How Jesus Taught

“And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matt. 7:28, 29).

It is surely very striking that what appears to have most impressed the audience that first heard Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was not its content, not its sublime moral precepts, but rather the manner in which it was delivered. Apparently, what stirred that multitude of Jewish listeners most deeply was not so much what Jesus was teaching as the way in which he taught, for, as Matthew puts it, “he taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”

To understand this statement, one must know who these scribes were and what they did. They were the recognized official students and expositors of the law of Moses, the Pentateuch, which, duly interpreted and expounded, was held to be a sufficient and authoritative rule of life and living. It was their duty to study the law, to gather together and collate the various opinions on that law given by generations of learned rabbis, and then to expound this sacred textbook of religion and ethics for the benefit of their contemporaries.

The Jews who heard Jesus give his Sermon on the Mount were thoroughly familiar with these scribes and their methods. But when they heard Jesus Christ, they were profoundly impressed with the difference between his manner of instruction and that of their official teachers, the scribes. What made this difference that came home so forcefully to those hearers of Jesus?

To begin with, Jesus Christ taught on his own initiative, responsibility, and authority, and not on the authority of anyone else. The scribes, of course, never pretended to do anything else than expound what had been said officially by Moses, the giver of their law, and by later rabbis who had tried to interpret and clarify the Mosaic law and apply it to particular cases. Their language was of this sort: “Moses commanded …; Rabbi This said so and so; Rabbi Thus said such and such and such.” They did not introduce their own views into the matter at all, for they taught not on their own authority but on that of others.

Jesus Christ’s method of teaching, however, was entirely different. He deliberately stated his own opinions and views in contrast to those of others. As Alexander MacLaren once put it, “Jesus Christ in these great laws of his kingdom adduced no authority but His own; stood forth as a legislator, not as a commentator; and commanded, and prohibited, and repealed, and promised, on his bare word.” The regular way in which he spoke was this: “Ye have heard it said by them of old time.… But I say unto you.…” In a word, Jesus Christ spoke with authority, while the scribes spoke from authorities. Clearly, then, what Jesus said to those multitudes would come home to them with much greater interest, vividness, and power than what the scribes said, for it is always more impressive to hear a man speak his own message than the message of any other.

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Second, Jesus Christ taught only what had come home to him with vital reality in his own personal experience, his own inner spiritual life. This was not at all what the scribes had in mind as they taught; indeed, it was not anything in which they were particularly interested. They set out in all their teaching only to expound and make clear that law contained in the Pentateuch. Here was the official text, the law of Moses, and here the commentaries of successive generations of rabbis of Israel; whether the scribes had found that teaching to come alive in their own life and experience was irrelevant.

With Jesus the case was quite different. He preached the Sermon on the Mount, not because it was his professional duty, but because what he said was so meaningful and important to him that he simply could not keep it to himself. John Bunyan once said, “I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel,” and this was true of Bunyan’s Master, Jesus Christ. When Jesus spoke as he did in the Sermon on the Mount about not being anxious and fearful, it was because he had proved in his own experience the rich blessing to be obtained through trusting God and being freed from all anxiety. When he spoke of the blessings that come through private prayer, it was because he himself had experienced those blessings through his daily practice of the presence of God. When he said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” what he meant was that his hearers should get rid of the censorious spirit, the spirit of carping and negative criticism, and he said that because he knew in his own spirit the health of mind that comes to one who is habitually appreciative and generous instead of critical and negative. Jesus’ teaching was something that was real and vital in his own life; it had behind it the witness of his own character and spirit. So naturally it came home to his hearers with great impressiveness and authority.

Third, the appeal Jesus made in his message was to the mind and heart, or in other words, to the experience of his listeners. For he believed that truth, the truth he proclaimed, was self-authenticating, that it shone in its own light and freely commended itself to the sincere and seeking mind and heart.

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This was not the attitude of the scribes at all. They depended on the prestige and authority of the name of Moses and the names of the famous Jewish rabbis whom they quoted to give weight to their laws and ordinances. With them, the determining consideration was that Moses, their great law-giver and leader, had said so and so, had laid down the law thus, and his decrees must be accepted and obeyed. The fact they stressed was that their teaching had behind it the sanction of a great name, the name of Moses.

By contrast, Jesus depended on the inherent force and authority of the truth that he proclaimed. He believed that the truth of his message would freely commend itself to any sincere mind and heart, so that it would not need any external weight of authority to buttress it and win acceptance for it. Says Dr. Herbert H. Farmer:

If anyone had the right to impose Himself and his message by over-riding authority upon men, He surely had it. Aware of the final decisiveness of His own person in the destinies of men, announcing the breaking in of the eternal kingdom of God upon history in His own advent, taking to Himself the highest category in the religious thought of men, there is nevertheless a complete absence of any attempt to compel men’s allegiance, whether by threat or command or any form of prestigious suggestion. Indeed, there is a manifest shrinking from any such thing. “Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” he cried. “Be ye not called Rabbi, for One is your teacher.” “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” In this last oft-repeated formula how much, how very much, is contained of the unique and distinctive quality of Christ, of his whole understanding of God and the way of his coming to man [The Servant of the Word, pp. 87, 88].

Take an obvious illustration. When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?” he did not give any dogmatic answer that had to be accepted without question. He did not categorically say, “Your neighbor is anyone in need whom you happen to meet.” What he did was to tell that great and unforgettable story of the Good Samaritan, and when he had told it, he said to his questioner: “Which of these three, thinkest thou was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” (Luke 10:36).

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Jesus Christ realized that truth is not dependent upon man’s acknowledgment of it. But he also recognized that in order for truth to have meaning for a man it must come home to him personally and freely, authenticating and commending itself to his own mind and heart and, where possible, being experienced in his life. Then and only then does the truth have illuminating and kindling power. Then and only then does the truth really make men free.

FALL AND THEN …

Don’t be afraid when each blade

Falls with a crash,

When a slate sky cries

Hate, rapes the proud oak

Bare, rakes glass debris

In thick death beds of grass

Paving. Do not fear death here

On this fall-leaf shroud.

For hate is love; and glass, that dead

Leaf-stone, is struck a blow to

Life, chiseled and heated to life