Fulfilling the Law

Jesus came to fulfill what was promised and foreshadowed in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Law, and the Prophets.

Fulfillment is a key theme in the Gospel of Matthew. With the arrival of Israel’s Messiah, the time of fulfillment commenced. But what does this imply regarding the Law of Moses? In his ‘Sermon on the Mount’, Jesus provides clear answers. He did not come to settle the interpretive disputes between competing Jewish sects over the details of the Law, but instead, to fulfill the “Law and the Prophets.”

[Scroll Photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash]

The focus of Christ’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’ is not on how to keep the Law perfectly or whether it must be restored to an earlier condition free of later traditions and additions. Instead, Jesus sums up his mission as one of fulfillment. His authoritative declarations on the requirements of the Law go beyond the statutes and regulations written in the Torah, and they stand in tension with the later oral “Traditions of the Elders.”

Jesus teaches his followers how to achieve a level of “righteousness” that exceeds the ritual purity of the most scrupulous interpreter of the Mosaic Law. After all, the Messiah was the Lawgiver and Prophet greater than Moses -(Deuteronomy 18:15-22, Matthew 5:17-20, Acts 7:37).

• “For Moses said, The Lord God will raise up a prophet like me from among your brothers; to him you will obey in all things whatever he tells you. And it will come to pass that every soul that does not heed this prophet will be completely destroyed from the midst of the people” - (Acts 3:22).

The Pharisees kept the Law meticulously, having surrounded it with many interpretations. The Sadducees rejected the oral law so valued by the Pharisees. They insisted on adhering to what was written in the Torah without later additions. However, Jesus taught things far beyond the debates of these two sects.

The most consistent opponents of Jesus in the gospel accounts are the Pharisees, not because Christ kept the Law more scrupulously than they did, but because of his looseness to some of its requirements as interpreted by the “Traditions of the Elders.” If Israel’s Messiah came simply to reaffirm the Torah as originally written, why did the Sadducees find it necessary to eliminate him?

Jesus did not come to “dismantle the law or the prophets.” When he stated this, he was referring to the entire body of the writings of the Hebrew Bible, not just the first five books of Moses. The term “Law and Prophets” was a summary statement for all that God had revealed in the written Scriptures - (Matthew 7:12, 11:13, 22:40, Luke 16:16, Acts 13:15, Romans 3:21).

Jesus demonstrated that he was no rigorist concerning the details of the written code. His attitude toward the Sabbath and dietary restrictions demonstrated this. The “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” a perspective that strict legalists would never tolerate.

When Christ claimed that neither “one jot nor one tittle” of the Law would pass away, it was a colorful way of describing the unchangeable nature of the expressed will of God. The written word represented His will and nature, but that did not mean His past revelations taught everything about Him, or that the Hebrew Scriptures were His final word on every matter.

BRIMMING OVER

The English term “fulfill” translates the Greek verb that has the sense of “filling to the full, to make full, to fill up completely, to fill to the brim” (‘pléroō’). This is what Jesus was doing. He fully fulfilled the Scriptures though often in unexpected ways, and this understanding is borne out by the contrasts made by Jesus in his ‘Sermon on the Mount’. The same idea is found in the description of the Spirit’s outpouring when the “Day of Pentecost was being filled full” – (Acts 2:1).

Jesus introduced legal principles and then reinterpreted them on his authority. Each time he did so, he began with the emphatic Greek pronoun ‘egō’ or “I, myself…” He went to the heart of each issue. For example, it was no longer enough simply not to kill. We as his disciples must abstain from hatred and anger. The six contrasts of the fifth chapter of Matthew provide real-life examples of what it means to have “righteousness that exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees.”- (Matthew 5:21, 5:27, 5:31, 5:33, 5:38, 5:43).

This is demonstrated especially in his explanation of how we must “love our neighbors as ourselves.” With their rigorist mindset, the “Scribes and Pharisees” interpreted the commandment to love your neighbor as applicable only to loving fellow Israelites but not Gentiles or enemies. In contrast, Jesus pointed to the nature of God Himself.

If God sends rain upon the just and the unjust, who are we to withhold love and mercy even from our “enemies”? By doing acts of kindness to our sworn “enemy” we emulate the Heavenly Father and become “perfect as He is.” Doing good to one’s “enemy” is the highest expression of the love commandment.

It is not strict obedience to every detail of the Mosaic Law that determines who enters the Kingdom of God, but whether we obey the words of Jesus, including his interpretations of the Law:

• “Every person that hears these sayings of mine and does them not shall be likened to a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:22-27).

If we do not commit adultery but lust for anyone other than our spouse, we fail to keep the words of Jesus and risk expulsion from his Kingdom. The standard of righteousness demanded by the Messiah of Israel exceeds anything written in the Torah or added by the later “Traditions of the Elders.”

Jesus came to “fulfill.” What was germinal in the old covenant came to fruition in him and his New Covenant. He was “the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” and the fulfillment of every “jot and tittle” of the “Law and Prophets.”

We are empowered to fulfill the righteous requirements of the Law by the Gift of the Spirit and our “circumcised hearts” - (“That the ordinance of the law may be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” - Deuteronomy 30:6, Ezekiel 36:26, Romans 7:6, 8:4, 10:4, Galatians 5:16-26).

• “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not yea and nay, but in him is Yea. For how many soever be the promises of God, in him is the Yea. Wherefore also, through him is the Amen for the glory of God through us  – (2 Corinthians 1:19-20).

• “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord - I will put my laws in their minds, and I will also write them on their hearts. And I will be a God to them, and they will be a people to me; and they will not teach each one to his fellow citizen, and each one to his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all of them will know me, from the least to the greatest of them” – (Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 8:10).

Embracing the Cross, emulating Christ’s self-sacrificial actions, and obeying his teachings in our daily lives is the course we must follow if we hope to achieve “righteousness that exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees” and qualify for entry into the Kingdom of God.

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SEE ALSO:

• Spirit and Covenant - (The Gift of the Spirit is part of the New Covenant, the first fruits of the New Creation, and the gathering of the nations in fulfillment of the covenant)

• The Circumcised Heart - (The promise of the Spirit is integral to the redemption of humanity and the Covenant of God with His people)

• He Baptizes in Spirit - (John the Baptist prepared the way for the Messiah who is the Herald of the Kingdom of God and the one who baptizes in the Spirit – Mark 1:4-8)

• La Loi et les Prophètes - (Jésus est venu accomplir ce qui avait été promis et annoncé dans les Écritures hébraïques, la Loi et les Prophètes)