But we get a totally different picture of salvation, faith, and forgiveness if we regard having life from the kingdom of the heavens now—the eternal kind of life—as the target.

One of the most influential writers in the conservative camp today is John MacArthur. He has defended the view that you cannot have a “saving” faith in Jesus Christ without also intending to obey his teachings. You must accept him as Lord, hence the name Lordship salvation.9

However, “the law” they had in mind and that they rubbed up against every day was not the law of God. It was a contemporary version of religious respectability, very harsh and oppressive in application, that Jesus referred to as “the goodness of scribes and Pharisees” (5:20).

But what I say is that anyone who becomes intensely angry [orgizomenos] with those around them shall stand condemned before the law” (5:22).

In Matt. 5:20–48, then, we find out precisely what fulfillment of the law would look like in daily life.

The remainder of the Discourse on the Hill, chapters 6 and 7, then provides a sequence of warnings about practices and attitudes that will deflect us from living from the kingdom.

And here also lies the fundamental mistake of the scribe and the Pharisee. They focus on the actions that the law requires and make elaborate specifications of exactly what those actions are and of the manner in which they are to be done. They also generate immense social pressure to force conformity of action to the law as they interpret it. They

The sensed irrelevance of what God is doing to what makes up our lives is the foundational flaw in the existence of multitudes of professing Christians today. They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just thinks it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ’s merit account to ours, and to wipe out our sin debt, upon

Even the moral disasters will be received by God as they come to rely on Jesus,