Matthew 5:33-37

Bird's-eye view

In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus continues to press His listeners beyond the surface-level righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. He takes up the issue of vows and oaths, a practice thoroughly entangled with the casuistry and loophole-lawyering of the day. The ancients were taught to keep the oaths they made to the Lord, which is right and good. But Christ, as He does throughout this sermon, drives to the heart of the matter. The issue is not just about fulfilling formal vows, but about the fundamental integrity of a man's word in every circumstance. He prohibits a certain kind of oath-making, the kind that tries to buttress a weak and wavering word by appealing to created things. This kind of talk, He says, comes from the evil one. The kingdom standard is a radical simplicity and truthfulness where a man's "yes" is a yes, and his "no" is a no, without any need for elaborate, world-invoking props.

This is not, as some have mistakenly thought, a blanket prohibition of all oaths for all time. God Himself swears oaths, and the saints are called to do so on solemn occasions, as in a court of law or in the taking of marriage vows. Rather, Jesus is condemning the proud and arrogant habit of men who feel the need to back up their word with something other than their own character. He is calling His people to be the kind of people whose bare word is their bond because they live and move and have their being in a world that is utterly saturated with the presence of God. Every word is spoken before His face, and therefore every word should be true.

Outline

Context In Matthew

This passage, Matthew 5:33-37, sits squarely within the central section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus provides a series of six antitheses, often called the "six examples." Each one begins with the formula, "You have heard that it was said... but I say to you." In this, Jesus is not contradicting or abrogating the Old Testament law. He is correcting the Pharisees' minimalist and external interpretations of it, revealing the true and deeper intent of God's commands. He has already dealt with murder and anger, adultery and lust, and divorce. Now He turns to the subject of oaths, which, like the others, was an area where the religious leaders had developed a complex system of rules that managed to miss the point entirely. The point was not to figure out which oaths were binding and which were not, but rather to be a person of such integrity that your word could be trusted without any oath at all. This teaching is a direct assault on the hypocrisy that measures righteousness by external compliance while the heart is full of deceit.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 33 “Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.’

Jesus begins, as He has before, by citing the traditional understanding, which is a summary of several Old Testament passages (e.g., Lev. 19:12; Num. 30:2; Deut. 23:21). The command is straightforward: do not swear falsely, and when you make a vow to God, you must perform it. This is basic covenantal faithfulness. God is a God who keeps His promises, and He expects His people to do the same. The Pharisees would have had no argument with this. They would have nodded along, confident in their meticulous observance of this rule. But their meticulousness was precisely the problem. They had developed a whole system for determining which oaths were truly "to the Lord" and therefore binding, and which were not. This created a two-tiered system of truth-telling, which is no truth at all.

v. 34-35 But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING.

Here comes the radical clarification. Jesus is not saying that a Christian should never take an oath in a courtroom. Paul himself calls God as a witness (2 Cor. 1:23), and God swears an oath to Abraham (Heb. 6:13-18). The issue here is the casual, conversational, and often evasive oath-making that was common practice. Men would swear by heaven or by the earth to add weight to their statements, to make them sound more credible. But Jesus pulls back the curtain on this practice. What do you think you are doing when you swear by heaven? You are invoking God's throne. When you swear by the earth, you are invoking His footstool. When you swear by Jerusalem, you are invoking the city of the Great King. You cannot cordon off little bits of creation to use as collateral for your promises without dealing with the God who owns it all. The world is not a neutral place full of secular things you can leverage for your own ends. It is God's world, through and through. To swear by any part of it is to implicitly swear by Him, and so the Pharisees' distinctions were nonsense. They were trying to make promises with their fingers crossed behind their backs, and Jesus calls them on it.

v. 36 Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

Jesus brings it down to the most personal level. Perhaps a man, realizing that heaven and earth are God's, decides to swear by something he thinks he owns: his own head, his own life. But this is the height of folly. You have no ultimate control over your own body. You cannot even change the color of a single hair by an act of your will. Your very life is a borrowed thing, sustained moment by moment by the God you are trying to leave out of the equation. This is a profound statement about human creatureliness and dependence. The man who has to swear by his own head to be believed is a man who is puffed up with a sense of his own autonomy, and Jesus punctures that pride with a simple biological fact. You are not your own, and so you cannot offer yourself up as the guarantee of your own word.

v. 37 But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of the evil one.

The conclusion is a call for radical verbal simplicity. Let your word be your word. If you mean yes, say yes. If you mean no, say no. The doubling of the words "Yes, yes" and "No, no" likely emphasizes this simplicity and finality. There is no need for additional verbal scaffolding. Why? Because the citizen of the kingdom of heaven is a new creation. His heart has been changed, and so his speech should be changed as well. He is a person of integrity, and so his words have integrity. The need to go "beyond" this simple affirmation or denial, the need for oaths, elaborate promises, and verbal gymnastics, arises from a fundamental problem. Jesus says it comes "of the evil one." Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44). Deception, duplicity, and double-talk are his native language. The world is full of broken promises, fine print, and weasel words because it is in bondage to him. The Christian is to be different. Our speech should be plain, clear, and true, reflecting the character of the God who is Truth.

Application

The immediate application here is to our mouths. Christians ought to be the most trustworthy people on the planet. Our word should be our bond, not because we have sworn a mighty oath, but because we fear God and walk in integrity. This means we should be careful with our promises, slow to make them, and diligent to keep them. It means we should avoid all exaggeration and hyperbole that shades into falsehood. We live in a culture that is drowning in spin, marketing, and political doublespeak. In this context, simple, unadorned truthfulness is a powerful form of witness.

But the deeper application gets to the root of why we feel the need to go beyond a simple yes or no. It is because of fear and pride. We fear that people will not believe us, so we try to bolster our words with something impressive. We are proud, and we want to control how others perceive us. Christ's command cuts through all this by reminding us that we are not in control. God is. The world is His, our bodies are His, and our lives are in His hands. True integrity, therefore, flows from a heart that rests in the sovereignty of God. When we know that our lives are lived before His face, we are freed from the anxious need to manage our reputation through deceitful speech. We can simply speak the truth in love and leave the results to Him. This is the liberty of the children of God, a liberty that should be evident every time we open our mouths.