ANNOUNCER: Welcome, we’re glad you’re here. This is Grace in Focus, with a continuation of yesterday’s episode: if we don’t forgive others, will we go to hell? How should we interpret Matthew 5:21-22, part of the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society, we’re located in North Texas, and our website is faithalone.org. We are currently in the window of application and registration for the Grace Evangelical Theological Seminary. It is our online seminary, with scholarships for all who maintain a high level. This is made possible by our donors for which we are thankful. And if you want to study with us, get the information you need, go ahead and apply, and be ready to study with us coming right up in the fall semester. Find the information at faithalone.org/seminary. 

Now with today’s discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob. This is going to be a follow-up on our last podcast where we talked about your question from Ann about Matthew 5:21-22. The verse that says, “whoever says ‘you fool’ will be in danger of hell fire.” And so we addressed that. 

BOB: And then after we were done, you said, but I don’t agree, so… 

SAM: After we were done…

BOB: Why don’t you agree? What is your view?

SAM: We agree obviously that this isn’t talking about the lake of fire or it’s not talking about a believer being sent to the lake of fire. Where I disagree or maybe I just have an incomplete understanding is you mentioned that you and Zane Hodges hold the view that this is a dispensational teaching for the millennial kingdom. So then you gave the example of three different instances in verse 22: angry at his brother without a just cause or just a cause. And then whoever says to his brother, “Raca,” and then whoever says “you fool.” So the first two being believers, the third being an unbeliever. Even if all of that is law that will be instated for the millennial kingdom, I think there has to be present application for Jesus’s immediate audience. 

BOB: Okay. The reason why when you told me that concern, I said, we probably need a follow up is because I erred in not saying, okay, let’s apply this now, because 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for reproof, for correction, for teaching, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate and fully equipped.” So this verse has to have application for the people in Jesus day. And this was still in the Old Testament economy. And it has to have application for people during the church age. 

SAM: Which to be clear, doesn’t mean every verse is addressed to you, the individual Christians. Sometimes things are for the church. I mean, for the the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, the disciples, but I think in this instance, based on His audience and the time He was speaking, I think he was trying to impart knowledge, a greater understanding of the law on these people because the Pharisees, the religious authorities at the time were greatly abusing God’s law in order to lift themselves up and keep the lesser Jews down. 

BOB: No, exactly right. So I should have talked about how this applies today. And what I would say is the application pretty much the same, except for the fact that we don’t have a council, we don’t have the judgment and we don’t have the Gehenna fire that we can initiate. Of course, I would say this would be judgment, whatever the Gehenna fire is, would be something that would be coming down from a rule or maybe all the way up to the Lord himself. 

SAM: And He’s going to throw them in the burning trash pit? 

BOB: Well, if it refers to physical death, He would just take their life. But in any case, I would say for now the application is, if a Christian in the church age is angry with his brother without a cause, he’s in danger of God judging him or her. So that person is going to experience some sort of consequences in this life. That means we should never be angry without a cause, right? This application is not tied to any specific dispensation. We should always restrict anger to having a cause. 

Secondly, we also shouldn’t call our brother “Raca” or numbskull or idiot face or, we shouldn’t do that. And if we do, we’re not going to be in danger of some council, like in the Millennium, but we will be in danger of judgment, and that could come from our local church. Someone yells at the other person, the elders might bring the person before them and say, you need to deal with your brother. You need to deal with your sister. You need to apologize. You need to deal with this. Or it may simply mean that God himself will judge them. But either way, we’re also not to call someone names. 

The third one, I would say if that is an unbeliever, which I think it is, even in this age, if an unbeliever is calling someone a fool or cussing them out, dropping F-bombs on them or whatever, that person is in danger of a fiery judgment. Here and now, not eternal condemnation, but they’re in danger of a fiery judgment directly from God, here and now. And it could get worse.

SAM: I got a couple things. First on the anger part of it. We’ve talked about the difference between emotion and sin before. We talked about it with like worry and doubt and anxiety and sadness and things like that. So anger is another one where there’s a natural human response. This happens to me all the time, I hit my head on something and I immediately start seeing red. It’s just a natural response like my in the winter, my hatchback, it doesn’t open all the way immediately. So I open it lean forward and slam my head on the metal rim and it makes me so angry that I want to hurt something, that it’s anger. But I think the difference that this for specifies is being angry with his brother. If something happens and you get angry, that’s not sin. But if something happens and now I say I’m angry at Bob, I want to hurt him, even if it’s on my head, that is now sin. 

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SAM: Let me play the layman for a second, which I’m really good at. The legalism of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the religious authority at the time was so focused on what people do. Their physical works, how much they contribute, things like that, that they were able to get away with a lot of stuff in their hearts and minds because they thought, okay, as long as I don’t murder anybody, I’m not sinning. As long as I don’t physically harm someone, it’s not a sin. 

But I think, this is my perspective, that what Jesus was telling them was novel even though it shouldn’t be because he was telling them, even if you don’t act on it, if you are feeling this way towards somebody else, that is sin. You think you’re sinless because you don’t commit any sins physically, but really the legalists were chief among sinners because they were not honoring God’s law in their hearts. They were just making sure their actions aligned with it. So in my understanding, that is what was novel about this. So not that Christ is laying out new kinds of punishment that are going to be in effect, but you guys think that you’re doing right, but really you’re not squeaking by. You’re still sinning. And so that is a present, right now, sin. And even though no one can read your mind, so you’re not going to go to jail for it, you’re not going to be convicted of it, and maybe with what you’re saying in the millennial kingdom, maybe that will be something that happens. But at least for the here and now, no one knows I’ve murdered my brother in my heart or I’ve committed adultery in my heart, except for God. So I am under God’s judgment, even if no one knows about it, even if I didn’t physically do it, there is still real present judgment for my sins as a believer. 

BOB: Right. And some people call these mental attitude sins and what Jesus is doing is saying, if you want to really understand God’s heart, it’s more than just physically murdering someone. It’s more than just physically committing adultery. In terms of anger, I’ve learned that there’s a whole range, starting out with something like annoyance or irritation. Right? So you can be annoyed or irritated, but that’s not rage. That’s not being furious. But then that can advance to the point of anger. It can lead to rage. And when people get to that point, they tend to break something or to hurt themselves or to hurt other people. And that’s why road rage is so dangerous because people are driving three and four thousand pound vehicles and they go beyond irritation and beyond anger to the point of rage. 

What I’ve learned over the years is we shouldn’t think as a believer, “Oh, well, I have the Holy Spirit in me. So the fact that I’m irritated doesn’t mean I need to do something about this.” No, if I keep towing with it, it can grow beyond irritation to anger. And if I keep in that situation, it can grow to the point of rage. So what I’ve found, if it starts getting irritating, the thing for me to do is disengage, go on a walk, talk to somebody else, do whatever, but get away from whatever this situation is, because it’s not sin at the irritation level. Once you get to the point where it’s rage, you’re now in sin, even if you don’t break something, even if you don’t do whatever. 

And so yeah, I would agree with you, this is something for today, but it’s going to be even stricter in the Millennium. In my view, the reason why the Millennium is going to be such a righteous kingdom is because these types of injunctions are going to be in place, probably not just in Israel, but all over the planet. 

SAM: I mean, Christ knows your heart. He knows what’s in your mind. It was very clear with His disciples that he knew what was in Peter and John and all their minds even knew the questions they were going to ask before they asked them. So if He’s the king, and He’s physically walking around the kingdom with us, then I don’t think He’s just going to be reading people’s thoughts or knowing their hearts and just ignore it. I think it’s going to be part of His rulership, and that’s what’s going to make him a great king.

BOB: And that’s true now too. Because he knows our hearts now, and He judges us now. And by the way, if a person, let’s say is involved with lusting in their heart, often that’s tied to pornography. If a person continues to do that, what happens is it takes worse and worse pornography to give the person the same kick, and they get to the point where they’re getting into violent pornography and things. A lot of people who go down that path end up being arrested because they’ve been guilty of a sexual assault or they’ve been guilty of rape. And it’s not they started out that way. It started out as a mental attitude sin that they didn’t deal with. So sometimes you can see that mental attitude sin morph into an actual adultery or actual rape or actual something. 

SAM: I think all sin like good works, bad works or sin will bear fruit if it’s not pruned, but we don’t want that kind of fruit. 

BOB: All right, well thanks so much everybody and let’s keep grace in focus. Amen.

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On our next episode: does John 14:12 say that all believers will do good works? Please join us for that and, in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.