Hope Singapore: Beyond The Lawনমুনা

Integrity: Beyond Making Promises Someone once said, “Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver.” Isn’t it true that it is not promises-made, but promises-kept that truly matters? In fact, one of the foundations of the Christian belief is that we have a God who keeps to His Word, and does what He says He will do. However, although truthfulness is greatly needed for community to survive, it seemed in the very nature of men to deceive and to distrust one another. By the first century, religious Jews have basically “created” three broad levels of truthfulness. The first level is common speech, which is not binding at all. The second level includes oaths or vows not involving God’s Name, and these are binding but not absolutely. Finally, the highest level of truthfulness refers to oaths or vows involving the name of God, which then makes them absolutely binding. It is against these absurd applications of the Law that Jesus turned to next in addressing how we need to live beyond the Law. Jesus starts by lambasting the ridiculous idea of stratifying the binding nature of promises and oaths, thus laying a basic foundation that we should seek to honour ALL our commitments, even if there were no paper documentations or legal proof of them. Jesus reminds His hearers (and us) that God holds us accountable and is a witness to all our formal commitments. God expects His people to reflect His character, and especially to be like Him in honouring our promises. It is therefore important for believers not to make empty promises or promises we know we can’t keep, and this includes not exaggerating when we make our claims or promises (Matthew 5:33, 34b-26). Just when we thought Jesus was done at this point, He raised the bar even further. Cultures developed the idea of oaths because people could not trust one another without calling an avenging deity to witness, but such formalities should not be necessary for people of integrity. God’s people should speak and live so consistently that people value our words even without appeals to oaths or promises. As soon as it is necessary to bolster our words with an oath in order to persuade others to believe what is said, the ideal of transparent truthfulness would have already been compromised (Matthew 5:34a, 37).