Jesus had been steadily widening and expanding his listeners’ understanding of what living in the Law was going to mean for his followers. He’d been asking them to live according to the spirit of the Law, not just obey the letter of the Law and stopping there. Next he showed his followers where he had been aiming all along, and it was way above their heads! He wanted them (and us) to live under the law the way our heavenly Father does.
The way God views people and how he plans to bless them has nothing to do with how they behave. God gives the best God has to give, no matter the state of the recipient. The sun shines on us all, whether we deserve it or not. The rain refreshes and blesses us all, whether we deserve it or not. That’s the way God gives love, to all of us, and that’s the way Jesus told us to act toward others. Jesus lifted our minds to a God’s eye view and showed us what life would be like if we shared God’s heart, if we didn’t keep score, if we weren’t focused on what was due us, if we didn’t divide up other people into friends and enemies, but always treated everyone as beloved of God. It’s almost more than our minds can encompass. But we have the mind of Christ, as Paul tells us in Philippians 2:5: “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus….” With the help of Jesus, we can imagine what it would be like to be perfect, as God is perfect. Once you have understood the Law like this, you can never go back to rote obedience to the letter of the Law only.