By Russ Johnson
In 2005, researchers working with the Himba of Namibia brought along a simple test. They showed people a ring of squares, all green but one, which was blue. Any English speaker would spot it instantly. But the Himba language uses one word for both colors, and the blue didn’t jump out the way you’d expect.
Then came a second ring. All green, except one square was a slightly different green, the kind English speakers miss. The Himba have separate words for those greens. They found it easily.
Same eyes. Same squares. Nothing had changed but the words, and their words drew the lines in different places.
Language doesn’t just name what we see. It teaches us what to look for. That may be the best way to understand the Law. Because before the Law became something people tried to keep, it gave them language.
This is good.
This destroys.
This exploits your neighbor.
This protects them.
The Law named things. And once something has a name, it becomes harder not to see. That’s what the Law was for.
The Hebrew word for it — Torah, carries the idea of instruction. Teaching. Guidance. Which already sounds different from the way many of us learned it.
We hear Law and imagine God finally producing the official list of things that annoy him.
Don’t murder.
Don’t sleep with your neighbor’s wife.
Leave his donkey alone.
Apparently the donkey situation needed clarification.
But the Law wasn’t given because God suddenly developed an interest in human behavior. It gave people language for seeing what human distrust does once it starts moving through families, money, sex, power,
property, strangers, enemies, and the occasional donkey.
The problem came later.
People confused noticing the difference between right and wrong with becoming different. The language became a scorecard. And humans love scorecards.
They tell us where we stand. Who is ahead. Who is behind. Who should try harder.
Give us enough rules and eventually we’ll find a way to calculate that we’re doing fine.
Which brings us to Jesus.
By the first century, the religious world around him had spent generations interpreting the Law — creating boundaries and traditions
for determining what counted and what didn’t.
And then Jesus sits on a rock and starts talking.
Bible translators called it the Sermon on the Mount. Church leaders often describe it as a blueprint for Christian living. A kingdom manifesto
for serious disciples.
Jesus begins: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
(Matt. 5:17–20)
Then he tells the crowd their righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law.
For a moment, the religious professionals must have felt terrific.
Finally.
Someone taking righteousness seriously.
No cheap grace here.
Then Jesus keeps talking.
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.” (vs 21-22)
Fair enough. Most of us have managed to get through the week without killing anyone.
But Jesus keeps going.
What about anger? Contempt? The part of you that turns another person into an idiot before lunch?
I live in Florida, have coached Little League, and possess internet access. So I can testify that the distance between goodwill and wanting
someone removed from the earth is sometimes one lane change.
Then Jesus moves to adultery.
“‘You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (vs 27)
He goes on to tell the crowd to gouge out an eye, or cut off a hand, if it causes them to stumble.
But let’s be real. Anyone familiar with being human knows the first flash of attraction can arrive before you’ve had a chance to decide anything about it.
And is Jesus really handing us self-mutilation as a practical checklist?Because if so, Sunday morning should involve significantly more eyepatches and prosthetic limbs.
Unless Jesus is taking our obsession with measurable righteousness to its absurd conclusion.
The Law said, Do not murder. We figured out how to avoid murder while despising each other. The Law said, Do not commit adultery. We figured out how to remain technically faithful while turning people into objects.
So Jesus keeps moving past the behavior and toward the thing underneath it. Past what can be measured. Past what can be managed.
Until finally he locks the door and closes all the exits:
“Be perfect, … as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48)
There goes the curve.
For years, I tried to make that sentence more reasonable. Surely there was a Greek word somewhere waiting to rescue us. Maybe perfect means: Give it your best shot. Make steady progress.
But eventually you realize the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t leave us with a manageable version of goodness. It exposes our inability to manufacture the kind of life we keep trying to manufacture.
Giles Fraser calls this a crisis of capacity.
I love that phrase.
Because as long we believe there is some version of ourselves we can get to, we don’t need rescue. We just need instructions.
But when Jesus takes the Law into the heart, something collapses: the illusion that we can secure life by getting it right.
And that collapse isn’t the failure of the Law. It is the Law doing its job. The blue square was there the whole time. Now we can see it.
The Apostle Paul gives that job a name in Galatians. He calls the Law a paidagōgos. A word for a household attendant responsible for walking a child safely to the classroom door every morning.
Useful.
Necessary for a time.
Paul says: “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law…” (Gal. 3:23) Then: “The law was our guardian until Christ came…” (vs 24)
That little word matters. Until.
The Law names. Reveals. Restrains. Exposes. It gives us language for seeing what distrust does to human beings.
Then Paul says: “Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” (vs 25)
No longer.
The guardian did its job. It brought us to the end of ourselves. And then it handed us to Jesus. The tragedy happens when we drag the guardian back into the house and ask it to raise us.
That’s how Christianity gets turned into the very project Jesus exposed.
Here are the rules.
Here are the disciplines.
Now get serious.
To be clear, the Law isn’t bad. A thermometer isn’t bad because it can’t break your fever.
The Law does something important. It helps us see what gives life and what destroys it. It exposes the places where distrust has become so normal we stopped noticing it.
But it cannot make us trust. It cannot manufacture love. It cannot produce the life it describes. That was never its job.
So let the Law take you to the secret places nobody else can grade; to the place where there is nowhere left to stand above anyone else.
Because that is exactly where grace
stops sounding like a theological idea
and starts sounding like very good news.