The Fulfillment of the Law

Matthew 5:17-20

Immanuel – 12/31/23

Last Sunday, Christmas Eve, we took a brief hiatus from the Gospel of Matthew. In both the morning service and the candlelight service we spent time in the book of Exodus, considering the incredible gifts of grace that God gave to Israel. These gifts came just before He gave them the law.

God was proving, through His tremendous gifts of grace, that He truly loved Israel. Indeed, God’s gifts of grace were the very foundations of the covenant He would make with Israel. Put another way, the covenant between God and Israel is entirely based upon God’s faithfulness and graciousness and love.

In response to God’s love, the Mosaic Law would be Israel’s expression of the covenant. For if the love of God filled their whole being, the law of God would be a natural expression of that love, as instinctive as breathing, filling every corner of life.

So it was intended. And again, this whole covenantal relationship was founded in the loving-kindness of God: His gifts, His salvation, His bread from heaven, His very presence. In awe of these wonderous graces, the only natural response of humanity is to worship and obey.

So, at the risk of sounding redundant, The Mosaic Law – given at Sinai – is the expression of what it looks like to love God, to worship and obey Him. I risk redundancy because it has everything to do with our passage today.

But before we get into our passage, let’s also take a quick moment to remember where we are in Matthew. We are in the middle of Jesus’ longest recorded teaching in the Bible: The Sermon on the Mount.

We can think of the Sermon on the Mount as the beginner’s guide to the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is teaching His disciples what the kingdom looks like, how it functions, and how it relates to what came before. If you want to know what the kingdom of God is all about, you must start by studying Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

It's called the Sermon on the Mount because Jesus delivered it from a mountain.

Read vs 1-2

Remember, Matthew’s gospel was written to Jewish Christians. When any first century Jewish reader saw that Jesus went up a mountain and delivered a series of laws – though they are laws in the form of blessings – they would have immediately picked up the implication. Jesus was echoing Moses, the mountain in Galilee is put in parallel to Mount Sinai.

Matthew wants to trigger thoughts of the Mosaic Law in the mind of his readers because, on this Galilean height, Jesus is delivering the law of the kingdom of heaven; and with this new law, something forever changes with the old law.

Purpose

1. In what way did Christ fulfill the law?

2. What is the significance of the law for us today?

3. What is the type of righteousness needed to enter the kingdom of heaven?

Today’s text takes us into territory that can be complicated; it is often made too complicated. So, it will be my goal today, as I seek to answer those three questions, to make this passage as easy to understand as possible. As I seek to honor God with my speaking – and the thinking I’ve already put in – I pray you desire to honor God with your listening and your thinking.

Read vs 17

The Law and the Prophets is a way of referring to the Jewish Scriptures, or what we would refer to as the Old Testament. So, when Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” the clear indication is that there were some – even among Jesus’ disciples – that thought He was indeed abolishing the Jewish Scriptures, particularly the law.

In fact, that is one of the very accusations levied against Jesus and the first church. There are several places we could see this, but I will take you to the first martyrdom, the stoning of Stephen.

Then [the Jews] secretly instigated men who said, “We have heard [Stephen] speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.”

-Acts 6:11-14

Stephen was executed because people were claiming that he was teaching the abolishment of the Mosaic Law. But such charges could only have come from false witnesses, because Jesus – the founder and perfector of our faith – said in no uncertain terms, “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.”

So no, neither Jesus nor His disciples are looking to dismiss the Old Testament.

But such a statement begs the question, “In what way did Christ fulfill the law?” The first thing to understand is that fulfill is not the same as keep. In other words, Christ did not say, “I came to keep the law.” Though Jesus did perfectly keep the law, completely obeying all 613 commands, that is not primarily what He is talking about in this Sermon on the Mount.

The Law

We come to a quick understanding of what Jesus means when we just think about how He has fulfilled the Prophets. Already in Matthew we have been shown many ways in which Jesus fulfilled prophesy, and we will see many more fulfillments as we continue through Matthew. Jesus fulfilled the Prophets because the Prophets were pointing to Him.

Jesus is the One the Prophets were all speaking about. He is the fulfillment. To understand how He is also the fulfilment of the Law, I need to do a little groundwork.

The purpose of the law is to reveal righteousness. For instance, if someone is not able to meet the requirements of the 10 commandments, with all of their implications, that person is not righteous. Conversely, if someone can perfectly obey the 10 commandments, they are righteous. Then there are the 603 other commands. Thus, the law’s purpose is to expose righteousness.

Think of the law like a moral x-ray machine. You pass a person under the lens of the law and suddenly a person’s heart and soul is exposed, revealing if any righteousness exists there, or if there is none. The law cannot make a person righteous; it can only reveal if a person is already righteous.

And, of course, the law reveals two massive realities.

First, the law reveals that God is righteous, perfectly holy.

Second, the law reveals that man is not righteous, completely unholy.

As it is written, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” -Romans 3:10-12

So, when the lens of the law is passed over you – or any person, every person – it is revealed that you, with everyone else, are unrighteous. And in your unrighteousness, you are not worthy of the kingdom of God. For as Romans 3:23 says, we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

But there was one, only one, who passed the test; for when the lens of the law is passed over Jesus, exposing His heart and soul: righteous! Perfectly righteous!

Again, Jesus did not become righteous by meeting the requirements of the law. Rather, the law reveals that Jesus is already righteous. Jesus’ whole being overflows with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In other words, Jesus is genuinely righteous, and the law proves it.

Therefore, Jesus is the fulfillment of the law because He is the only one that stood beneath the scrutiny of the law and was declared: Righteous! Jesus has not come merely to keep the commands of the law, but to be the embodied righteousness that the law had always talked about – the fulfillment. Just as He has come to fulfill all prophecy.

Listen to how Paul makes the same assertion:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it. -Romans 3:21

Paul is talking about the righteousness of God as revealed in Jesus, and it is a righteousness that is apart from the law. The law has nothing to do with Jesus’ righteousness, except to give us eyes to see just how magnificently Jesus is the fulfillment of all righteousness. The Law and the Prophets bear witness to this new reality that dawns in Christ.

The Apostle John took the same sort of concept, and he put it another way.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. -John 1:14,16-17

Jesus is the substance to which the law had pointed. Christ is the fulfillment, and from Him flows grace and truth!

Now, in the strongest terms possible, Jesus affirms the significance of the Scriptures, with a particular focus on the law.

Read vs 18

Significance Today

An iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. A dot is the smallest marking on the smallest letter. Jesus is essentially saying, “Even the seemingly most insignificant part of the law is eternally significant. It cannot be forgotten or abolished.”

It is easy to read verse 18 and think that the law will only be significant until heaven and earth pass away. You might also think, “Look, Jesus is teaching that the earth will be destroyed!” But these would be misunderstanding and surface level readings of the verse.

Instead, the phrase “until heaven and earth pass away” was something like a Jewish idiom. It was used in a similar way to when we say, “when hell freezes over.” Therefore, Jesus is saying that the law is as permanent as the created order; even more permanent, for the created order is based upon the law of God.

Then all of this is punctuated by the phrase, “until all is accomplished.” Not heaven and earth, and not the law, will pass away until all has been accomplished. And then, when everything is accomplished, does that not mean that paradise has come, that heaven and earth have been joined, the fullness of God’s plans have been realized? Why would heaven and earth be destroyed when all has been perfected? In the same way, neither will the law diminish in its value.

And again, we must understand this in light of Christ as the fulfillment. If Jesus is the fulfillment of Scripture, if He is the living Word, then how can that word be discarded? Even the smallest minutia of Scripture is a revelation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Let us never lay it aside nor diminish it!

Read vs 19

In this verse, Jesus is not suddenly teaching that a person needs to obey the law down to the smallest detail. Behavior is not Jesus’ focus, though there certainly is an implication for behavior.

Rather, the focus of verse 19 is teaching. No one should relax or diminish aspects of the law; meaning, don’t be telling people that the Old Testament doesn’t matter. Don’t tell people that even the smallest parts of the law are irrelevant. Do not be like Andy Stanley; teaching that we need to unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament.

You might say, “Well, the ceremonial laws no longer apply to us. Haven’t they been abolished? Don’t we set them aside? Aren’t they pretty much irrelevant now?”

Never! For instance, every ceremonial law is fulfilled in Jesus! Jesus is the once-for-all sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world. All of the Mosaic washings are completed when we are forever cleansed by the blood of Christ. He is the Ark of the Covenant and He is making us into the living temple. He is our great high priest.

Though we do not practice these Old Testament things, all of them help us to see the majesty, humility, glory, and righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ! We shall never diminish them, though we may not practice them. Christ is the fulfillment.

In the Greek, there’s a play on words in verse 19: smallest commandment, smallest in the kingdom. Interesting that you can still be a part of the kingdom of heaven even if you are careless with the commands of Scripture. But what faithful disciple of Jesus would want to hear from God that they are least? Jesus’ implicit exhortation is clear, strive to be called greatest in the kingdom.

Do you want a practical way, something you can work on today, that you may be great in the kingdom of heaven? Heed the commission of Christ!

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” -Matthew 28:18-20

See teaching and commandments in there? Go everywhere, making disciples, and teaching everything that Christ has commanded. Do you make efforts to make disciples? Have you taught them to obey Jesus? Do not relax this command and leave it for others!

Read vs 20

Everything that Jesus has said so far would have gotten the heads of all the scribes and Pharisees nodding (except perhaps the bit about fulfillment). And then Jesus drops this bomb, effectively saying the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is not enough to enter heaven. You can just picture the hot flash of anger on their faces.

A New Righteousness

The scribes and Pharisees were the most diligent law followers in all Israel. Their aim was to literally follow every dot and iota of every law, even to where they tithed from the spices in their cabinets (Matthew 23:23). They were meticulous rule followers but could not see the more important matters. For instance, they knew how to obey every ceremonial cleansing law, but they could not understand how to be clean before God. The Pharisaic way was the wrong way.

Even still, as Jesus spoke these words from the mount, the thoughts of the crowds must have screamed, “Who in all Israel, in all the world, could exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees?”

Of course, Jesus is not saying that the way to enter the kingdom of heaven is to beat the Pharisees at their own game. No. But in this age of fulfillment, there is a greater righteousness that does not come from rule following, or law adherence, or trying to obey your way into righteousness.

The greater righteousness is a righteousness that you do not need to work for, that you don’t have to earn, but is freely and graciously given. Jesus already told us how to find this righteousness. It’s one of the laws of the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” -Matthew 5:6

All you have to do is recognize you are starving, starving for righteousness. And what you starve for only God can give. Come to Him, in faith, and He will send you His bread from heaven. Jesus said:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

-John 6:51

That’s the key to the righteousness that opens heaven’s doors: Jesus’ flesh. The law exposed our wickedness, that no amount of good deeds are enough for us to climb from the abyss of our unrighteousness. And instead of earning God’s favor, all we can earn for ourselves is God’s condemnation.

But Christ’s righteousness is enough! His righteousness brings Him right before the Father: beloved, most precious, God’s one and only Son. Metaphorically speaking, our flesh was putrefying in unrighteousness and bound for the fire. But in place of ours, this most beloved Son offered His righteous flesh in place of our own, on the cross, that we may be spared the fire.

Believe it, feast your faith upon the righteousness of Christ, and be satisfied. He gives you His perfection. His life is your life. By faith in Jesus, yours is now a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

-Romans 10:4

You do not live by the law of demands and rules. You live by a law of grace and love.

We are now new creations in Christ, newly created to be righteous. The lens of the law will never pass over you and declare you unrighteous, for God has looked upon you, seen His Son, and made the eternal declaration that you are righteous! Nothing in all creation can now separate you from His love!

Our expression of that righteousness, gracious given by God, looks now like obedience to the law. It is our joy and longing – with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength – to love the God who did not spare His own Son. And because of God’s great love for a wretch like me, how can I not love my neighbor as Christ has loved me?

Of course, loving God and loving others are the two greatest commandments in the Mosaic Law. There are many other ways the Mosaic Law comes alive and is fulfilled in the hearts of those who love Jesus Christ. For the rest of Matthew 5, Jesus will go on to describe that further, until He comes to the words in verse 48:

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

-Matthew 5:48

So let me now concisely answer those three questions I asked in the beginning.

1. In what way did Christ fulfill the Mosaic Law?

Christ is the very embodiment of righteousness. The law merely exposes the perfection of Jesus’ righteousness. Thus, the law is forever pointing towards the righteousness of Christ.

2. What is the significance of the Law for us today?

The Law helps us see our desperate need for the perfection of Jesus’ righteousness. Once we receive that righteousness, by faith, the law helps us understand how to express that righteousness.

3. What is the type of righteousness needed to enter the kingdom of heaven?

Only the perfect righteousness of Christ, given to sinners as a gracious gift, and only received through faith. Live now by the law of grace and love.