No one likes to be told what to do. In general, we dislike laws and regulations. Rules can vary from being annoying to stifling to burdensome. As a result, we try to find ways to avoid following the rules. We ask ourselves how we can get away with doing the minimum. For example, perhaps you find yourself questioning the actual ingredients in that tempting hamburger from your favorite fast-food restaurant on a Friday during Lent: “They probably don’t even use real meat in these burgers. I’m sure it would be OK to eat one today.”

Jesus challenges this minimalist approach to the law. Jesus tries to explain how the teaching of the law and the prophets has an internal aspect that surpasses the simple literal interpretation. In other words, Jesus is trying to get people to understand the law as a way to love one another in a profound way that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees.

And this is a huge challenge. You can’t legislate love. You can’t demand that people love one another. Love must be freely given. And we don’t express our love on a balance sheet. Our first reading reminds us that if a wicked man turns away from his sins, he will live. It doesn’t matter what wicked deeds he performed in the past. None of those crimes will be remembered. Likewise, if a virtuous person turns from the path of virtue to do evil, then that person will die. It doesn’t matter how many great and virtuous deeds that person had performed in the past. There is no cosmic balancing sheet weighing our good deeds against our evil deeds.

Jesus re-interprets the commandment, “Do not kill,” to suggest that anger is a form of killing. Anger prevents us from reconciling with our loved ones and so can “kill” a relationship. I’m sure we can think of people who, out of anger, have cut a loved one out of their lives. We can act on our feelings of anger in ways that take the form of killing. To the extent that we allow our anger to cripple our relationships with others and with God, to the extent that our anger stifles healing and reconciliation, to the extent that our anger prevents us from loving others and God, then we are guilty of killing.

God did not give us the commandments simply so we can get along with each other as if we were all passengers on a public bus. The commandments establish a minimum standard of behavior so we can be free to love each other and to love God as children of God. We must not simply follow the literal, minimum requirements of the law. Instead, we must live within the law so we can be free to deepen our love for one another and God.