Jesus opposed a severe interpretation of the Law. He healed people on the Sabbath even when they were not in immediate danger of death. He allowed his disciples to pick and eat corn while walking through a cornfield on the Sabbath. Jesus associated with sinners and others considered impure. He told people to follow him instead of burying their parents. All of this (and more) would have scandalized the Jews of his time, especially their leaders.

Jesus, as portrayed in Matthew's Gospel, has a harder edge than the Jesus found in the Gospel of Luke. It is in Matthew that we hear Jesus say, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (5.48). It is in Matthew where, in one of Jesus' parables, a king orders that a man who entered a banquet without a wedding garment should be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness "where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (22.13).