Sermon on the Mount
Week 15 –Binding and Loosing
The Sermon on the Mount is the core of Jesus’ yoke and if we want to be true Jesus followers, then we need to understand how to live out his yoke. The main purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to show how to live a life that God finds pious, that is, how to live out the righteousness of God here on Earth. We have spent the past couple of months looking at the “Principles of the Yoke,” the Beatitudes. These principles showed us that God values the heart of mankind. He wants us to stop worrying about seeking after what man holds honorable and to seek after that which he holds as honorable. He then tells us that what he values is humility, meekness, piety, mercy, peacemaking, etc.
Tonight we start a new section of the Yoke. For the next six weeks we will be examining some of Jesus’ “new” interpretations of the Law. These teachings all follow a pattern of beginning with the phrase “You have heard it said…” and end with “but I say to you….”
If you remember from our first few weeks, we learned that this language was common for s’mikah rabbis. We contrasted the language used by Torah Rabbis, who would say “It is written…..and it means…..” with the s’mikah Rabbis and their phrase “You have heard……BUT I tell you……..”
To a rabbi and to a first century Jew, this phrase was part of the “binding” and “Loosing” formula. In the next six weeks we will see several examples of Jesus “binding and loosing” so we need to have an understanding of what that is.
A torah rabbi had no freedom to offer his own interpretations of the law. All he was able to do was to say, “it is written…and it means…” This means that if a situation arose in his town and somebody came to him asked for his advice, he only had authority to give advice based on what he has been taught from his s’mikah rabbi. If he has no knowledge or learning from his s’mikah rabbi, then he would be unable to apply the Torah to this particular situation. He would have to get some advice from a rabbi with s’mikah.
It appears, though, that Jesus gives his followers authority to make these determinations amongst themselves (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18-20). Jesus understood reading the Bible is easy. He knew that the real difficulty came in “day-to-day” application. It is applying it that is tricky. Applying the Bible is harder than just simply stating “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”
For example, the passage we want to interpret next week is Jesus’ “binding” concerning the commandment against killing. It’s obvious this applies to outright premeditated murder, but does this prohibition against killing also apply to the battlefield? What about killing in self defense? What about killing in the defense of a child or loved one that is being attacked? Does this teaching extend to capital punishment?
Who gets to say what the Bible says on these things?
What about this passage, for another example: "Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?" In strict context this passage explicitly applies to visiting temple prostitutes. But does it apply to anything else? Is it a prohibition against alcohol? Is it an exhortation to exercise? Can we use this passage as a justification against tobacco? Can we employ this passage when we are encouraging someone to eat more nutritiously? Is this passage a condemnation of obesity? What about my intake of caffeine and sugar? Are they covered in this verse?
Who can say how far the Bible applies in each of these situations? You? Me? Our denomination?
One more example: the Old Testament teaches us to keep the Sabbath day holy. Is Sunday the Sabbath? Is going to the beach on Sunday wrong? Cutting my grass? Making unnecessary purchases? Is there no such thing as a Sabbath at all anymore?
How can I know how the Bible applies in these situations? Who can decide what the Bible means—obviously I can’t just decide for myself—neither you nor I can be trusted to let the Bible mean whatever we decide it means ourselves. So who can we trust?
We covered this a little while ago, and I feel as if I had done a terrible job of explaining what is in my head and I believe that I may have misspoke on a few of the points. So, I will attempt to be clearer as we look at this a little more deeply.
As we have said time and time again during this study, from Moses’ time until Jesus’ time, these implementation of the law tasks were led by the rabbis. Thinking Jews immediately saw that the Ten Commandments were more "principles" that needed application than commandments.
The commandment on the Sabbath didn’t say specifically what it meant to work—just don’t do it. Was building a fire to eat considered "work?" What about a fire for warmth? Is collecting sticks for the fire working on the Sabbath? Feeding animals? Taking in the harvest before tomorrow’s rain?
God commanded Sabbath-keeping but left the details up to us to figure out. It is the same with "Honor your mother and father." What does that mean? Does it mean a Jew had to obey their parents even after they were an adult? Take them into their own house and care for them when they are old? Merely give parent them respect and admiration? How was a devout Jew to know how this commandment applied? Who gets to decide?
As we have said, this is where the rabbis came in. The Rabbis took up the task of applying the Scriptures to daily life—answering the question "How far should I go?" and, "How far is too far?" The answers to these questions were called the rabbi’s "yoke."
“A majority of scholars now recognize that the terms "to bind" and "to loose" are best understood with reference to a practice of determining the application of scriptural commandments for contemporary situations. (1) The words are used in this regard by Josephus and in targumic materials. Jewish rabbis "bound" the law when they determined that a commandment was applicable to a particular situation, and they "loosed" the law when they determined that a word of scripture (while eternally valid) was not applicable under certain specific circumstances.”
Binding and loosing: a paradigm for ethical discernment from the Gospel of Matthew
Mark Allan Powell
To determine the application of Scripture the Rabbis used a question and answer approach. The two schools of Rabbis of the first century (Hillel and Shammai) are the most famous. The rabbis examined the law and applied it. Someone might ask, "If I find a fledgling dove and keep it have I stolen?" The rabbi’s teaching then established the application of the commandment "Do not steal" to the real situation of a person’s finding a baby bird that had obviously escaped from someone’s cage. In this case the teaching was that if you found the bird within fifty cubits of the cage you had to return it, otherwise "finder’s keepers" prevailed.
All this of course sounds really ridiculously legalistic to us until one examines our own church rules (and personal ones) which attempt to make similar applications of the Bible to today’s issues. Well, what is your answer? Ever found a some cash in a parking lot? What about a quarter? What about a penny? What did you do? What do you do if you find out the cashier made a mistake and didn’t charge you for an item? What if the item cost $100? What if it costs a $1?
Do you reimburse for personal photocopying at work? Telephone calls? Time sending personal emails? Use of the ink in an office pen for personal purposes? See?
We all have to make ethical judgments every day that either bind us or loose us from "the law."
The rabbis used a particular phrase for this process—Bind and loose. It was not a matter of treating the Scripture lightly, "loosing" it by tossing overboard, but rather the process treated Scripture with gravity, carefully attempting to discern how it applied to actual daily living.
“It is important to note that for the rabbis (and for Matthew) loosing the law never meant dismissing scripture or countering its authority. The law was never wrong when it was rightly interpreted. The issue, rather, was discernment of the law's intent and of the sphere of its application.”
Binding and loosing: a paradigm for ethical discernment from the Gospel of Matthew
Mark Allan Powell
We all know real people need help with this sort of thing. First, there are some folk who are simply too hard on themselves—their consciences are so tender that they’ll turn in a penny they’ve found to the Wal-Mart counter and if they keep it they feel like they are a thief. These people need loosed from their hard taskmaster.
But there are also others who are so liberal on themselves they will "loose" just about every command in Scripture—including explicit ones—as they "consider the circumstances" in their own life. They’ll be sinning boldly and pronouncing it good. These sorts of folk could use a bit of "binding."
The bottom line: individuals can’t be trusted to do their own binding and loosing—they needed a rabbi to help them and this was the situation in the first century when Jesus spoke these words.
In some ways the entire Sermon on the Mount is an example of Jesus’ binding and loosing ("You have heard it said…I say unto you"). We are going to see that he will bind murder to include anger. He is going to bind the commandment of loving neighbor to also include loving of enemies.
We also see (in other places) that he looses Sabbath-keeping so that one might harvest grain by hand and even heal people. He also looses the restrictions against idolatry by allowing tax payments to Caesar who considered himself a god.
Rabbi Jesus did what rabbis did—they took the law and applied it to daily practical issues of morality—loosening the grip of some rules and tightening and extending others. He never disposed of the law, but applied it to real-life through the process of binding and loosing.
If we look at these two passages, we see that Jesus delegates the authority of binding and loosing to the church. The questions are: what are the keys and who got them? The keys seem obvious: they are the authority to apply Scripture to daily life, binding and loosing it when applied to life.
If these are the keys then who has authority to use them? Some would say that only Peter, the other apostles, and their successors (through the laying on of hands) have the authority. Some would argue that each and every individual Christian personally has the authority. Others would say that “the church” has the authority and then argue over whether that means the “local” church or the “universal” church.
I think that the authority belongs to “us” as the “church” in a series of concentric rings, which I will describe in a few moments.
It is our job to apply Scripture to today’s world—being strict on some things and more loose on others. It is our job to start with God’s word then look at real-life situations and decide where to bind and extend the meaning of Scripture and where to loosen up its application and turn people free. I think it is our job to tell the person who feels guilty for the penny they stole from the parking lot that they’ve not stolen it at all and if they know they have $100 item that the cashier neglected to ring up that they need to go pay for it.
The question then comes down to practicality. Who, in your life, have you granted the authority to bind and loose? I see this authority as a series of concentric circles.
All of these combine to guard me, my church and my denomination in straying too far from what the Holy Spirit has been telling the church through the ages.
So, there you have my concentric circles. It is a complicated process and once I’ve written it I see why it is so popular to choose one of the simpler solutions (e.g. "I decide for myself what the Bible now means" or "I just believe whatever my denomination says.")
This series of circles is a far more complicated system of determining how the Bible applies to today and requires too much work to be practical for most people. But I am convinced that it is the best method and I try to do it as best I can—though I do admit that it leaves things in ‘flux" often and thus is not an attractive option for people who like simple and rigid answers to everything
Matthew's readers are urged to avoid two pitfalls:
Anyway, I say all this because we are going to see Jesus do some binding and loosing in the next 6 passages. As we study those, it is important to note that some of these bindings and loosing may have changed over the centuries and that might be OK.
So, when we get to some of these topics a little later and we take some liberties that aren’t in the text, we can examine them against the backdrop of our circles to understand why we believe the things we believe.