What Does This Mean: Matthew 5:20 Kjv - Except Your Righteousness Shall Exceed the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees?
1) Direct answer
It means entrance into the Kingdom requires a righteousness that is not outward rule‑keeping like the scribes and Pharisees, but an inward righteousness—Christ’s own life in you—fulfilling God’s law from the heart by the Holy Ghost.
2) Scriptural explanation
- The Bible says the Pharisees were clean outside but full of uncleanness within (Matthew 23:25–28). Jesus was not asking for “more” of that; He demanded a different kind: heart righteousness.
- Right in this chapter, Jesus raises the law to the heart level: anger is murder in seed, lust is adultery in seed (Matthew 5:21–28). That shows the righteousness God requires is inward.
- By the law shall no flesh be justified (Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16). If outward works could open the Kingdom, the Pharisees would have qualified.
- Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Romans 10:4). God made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
- The new covenant writes the law in the heart (Hebrews 8:10; Ezekiel 36:26–27), so that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Romans 8:3–4).
- You must be born again to see and enter the Kingdom (John 3:3–5). That new birth is the only way your righteousness can exceed theirs.
3) Simple clarifying logic
- How will you “out‑Pharisee” the Pharisees—men who fasted, tithed, and kept traditions strictly—if righteousness is measured by external performance? You can’t.
- Jesus exposed the heart. Since sin begins within, righteousness must begin within. That’s why He pointed from acts to motives.
- The law can measure you but cannot change you. Christ gives a new nature; then the life of the Spirit produces what the law demanded: love that fulfills the law (Romans 13:10), the fruit of the Spirit against which there is no law (Galatians 5:22–23).
- So “exceed” means a higher quality, not a higher quantity—God’s righteousness, not self‑righteousness. It is received by faith and proven by a transformed walk.
4) Reinforcing statement
Repent and believe the Gospel, be identified with Christ, and receive the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38). Then the One who wrote the law will live it through you. That is the righteousness that exceeds and that opens the Kingdom.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Mary's belief
61-0121 §30
Now, listen, friends. Don't take a substitute. Don't just shake a man's hand and put your name on the book. That's ... as far as it goes, that's all right. It might help you to get out of the saloon and get in a decent place and try to live right. That won't do it though. "Except a man be born again he cannot even see the kingdom of God." Now, see means "to understand." There's a lot of people that say they're born again and can't understand the message of God, can't see the angel of the Lord. Their eyes are blinde...
The Queen of the South
60-1127E §26
Now, I'm going to speak tonight on divine healing, the Lord willing, a little along that line. But, let's turn now to Matthew the twelfth chapter for a little text. And then from this draw a context, the Lord willing. Matthew the twelfth chapter. And now, let's start reading at the thirty-eighth verse of Matthew, the twelfth chapter, to you who are taking down the text, as many times people in meetings do. They take the text down and keep it kind of in their mind. Then when they get the tapes, they rehearse it and...
The Queen of Sheba
60-0110 §14
...that the people ... they're standing, no place to sit down to listen. You'd be comfortable and could get more out of the service, of course. But to you who are now ... got your Bibles, and you like to kind of follow the scriptures, turn with me to the book of St. Matthew, twelfth chapter, and we'll begin from the twelfth chapter at the thirty-eighth verse for just a portion. Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them,...
Seals 8: The Sixth Seal
63-0323 §66
Just perfectly. Turn right back over and see what Jesus said here now in Matthew 24:29. Listen (after this Eichmann case and so forth). Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, ... the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: [Now watch.] And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and they shall see ... and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man comin...
It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness
61-1001M §43
...John knew that Jesus was the Messiah of the hour, and that they both clearly had an under-standing. Oh, if the church of the living God could only get that into their heads this morning, and their hearts; that the church would not be separated by denominational barriers, that differences in creeds and colors, and so forth; that we might come together in the name of the Lord Jesus, not having anything to bear us away from the true Word of the living God; and walk straight down that line of Scripture, to fulfill all...