It is the spirit of the law that is the priority, not the letter.

The law, beloved, is not mechanical.

That's what Jesus is saying.

It is not simply functional.

It is the inside that God is concerned about.

God is not looking for externals.

He's looking for changed hearts.

Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

Consider these two people. One of them is committed to his wife.

He's a diligent worker, and he's always ready to serve others. Person number two, well, he has

lustful thoughts. He thinks evil of his boss, and he wishes that people would just stop pestering

him. Now consider this. Those two people, they are actually the same person.

He looks great on the outside, but his inward attitudes are anything but lovely to God. That gets to

the core of John MacArthur's current study titled The Sinfulness of Sin. Simply put, it's a call to

examine your heart attitudes, the breeding ground for sin.

So to help you make sure you're honoring Christ on the outside and on the inside, here's John with today's lesson.

In Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 to 48, as our Lord gives standards for living in his kingdom, as he redefines and reemphasizes

the divine standard given in the law of God, what he wants to say here is, the inside

is infinitely more revealing, infinitely more important than the outside.

What you are on the inside is what God is concerned with.

Jesus emphasized here in the sermon on the Mount and frankly throughout his whole ministry

that external ceremonies, that external religious rights, that certain works are not the whole issue, that God is

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