20 “But I warn you- unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven! (Matt. 5:20, NLT)

The righteousness of the Pharisees was a behavioral based righteousness. It’s a “disease” any of us can be afflicted with in our culture. It’s just too fun to pick on “evangelicals” and their “rules,” while “liberals” have their own set of righteous behaviors as well.

Face it, friends, we all have “planks” in our eyes from time to time and we have to deal with them.

The task is to go behind the behavioral traits we desire and get to the heart of following Jesus and being apprenticed to his Kingdom.

Jesus then goes into a fuller explanation of what he means in the rest of Matthew 5. Our problem is that we turn those examples into a new legalism.

God help us! We just have to keep looking for behavioral traits!

See the examples in Matthew 5 for what they are, and then look to our day to see similar examples. The point Jesus is trying to make is when we get past the behavioral righteousness and we are truly apprenticed to Jesus, we may see what brings Kingdom “rightness” (thank you, Dallas Willard for that phrase) in our current situations.

From the “macro” situations, like how do we treat the immigrant right in front of us, or, more realistically in some cases, how do we help those with mental illness, etc., to the “micro” situations, like “how do I deal with the jerk at work?” we need to know kingdom rightness and not just “righteous behavior.”