From the Evil One Text: Matthew 5:33-37
Introduction: The Integrity of the Word
In our ongoing study of the Sermon on the Mount, we have seen the Lord Jesus take up the law of God and press it past the external, superficial interpretations of the scribes and Pharisees, driving it down into the very heart of man. He has shown us that the prohibition against murder includes causeless anger and contemptuous words. He has shown us that the prohibition against adultery includes the lustful glance. Jesus is not setting aside the law; He is restoring its true and terrifying scope. He is showing us that God's standard is not a series of external hurdles to be cleared, but rather a demand for total, internal righteousness. A righteousness that none of us possess on our own.
Now He comes to the matter of oaths, vows, and the integrity of our speech. And here again, the principle is the same. The issue is not the technical, legal definition of a binding oath. The issue is the heart. Why do we feel the need to bolster our speech? Why do we construct elaborate verbal scaffoldings around our promises? Why do we have different tiers of truthfulness? It is because we are liars. It is because our hearts are shot through with deceit. We live in a world that runs on fine print, disclaimers, and verbal sleight of hand. And the reason for this is that the world is in the grip of the evil one, who is the father of lies.
Jesus is not simply giving us a new rule for communication. He is diagnosing the disease that makes such rules necessary. The Pharisees had developed a complex system of casuistry, a lawyerly way of parsing their oaths to create loopholes. An oath by the temple was nothing, but an oath by the gold of the temple was binding. This is the kind of game-playing that happens when men have lost the fear of God. They treat God like a slow-witted judge who can be tricked by clever rhetoric. But Jesus cuts through all this nonsense. He tells us that the problem is not that we are bad at keeping our oaths. The problem is that we need them in the first place.
The goal of the Christian life is not to become an expert in swearing solemn oaths. The goal is to become the kind of person whose simple word is as good as any oath, because your heart has been captured by the truth, and the truth is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Text
"Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.' 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. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of the evil one."
(Matthew 5:33-37 LSB)
The Old Commandment and the Pharisaical Dodge (v. 33)
Jesus begins, as He has before, by citing the teaching they had received.
"Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.'" (Matthew 5:33 LSB)
This summarizes several passages from the Old Testament (e.g., Lev. 19:12; Num. 30:2; Deut. 23:21). The law was clear: when you make a vow to the Lord, you must keep it. Do not swear falsely by God's name. This was a command to take God's name seriously and to be a person of your word. The intent of the law was to promote truthfulness and integrity among the people of God.
But the Pharisees, in their spiritual blindness, had twisted this. They focused all their attention on the phrase "to the Lord." They reasoned that if an oath did not explicitly invoke the name of the Lord, then it was not truly binding. This allowed them to create a whole system of "lesser" oaths that they could break with impunity. They would swear by heaven, or by the earth, or by their own head, believing that these oaths were not "to the Lord" and therefore carried no real weight. They had turned a command for truthfulness into a formula for sophisticated lying. They were creating tiers of honesty, which is just another way of saying they were institutionalizing dishonesty.
This is the essence of legalism. Legalism is not about being too strict; it is about finding clever ways to get around the true intent of God's law while maintaining an outward appearance of righteousness. It is about manipulating the letter of the law in order to violate its spirit. And this is precisely what Jesus confronts head-on.
The All-Encompassing Sovereignty of God (v. 34-36)
Jesus demolishes their flimsy system by showing that there is no such thing as an oath that does not involve God.
"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. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black." (Matthew 5:34-36 LSB)
Jesus's logic here is devastatingly simple. You cannot swear by anything without implicitly swearing by the God who owns it. The Pharisees thought they were being clever by avoiding the divine name, but Jesus shows them that the whole world is stamped with God's ownership papers. You want to swear by heaven? That's God's throne. You want to swear by the earth? That's His footstool. You swear by Jerusalem? That's His city.
There is no neutral ground in the universe. There is no corner of creation that is not immediately and totally under the sovereign rule of God. To swear by any part of creation is to invoke the Creator. The attempt to make a "secular" oath is a theological impossibility. Everything is His. This is a radical declaration of God's all-encompassing lordship.
Then Jesus brings it down to the most personal level imaginable: "Nor shall you make an oath by your head." Why? "For you cannot make one hair white or black." You do not even have ultimate sovereignty over your own body. You are not your own. Your very life is a borrowed thing, sustained moment by moment by the God you are trying to exclude from your promises. You cannot guarantee the color of a single hair, yet you have the audacity to act as the ultimate guarantor of your own word? This is the height of creaturely arrogance.
So, is Jesus forbidding all oaths? Is it a sin to take the stand in a court of law and swear to tell the truth? Is it a sin to make marriage vows? No. Jesus Himself answered under oath before the high priest (Matthew 26:63-64). The apostle Paul called God as his witness on numerous occasions (e.g., Rom. 1:9; 2 Cor. 1:23). The point here is not a blanket prohibition on formal, solemn oaths required by a magistrate. The point is a prohibition on the kind of casual, evasive, and self-aggrandizing oath-making that was rampant among the Pharisees, and which is rampant among us.
The Christian Standard: Plain Speech (v. 37)
Having dismantled the world's system of propped-up promises, Jesus gives us the Christian standard.
"But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of the evil one." (Matthew 5:37 LSB)
The standard for a follower of Jesus is radical, unadorned simplicity. Your 'Yes' should mean yes. Your 'No' should mean no. That's it. There should be no need for extra layers of verbal insurance. A Christian's character should be the only collateral needed for his word. His speech should be as reliable as a gold coin, not because of the fancy stamp on it, but because it is solid gold all the way through.
When a man's word is not enough, when he has to say, "I swear on my mother's grave," or "I swear to God," what is he admitting? He is admitting that his normal speech is not trustworthy. He is admitting that he operates with multiple levels of truthfulness, and you have to pay extra, as it were, to get to the premium level. Jesus says that for his disciples, there is only one level: the truth.
And then He gives the diagnosis. "Anything beyond these is of the evil one." The Greek is ek tou ponerou, which can mean "from the evil one" or "from evil." Both are true. The need for oaths, the whole system of verbal maneuvering and reputation-bolstering, arises from the fundamental brokenness and deceit that Satan introduced into the world. He is the father of lies (John 8:44). Lying is his native tongue. And every time we play games with the truth, every time we rely on verbal pyrotechnics instead of simple integrity, we are speaking his language. We are operating according to the grammar of his kingdom of darkness.
The world is a place of deception, and so it needs contracts, lawyers, and sworn affidavits. But the church is to be a colony of heaven, an outpost of the kingdom of truth. In our dealings with one another, a simple 'yes' or 'no' should be sufficient. When it is not, it is a sign that the evil one has made inroads. It is a sign that sin is present.
The Gospel of the Trustworthy God
This high standard of truthfulness should drive us to despair, because we all fail it. We shade the truth. We make promises we don't keep. We say 'yes' with our mouths when our hearts are saying 'no.' Our words are not solid. We are all, by nature, children of the evil one in this respect.
But the good news is that God has dealt with this problem. He has dealt with it in the person of His Son. The reason we can be people of the truth is that we serve a God of the truth. God is the ultimate promise-keeper. And when He wanted to make the ultimate promise, He swore an oath. But because there was no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself (Hebrews 6:13-18).
And what was this promise? It was the gospel. It was the promise of redemption and inheritance through Jesus Christ. All the promises of God find their 'Yes' in Him (2 Corinthians 1:20). Jesus is God's great 'Yes' to fallen humanity. He is the Word made flesh, the very embodiment of truth. He always spoke the truth, and He is the truth.
When we put our faith in Jesus, we are united to the Truth Himself. We are transferred out of the kingdom of the evil one, the kingdom of lies, and into the kingdom of God's beloved Son, the kingdom of truth. The Holy Spirit is given to us, and He is the Spirit of truth. He begins a work in us, a lifelong process of sanctification, where He teaches us to put away falsehood and to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15, 25).
Therefore, our calling is not to strive in our own strength to be more honest. Our calling is to cling to Christ, the faithful and true witness. It is to confess our lies and our verbal games. It is to ask Him to make us more like Him. The world needs to see a people whose word is their bond, not because they are naturally virtuous, but because they have been bought by the blood of a God who cannot lie. Let your 'yes' be yes, and your 'no' be no, because you belong to the one who is the Amen, the great Yes to all of God's promises.