More Whining (from me) about the Law

Covenant Theologians, who want the Ten Commandments to be the consummate revelation of God’s moral law, ¹ have a difficult task, though they are loath to admit it!.  It is not surprising ²—they want demand that in Jesus’ “but I say unto you” teachings in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, chapter the fifth) are not new law but corrections of bad teaching from the authorities.

As I have talked about before, this has many problems including:

• What comes before, in the same sermon, are the beatitudes. They are certainly new teaching. So we have to accept that Jesus segued from teaching something new into pharisee-correction mode. 
• If Jesus is correcting the authorities he is being uncharacteristically mild. There is none of the “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, Yankees fans!” that we find elsewhere—so much so that “Woes of the Pharisees” has its own wiki page. 
• There is that ginormous problem that one of the "corrections" (Matt 5:27) is "You have heard it said do not commit adultery, but I said until you..." The problem here is obvious: Do not commit adultery is exactly when God wrote on the tablets with his finger. If it is a correction, it is corrected God himself. May it never be. 

Then on the other bookend, it must be that Jesus segues again. For a few verses later Jesus teaches:

³⁸ “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ ³⁹ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matt 5:38-39)

Here again Jesus appears to be replacing Mosaic Law (Ex. 21:24), not correcting faulty teaching. There is no way that you can morph the Old Testament passage into "turn the other cheek."³

But I have not heard a Covenant Theologian argue that Matt 5:38-39 is a correction. I believe they are willing to accept it as new teaching--because it is not one of "the" irreplaceable commandments.

So their (probably strawman)position regarding the Sermon on the Mount seems to me to be this:

1. Jesus gave new teaching (the beatitudes) 
2. He switched to corrective mode when talking about the Ten Commandments, even though he doesn't as was his custom, call out the religious authorities 
3. After he finished discussing the Commandments he, though using the same "but I say unto you" format, was teaching new law 

 It seems, my friends, like such an unnecessary Rube Goldberg approach to the Sermon.

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¹ Which includes virtually everyone I worship with, admire, and am friends with, and who is into theology, and is not like all: "Eww, don't label me, I hate labels, I just love Jesus, that's enough!"

² This would more or less leave God's moral law as the only item of theological significance that was more fully revealed in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. For if the Ten Commandments are supreme, then they are superior to Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

³ Just like, in my mind, you cannot morph "Do not commit adultery" into "Do not lust", or "Do not kill" into "Do not hate". They are not corrections, they are new and improved replacements. (I know--you don't agree. That's cool.)