Okay, so the next question here is from one of our learners, he asked, or she asked, " Jesus says not to call one brother a fool. " Yet, why did he call the two on the Emmaus Road oh foolish ones? Okay, excellent question. And I have a long discussion on that in the commentary. Now, this goes back to the wrong explanation that we have all heard that I have taught nearly my whole life. And that is Jesus, I think, well, I'll just read it here. Let me see. Yeah.
He said, " But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, Raca will be in danger of the council. And whoever says, " You fool will be in danger of hellfire. " And so most of us have explained this that there's a tier. If you're angry, okay, you are going to be in trouble with the judge. And this was usually explained, okay, this was the local judge there in Israel, a local council, something like that.
And then the next level is if you call somebody Raca, well then you're going to be before an appeals court, maybe the Sanhedrin, some translation say that. And then finally, if you say fool, well, then you're in danger of hellfire. That's the worst thing you can call someone. It goes against our common sense, like fool. I mean, that's a pretty mild term, we would think. And so then we have to come up with these explanations.
And I've given sermons on why fool is the worst thing you can call someone, even though it went against what I would naturally think. So it was very enlightening to me to see that the early Christians weren't reading it that way whatsoever. For one thing, this was not a tier with them. They're understanding Jesus to be talking about two separate sins. He says, in the law, it's forbidden to murder.
What I'm saying, don't even be angry with your brother, because if you are, you're liable on judgment day, not some local judge, on judgment day, okay? You know, judgment. And don't insult your brother. And he says the same thing in two different ways. Raca and fool, they have almost exactly the same meaning. One is the Aramaic word, and then he uses the Greek words, which you know basically means fool. And it's saying the same thing.
And so I noticed the early Christians, the quotes don't make a distinction between the two. He's saying the same thing. Council, meaning the council on Judgment Day, that he and his angels in Matthew 25, he says, he will sit down with his angels, and that's the council he's talking about. So the point he is getting across is not that fool is some kind of horrible word, picking the mildest insults you could give somebody.
I mean, you know, when you try to think of what other word can you use, you can't get one that's more mild than that. In fact, there on the road of Emmaus, he actually uses a different Greek word, but they translate it, you know, oh fools or oh foolish ones. Because what else are you going to say? Oh, imbeciles, dumb heads? I mean, in other words, fool is really mildest thing. And that's what the early Christians point out that he's saying. Yeah, or idiot or yeah. Yeah, anything else is worse.
So he's picking the mildest thing you can say and saying don't do it. Yeah. Insult your brother. Now he's not saying it as an insult. He's talking about they really are foolish. He's saying don't use that though as an insult. So in other words, it's wrong to be angry. It's wrong to insult your brother. Either one we will answer for on judgment day. So that is really sobering, but it's nonsense that, oh, the word fool, which would mean, oh, you could call somebody an idiot.
You could call them, I mean, all kinds of vile terms. And that'd be okay. As long as it's not fool, yeah. You know, which was always, you know, kind of silly, but I didn't know what else to explain. Now, once you understand the historic understanding, then you realize how utterly stupid what we've all been saying. Because to begin with, no, you're not going to be called before a court because you're angry with your brother, an earthly. Just think about it.
I go in before a judge and say, I want to file a complaint against Clark Ray. He's angry with me. OK. I say, well, no, he hadn't done anything, but he's mad at me. I mean, they would like throw you out of court. Or Chrysostom explains that it was a common term. He lived in Antioch, where they spoke Aramaic.
And he said, where we would say in Greek, hey, you, when you're talking to a slave or something like that, or at least the world would say that, they would say, Raca, you know, like a derogatory statement about lowering someone else's value. Right. It's derogatory, but it's pretty mild. Hey, hey, you, you know, I mean, we'd like to be called by our name. Imagine you go before the Sanhedrin, you know, and I say, " Hey, Timothy Miller, I want to report on him. " He said, " I was at McDonald's.
" And he said, " Hey, you, give me a napkin. " And, you know, they say, " Okay, and what happened next? " " Oh, nothing, I gave him a napkin. " So what's your complaint? Well, he said, " Hey, you. " I mean, see, it's just ridiculous. But the historic understanding makes total sense that we don't regard our brother, no matter who he is, as somebody beneath us that we could assault and, you know, talk like that to him. Yeah, in the same way that Jesus was aligning, you know, murder starts with anger.
Everything associated with just discounting another person ends up in a greater problem. And so it's really just attacking the root of our anger, of our language. When it's our heart towards someone, he's addressing that core issue, not necessarily this tiered approach of like, you get to this word and then you're suddenly like in the ditch. Yeah, you've crossed the line, yeah. Yeah, you crossed the line now, it's all over. But instead, he's really just wanting us to reflect on everything we say. Is it true?
Is it beneficial? Does it build people up? Does it admonish people? That type of type of thinking. And so what you're equating that to is that when he's then on the road there and he calls them foolish, he's not saying it out of anger, or at least unjust anger. He's saying it out of like, you guys need to get it together. You know Right. And Paul uses that several times. He says to the Galatians, oh foolish ones and all that. But he's not insulting them.
He's talking about, hey, they are doing something very foolish going back to the law. And so it's not the word, it's the insulting and yeah. What's behind it? Yeah. Jesus are just insulting someone. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I really appreciate that.
No materials available for this lesson.