From Schoolmaster to The Master: This section of the Sermon on the Mount serves as the explanation of the way that Christ’s gospel is the fulfillment of the Law of Moses. To show how the Law is fulfilled, Jesus must move from the Law of Moses to the Law of Christ and show that difference. What is the relationship between the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Christ? Paul tells us that the Law of Moses was a preliminary gospel, an instructive gospel:
Galations 3:24
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster [to bring us] unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
In Paul’s reference, the Law of Moses taught lessons which were important to learn. However, those lessons were subservient to that which is to be learned by immersion in Christ’s Gospel. Interestingly enough, Paul uses faith as the key to the transition. What can we learn from the transition from Law to Faith?
Christ may not have come to destroy the Law, but he did come to do something to the Law. This section of the Sermon on the Mount is the clearest explanation in all scripture of the nature of the transition between the Law of Moses and the gospel of Christ. The message of the text is presented in two ways. The first is lies in the words of the text, and the second is encoded in the way the words are presented. In this case, the general structure of the text allows us to generalize the kind of meaning Christ is illustrating, so that the message can be applied to situations which he did not specifically describe.
The structural model used in this section consists of paralleled examples that are fit into a particular form. The beginning of each example is some form of “ye have heard it was said by them of old..” which introduces a principle that the people would have known from the oral version of the Law. It is followed by a countering section introduced by “but I say unto you…” that takes the theme of the first section and expands upon it in the second. The repeated structures that give the same type of example serve as the model against which we should begin to be able to insert other clauses and learn how the gospel intends us to live the Law, even in cases that were not specifically mentioned.
Comment: This reference is very clearly to the Decalogue. The phrase that the audience is to recall is the “thou shalt not kill” that is found in both Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17. The phrase “whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment of God” does not appear in the 10 Commandments, but certainly is implied. Thus the “setup” of the instructive set is that there is a prohibition against killing, and that killing is something that will cause the person to come under the judgment of God. It is important to note that we should understand this verse more in terms of murder than just causing death. Both the Hebrew word in the Ten Commandments and the Greek word in Matthew both carry the direct meaning of murder. (Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the New Testament: the Four Gospels. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1978, p. 49).
The companion to this setup phrase is introduced by the “but I say unto you” clause. Even as an element of the explanatory material is given in contrast to the murder of the first clause, there is stll a parallelism in that the penalties of judgment, council, and hell fire still apply. The structure of the unit suggests that both elements of the antithetical parallel will result in the same eternal penalties. This focuses our attention on the nature of the shift in the thing that will incur the judgment.
We have murder in the first place, and anger in the second. The examples of saying “Raca” and “thou fool” are simply extensions of the essential contrast between murder and anger. What, therefore, is the essential relationship between these two? In the case of murder, our sympathies are certainly centered upon the victim, and extend to the family of the victim. When murder occurs, we understand the pain that is caused to that family, and we envision the difficult task we would have if it were we who were required to face such a horrendous event.
Nevertheless, avoiding this situation is not the main intent of the prohibition against murder from the Lord’s viewpoint. We may understand this better if we imagine the effects of murder from an eternal perspective rather than our earth-bound limitations. There are at least two people who are involved in a murder: the victim and the murderer.
Examine the fate of the victim from an eternal perspective. Certainly there are earthly consequences for the untimely death, but what happens to the eternal possibilities of that person? There is no lasting effect. The gospel is designed in such a way that the inequities and vagaries of an earth with agency will not have an eternal effect that we do not choose ourselves. If anyone dies before they accept the gospel, whether of natural or unnatural causes, they are not condemned, but simply taught in the spirit world. While we feel the pain of the victim, in the eternal perspective, the victim still has all of their best eternal prospects ahead of them.
This continuation of the blessings of eternity that await the victim stands in stark contrast to the eternal future of the murderer. This is where we must remember the distinction between murder and killing. We might be the accidental agent of someone’s death, and therefore bear the burden of having killed someone. That is tragic, but a very different kind of tragedy from what happens to the soul of someone who can intend, plan, and carry out the murder of another human being. For the murderer the blood of the atonement does not apply:
“For persons not to receive forgiveness neither in this world nor in the world to come does not mean that they will be cast into outer darkness, for the sin of murder can be pardoned even though it is unforgivable. Joseph Smith taught: “A murderer, one that sheds innocent blood, cannot have forgiveness” (TPJS 339). The Prophet used David as an example. “David sought repentance at the hand of God carefully with tears, for the murder of Uriah; but he could only get it through hell: he got a promise that his soul should not be left in hell:” (TPJS 339). President Joseph F. Smith indicated that this meant “even he [David] shall escape the second death” (434).
Murder is unforgivable because of the nature of the sin. In order for a sin to be forgiven, the sinner must repent. If the sin is of such a nature that repentance cannot take place or if the sinner refuses to repent, then it remains “as though there had been no redemption made, except it be the loosing of the bands of death” (Alma 11:41). President Harold B. Lee stated:
One of the most serious of all sins and crimes against the Lord’s plan of salvation is the sin of murder or the destruction of human life. It seems clear that to be guilty of destroying life is the act of “rebellion” against the plan of the Almighty by denying an individual thus destroyed in mortality, the privilege of a full experience in this earth-school of opportunity. It is in the same category as the rebellion of Satan and his hosts and therefore it would not be surprising if the penalties to be imposed upon a murderer were to be of similar character as the penalties meted out to those spirits which were cast out of heaven with Satan. (“The Sixth Commandment” 88)
Because of this rebellion, the fulness of the atonement of Jesus Christ is not effective in murderers’ lives. In order for the demands of justice to be met, murderers must pay the price themselves before they can enter into a kingdom of glory. Elder McConkie suggests that it appears that they “shall eventually go to the Telestial Kingdom” (Doctrinal New Testament Commentary 3:584).” (H. Dean Garrett. “The Gtrhee Most Abominable Sins.” Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate, Jr., eds., Alma, the Testimony of the Word [Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1992], 162.)
The prohibition against killing is therefore protecting the person who would kill more than the person who might be killed.
The eternal perspective is the one that helps us understand how this paired set moves from murder to anger. They are related on a continuum, and the movement of Christ’s law away from the focus on the act, and towards a focus on the damage caused to the individual as they approach the act. To clarify how anger might still be related to murder, let’s examine a case of an inept murderer. Suppose we have a person who has all of the motivations to murder, plans the murder, selects the time and the gun, fires the gun – and misses. Modern jurisprudence has created a category for this crime, that of attempted murder. The fact is, however, that no murder has taken place. The technical requirement of the Law, “thou shalt not murder” has been kept. However, both the Law and God understand that something almost as terrible has happened. For the Lord, it is quite likely that the attempt and the success are very nearly the same thing.
What has happened in the attempted murderer is that all of the soul-damaging intent leading to the act has happened in just the same way as a more successful murderer. In spite of missing the target, the damage to his own soul had already been accomplished, and it is that internal soul-damage that condemns the murderer. This is the distinction that Paul recognized and preached as he attempted to continue the explanation of the movement from Law to Gospel:
Romans 2:28-29
28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Textual: The examples of anger contain phrases that may not seem as terrible as they are meant to. The first is the word “raca,” which is “term of utter vilification; “thou worthless one”; “O empty one.” (Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the New Testament: the Four Gospels. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1978], p. 16). It is generally understood to be a transliteration of an Aramaic term meaning “empty headed.” (Robert Guelich. A Foundation for Understanding the Sermon on the Mount. Word Publishing, Dallas. 1982, p. 186).
This was an extreme insult, and might better translate into English idiom with one of our infamous four letter words. The second phrase includes calling a person “fool.” The most obvious meaning of this phrase is the obvious, with the proviso that it might have been considered more insulting than it might in today’s idiom.
There is an interesting possibility for the particular term that we have as “fool” in the KJV based on the Greek of Matthews gospel. We noted that the salt losing its savor was an ambiguous phrasing, as the word has the meaning of “foolish.” The root of the word that is translated in the “salt” reference as “losing savor” is the very same as the one that here is “foolish.” In the Greek, the connection between the savorless salt and calling one a “fool” might have been more apparent, and might suggest a referential meaning between the two. The “fool” might be the same as one who was “unsalty salt.”
In the 3 Nephi redaction, we have slight changes in both verses: