Matthew Poole and continuators on Matthew 5:20

20 For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

I am so far from giving a Liberty to the Violation of my Fathers Law, (as the Scribes and Pharisees may possibly suggest) that I assure you, that unless your Obedience to it exceed that Obedience, which the Scribes and Pharisees teach you, and themselves Practise, you shall never come in Heaven. What the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was, we cannot better learn than from St. Paul, who was himself a Pharisee, and bred up at the Feet of Gamaliel a great Doctor amongst them, Acts 23.5. & 26.5. Phil. 3.5. That it was a Righteousness of works appeareth from Phil. 3. and the whole Epistles to the Romans, and Galathians, and their not owning Christ as the Messiah: Nor believing on him, Ioh. 7.48. made it impossible that it should be any other, that they lookt upon their meer Obedience to the Ceremonial Law as their Righteousness, cannot be proved, yea the contrary is enough Evident, by their Obedience to the Moral Law, according to the Interpretation they put upon it. But their Interpretation of the Moral Law was so short and jejune, that it is manifest that their Righteousness, was not only a Righteousness not of Faith, but of Works, but Works that were very imperfect and short of what the true Sense of the Law required, our Saviour afterward proveth. That is to say, it was no Righteousness, for he that keepeth the whole Law, if he be Guilty in one Point is Guilty of all, Ia. 2.10.

Marginal references: Luk. 11.39.