You Made Jesus in Your Own Image. So Did Matthew.

Matthew, Paul, and the uncomfortable truth about “just following Jesus”

Warning: If you have been following along with this series and thinking, Now this is what I’m talking about—Jesus, not religion, you are probably not going to love this post.

This is the fourth post in The Way of Jesus series, and it only takes us seventeen verses into Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount to encounter a Jesus most of us do not want to follow.

I include myself in that.

A common destination in the deconstruction process of many of us is some version of this:

Give me Jesus, not Christianity.

Give me Jesus, not religion.

Give me grace, not legalism.

Give me the simple Way of Jesus—not all the theology and institutional baggage Christians built around him.

I understand the impulse. I feel it myself. And so far in this series, you could look at what I’ve written and basically hear me saying that.

But… then we arrive at Matthew 5:17–20:

“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.

“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

“Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

—Matthew 5:17–20

Well, shit.

This is not the Jesus most of us were originally given. And just as importantly, it is certainly not the Jesus many of us hoped to discover waiting for us on the other side of our deconstruction.

This Jesus was a problem when we were young, devout believers.

And he still is a problem today.

Matthew’s Jesus does not say, “Forget religion and just love people.” He does not say, “The Law was too demanding, so I have come to replace it with grace.” He does not say, “It’s not about religion, it’s about a relationship with me.”

He says that not one letter—not even one stroke of a letter—will disappear from the Law of Moses. He says that anyone who relaxes even the least of its commands will be called least in the kingdom. He says that our righteousness must surpass that of the hyper-religious Pharisees.

Whatever else Matthew means by “fulfill the law,” he does not appear to mean “abolish it.”

Jesus explicitly says that he did not come to do that.

Here’s the hard truth: the Jesus of Matthew doubled down on the Law of Moses.

And most of us were never actually taught this.

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And now, back to your previously scheduled article…

Of course, most Christians have been given ways to negotiate around these verses.

We were taught that Jesus “fulfilled” the Law so perfectly that nobody else needed to keep it. The Law remained technically valid, but Jesus had completed it on our behalf.

That interpretation may be theologically meaningful. Plenty of thoughtful Christians believe it. But it is difficult to get there from Matthew’s account.

On its face, Matthew leaves us far less room to escape the demands of Torah than most forms of Christianity admit.

When Matthew refers to the Law and the Prophets, he is talking about the Jewish Scriptures and the covenantal way of life they describe. That includes far more than the Ten Commandments or a general instruction to be a good person. It includes dietary restrictions, Sabbath observance, tithing, purity practices, and rules about clothing, food, worship, sacrifice, sexuality, agriculture, debt, and communal life.

Christians have developed sophisticated schemes of dividing these commands into moral, ceremonial, and civil categories in order to explain why some laws are no longer applicable. But Matthew’s Jesus does not offer us that option. Neither does the Law itself, by the way.

Jesus says not even the smallest command should be ignored.

There is legitimate scholarly debate about how literally Matthew expected every command to be practiced and how Jewish followers could keep laws connected to the Temple after its destruction. There is also debate about what Matthew expected from Gentiles.

But here is where I currently land:

Matthew’s Jesus demands a fierce commitment to Mosaic Law.

I would go so far as to say that Matthew may imagine Gentile followers entering Israel’s covenant and adopting a Torah-observant way of life—something much closer to what we would now call conversion to Judaism than almost any form of Christianity has been willing to require.

It is worth noticing that Luke’s version of this sermon does not include this teaching of Jesus.

Luke’s Sermon on the Plain contains many parallels to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount: blessings, enemy-love, nonjudgment, trees and their fruit, and the house built on a solid foundation. But Luke does not include Matthew’s declaration that every letter of the Law remains in place or that his followers’ righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees.

Luke does not ignore the question entirely in his two-volume work, though. He answers it much later in Acts 15.

There, some Jewish followers of Jesus argue that Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to keep the Law of Moses. After what Luke portrays as a significant debate, the leaders decide not to place the full burden of Torah on Gentiles. Instead, they give them four requirements: abstain from food sacrificed to idols, sexual immorality, meat from strangled animals, and blood.

So, if Matthew’s answer appears to be, “Yes, keep the Law,” and Paul’s answer is, “No, Gentiles are not under the Law,” Luke’s answer is basically:

Just a little bit of the Law should be kept by Gentiles.

Gentiles do not need to become fully Torah-observant Jews, but neither are they given an entirely law-free way. Luke preserves a negotiated compromise—one intended to make it possible for Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus to belong to the same movement and, perhaps, eat at the same table.

This is not a minor detail. Luke had access to many of the sayings Matthew used, or at least to similar traditions. He included some and omitted others. Then, in Acts, he told a story in which the earliest church debated the question and reached a compromise.

Matthew gives us one answer.

Paul gives us another.

Luke attempts to broker a peace.

The negotiation of Jesus was already happening inside the New Testament itself.

If we hope the verses that follow in Matthew 5 will offer some relief, they do the opposite.

Matthew’s Jesus does not preserve the Law and then make it easier to keep.

He makes it harder.

Do not murder becomes do not remain angry or treat another person with contempt.

Do not commit adultery becomes do not cultivate the desire to possess someone who is not yours.

Do not break an oath becomes do not speak in a way that requires an oath to make you believable.

Love your neighbor becomes love your enemy.

Matthew’s Jesus takes commands regulating visible behavior and pushes them inward—into anger, desire, honesty, vengeance, and love. These are places no religious authority can easily monitor.

This is not grace replacing Law.

It is Torah intensified to the point for full personal renewal.

The righteousness Matthew describes does not surpass the Pharisees by keeping a few more rules. It reaches further into the person. Do not merely avoid killing your enemy; refuse to hate them. Do not merely remain technically faithful to your spouse; confront the desire to use another person. Do not merely tell the truth when you are under oath; become someone whose ordinary words can be trusted. Do not merely limit your revenge; refuse retaliation altogether. Do not merely tolerate your enemy; love them.

Whatever “fulfill” means for Matthew, it does not mean making the Way easier.

Matthew’s Jesus makes it almost unbearably demanding.

Many of us who have deconstructed Christianity have complicated feelings about Paul.

We accuse him of turning the Way of Jesus into a new religion about Jesus. We question his teachings about women, sex, authority, and submission. We blame later Christians—and sometimes Paul himself—for placing too much emphasis on sin, atonement, and believing the right things.

Some of those criticisms are fair.

But Paul should also receive credit for making the Jesus movement accessible to those of us who are not Jewish by birth.

More than any other early Christian voice whose writings survive, Paul argued that Gentiles could belong without first becoming Jews. They did not need to be circumcised, adopt Jewish dietary practices, or keep the full Mosaic Law. They could enter the family of Abraham through the faithfulness of Jesus without first taking on the complete covenantal identity of Israel.

Paul opened the Way of Jesus to the Gentile world in a way Matthew, read on his own terms, did not.

This gives important context to one of Paul’s most famous statements:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

—Romans 3:23

Many of us were taught to read this primarily as a statement about our private moral failure:

You are a sinner. You have fallen short. You need to accept Jesus so you can go to heaven when you die.

But that is not Paul’s actual argument in Romans 3.

Paul is wrestling with the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. Who belongs to the family of God? What advantage does possessing the Law give Israel? Must Gentiles adopt the Law to enter the covenant?

Paul’s answer is that everyone (both groups) has fallen short. The Gentiles have fallen short, but the Jews have fallen short too. Possessing the Law has not made Israel perfectly righteous, and not possessing it has not placed the Gentiles beyond the reach of God.

No group gets to claim moral superiority or control the door. Everyone stands on level ground, and everyone can be welcomed through the grace revealed in Jesus.

“All have sinned” is not so much bad news about your individual soul. In Paul’s view, it is good news because both Jews and Gentiles get to start anew together in Christ.

Romans is partly about the question separating Paul’s view of the Way of Jesus from the vision we find in Matthew:

Must people keep the Mosaic Law to belong to the Way of Jesus?

Matthew appears to say yes—or at least comes much closer to saying yes than most Christians are comfortable admitting.

Paul says no.

Romans comes later in your Bible, but was actually written decades before Matthew, so Paul was not responding specifically to Matthew’s Gospel. We also cannot know with certainty whether Matthew had read Paul’s letters or was consciously pushing back against him. But we can rather safely assume that this was a massive debate, perhaps the single biggest divisive issue, among the early followers of the Way of Jesus.

So we have Matthew and Paul providing different answers to one of the defining arguments within the early Jesus movement.

Paul says Gentiles do not need to become Torah-observant Jews in order to belong. Matthew’s Jesus says that not one letter or stroke of the Law will disappear and that anyone who relaxes even one of its smallest commands will be called least in the kingdom.

Those are not obviously the same message.

Christianity eventually found ways to hold them together. But it usually did so by allowing Paul to determine what Matthew must have meant.

We read Matthew’s “not one letter will disappear” through Paul’s “you are not under Law but under grace.” We read Matthew’s “keep even the least of these commands” through the decision in Acts 15 not to place the full burden of Torah on Gentile believers.

We read Matthew through Paul because Paul gives most of us a much easier way in.

And historically, Paul’s version of the Way of Jesus won.

The version that opened the door to Gentiles without demanding circumcision, dietary restrictions, or complete Torah observance became Christianity as most of us know it.

In some real sense, the Jesus of Paul defeated the Jesus of Matthew.

Or perhaps stated more fairly, Paul taught the Gentile world how to follow Jesus without becoming the kind of follower Matthew’s Jesus appears to demand.

But the real tension here is larger than the early debate over whether Gentiles needed to become Jewish.

The deeper truth is that we have all been negotiating the meaning of Jesus from the beginning.

Paul did it.

Matthew did it.

Luke did it.

Augustine did it.

Luther did it.

Calvin did it.

Billy Graham did it.

Your youth pastor did it.

You do it.

I do it.

Paul’s letters were written beginning in the early-to-mid-50s—before any of our canonical Gospels. Within a couple of decades of Jesus’ death, his followers were already arguing about what his life meant, who could belong, what faithfulness required, and which parts of their inherited religious world remained binding.

Paul interpreted Jesus for a Gentile mission. Matthew interpreted Jesus for a community deeply committed to its Jewish identity and Scriptures. Luke interpreted Jesus for another community and another moment. John gave us a Jesus who speaks and understands himself very differently from the Jesus we meet in Mark.

None of them simply handed us a 100% pure, unaltered Jesus.

Each interpreted him. Each arranged his story, emphasized certain teachings, and gave their community the Jesus they believed it needed.

That may sound scandalous, but it is right there on the pages of the New Testament. The Gospels are not four identical historical reports. They are four developing portraits of Jesus, shaped by different authors, communities, circumstances, and theological concerns.

We have continued doing the same thing ever since.

It is all baked into the stories about Jesus we were handed in our leather-bound books since children’s church. We just did not see it. Or, more commonly, we blindly trusted the people who assured us it was not an issue.

As Jesus may or may not have actually said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”

I can see now that I did this as a pastor. I read Matthew through Paul without admitting that was what I was doing. When Matthew’s Jesus became too Jewish, too religious, or too demanding, I reached for another voice.

Give me Acts 15.

Give me John.

Give me Paul’s theology of grace.

Give me a way out from under the full weight of Matthew’s words.

I still do that. I am just aware of it now.

I prefer Paul’s answer to Matthew’s on this issue. I prefer Matthew’s Jesus to Paul’s in other ways. And generally, I prefer John’s Jesus to either of them overall. But I make sure to keep some Markan Jesus and some Lukan Jesus in my Jesus cocktail.

Just yesterday, I received an email from a pastor telling me that I have made Jesus in my own image. He said that I have centered my own story over the story of Jesus and warned me to be careful not to lead others to do the same.

The truth is, he is absolutely correct.

I have made Jesus in my own image.

I have centered my own current understanding of Jesus over other understandings.

And I should be careful about that.

Where we disagree, I assume, is why I should be careful.

His concern seemed to be that my work might lead people away from the true version of Jesus—as if there were an objective, unfiltered Jesus available to us and I was deliberately distorting him.

My reason for being careful is different.

I should be careful because the truth can be hard to accept: every Jesus we encounter has already been interpreted. Every Jesus we believe in is a portrait assembled from selected texts, inherited theology, personal experience, cultural assumptions, and the things we need or hope to be true.

My Jesus is constructed in my image.

So is his.

So is yours.

That does not mean every portrait of Jesus is equally honest, historically plausible, or morally defensible. It does not mean we should make Jesus say anything we want and pretend the evidence supports us. Some interpretations fit the surviving sources better than others. Some require us to ignore enormous portions of the record. Some produce healing, while others produce tremendous harm.

But none of us has access to Jesus without interpretation.

Not the pastor who emailed me.

Not the scholar reconstructing the historical Jesus.

Not the believer insisting that they “just read the Bible.”

Not me.

And not you.

We all choose which Gospel receives the most weight. We decide which words are historical, which are theological, which remain binding, and which belonged to another time. We use one New Testament author to explain, soften, or reject another.

Then we call the result “Jesus.”

I can explain my preferences historically and theologically. I can construct an argument about the inclusion of Gentiles, the difference between the letter and spirit of the Law, and the trajectory I believe runs through the New Testament.

But after all the arguments are over, the uncomfortable truth remains:

I am choosing.

I am interpreting.

I am constructing a Jesus I can live with.

The difference is that I no longer need to pretend I am doing anything else.

If, like me, you would say that you have deconstructed Christianity, but still follow Jesus, then just know this is true:

You do not simply follow Jesus. You follow a Jesus you have interpreted, negotiated, and chosen—a Jesus we can live with.

Just like I have.

Just like all of his earliest followers did.

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Everything I write here is free for anyone who needs it. Others who do similar work put their most useful content behind a paywall, but I have a strong conviction not to do that.

I find myself in particular need of financial help at this time.

If my work has been valuable to you, please consider supporting it in one of the ways below:

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• Give a gift directly on Venmo.

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