Matthew 5

v1-12: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is showing us what it means to repent.  He directs the sermon to His disciples who were there because they loved Him and wanted to learn from Him, whereas the crowd was there only to be healed.  However, His teaching was in the hearing of the multitude and Jesus took this opportunity to instruct them about what good they should do and what evil they should hate.  Each beatitudes that Christ speaks both shows the characteristics of those who are truly happy, and what is promised to them that will make them truly happy.

v13-16: Christ tells His disciples that as well as being fishers of men, they will be the salt of the earth and lights of the world.  Those who have learned the teaching of the Gospel are to teach it to others, not forgetting that “the holy, regular, exemplary lives of the saints may do much toward converting sinners; those who are unfamiliar with the faith may be led to know what it is by this means.  Examples of godly lives speak volumes and teach people."

v17-20: Jesus came to obey the commands of the Law in all respects.  He shows that to use the Scriptures of the Old Testament as your rule is the right thing to do because “the rule that Christ came to establish corresponded exactly with the Scriptures of the Old Testament.”  He commands "nothing now that was forbidden either by the law of nature or by the moral law, nor does he forbid anything that those laws had commanded.”  We need go beyond the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law or we will fall short of heaven, which is why we need the righteousness of Christ.

v21-48: The big error that the Jewish teachers made, was focusing on the letter of the law, without ever looking into its spiritual meaning.  Christ explains the meaning of the law in these particular instances to show its breadth, strictness, and spiritual nature, in order to make clear what its true intent and full extent is.  In these six examples Jesus makes it clear that the righteousness of the Pharisees did not go deep enough and did not fully reflect what God is like.  “It is the duty of Christians to seek, aim at, and press toward a perfection in grace and holiness.  We must seek to conform to the example of our Heavenly Father."