish faith. But then verse 20 drew my particular attention:

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (v. 20).

Jesus summons his followers to outdo Jewish experts on the Torah in their seriousness about Torah obedience. This “greater righteousness” suggests levels of seriousness about the obedient conduct of one’s life.

When I reflected on this suggestion of gradations or levels of moral seriousness, the first thing I thought of was “stages of growth” in the defining work of the great Swiss child psychologist, Jean Piaget. In a series of books in the mid-twentieth century, Piaget reported on his careful observation of children and concluded that children in their intellectual and moral development regularly advance through several different stages of learning:

Sensorimotor stage: Birth to 2 years

Preoperational stage: Ages 2 to 7

Concrete operational stage: Ages 7-11

Formal operational stage: Ages12 and up.

These are quite “normal” and “natural” stages of development. Once identified, they can be variously observed in a child by any parent or educator. Piaget regarded his articulation as descriptive of a process through which a child moves quite freely and unwittingly.

Piaget’s work, along with the articulation of Erik Erikson and Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, were taken up by James W. Fowler. In his book, Stages of Faith: Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (1981) Fowler reads the sequence of “stages of development” from a religious perspective with a great accent on the moral. He proposed that moral maturation and moral development includes the following:
Ages Birth to 2:  Primal Undifferentiated Faith,

Stage 1 (3-7): Intuitive-Projective Faith

Stage 2 (7-12): Mythic-Literal Faith

Stage 3 (12 to Adult): Synthetic Conventional Faith

Stage 4 (Mid-Twenties to Late Thirties): Reflective Faith

Stage 5 (Mid-Life Crisis): Conjunctive Faith

Stage 6 (Later adulthood): Universalizing Faith (or Enlightenment).

Fowler’s work gained great popularity in the church. In the midst of the many interpretations of his work, his “stages” ran the risk of being taken not as “descriptive,” as Piaget had insisted, but as prescriptive, as tasks of growth to be accomplished. Thus there was in Fowler a suggestion (perhaps because of a Wesleyan tilt), that human persons have a responsibility or an obligation to seek to grown, and to make an effort to grow in one’s moral capacity and sensibility.

The matter of “descriptive” and “prescriptive” in Piaget, Kohlberg, and Fowler is complex and tricky. If the processes are “normal” and “natural,” then there is no imperative attached to them. But conversely, if they are prescriptive, then they are not “normal” or “natural,” but require resolve and effort. It is to be recognized, of course, that the matter of moral development occurs in ways that we cannot discern, so that the matter is open to endless adjudication.

But what stands out in Matthew 5:20, in light of this work on “moral development,” is the fact that Jesus’ word to his disciple does include an urgent imperative. That is, the disciples are called to account for their capacity for and practice of “righteousness.” This accent on responsibility for the practice of one’s “righteousness” is worth noting, especially in a Christian context wherein we have long since championed “grace alone” as the truth of our moral life. This theological tradition has been haunted by the specter of “works righteousness,” and has largely eschewed any notion of such responsibility. Indeed, the church has so stressed “grace alone” and left off the imperatives of the gospel, so that we have ended, more or less, in “cheap grace.” That phrase from Bonhoeffer concerns not just a general indulgence; in his context it concerned a capacity for church people to accommodate Nazi ideology in the scope of the gospel. In the same way in the US church there is an easy capacity to affirm, within faith, all manner of ideology such as racism, or nationalism, or capitalism. The church becomes so welcoming that the demands of the gospel evaporate in a general offer of welcome, friendliness, and good feeling. It may be that such a stance is important, given that our Puritan-based culture is rigorous in some of its expressions. And yet Jesus—without benefit of Piaget or Fowler—and without adjudicating “description-prescription,” summons his disciples to a “greater righteousness.” Such a summons suggests that the church has work to do in schooling its members in the arts and practices of righteousness, with anticipation that we are, as a congregation, engaged in the work of moral growth beyond our easy inclination. The words of Jesus suggest that disciplines can be practiced, habits can be formed, and decisions can be made that lead to “greater righteousness.”

One remarkable expression of this imperative is the teaching of the Westminster Larger Catechism on the subject:*

Q. 167. How is our baptism to be improved by us?

A. The needful but much neglected duty of improving our Baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others, by serious and thoughtful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein; by being humbled by our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking contrary to, the grace of the Baptism  and our engagements; by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that Sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ; and to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body.

This astonishing phrase, “improving our baptism” accepts that serious believers are engaged in reflective growth in order to more fully embrace and practice the alternative life to which we are summoned in the gospel. The answer in the catechism is filled with active imperative verbs:

be humbled by our sin;

growing up to assurance of pardon;

drawing strength from the death and new life of Jesus; 

endeavoring to live by faith; and

walking in brotherly love.

The catechism has no doubt that such prospects are on offer in and through the sacrament. These several summons are in the orbit of baptism, the entry point into and marker of an alternative life. Thus I suppose that every congregation and every pastor might thoughtfully and endlessly adjudicate the matter of “cheap grace” (that readily accommodates our ideological waywardness) and “works righteousness (that presumes too much on our own merit0. My own observation of the church is the latter most readily besets us, as though the gospel were a free offer of “love sweet love,” without any summons to new life attached to it. Thus thought is that such pastors and congregations might consider how and in what ways participants in the life of the congregation are being equipped and given the skills and sensibility that make an alternative life possible that knowingly contradicts the common life of our culture.

I finish this reflection with reference to three scriptural recitations. First, Paul, the great advocate of “grace alone,” twice in his letter to the Philippians attests the urgency of growth in faith. In Philippians 2, after the great hymn of to the humbled-exalted Lord (2:5-11), Paul follows with a “therefore:”

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure (2:12-13).

He addresses the congregation as “my beloved,” and commends their obedience. Then he voices the great imperative:

Work out your own salvation.

The operational verb, katergzethe, means to “achieve, accomplish, produce, create.” That is, one’s “salvation,” one’s happy linkage to the God of the gospel, is one’s proper work. Paul anticipates his congregation will be at the task. They will, moreover, do so with “fear and trembling,” that is, with awareness that this is an urgent high-risk task. But before he finishes his pastoral urging, Paul comes around to affirm that it is God “at work” (evergon) who enables your work. Thus it is a both/and, not without human effort, not without divine engagement.

In the next chapter Paul takes up the mandate he has voiced in chapter 2, and makes the matter quite personal for himself:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but  this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on to the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus (3:12-14).

He utilizes strong verbs of effort to describe his own continuing resolve to grow in faith:

press on;

strive;

press on.

He is unambiguously clear about “the gospel”: “the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Paul
sees that his life is to be given over to a purpose well beyond himself or his own “natural, normal” inclination, a purpose that requires his deepest attentiveness. He anticipates that he will continue to “mature” as a member of the body of Christ, and he will give his energy to that role and identity.  He urges his addressees at Philippi to new diligence, to assure we do not to yield “what we have attained” (3:16).

Finally, I cite a narrative that evidences the kind of “greater righteousness” to which Jesus is committed (Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-31, Luke 18:18-30). A serious man puts a question to Jesus (Mathew 19:16). Jesus answers the man with the commandments (vv. 17-19). The commandments he names are intended to be an allusion to the entire corpus of the Torah. Notably, his final one is “love of neighbor, not among the “Ten” of Sinai. The man compliments himself for being a serious, effective Torah-keeper (v. 20). The conversation might have ended there. The man embodies “the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees” (see 5:20). But the man knows he has not yet received all that Jesus has to tell him. He asks for more (19:20). He lacks what would make him “perfect” (teleios (v. 21); this is the same term as used in Matthew 5:17). And then Jesus responds to the man and delivers his zinger:

If you wish to be perfect (teleios), go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me (v. 21).

Five quick imperatives: go, sell, give, come, follow.” This is the “righteousness” that exceeds conventional Judaism. The summons of Jesus is to divest of this world’s riches, to trade them for an alternative treasure that has currency only in the alternative world where the governance of God prevails. This imperative gives unmistakable substance to the notion of the “greater righteousness” of 5:20. This righteousness is not about being “good” or being “pure” or being in any conventional sense “holy.” It is only about the poor, about provision for the poor and making resources available for the wellbeing of the poor.

The response of the man to the mandate of Jesus is no big surprise, for it is the response we all easily make. The hindrance to the alternative life of Jesus is “many possessions,” perhaps monetary, but of many other kinds as well. It is our “many possessions” that can be kept intact by diligent rule-keeping that are at issue in the “greater righteousness.” The disciples who observed this interaction got the point. It is hard! It is too hard! It requires a big effort, but it is too hard. But Jesus is ready for the shock of the disciples as they discern, yet again, what it is for which they have signed on. At least the disciples, unlike the man, did not turn away because it is too hard. They stayed for the follow up session and in this their moment or astonishment. Jesus repositions the shock of the disciples amid the overriding power of God’s goodness:

For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible (v. 26).

This is the same both/and we have seen elsewhere. Such “righteousness” is demanding of human effort. But such “righteousness” is the work of the God of all possibility. The response of Jesus is quite like the summons of Paul:
Work out your own salvation, for God is at work in you!

The trajectory of both/and…both human effort and divine goodness…is the truth of our faith. It is such an urgent truth in a culture that wants to settle for the cheap grace of self-indulgence or for the fearful effort of works righteousness. The way to greater righteousness is neither of these. It is rather the slow work of permitting the good power of God’s transformative grace to be at work amid our attentive disciplines in faith. This is the good work a congregation can do as it summons and empowers its members to grow in grace. What a phrase: “improve your baptism”! The imperative is to let our faith identity become more complete. As we grow in such grace, we may contribute to the formation of a socio-political economy in which the poor receive good news, even as the blind, lame, deaf, and lepers have transformative restoration (Matthew 11:5). It is our work through which the restorative work of God is done.

*I had a clue about this phrase, “improving our baptism,” but relied on Erskine Clarke to help me locate it in the catechism.