(a) Our Lord is still concerned with the relation of himself and his followers to the religion of the day, of which the Old Testament (Matthew 5:17), and more especially the Law (Matthew 5:18), was the accepted standard. But after having spoken of the need of careful attention to (Matthew 5:17,Matthew 5:18), and observance of (Matthew 5:19), even the least commands of the Law, he goes on to point out the far-reaching character of these commands, whether they are such as we should call more (Matthew 5:21, Matthew 5:27, 81) or less (Matthew 5:33, Matthew 5:38, Matthew 5:43) impotent.
It is essential to notice that our Lord refers to these commands, not merely as statements contained in the Law, but as part of the religion of the day, and that he contrasts their true bearing on life and conduct with that false bearing on this which was commonly predicated of them. By this it is not meant that our Lord was only opposing such narrow glosses and interpretations as had arisen at various times during the centuries after the promulgation of the Law (for these were for the most part perfectly natural and legitimate developments of the earliest possible interpretations of it), still less that he was thinking only of the worst of the misrepresentations of its commands, comparatively recently made by the Pharisees; but that he was now going back, beyond this so far natural and normal development of the earliest interpretations, to the first principles underlying the revelation contained in the Law. While the Jews, not unnaturally, clung to the primary, but temporary, meaning of the Law as a revelation of God's will for them as a nation, our Lord was now about to expound its commands as a revelation of God's permanent will for them and all men as men. Our Lord was now, that is to say, wishing to do more than merely cut off the excrescences that, chiefly through the Pharisaic party, had grown up round the Law, but less than root up the Law itself. He rather cuts down the whole growth that had been, notwithstanding some mere excrescences, the right and proper outcome of the Law in its original environment, in order that, in fresh environment, which corresponded better to its nature, the Law might produce a growth still more right and proper.