Day Five Matthew 5:20
“But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” – Matthew 5:20 (NLT)
Learn From the Word
For Jesus, the law is the way to follow God’s will. Through both His example and His teachings, He followed it perfectly. And as we will see in the rest of the chapter, Jesus’ standard of obedience is even more exacting than the written law! Because it's impossible for any human being to live up to that standard, Jesus satisfied the just requirement of the law on our behalf (see Romans 8:3-4).
Put It Into Practice
Spend some time in the only suitable response to the action God took on our behalf – praise and worship of Him. These songs from our team’s online worship experience are powerful if you haven’t watched it yet! Look back over the “Put It Into Practice” sections from this week on the Traders Point app, and if there’s something you sense God asking you to do, ask for His strength to follow through with it.
For Families with Kids at Home
Have your kids imagine a scenario where they broke a very important rule, but instead of them being punished, someone else volunteered to take the punishment on their behalf, even though that person hadn’t done anything wrong. That’s what Jesus did for each of us! We can never be “good enough” by following all the rules, but because Jesus lived a perfect life and then willingly went to the cross for us, God views us as though we’ve never broken a single rule!