THROUGH MY OCCASIONAL role as either a wedding officiant or a marriage educator, I’ve worked with many couples over the years. Sometimes, it’s a matter of helping them prepare for marriage; sometimes it’s a matter of helping them improve the marriage they already have.

Skills training is an essential part of the work. I can easily fill their heads with hours of lofty ideals; I can even inspire them to change their ways and do better. But if I don’t show them what to do and help them practice it, nothing will change. For example, when I teach communication skills, I first give the couples a simple set of guidelines to follow, but then immediately make the couples put them to use in a simple, low-threat conversation.

It’s awkward at first. They’re not used to having to think about what they’re doing. That’s how it is, though, with developing any new skill; it takes time and practice for skills to become more natural, more automatic. I’m sure you know how to drive a car, for example — but don’t forget the trash cans or other obstacles that were sacrificed for you to get where you are now.

But it’s not just about the skills. Using the Beatitudes, I try to get the couples to envision who they want to be as Christians, indeed, who Jesus has called them to be: peacemakers, people who seek God’s shalom in relationship to their spouses and others. Learning the skill of listening well, for example, is one way to embody the humility and compassion to which the Beatitudes point.

Thus, in working with couples, I will indeed give them some rules or guidelines to follow. But the goal is not for them to become good rule followers; it’s for them to grow and change as people, particularly in how they relate to one another. For that, we need both rules and vision.

And something similar, I think, can be said about what Jesus teaches in Matthew 5.

“YOU HAVE HEARD…” Jesus says several times, before repeating something the people had been taught about righteousness. Those lessons could all be gathered into a tidy little list of dos and don’ts. Some of them reference the Ten Commandments: don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, and possibly don’t covet and don’t take God’s name in vain as well. To this, he adds, Follow the proper rules for divorce. Don’t break your oaths, but keep them instead. Stick to the rules of retaliatory justice. Love your neighbor…and hate your enemy.

There’s nothing wrong with giving rules in general. Nor is there anything wrong with these rules in particular, as far as they go…well, with the exception of hating your enemy. No, the problem comes with equating rule-following with righteousness. I haven’t committed homicide, someone might think. I haven’t cheated on my spouse. I filed the right paperwork when I sent my wife away. I made a vow to God and I kept it. There was that idiot who injured me, but I only injured him the same way in return. And I’m really nice to my family, friends, and neighbors — though, of course, all bets are off with anyone else. I guess I must be a pretty righteous person!

“That’s what you’ve been taught,” Jesus says, “now listen to what I’m telling you instead.” But we can’t read his words as a new and more stringent set of rules. You haven’t committed homicide? Well, bully for you. But if you were really righteous, you wouldn’t get mad enough to want to hurt someone in the first place. You haven’t slept around? Congratulations. But you thought about it, didn’t you? You had a moment of lust? That’s just as bad…

If we think righteousness consists of following the rules, of not doing bad things, then Jesus’ words will sound like an impossible demand. We might blurt out, as the disciples once did, “Then who can be saved?” And to some extent, that is indeed what I think Jesus is trying to do here: he’s trying to wake people up, trying to make sure that no one listening, not even a Pharisee, is able to take their righteousness for granted.

But more positively, Jesus is trying to get his hearers to reimagine what righteousness looks like in the first place. It’s not simply about avoiding bad things, it’s about doing good things, especially doing good in relationship to others. In his teaching, he’s not creating a new list of rules, but giving vignettes of goodness in action, particularly in the social realm.

If you want to get into God’s kingdom, he says, you need a different kind of righteousness, a righteousness that goes beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees. What does that look like? Let me tell you. It looks like taking the initiative to reconcile with people you’ve hurt or offended. It looks like being willing to making sacrifices to guard against temptation. It means honoring your marriage vows, and more generally, being someone whose word can always be trusted. It means not insisting on your right to retaliation, but being generous in spirit when people make demands on you. And it means loving not just your friends, but your enemy as well.

Does all of this describe any of us? Probably not. But we need a vision for where we’re going, and a few ideas of where to start. I may not be able to love my enemies right this moment, for example. But I can pray for them, with the hope that God will grow me up over time to be more like him.

Again, Jesus isn’t making new rules. And he could, of course, have used other illustrations or made other suggestions. We can’t read him as saying, Just do these few things and you’re good to go! Rather, he is sketching a portrait of a life of kingdom righteousness and saying, That’s the kind of person you should strive to be in relationship to others.

COUPLES WHO COME to marriage workshops vary tremendously in terms of how much they want to be there. On the one hand, some participants are desperate to find something, anything, that will lead to change. On the other hand, some have been duped or threatened into being there. My job is to work with all of them, to give them a vision for what their relationship could be and some doable ways to take a step or two in the right direction.

Again, I think something similar can be said about the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is giving his hearers a vision of a different kind of righteousness than they’re used to, something that goes beyond legalism. Part of the problem, as we’ve seen, is that even within a legalistic approach, it’s too easy to find ways to twist the rules in self-serving ways: Sure, I got mad, but I didn’t call him a fool; I called him a loser instead. I didn’t break the rule. Oh, and I didn’t sin with my right hand, I sinned with my left, so I don’t have to cut it off. It’s all good.

That’s not the kind of righteousness that embodies the spirit of the Beatitudes or the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is pointing the way. We need to catch the vision, to allow his words to reshape our imagination of what life could be like, of who we could become: more like Jesus, more like our heavenly Father. It’s awkward at first. But by God’s grace, with time and practice, it can be more and more the kind of person we are.