Matthew 5:33 Commentary and Bible Study

(Synoptics: Matthew 5:33-37) The Christian church understands the third commandment not only to prohibit swearing falsely in God’s name, but to all thoughtless and light invocation of God’s name, even in worship. We must come to our sovereign God with great reverence and care. But in this 4^th contrast between the teaching of the Pharisees and the standards of the law, Christ focuses particularly on the subject of false oaths and vows, and this is therefore about our inner integrity and the integrity of our words, and so is also about the ninth commandment.Christ summaries the Old Testament teaching on oaths or vows. The obligation on someone who has sworn an oath is to perform the thing that he has so solemnly said he will do. An oath is a form of self-curse, invoking the curse of some high power, generally a deity who knows what we are doing, as a witness against us if we fail speak the truth or to do what we have sworn to do. The Old Testament warning summarised by Christ was against those who swore falsely to God, who bound themselves by an oath to perform something for the Lord and who failed to keep their vow (Leviticus 19:12, Numbers 30:2; Deuteronomy 23:23). This includes any oath taken in the name of the Lord including every solemn affirmation to men made under oath, and so covers perjury – lying under oath in a court of law. Calvin translates Matthew 5:33 as, ‘Thou shalt not perjure thyself’. Perjury is treated as a separate and serious crime under the law just because an oath is so important practically and morally. The error of the Pharisees was that they used oaths to reduce their integrity, rather than to increase it. They twisted the third commandment by trying to limit it to only the most oaths which invoked the name of God, and to excuse their failure to keep them in other cases. While oaths should have been used only on rare occasions to solemnly affirm some truth or avow some intention, the Pharisees had devalued them by making them a commonplace part of their speech. This had the effect of leaving ordinary speech, without an oath attached to it, as worth very little, and so a man could quite acceptably lie when he did not add an oath. Only the most formal oaths which invoked the divine name were regarded as binding. But the same standard of truth applied to all solemn affirmations whether made under oath or not. The law insisted on the absolute integrity of a man’s word whether about past, present or future matters. To lie to God is especially serious, since we lie to one who we know is the God of truth and incapable of being deceived, and yet in lying we attempt to deceive him; we therefore effectively deny his being. For this Ananias and Sapphira were struck down by the Lord. But it is not good enough to limit truth telling to words spoken to the Lord. The Pharisees in effect said, ‘I shall not break my oath to God, but I will carelessly swear to men by all manner of lesser things and think nothing of it. I will invoke all manner of sacred objects associated with the Lord and think that because such oaths are sworn by something other than the Lord himself, they are not binding on me.’