The word “love” does not appear in this text, but in its substance it quite clearly speaks of what love means. Love in the Bible is not primarily deep feeling and upwelling emotion but effective help. When, in the parable in Luke 10:30-35, the Samaritan raises up the robbery victim, pours oil and wine on his wounds and bandages them, brings him to an inn, pays the owner and assures him that he will make good on any additional costs, Jesus is describing exactly what he thinks of as love. Exodus 23:4-5 does the same.
Even as concerns love of enemies Jesus thus thinks and speaks entirely in terms of the Torah. He interprets it. He brings its scattered parts together. He thinks through “loving God” and “loving neighbor” to their utmost consequences. Precisely on the basis of the Torah he knows who God is and how, therefore, people in Israel ought to be also.
Certainly it was not a matter of course to read the Old Testament that way, because there are other voices to be found there as well. It can indeed speak of hatred and do so with elemental rage. In Psalm 139—to take only one example—we read:
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies. (Ps 139:21-22)
We could say a great deal about this extract from a much longer psalm text. It is not about private quarrels and enmity. The one praying experiences how the people of God are being destroyed by “men of blood” (v. 19) who themselves are Israelites, and he or she wants to stand on God’s side. But above all we may not overlook the “prayer dynamic” of the psalm.22 The speaker has already asserted that she or he can never truly grasp God’s thoughts (vv. 17-18) and in the end begs God to test him or her and point out the way she or he should go (vv. 23-24).
And yet, at a later time people read Psalm 139:21-22 with some justification as a call to separation from and hatred toward God’s enemies. Anyone who entered the Qumran community had to swear “to love everything that [God] selects, and to hate everything that he rejects” (1 QS 1, 3-4), “to love all the [children] of light” and “to detest all the [children] of darkness” (1 QS 1, 9-10). It was forbidden to hate any member of the community (1 QS 5, 26), but one must nourish “everlasting hatred for the men of the pit” (1 QS 9, 21-22). The children of light are the members of the Qumran community, the children of darkness everyone else. That is how some people in Jesus’ time interpreted the Bible.
Only against the background of these voices can we clearly see the certainty, clarity, and absolute conviction with which Jesus understood Leviticus 19:18 at its heart and uncovered the whole import of that text: love of neighbor includes the enemy and precisely in its treatment of the enemy demonstrates itself as genuine love.
But Jesus not only taught love of enemies; he lived it in his behavior toward those who in his time were excluded and socially stigmatized: in his attitude toward the “tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34), the “toll collectors and prostitutes” (Matt 21:31), the “thieves, rogues, and adulterers” (Luke 18:11). People in Israel at that time felt themselves morally superior to such types. They were despised in the name of God; people avoided them and as far as possible shunned social contact with them. Jesus did the opposite and so made them his “neighbors.”23
Anger Is Forbidden
The antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount are especially important for the question of Jesus’ attitude toward the Torah; hence, our next sample will concern the first of those antitheses.24 It begins as follows:
You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that if you are [merely] angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. (Matt 5:21-22a)
The thesis that precedes the antithesis is clear. “Those of ancient times” are the Israelites who received the Torah at Sinai. To that generation, and thus to all of Israel, “it was said.…” The passive construction is used at this point to avoid employing the name “God.” What it means is that God said to Israel, when proclaiming the Torah at Sinai, “You shall not murder.” This is a word-for-word quotation of the prohibition of murder in Exodus 20:13, with the addition of “whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.” There is nothing more said about what will then happen to the murderer on trial, since that is obvious. One who murders another human being is punished with death (cf., e.g., Lev 24:17). That is the thesis. Jesus is only reminding his hearers of what was known to every Jew of his time.
But now comes his antithesis: “But I say to you.” This “but I” is uncanny, because if God has already spoken, then “but I” can only mean: “Now I am speaking with the same authority with which God formerly spoke. I am speaking in the role and in the place of God.”
And what does Jesus say? What does he proclaim with the same authority once exercised by God at Sinai? He says that bitterness against one’s brother or sister, that is, against one’s fellow believer among the people of God, is the same thing as murder. Just as a murderer is brought to judgment and then punished with death, so will anyone who is merely angry at the fellow believer be brought to judgment and punished with death.
Given the way the antithesis is laid out, the anger against the fellow believer can, naturally, only be an internal emotion, anger in the heart, cold rage against the other—that is, something that would never bring anyone before the judge because it is not justiciable. Otherwise, the antithesis would not function.25 Jesus is saying: “God has ordered that for murder one must be brought to judgment. But I am now decreeing that one must be brought to judgment even for holding anger in one’s heart.” It had to be clear to every hearer, at least after the initial shock, that while Jesus is formulating his words as a legal decree (if someone does such-and-such, then this and that will follow), in reality he is using that form only to uncover what it means to be angry with a fellow believer. It is like murder.
This play of language, sharpened to the utmost, is characteristic of Jesus. He can use imagery that is scarcely bearable, such as that of a beam in the eye (Matt 7:3), of tearing out one’s own eye (Matt 5:29), of swallowing a camel (Matt 23:24). But he can also play with rhetorical genres to provoke or, better, to bring his hearers to insights they constantly repress. In our case this is the recognition that the deep division in the people of God that prevents them from becoming a sign for the world begins with anger against the sister or brother. No, it does not merely begin there; when anger is present, destruction is already at hand. Internal bitterness is murder of the sister or brother, murder of the people of God.
What was Jesus doing with this antithetical speech in Matthew 5:21-22? Did he abolish the Torah, or the fifth commandment of the Decalogue? By no means! Did he replace the Torah with a new commandment? Not that either! He left the fifth commandment as it stands, irreplaceable and unconditionally necessary. But he grasped it down to its roots. Murder begins in the heart and the head. It begins with anger.
And now the crucial point: this working out of the root of the fifth commandment happens already in the Torah itself. It is nothing new. When Cain was envious of his brother, when his anger boiled over and his face sank to the ground, God said to him, “If you do well, can you not look up? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen 4:7).26 This assumes that murder begins in the mind. Outwardly Cain had not yet done anything. But he is already on the point of murdering his brother. The evil intent is working in him. Sin is already threatening.