I am convinced that God does not see the way we see. He sees everything, He perceives everything, and He understands everything — and I believe we have a God who wants to change how we see. Let me put it this way: we do not see things the way they are. We see things the way we are. That is an important distinction, and it lies at the heart of what it means to live with a kingdom perspective.
The Sermon on the Mount Raises the Bar
As written in Matthew 5:21–22, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” (NKJV). Jesus says it again and again in the Sermon on the Mount: you have heard it said this way, but I say to you this.
I have to confess that, as a younger Christian, I never really liked the Sermon on the Mount. It felt like the Law of Moses Part 2: Moses came down a mountain with laws, and Jesus went up a mountain and gave a whole bunch of other laws. If I am honest, “Blessed are those who are persecuted” was not a verse I would run to underline.
There is a concept in much of our modern grace-message Christianity that is not completely true: the idea that the Law was harsh and demanding, but grace is easy.
Think about it this way. Under the Old Covenant there was a man stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Under the New Covenant, a woman caught in the very act of adultery is dragged before Jesus, and He forgives her, lets her walk away, and tells all the men holding stones to put them down. We can look at that as if the Law is harsh and grace is easy. People even talk about “greasy grace.” I would contend and suggest to you that the opposite is true. I believe grace is a million times more demanding than the Law.
Jesus says, “You have heard it said, do not murder — but I say to you, do not even get angry.” Whoever gets angry with the driver who cut in front of him on the interstate has already committed murder in his heart. Jesus tells people who think they are righteous because they have never committed adultery, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Jesus is talking to religious people who think they are doing well because they obey the Law of Moses. They tithed the mint and the cumin — the salt and pepper, as we might say. Jesus says you should tithe. Listen, friends: you should tithe. Those are the words of Jesus. Yet He also says, do not neglect “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23). Do not miss the heart of God behind the Law.
Not a Lower Bar, but a New Life
I now love the Sermon on the Mount, and I love it for two reasons. First, I realized Jesus is not lowering the bar. Rather, He is raising the bar so high that nobody could live this way. We would all be plucking out our eyes and chopping off our arms all day long. If it were an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we would all go through life blind and toothless. Jesus is not saying, “Lower the bar.” He is saying that God’s standard of holiness is so high that nobody except Jesus can meet it.
Second, Jesus is not saying, “Try really hard to live this way.” I believe what He is saying is this: here is how My life — the life of a citizen of the kingdom of heaven — will express itself in various situations. He is not giving instructions to strive after. He is saying, “Come to Me, die, and let Me birth My life in you. This is what it will look like to be a citizen of the kingdom.” As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (NKJV).
When Jesus says you will turn the other cheek, He is not laying down some new law. The larger point I would like you to grasp is that Jesus comes saying, “You have heard it said one way, but I say to you something really different.”
We Do Not See What We Do Not See
There is something else I would love you to think through and grasp: we do not see what we do not see. I will often sit in a meeting and own up to the fact that I do not know what I do not know. I remember hearing Donald Rumsfeld say years ago that there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. There are things we know that we know. There are things we know that we do not know. There are things we do not even know that we do not know — and those are the really dangerous ones.
It is like that with sight. We see with the eye, but we perceive with the heart. As it is written in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (NKJV). Here is a question: how do you get things to enter into the heart of man? Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered in. Something goes into your heart by what you see and what you perceive, by what you hear and what you perceive. It is one thing to see something. It is another to perceive it.
In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes asks Dr. Watson how many steps lead up to 221B Baker Street. Watson does not know. Holmes makes the point: you have seen them every day, but you have never noticed them. There are things we see that we simply do not perceive.
Most of us have had this experience. Perhaps we are thinking of buying a red Jeep, and suddenly we begin seeing them everywhere. Did they multiply? No. Our brains begin noticing what we have set our hearts on.
Invisible Fences
Let me challenge you in this way. All of us have grown up in some kind of culture — even if you grew up in an Amazonian village. You think you see with your eyes, but you actually see through your memories. You see through a set of presuppositions about how the world works and how it does not work. You see through the things you caught by osmosis, the lived experiences of others: this is what happens when you do this; this is what happens when you do that. We see through our own experiences and through our own pain. So much has mentored us into the people we are. We think we see clearly, and yet we do not see clearly. As Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (NKJV).
Here in America there is something I never saw in the UK: an invisible fence for a dog. Some friends of mine with a young puppy laid an electrical wire around the edge of their property, buried underground, and fitted the dog with a special collar. Whenever the young dog came near the boundary, it received a small, friendly electric shock in its collar. The dog wanted to wander off the property, and as it neared the edge — “Ouch, that hurt.” It backed away and carried on with what it was doing. After a while, the dog instinctively learned, “I do not like going near the edge. It feels good when I am here, and it does not feel good when I am there.”
I cannot say whether a dog connects those thoughts in that manner, but one thing I do know: like Pavlov’s dog salivating at the sound of the bell, the dog quickly learns the behaviour pattern. Do not go near the edge. What is striking is that after a few months, the owners can take that collar off and throw it away. For the rest of that dog’s life it will not go near that place. It has learned, “I can do this, and I cannot do that.”
A New Perception
This is one of the reasons I love to take people on mission trips. I love to minister to the nation we are visiting and to win souls — amen for that. Yet when I take people out of the United States and into Europe, they become completely different people. They break the rules. I do not mean in a bad way, such as speeding. I mean that the social limitations — the invisible fences that were placed upon them — no longer work there. They can do completely new things in a new culture.
The wonderful thing is that if they do enough of it on a mission trip for a week, they come home with a realization: “I could have done this all the time in my own country. I can be bold.” They step into a new perception of themselves, and they bring it back with them. That is the kingdom at work. Jesus comes and says, “You have heard it said this way, but I say to you,” and in doing so He switches off the power to fences that have held us for years.
Let me challenge you to ask the Lord where you are still living within an invisible fence. Ask Him to show you the unknown unknowns. We do not see things the way they are; we see things the way we are. When God changes the way we are, He changes the way we see.
Scriptures for Study
Matthew 5:21-22, Matthew 5:27-28, Matthew 5:38-39, Matthew 5:3-12, Matthew 5:17-20, Matthew 23:23, Matthew 6:22-23, Matthew 11:28-30, Numbers 15:32-36, John 8:3-11, 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, Isaiah 64:4, Proverbs 23:7, Proverbs 4:23, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 1:17-18, Ephesians 4:22-24, John 3:3, John 15:5, Hebrews 8:10, 2 Timothy 1:7, Acts 4:13, Philippians 3:13-14
10 Questions for Reflection
- What does it mean to you that we see things the way we are rather than the way they are?
- Have you ever felt that the Sermon on the Mount was simply another set of laws? How does this teaching reshape that view?
- Why might grace be more demanding than the Law rather than less?
- In what ways have you tried to live the kingdom life by effort instead of letting Christ live His life in you?
- What “unknown unknowns” might be shaping your walk with God?
- What is the difference between seeing something and perceiving it?
- What has your heart been set on, and how has that changed what you notice?
- Which experiences, memories, or cultural assumptions most influence the way you see?
- Where in your life might an invisible fence still be holding you back long after the power was switched off?
- What would it look like for you to step into a new perception of yourself and bring it home?
