waynebo wrote:Matthew 5:33"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' 34But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
I take it we are not to swear on the Bible or anything for that matter?
It helps, I think, to understand the context of the day and culture that Jesus was speaking. The Pharisees and temple leaders approached things from a very legalistic point of view and had a whole series of supporting laws, above and beyond those conveyed in the Old Testament. Rather than simply going to the spirit of the Law which was to tell the truth, not lie and not bear false witness, they contrived a whole system of oaths and whether the person taking or making them was obligated to tell the truth, based upon whether the item or person they were swearing by.
Put more simply, they made allowances for "crossing their fingers" and in so doing, missed the entire point.
Jesus in the sermon on the mount, addressed many of these kinds of things that had been built into the religious system by making strong statements, and in some cases, even hyperbole to illustrate and push against this whole legalistic, hypocritical system.
The irony with that is, that, if you wanted, some can take Christ's statement and focus upon the externals of it (like establishing a rule like not swearing an oath in a court of law which is not what Jesus was directly addressing) and imagine they're listening to Christ when in fact they're only getting half the point, and missing the main point in the process which is that your word should be representative of a heart that seeks to tell the truth and doesn't "work the angles" as to whether the right combination of words of object in an oath, obligate you to do so.
