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Murder. There’s a lot of evil out there in the world. The news often carries stories of someone who has done something so terrible to one or more fellow human beings that you might sometimes want to just turn it off. History, too, is replete with descriptions of figures who in various ways made monsters of themselves.

Dictators. Tyrants. Monsters. Murderers. They seem so foreign, don’t they? What have they to do with us? Do you ever wonder about that? I don’t think there are any murderers here with us today, in the strictest sense. But here’s a frightening truth: there is within every single one of us something that desires to break out and do terrible things, something that is restrained from acting by external forces. Something that, if unchecked, would eventually make every one of us into something terrible to contemplate.

The difference between us and the monsters of history and in the news is that those figures have each somehow thrown off the external constraints. They managed to get themselves to a place where fear of loss of reputation, fear of loss of wealth, fear of punishment under the law, fear of hell itself, no longer applied to them. No one is born a terrorist, no one is born a tyrant. It takes a series of steps to get there. Before murder, there is hate. And hate has several degrees.

Now, it is unlikely that any of us here today will ever become mass murderers in this life. The path from here to there is just too great. But the first step of that path lies at our feet. And the end of the journey is not in this life, but in the next, and in the next life, all external constraints are lifted. If we give in to hate in this life, we are in danger of becoming terrible murderers in the life of the spirit after death.

This is in part what the Lord is warning us about in his explanation of the seventh commandment, “You shall not murder.”

Let’s look a bit more deeply at the Lord’s words from Matthew. It begins:

Verse 21. “You have heard that it was declared to the ancients, ‘You shall not murder; but whoever murders, shall be liable to the judgment.

This is part of a famous series of “Antitheses”, each of which begins “You have heard…” and then goes on to redefine Mosaic law with the new covenant of Christianity. Here, the Lord is redefining murder. He is also calling us to take a deeper look at everything commanded in His Word. We are not to live strictly by the letter of the law, but to enter into the spirit of His commandments.

So what is murder, when looked at more interiorly? The book True Christian Religion defines murder in three degrees. In the natural sense, murder includes not only murder of the body, but also actions that might lead to someone’s death, and also the murder of someone’s reputation. Further, murder includes the very desire to do harm. Murder is hatred.

In an even higher sense, murder is the act of destroying someone’s soul, or the attempt to do so. How do you destroy a soul? By attacking a person’s beliefs, and by drawing them into a life of evil. Spiritual murder also includes the desire to attack someone’s soul, even when not carried out.

In the highest sense, murder is really an attack against the Lord Himself. Murder at its worst is an intense hatred of the Lord.

In the book Doctrine of Life there is an entire chapter with the title “So far as Any One Shuns All Kinds of Murder as Sins, so far He Has Love Toward the Neighbor”. This is because hatred, which is murder in one’s heart, is the direct opposite of love toward the neighbor.

Now, moving forward, you will see that what follows is broken into three movements. First, the Lord is going to redefine murder, breaking it down into its various levels.

Verse 22. But I say to you, That every one who is angry with their brother rashly, shall be subject to the judgment; but whoever says to their brother, ‘Raca,’ shall be subject to the council; but whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be subject to the Gehenna of fire.

Now, first of all, we need to talk about the word “brother”. In the simplest sense, references in the Word to a “brother” are all talking about a person’s neighbor. We are each to treat our neighbors as if they are our brothers and sisters. We’re supposed to love one another, to look out for one another, to help one another along in life.

In a higher sense, the word “brother” refers to the goods of charity. In the story of Cain and Abel, for instance, Cain represents faith and Abel represents charity. Charity loves faith as a brother but sometimes, if we let faith rule over charity, faith alone kills charity just as Cain murdered Abel. Also, when we are commanded to love our neighbor, it is really the good within the neighbor that we are meant to treat as a brother. So “brother” means the good of charity.

In the highest sense, the Lord is the source of all good, and so references to neighbors and brothers in the Word are really about the Lord Himself and our relationship with Him.

Now, looking closely at the rest of this verse, we see a series of three: anger, “Raca”, and “You fool”, with their associated punishments of “judgment”, “the council”, and “the Gehenna of fire”. What is the Lord saying, here?

Number one: “anger”.

It’s important to note that the Lord is not talking about just any anger. Some translations say “whoever is angry with their brother rashly”, others say “without cause”. This is a key idea with this first degree of murder: we are subject to judgment when we are unjustly angry with our brother. There are just causes of anger in life, but we’re not talking about those situations.

This unjust sort of anger, this senseless sort of hatred happens all the time when people are in their cars, doesn’t it? We may be tempted to lash out at the driver of the car in front of us because they are going too slowly, or at the driver behind us because they are trying to go too fast. We don’t really think rationally about this; we just shake our fist, honk our horn, or merely seethe with anger without doing anything about it.

At home, a loved one accidentally spills a whole glass of juice all over you, and your instinct is to lash out. Maybe you say something mean, maybe you yell, or maybe you just keep your dark thoughts to yourself. Either way, you don’t really think about it—you just react.

In a higher sense, being angry with your brother is spurning the goods of charity in an unthinking way. You might be faced with the opportunity to really help someone who has come to you with a personal crisis, but you close up and shrug them off. You’re busy. You don’t even stop to think about what the right thing to do is, because you’re feeling selfish. In the highest sense, you are acting poorly because you are not thinking about the Lord.

Number two: “raca.”

So what does that mean? Well, “raca” is an Aramaic word, the meaning of which is somewhat obscured in modern times. There’s some scholarly debate about it, but we have some idea that saying “raca” to someone is akin to saying “you’re worthless”, or “you mean nothing to me”. This next, more serious degree of murder the Lord is talking about is that hatred born of contempt for another person.

For instance, there may be someone at work whose opinion seems always to be the opposite of yours. Over time, you’ve developed the attitude that they are stupid, or unimportant, or somehow less than yourself. When they speak up, you brush them off with a snide putdown. They are nothing to you, so it’s okay for you to be hateful toward them. Or so you’ve convinced yourself.

Sometimes you may say “raca” to someone you love, even. You may be tempted to take advantage of a loved one’s generosity. You know that they will let you have your way if you insist on it, and so you do, without regard for their feelings. If you railroad them through a decision in this way, you are essentially giving yourself permission to be selfish because you do not respect their needs as much as your own.

Saying “raca” in the spiritual sense is telling yourself that the goods of charity are of little worth. Where “rash anger” meant a sort of unthinking disregard for the Lord and His commandments, saying “raca” is more willful, more deliberate. It is allowing evil into our hearts intentionally.

Number three: “you fool.”

Now, when we read the word “fool” in the Lord’s Word, we really shouldn’t think of the modern idea of “foolishness” as being somehow silly. The biblical idea of a fool is not so much one of someone who doesn’t have their head on straight. Really, what is meant is someone who is always working at cross purposes to what the Lord wants. A fool is an enemy.

So this is talking about the worst degree of hatred, a hatred of the will itself. When you spiritually say “you fool” to someone, you are no longer reacting hatefully, but willfully acting in a hateful manner. You make them into the enemy. If you catch yourself in a dark moment actively plotting out revenge against that coworker, plotting out a way of stealing their job in order to “get them”, you are crossing over into that worst degree of hatered. If contempt for a spouse turns into an active hatred that seeks out ways to hurt them, then you are in a terrible place indeed.

So. At first, we ignore the Lord. We are angry with our brother without cause. Over time we come to believe that He is unimportant. We say, “Raca!” to our brother. Eventually, we decide that He is actually the problem and seek to do away with Him in our lives. To our brother we say, “You fool!” These are the degrees of hatred, in their order. To get to the worst, we have to pass through the first two.

Each carries greater consequences, in order. And the final consequence, the end of this road, is “the Gehenna of fire”—sometimes translated as “hell fire”.

When we willfully set out to destroy someone else, even if only in our own minds, then our love for ourselves and our hatred towards the neighbor and towards the Lord all becomes an unquenchable fire. And it consumes us.

Yes, this is frightening. Blessedly, the Lord doesn’t point out a problem without also providing a remedy. This takes us to the second part of the Lord’s words:

Verses 23-24. If therefore you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you; Leave your gift there before the altar, and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

In the Word, when we read of altars, the Lord is talking to us about worship. That’s the case here, in this second section. A gift brought before the altar is a symbol of interior worship. In other words, we’re not talking here about merely the act of going to church. No, interior worship, we are taught, is leading the life of charity.

Notice that these two verses are still all about our relationship with a brother, but that all talk of judgment and councils is now absent. This section is all about charity. And what does the Lord say to us when we look deeply into it?

He is saying that if you we to live the life of charity, if we try to be a good person and do good works, we have to do it from a proper motivation. Think about it. Your brother, remember, is charity. If your brother has something against you, then it means that you and your brother are having a falling out. And it’s not your brother’s fault. When Cain’s gift was not favored, he got really upset. But the Lord said to him, basically, “Why are you surprised? If there’s a problem with your sacrifice, then it’s because sin lies at the door. Your brother loves you, but you boss him around all the time.” If we don’t give charity its proper place in our life, if we treat it as secondary to what really matters, then all the good works we do are empty.

There are lots of reasons to do good works. Sometimes, it makes us feel important to help someone more in need. Sometimes, being useful also makes us rich. We like the way others praise us when we are good. But the Lord wants us to do good things out of love for those outside ourselves. He wants us to be reconciled with our brother.

Notice, though, that He doesn’t say, “Take your gift back!” No, He says to leave it at the altar, and then come back to it once we’ve fixed our relationship with our brother. Doing good for less noble reasons is at least a start. The Lord can work with it until we reconcile ourselves with true charity.

We are to do good works for whatever reasons we can come up with, but in the meantime recognize that they really aren’t good—that we really aren’t truly leading a worshipful life—until we put charity and love of the neighbor first in our life. And how are we to know when our brother has something against us? Through honest self-examination. Repentance is the key to making things right with our brother.

Now let’s look at the third and final section.

Verses 25-26. Be well-minded to your accuser quickly, while you are in the way with him, lest at any time the accuser deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you are cast into prison. Amen I say unto you, You shall by no means come out from there, until you have paid the last penny.

What you have to understand here is that the tone has shifted. We’re not talking about our brother anymore, but our “accuser”. The Greek word this is a translation of is almost a technical term. We’re not talking about someone who merely has a complaint against you. What this word really means is someone you are in a formal legal dispute with. The language has shifted from talk of worship to talk of a court of law. Also, don’t think of the accuser—sometimes translated as “adversary”—as a witness against you; they are the primary plaintiff in the law suit.

And, by the way: they are right. The complaint of the accuser is a just one. We are wrong, and the accuser is right. How do we know that? Well, what does the Lord tell us? He’s saying that if we don’t “settle out of court” as it were, then we will lose, and end up in prison. Our case doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

This “accuser”, here, sounds like the Lord’s truth, doesn’t it? We know, after all, that Divine Good works to lift all to heaven, but that Divine Truth—if taken all by itself without Divine Good—condemns all to hell.

Now, the Lord says to be “well-minded to your accuser quickly”. Quickly! Don’t put this off for later! You have to bow to the accusation quickly. Life is short, and as the Lord says here, delivery to the judge could come “at any time”. And I think we all know what that means.
It is in this life that we can make things right, that we can put our minds in order under the truth, that we can determine for ourselves to treat charity and our neighbors both as brothers to be loved. Once we die, we are delivered to the judge, and there is no more room for settling accounts out of court.

In the next life, externals that do not match internals are cast aside. If we have determined to let hate run its course in our hearts in this life, then we will find ourselves in the prison of the afterlife that is hell. And in that prison, we lose every last penny. In other words, every last knowledge of truth, even down to the tiniest thing, is lost, from lack of use. Then we truly become monsters.

Friends, this is not the path the Lord has set before us. This is the path of unjust anger. This is the path of hatred. This is the path of murder.

The Lord has warned us, and He has provided us the way of salvation. We all need to go and reconcile ourselves with our brothers right now! We must examine ourselves today, to seek out the shadow of murder in our hearts, and pray to the Lord for strength against hatred, and ask Him to remove from our hearts the seeds of our destruction. Then we may worship the Lord in life, and our good works can become works of true charity, and of love.

Amen.