BAt the start of His ministry on earth, Jesus made clear that God’s law was here to stay…
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:17-19 NIV
There it is, in black and white! The law of God is here to stay! Since the law was the expression of God’s holy being, how can anyone decide that it is redundant?
…but, you may protest…why the law if we are not saved by trying to keep the law?
First, the law (the Torah…God’s instructions for living under His rule) was never meant to save anyone. No rule, written on a slab of stone, can make anyone perfect in God’s sight. All it can do is expose the true condition of the heart.
The Apostle Paul knew this…to his great frustration. The more he tried to obey the Torah, the more dismally he failed.
“I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death…For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out…So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”
Romans 7:10, 18, 21-23 NIV
The problem is that the law of God, expressing His holy standards and demanding perfect obedience, can do nothing to change the sinful heart. The law can only expose the sin that is already entrenched in the heart.
Through his dealings with his own nation, Jeremiah discovered this sad truth…
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
Jeremiah 17:9 NIV
So, what did Jesus mean when He declared that He had come to fulfil the law?
Jesus, the last Adam, was born with a human nature like that of the first Adam before he sinned…able to sin and able not to sin. By perfectly obeying the law, Jesus showed humankind what obedience looked like, and…by fulfilling the law, He satisfied God’s requirement and did away with obedience to the law as a way to please God.
Just as Adam’s sin was passed on to the human race by sinning, once Jesus, the perfect man, had fully obeyed God’s law, His righteousness was secured. As man’s representative, the last Adam in place of the first Adam, God could credit Jesus’ righteousness to the sinner as a gift…to every person who receives this gift by faith…just as He had credited Adam’s sin to the whole human race.
Second, then, the standards of the Torah remain but…not to be obeyed to save but to be lived as evidence of a changed heart and a new nature. Jesus demonstrated that the letter of the Torah, in all its minute demands, was not the issue. The real issue was what the Torah revealed of God’s nature…holy love!
Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees was around this very issue…
“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.””
Matthew 9:10-13 NIV
Later, Jesus exposed the Pharisees’ wicked hearts…
“At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? …If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.”
Matthew 12:1-3, 7 NIV
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”
Matthew 23:23 NIV
In the end, the heart of the Torah was…loving God and loving one’s neighbour…the standard of the greatest commandment in the Old Covenant…a perfect and permanent standard… and no one can keep it!
To be continued…