Sermon On The Mount Discourse

Matthew 5:27-32 is part of the Sermon on the Mount discourse, which is one of the five discourses of the Gospel of Matthew (5-7, 10, 13, 18, and 23-25). This passage locates relatively earlier in the Sermon. Professor Dallas Willard (1998), in his book The Divine Conspiracy, claims that “The later parts of the Discourse presuppose the earlier parts and simply cannot be understood unless their dependence upon the earlier parts is clearly seen” (p. 138). If the sequential order in the discourse is important, then the earlier parts are more foundational than the later parts. That is the first reason I chose to memorize this passage rather than other passages of the Sermon on the Mount discourse. The second reason I choose this passage because