But I say unto you.
The imperatives of Jesus
I. The range and extent of Jesus’ imperative speeches. He keeps up to His own superior level of command upon all occasions and before all men. Men like us only assume without offence an imperative mood in certain relations of life. Christ did before the Rulers, before the Roman power.
II. The nature and significance of these relations of life, and those elements of human nature, over which Jesus quietly assumed mastery.
1. The miracles of Christ not the greatest of His wonderful works; a greater assumption of power to exercise authority over the higher principles and laws of our human nature, than to claim authority over winds and waves.
2. With what calm consciousness of right Jesus assumes this authority-which belongs to God alone-over human hearts.
3. The nature or right of this supremacy of the Christ.
(1) One ever-present illustration of what Jesus is to this universe we have within us in conscience. Hence you have a means of understanding the authority of Christ.
(2) It reappears in the law of love. He is the righteousness of God with man.
4. We should bring obedience.
5. Do we not need, all of us, to be most thoroughly commanded by something higher and better than ourselves? We fall from our own possibilities, and need a command to step forth like princes to our high calling. (Newman Smyth, D. D.)
The authority of Jesus over human nature and history resembles the lordship of the sun over the earth
The world feels it from centre to circumference; every fruitful field rejoices in it, and this earth would be indeed worthless and dark without it; but we can only make guesses at the riddle of its gravitation and its light; and while any child knows that it is, the wisest can only declare in part, in very little part, how it is. (Newman Smyth, D. D.)