13 What Jesus Really Teaches – Promise nothing: Tell the truth as best you understand it
April 4
“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” – Matthew 5:33-37
So, Jesus again sets up a contrast: “It was said …”, “But I tell you …” But here he does not affirm the old teaching, literally from the Greek, “Do not perjure or lie under oath, but keep your oaths (as though you made them) to the Lord.” That’s the old way.
In the new way of the heavens, Jesus says, don’t swear an oath at all. Period. And not by any of these “things” because they are all God’s (not yours).
For that matter, all these things are going to pass away. But Jesus is teaching about how to live the kingdom of heaven (literally, the way of the heavens) here on Earth. The implication is that his followers are eternal spiritual beings, not bound by any physically precious thing.
So, make note, he is teaching us that we need to act and speak with purity; that is, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that a human being will break any vow or oath that they make. So, don’t swear to anything because you really don’t know how circumstances are going to change in the next few seconds, much less five or fifty years from now. (Yet, the Bible is used to swear on, in violation of Jesus’ teaching.)
Simply say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ That is, tell the truth as best you know it (and you don’t ever really know it, but we do the best we can). So, in The Way, oaths are obsolete because we can only tell our personal truth, not the full, real truth. We can only do what we can do, and our ability to fulfill our obligations may change at any moment. So, say ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and tell it like it is in this moment under these circumstances. Say, I’ll do the best I can, but promise nothing. Again, Jesus is being practical and pragmatic here, detailing what he means for real world practice.
To say or promise to do anything beyond your current – immediate – perception of things, even to speculate or gossip, these are misguided and likely wrong.
We have no idea what’s really going on outside of our immediate attention, not to mention all the things that are going on outside of our ability to perceive. So, keep it simple. Tell the truth as you know it in the moment. Don’t even profess that to be true. No oath.
This is the way of the heavens as Jesus teaches us to practice it on Earth.
This is what I read in the New Testament as well. I take an oath on it. 😁