At the time of Christ, there were two types of people in the Jewish nation: the adulterers, tax collectors, sinners, impure, and ignorant. Facing them there were the educated, and professing who despised the first demagogic group, and considered themselves alone as noble, righteous, good, and brought near to God.
Whenever Jesus came into a town, the same thing happened: the poor, sinful, and harmless repented and became justified, but the professors, proud, prayers, and self-satisfied became hardened and did not repent. The miracle happened: the sinners were justified, while the professors remained sinners.
Jesus hit their forms of hypocritical rites, attacked their worship to money, and unveiled their bondage in their golden chains. Those who became exposed and unmasked derided Jesus, but he condemned their hypocritical mind severely, and told them that the Omniscient God had seen their pride and covetousness, and known all their innermost hearts. Do you know that the Omniscient God perceives all your thought, and records all your works in heaven? Are you still thinking yourself as precious, good, and champion? Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, for the Omniscient God opposes those who exalt themselves. No created man is, in fact, important. We are all small compared to God the Great One. It is blasphemy to deify a man, to raise his image in our rooms and streets, and to place our confidence and assurance on him as if he were able to change the situations in our society. God alone is the Pantokrator "the All-Ruling", who has control over all, before whom we look like miserable worms. Would you like to be famous, intelligent, and experienced to be highly esteemed among men, and then you would certainly fall into hell? Or would you prefer to remain small, humble, and hardworking servant unknown in societies, refusing riches and pride, and then Jesus would stand by you, and be himself your treasure, protection, and future?
Jesus pulls down the pride of the upright. He shows them that no one gains the kingdom of God through his own deeds. The believer alone enters into the door of heaven. It was a shock to the lawyers to hear that the adulterers and robbers become justified through their faith alone, having nothing to offer to God but debts, sins, repentance, and tears. But the Omniscient God prefers to answer the prayer of their broken hearts one thousand times rather than hearing the hymns of the proud who despise the evil. He who accepts the word and promises of Jesus receives the key of the door of heaven freely, opens it, enters by faith into the kingdom of God, and wonders how the love of God made easy for us to come to the Holy One. Your faith has made you well.
Then the Pharisees rejoiced within their hearts, thinking they had now arrested Jesus, for he said that every man presses into the kingdom of God through faith alone. He caused them to understand that the Holy One wanted to say to them, "You fool who lack understanding, a believer is justified by grace, but this grace plants all the law, at the same time, into his heart, and then he keeps the law not of his own righteousness, but of gratitude and praise for the righteousness gifted to him. The believer of the New Testament raises the law higher than the members of the Old Testament do. Those who follow Christ love their enemies more than commanded by the law, and become purified in their hearts by grace. They do not only keep the commandment of prohibiting adultery, but the believer becomes completely chaste through the Holy Spirit.
Thereafter, with the sword of his word, Jesus condemned the Pharisees’ deceitful way of divorcing who allowed divorce if the complainant came with two witnesses in support of his claim. Christ confirmed that marriage is not subject to divorce, since the husband and the wife had become a spiritual union subconsciously established and deep-rooted. They do not only become one body, but are also united in soul, for the woman does not understand the world but through the eyes of her man, and the man leaves his father and mother and becomes joined to his wife. Therefore he who unties the deep tie between two hearts, and does not lead those in disagreement into forgiveness, humility, and peace, participates in breaking the matrimonial bond and becomes guilty with them.
Jesus leads us to a higher stage: He does not say that the divorced became free, but they remained bound by their hearts. He who marries a divorced woman imputes guilt unjustly to her previous matrimonial bond, even if she was officially divorced. The order of the law is more deeply related to the nature of God than our minds can understand. Yet man does not find rest unless he lives within the exactness of the love of God.
Even now, we can find two kinds of people: the haughty, lovers of money, living in whoredom, and covering their pollution with the dress of hypocritical profession of religion and external righteousness; and those whom the Holy Spirit led into humility, delivered them from worries and covetousness, and encouraged them into Christ’s purity, who confess their sins taking off the veil of their false profession, and only justified by the blood of Christ. To which party do you belong? Will you remain a proud Pharisee? Or will be become a humble sinner whom the Holy Spirit led to believe in Christ and his salvation, and entered into the open door of heaven?