A New Torah and the Fulfillment of God’s Kingdom

Matthew’s Gospel portrays Jesus as a New Moses. After the Israelites had fled Egyptian slavery, it was Moses who gathered the people and instructed them on how they were to be God’s beloved people. In Judaism, God’s message to Moses came to be called Torah. Torah means “teaching”; in Judaism, it can also refer to the Pentateuch. According to Matthew’s Gospel today, “when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,” where, like Moses, he addresses the crowd. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) can be called his Torah, though unlike Moses, who instructs Israel what he has heard from the Lord, Jesus speaks on his own authority. Jesus’s Torah does not replace the Torah delivered by Moses, but interprets it. Christianity does not replace Judaism (supersessionism), but continues and fulfills it. Matthew has gathered a variety of Jesus’s teachings into the sermon, much of which is illustrated by Jesus’s own life. 

The Sermon is not a collection of noble human attitudes, but is designed to prepare a community with a distinctive vision and a willingness to pay the price of living by that vision in a world that opposes it or remains indifferent. His words are meant to break the grip of alien and dehumanizing forces and win people to the rule of God.  

In the Beatitudes, Jesus is not giving advice but validating a way of life. People who live in accord with the Beatitudes are “doing the right thing.” He is almost saying to the hearers, as one translation has it, “Congratulations!” because they are the marks of the coming rule of God. For example, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” means living in a non-competitive, non-grasping way. “Blessed are they who mourn” is addressed to those saddened by situations when the powerful triumph over the weak. “Blessed are the peacemakers” validates those who bravely face down violent bullies, lying to gain advantage and wealth. One should not forget the rewards for each type of behavior. The rewards are stated as passive verbs, e.g., “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” but such “divine passives” were a common and reverent way of referring to God’s action in the world. The Beatitudes declare victory for the Kingdom of God.

Richard Clifford, S.J., has taught biblical studies for 55 years, most recently at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College, and has written many scholarly and popular books and articles.