Christ the Lord When Jesus teaches, he takes an authoritative posture: he is not just giving advice, he is unveiling Truth. St. Matthew illustrates this with two details prefacing Chapters 5-7 of his Gospel, the chapters that present in summary form Christ’s idea of how we ought to live, commonly called the Sermon on the Mount: First, Jesus sat down before he began to teach. When rabbis in Israel sat down to teach, it indicated that they were presenting their official doctrine. Second, the Greek used for “Then he began to speak…” contains a phrase that, literally translated, would read: “he opened his mouth.” In the ancient world, this phrase indicated an official declaration or a setting forth of the speaker’s most deeply held convictions. When St. Matthew depicts Jesus as sitting down and opening his mouth, it is as if he were saying: “What follows is the soul of Christ’s doctrine, his very heart expressed in the most important words spoken by the Word of God.” When Christ teaches, he claims to have authority; we can either accept it or reject it, but we cannot write it off, nor can we treat it like one opinion among many. Our attitude towards Jesus’ teaching is our attitude toward the Lord himself.