By Neil Earle
It’s a good question and one that still bothers many people brought up in the earlier Worldwide Church of God tradition.
Usually the passage at issue is Matthew 5:17-20 which opens with Jesus saying “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
We’ll take a second look at this passage with the help of two competent dialogue partners: Michael Green, once assistant to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the careful expositor R.T. France from the London Bible College. “In the mouth of two or three witnesses,” one might say. These are careful men, honest enough to admit the challenge these “controversial” verses (France) pose even to veteran Christians. In fact Michael Green flat out says:
“The category of law is not abolished for the followers of Jesus…Of course, some of the elements in the Old Testament law were abolished by being fulfilled. They had pointed forward to what had now eclipsed them in the fuller light brought by Jesus. But the moral law had not been abrogated…Jesus looks for the inner disposition as well as the outer action. The law is not the limit of obedience; it is to be seen as the springboard for a life of devotion to Jesus and his Father. It is the kerbstone along the road of love” (Bible Speaks Today: Matthew, page 92).
The section we are looking at is part of what has been called the Sermon on the Mount. This is within Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5-7 and Matthew is always careful to define Jesus, the Teacher who was to come, in relationship to the Law.
R.T. France focuses attention on the word “fulfill” – plerosai in the Greek. It can mean
a. accomplish, obey
b. to bring out the full meaning
c. to complete or “bring to its destined end.” See Romans 10:4.
France makes the very good point that “to complete” agrees well with the context in that Jesus cites both “the Law and the Prophets.” The whole point of being a prophet was in presenting a message to be fulfilled. As France says: “The prophet’s writings are fulfilled when what they looked forward to happens.” He also mentions that the phrase “Law and the Prophets” can refer to the entire Old Testament (Acts 24:14; 28:23). Right away, this reminds alert Christians to the fact that some things have very definitely ceased or been transformed – for example, physical circumcision, the Temple system, the preeminence given to one nation.
A second point is that in this whole section – Matthew 5,6,7 – Jesus is looking forward not backward. A related question might be: Was Moses looking forward or backward when he prophesied of the coming Messiah? The answer is he was obviously looking forward, and Jesus was acclaimed as “that Prophet” (Deuteronomy 18:15; Acts 3:22).
The Sermon on the Mount is one of the clearest statements of Jesus’ agenda and Matthew is the most systematic of the Gospel writers. Six times he repeats the formula “you have heard it said/but I say unto you.” John 1:17 could be injected here: “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The note of contrast is overwhelming.
But to return to Matthew 5:17. Like Green, R.T. France makes the point that there are aspects of the old covenant Law that are intensified under Jesus. Certainly he elaborates on how wide-ranging are the commandments are against murder and adultery. “Jesus goes far deeper, “says Green. “He traces murder to its dark lair in human hearts: Hatred” (page 94). Here Jesus takes Old Covenant moral laws and transforms them, moving them to a higher level, showing what the real meaning and intention was behind it.
But as R.T. France is quick to point out, there are many other stipulations Jesus clearly annuls. For example Jesus greatly loosens up the instructions about giving oaths (Matthew 5:33). He gets to the heart of the matter – Christians should be honest (Matthew 5:37).
In Matthew 5-7 Jesus clearly stood against some of the harshest literal requirements of the Law. Note some of them:
Later Jesus will pardon the woman taken in adultery by applying the higher principle of mercy, which the prophet Micah had emphasized (John 8:11; Micah 6:6-8). He has no time for scrupulous observance of laws of ritual purity (Matthew 15:1-20). He does not even expect his disciples to fast while he is with them (Matthew 9:15). He also reminds his audiences of the “exceptions” made in applying the law of the Sabbath, making it a limited law, sometimes needing to be laid aside by its very upholders (Matthew 12:5).
Nothing we can see here can make Jesus into a legalist – a precise observer of every ritual in the old covenant. Far from it. He represents a new spirit and attitude towards the Law. This is why he shocks his disciples so often with some of his pronouncements. He has little good to say about the Jewish temple, for example (Matthew 24:2). There is a radical nature to his teaching. He says he is bringing new wineskins as fresh containers of truth for the Spirit not offering the same old attempt to drink stale spiritual wine from shriveled canteens.
Like the prophets before him Jesus knew how to use exaggeration for effect. Back in Matthew 5:17-21 he clearly uses hyperbole – “hype” we say today, the bold over-the-top statement that calls attention. He startles his disciples in Matthew 5:20 by saying that they need righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees. Paul will later explain that this is a righteousness infused into us by faith (Philippians 3:9), but in this context of discussing the Law Jesus’ point is shocking. Who could be more fanatical about the Sabbath, for example, than the Pharisees? Yet even here they are forced to make exceptions or none can get into the Temple on Saturday. Jesus knows this: A Law which has exceptions is not an absolute law.
Now we grasp more clearly the background to Jesus’ forceful exaggeration that “till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” This, as some perceptive commentators have noted, does place a limitation on the Law – in God’s good time heaven and earth will pass away (Revelation 21:1). Part of the good news Jesus brought is that even now God is in the business already of inaugurating a new creation where everything is made new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Does the expression “not one jot or tittle” bring us back to strict law-keeping? No. Christians know they do not offer a sacrifice of a goat or a sheep, for example. In verse 18 Jesus is reiterating what he already said about fulfillment in verse 17. His point about the “one jot or tittle” is that everything about him in the Law will eventually be fulfilled, indeed, is already well on the way to fulfillment especially in his death and resurrection (16:21). Thus, the fifty chapters in the Torah describing the Temple construction and rituals came to pass in Jesus. “Destroy this temple,” Jesus told the Temple proprietors he had just offended, “and in three days I will raise it up” (John 1:19-21). This was fulfilled in his own resurrection from the dead.
“The fulfillment,” writes France, “demands the fullest respect of the disciples.” If the Pharisees fail by not living up to the divine intentions behind the Law then Jesus shows how it is possible. He does this, says France, “not by meaning more scrupulous in literal observance but by penetrating to the true will of God enshrined in the law.”
Arguably, no one could be more scrupulous in Sabbath observance than the Pharisees of the first century. But Jesus challenged them. He would ask: What was the intention behind the seventh day Sabbath? Clearly it was to give rest to humans and animals (Exodus 20:10). How was that command fulfilled? By Jesus putting himself forward as the true rest. He said this in Matthew 12:1-8 after being criticized for breaking Pharisaic law on the Sabbath. “Look,” he told them, “the priests in the Temple are working on Saturday and thus profane the strict interpretation you have put on the Sabbath. But there is one here among you greater than the Temple.”
He concluded this interview with a key statement: “the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Remember: The true Sabbath intention was freedom for animals and slaves, at least for one day. But Jesus says if the Son makes you free then you are free indeed (John 8:36). Who is it who brings true rest and freedom? The Son of God, the new Prophet. Therefore the Sabbath commandment is both fulfilled and transcended in Jesus Christ. Only the outer shell – a 24 hour period – remains.
Can one be a Sabbath-keeper and be a Christian? Yes, but not as easily as some seem to think. In religious observance, the cart is so easily placed before the horse. It is so easy to allow repetitive physical rituals to become ends in themselves till only a hollow shell is being worshipped – exactly the problem with the whole Pharisaic observance of the Law. With the Sabbath there was the added hazard of a feeling of spiritual superiority – another ditch Jesus’ generation fell into and from which he tried so hard to extricate them.
The Sabbath became an idol and an idol ultimately prevents us from seeing the true God.
We can now reach some overall conclusions. Some OT laws Jesus abrogates and overturns, a few he actually intensifies, especially those dealing with human relationships – murder and adultery, for example. By so freely making distinctions among the laws – grading them, you could say, to get at their relative importance – Jesus showed he was not a prisoner of either the Law of Moses or the rules of the Pharisees. A good Christian will respect the Old Testament – it is written for us even if it is not directly written to us! As France adds:
“The scribes and Pharisees devoted to scrupulous observance…do not thereby qualify for the kingdom of heaven. What is required is a greater righteousness (see Matthew 3:15, 5:6, 10), a relationship of love and obedience to God, which is more than a literal observance of regulations. It is such a righteousness which fulfills the law and the prophets…
“This passage does not therefore state that every Old Testament regulation is eternally valid…the New Testament consistently sees Jesus as introducing a new situation, for which the law prepared but which now transcends it. The focus is now on Jesus and his teachings, and in this light the validity of Old Testament rules must now be fulfilled…Jesus’ radical [teaching] takes its starting-point from the Old Testament law, but does not so much either confirm or abrogate it as transcend it” (Matthew, pages 116-118).
With the coming of Jesus, the Prophet whom Moses expected, everything is changed, even the way we view the Law and the Prophets. Some laws are abrogated, some are intensified, and all are transcended by a new spirit of liberty. We therefore look to the Spirit not to the written letter, that self-same Spirit which early Christians called “the Lord and Giver of Life,” the ever-fresh Spirit of creation, unable to be confined by ritual obedience and mechanical repetition.