From Christ Doctrine of the Atonement by George Smeaton
“It must be further noticed that out Lord’s great aim in this portion of the Sermon on the Mount is not so much to teach us Christian ethics, or to adduce a number of practical duties, to be followed out under the force of Christian motives, such as we find enumerated at the end of the apostolic epistles, as to awaken the conscience of these somewhat legal hearers to who He addressed Himself. For while the former use has been legitimately made of the Sermon on the Mount by the Church of all times, our Lord’s view-point and scope are somewhat different. It cannot be said that He takes so much for granted: His church was not yet founded. Rather, He expounds the law on this occasion, as He does in several other passages, in order to convince and awaken men to feel their need of a perfect righteousness. Is was the ignorance of the law that was the true parent or source of Pharisaism, for they claimed to fulfill it in the outward letter: and our Lord in the sermon aims to awaken conscience, by enforcing its true import and requirements.
It will be found accordingly, that the Sermon on the Mount perpetually returns to one main thought, which is again and again applied with various modification and peculiar turns. It aims to awaken in men a sense of need, and to shut them up to the righteousness which is of God. This object could be attained only by the spiritual application of the moral law, or by enforcing its inviolable import and the indispensable strictness of its demands. This alone convinces men that they need a righteousness which emanates from a divine person, and which much exceeds that of the Pharisees: and hence to awaken this sense of need, we find that the Sermon on the Mount returns again and again to this one central thought in many forms and applications which are variously modified.” pg 232,233
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