Pick the most spiritual person you know. The one that knows all the rules. The one that keeps them all. The one that has spent his whole life studying. The one who has cleaned every bad habit out of her closet. The one that prays every day. The one that has a quiet time every night. The one that has memorized more of the Bible than you have read. The one that, try as you might, has no faults.
I mean, really has no faults.
That person that is so good that you decide that there is no hope for you. The person that you try to argue with about God and they win every time. The one that seems to have no questions, no doubts. The one that knows the answer every time in Sunday school. The one that has just the right video to recommend for that problem, that has the right verse. that knows the right song, that sings with the right choir.
You know that person?
Jesus says that they aren’t going to heaven. So neither are you. Neither am I.
Of course, he doesn’t stop there. Or, more accurately, he doesn’t end there.
He starts with, “unless you are far more righteous than that person…”
Those people, who were called Pharisees by the people listening to Jesus this day he was sitting on a hillside talking, were the perfect people. And when Jesus says that even they weren’t righteous enough, a murmur must have wafted through the crowd. People must have looked around the edges of the crowd for a Pharisee. People must have felt a mixture of fear and despair.
Jesus had said the Pharisees didn’t measure up (fear). He said no one did (despair).
It’s good that he was righteousness.
300 words a day 