When Words Lose Their Meaning

James went rock climbing with a buddy — two hundred and twenty pounds, and you have never seen a man go up a wall that fast.

But before either of them touched the wall, there was paperwork. One contract to come through the door. Oh, you brought kids? One for each of them. Oh, you want to climb today? Sign this. Oh, you want to belay that man on a rope? One more.

Five contracts before he was allowed to leave the ground. Eighty pages of fine print.

We live in a litigious society, and there is nothing wicked about covering yourself and protecting people. But look at why any of it exists. We paper each other because we do not trust each other. We write fine print because we want an escape hatch in case the thing we just promised does not work out.

That is our world, and it is not one bit different from the world Jesus was preaching into.

An oath is a promise you prop up by appealing to God, or at least to something bigger than you. I swear on my mother. I swear on my life. I swear to God. Every one of them is an admission that your plain word was not felt to be enough — by you, or by them.

So start here, before any of the theology. Where in your life have you needed the extra words? Who have you had to convince recently, and what does it say that convincing was required?

The surface reading of Matthew 5 is that Jesus bans oaths, we close the book and go home. But we read the Bible in context.

In the Old Testament God himself commands oaths — today's verse is one of them, and Exodus puts them squarely in the court of law, which is a large part of why we still swear to tell the whole truth in a courtroom. Paul takes an oath three times, always in an official setting.

So a blanket ban is not it. Ask the better question instead. Why do oaths exist at all?

Because people lie. Or they tell part of the truth, which is what the father of lies specialises in — and a half-truth is more useful to him than a lie, because it survives inspection. You need a notarised promise precisely where a plain word is not worth anything.

That is the diagnosis underneath the whole passage. The oath is not the disease. The oath is the cast on a broken bone, and Jesus is asking about the bone.

And notice what today's verse requires: he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. The standard was never about the formula. It was always about whether the words meant anything.

So audit yesterday, not your character in general. What did you say out loud that you have not done? Not the big vows — the small ones. I'll call you. I'll pray for you. I'll get to it this week.

Pick one and do it today.

The Pharisees had turned this into a game. You can swear by the temple, they said, but the binding one is swearing by the gold of the temple. Fine gradations of how much a promise counts — a whole system for sounding sincere while leaving yourself an exit.

Jesus calls it blind guides, and asks the obvious question in today's verse: which is greater, the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?

They were strict about washing hands, and he asked why they would not start with the heart. They tithed their dill and their spices down to the grain and neglected the weighty things — justice, mercy, faithfulness. Straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Here is what was really happening, and it is the most human thing in the passage. They could not live up to God's law, so they wrote laws they could live up to — and then stacked those on everybody else's back.

That is the pattern of the whole Sermon on the Mount running in reverse. You think you have not murdered — but you have been angry. You think you have not committed adultery — but you have looked. You know you should not lie — and he is telling you not even to need the extra words that prop up your truthfulness.

Jesus is not concerned with the hand. He is after the heart, because whatever is in the heart eventually shows up in the hand.

What is the manageable standard you have quietly substituted for the real one? Everybody has one. Name yours.

When James and Heidi started out in ministry they were sent, of all places, to a city in New Zealand called Christchurch.

He loves hiking up a mountain and has never enjoyed hiking down one, so when he found out you could paraglide down instead, that settled it. The first lesson had him running a field with the chute up, learning to control it, which felt like a good day's work.

The instructor said: great. Now to the hill.

He is standing at the edge of a drop-off looking at a valley that runs down to the water. It is gorgeous. He has signed nothing. There is no waiver. He is not wearing a helmet. And the instruction is: run, take off, and listen to the walkie-talkie.

So he did the gentlemanly thing and told Heidi, ladies first.

Then he ran, and stepped off, and was flying — thrilled right up until it occurred to him that he had no idea how to land. That is what the walkie-talkie was for.

That would never happen here. And there was something good in doing business on a handshake: simple, clear, your word was your bond, and what you said was what you meant.

Today's verse is one sentence long. Let what you say be simply yes or no; anything more than this comes from evil.

Cut the red tape and the legalese and the catch-22s. Try it for one day — no I promise, no I swear, no elaborate assurance. Just yes, or no, and then do the thing.

How many of your sentences would have to change?

Here is where the gospel comes alive in this text. Jesus wants a people so anchored by grace that they do not need to be propped up by oaths — people who tell the truth because they are following the man who said, I have come to bear witness to the truth.

Think about Peter, in today's verses. He denied Jesus three times, and he did it under oath — the very thing the Sermon on the Mount had warned him about, from the mouth of the man he was denying. Then the rooster. Then the Lord turned and looked at him. And he went out and wept bitterly.

And when Jesus came back, he did not demand an apology or a performance. He asked three questions on a beach and forgave him three times over, once for each denial, and then handed him a job.

That is grace, and it is the engine of this whole passage. We are not telling the truth in order to become truth-tellers. We tell the truth because the truth himself is living in us and starting to show.

The new year is right around the corner. The gyms will be full for a few weeks. Goals are being written this week, and most of them will be broken before the month is out — not because you did not mean it, but because try harder and do better has never once been able to fix a heart.

So do not resolve to be more honest this year. Ask him for the new heart that makes honesty possible.

And then sit with the question the week has been building to: what would change if your word alone were enough?