Willard's World 5- The Dikaiosune

The rest of Matthew 5 according to Willard lays out what the fulfillment of the law looks like in real life. Willard first points to the Greek word, “Dikaiosune”. Willard defines this word as, “the character of the inner life when it is as it should be.” The closest English word might be righteousness. This is what Jesus is explaining when he lays out how we are to live in the kingdom.

I’ve struggled with whether or not to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. There are a lot of rules to get right. Jesus addresses this though and says, “Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom. Jesus acknowledges here that a list of rules is impossible to adhere to. Therefore the dikaiosune is, “at the much deeper level of the source of the actions, good and bad. He is taking us deeper into the kind of beings we are, the kind of love God has for us, and the kind of love that as we show it, brings us into harmony with his life. No one can be ‘right’ in the kingdom sense who is not transformed at this level. And then of course, the issue of not [acting wrongly] is automatically taken care of.” So then the many situations laid out in the next verses of Matthew 5 are illustrations of what it might look like for a person whose heart is dikaiosune to live real life.

When we’re irritated with someone
The old law had said don’t murder but Jesus teaches that the dikaiosune is to not indulge in anger. It’s a new thought for me that anger is something we indulge in as opposed to a felling that happens. Willard explains that, “Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self righteousness and vanity. Find a person who had embraced anger and you find a person with a wounded ego.”

Now the illustrations that follow show how one might act rightly when they become irritated. When our heart is about reconciliation we will automatically not call one another “fools” (or insert the current derogatory term of your choice). We will leave important events to reconcile relationships and we will not fear awkward meeting in public but will humbly seek to right each relationship even at a social cost. These are not laws Willard reminds us but illustrations of the normal course of a kingdom life.

When we’re attracted to a person on the street
The old law had said don’t have sex with anyone but your spouse but the dikaiosune says act like Job in chapter 31. “’I made a covenant with my eyes,’ he says. He had as it were, an understanding with them that they would not engage in lusting. ‘How,’ he asks, ‘could I ogle a young woman,’ a ‘virgin’? The salacious gaze would be seen by God. And it would certainly lead to deceitful actions…. ‘If my feet have carried me to wrong places,’ he says, ‘or if my hand is defiled because it has touched what it ought not to touch, then let my children belong to others. And if my heart has been captured by the wife of another, and I have sought for and opportunity with her, then may my wife be possessed by other men.’” This is a change in heart as opposed to a change in actions.

Jesus then goes on to talk of mutilating your body to avoid lust. What does all this greusom talk of gouging eyes and cutting off hands mean? Willard suggest that, “Jesus is saying that if you think that laws can eliminate being wrong you would, to be consistent, cut off your hand or gouge out your eye so that you could not possibly do the acts the law forbids.” By means of hyperbole, Jesus makes the life of rules seem pretty absurd.

When you’re unhappy with your spouse
The old law as practiced had said that as long as you a man gave his wife legal divorce papers (which could defend her from stoning for adultery) you were right before God. Willard points out that Jesus does not rule out divorce entirely and says that indeed on rare occasions may be done as an act of love. More important though he reminds us that, “the resources of the kingdom of the heavens are sufficient to resolve difficulties between husband and wife and to make their union rich and good before God and man—provided, of course, that both are prepared to seek and find these resources.” The dikaiosune then is acting to find and then use these kingdom resources to reconcile marital conflicts.

When you want to make someone believe you
The old law had said keep your oaths and vows while the dikaiosune person does not participate in verbal manipulation. Willard says, “Many people make a good living doing nothing but uttering in attractive or coercive ways ‘yeses’ that are not really yeses at all, and ‘noes’ that are not noes. In social or political contexts, we now call then ‘spin doctors.’

When you are injured by someone
The old law said that equal redress of injury is right while the dikaiosune says help the one that damaged you. Jesus then gives four illustrations of what a person with a dikaiosune heart might do. One will often: a)Remain vulnerable (Mat.5:39), b)Help those taking things from them (5:40), c)Offer to others more than required by law (5:41), d)Give generously to those undeserving (5:42). If these were laws one would have to give up in frustration but when they are understood as illustrations we realize that the dikaiosune heart will act this way by nature much of the time. In a way it would be easier to just follow the law because that would abdicate us of considering the decision and prayerfully discerning how to act. The law would be just like a recipe. The dikaiosune on the other hand is like art where every brush stroke needs to be thought trough and no absolute blueprint exists. We will always have to ask, “if the gift of my vulnerability, goods, time and strength is precisely, appropriate. That is my responsibility before God.”

One extra thought about making oneself vulnerable by “turning the other cheek.” Willard points out that, “Jesus never suggests that we turn someone else’s cheek or make someone else vulnerable.” This acknowledgement makes subsequent defenses of pacifism as commonly understood more complex although I suspect not impossible.

When you have an enemy
The old law had said treat them exactly as they treat you—no more, no less--, while the dikaiosune says love them. Willard says, “With this contrast Jesus brings to completion his exposition of the kind of ‘goodness beyond’ that goes hand in hand with the blessedness of the eternal kind of life. When he thus comes to completion in the agape love that characterizes the Father, he moved beyond specific acts and illustrations of kingdom goodness. Love does not illustrate, it simply is the goodness beyond the goodness of the Pharisees. All the illustrations he has given in the various situations discussed [previously] are illustrations of it.”

If all this were a call to “do the law” we’d be in big trouble, but “he does not call us to do what he did but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.” The fulfillment of the law in the dikaiosune ultimately looks like the person of Jesus.