The Wednesday of the First Week after Trinity

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Sunday, we reflected on the centrality of God’s Word both for conversion and for sustenance in the faith. We heard these words from father Abraham in the story of the rich man and Lazarus:

“They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Luke 16:29).

Today, our Lord speaks further about Moses and the prophets, though He uses the phrase “the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 5:17). This phrase, “the Law and the Prophets”, can be understood as a broad-stroke description of all Holy Scripture, as is the case with what we heard on Sunday. But this phrase can also be used in a narrow sense to speak of the law as the commands of God, as our Lord does in today’s Gospel. This zeroing in on law as the commands of God gives us opportunity today to consider how: The Law is God’s eternal will for creation.

Now, for a Lutheran, any discussion of God’s Law must begin with a brief consideration of the Law and the Gospel. As our Book of Concord states, the Law and the Gospel must be distinguished for their unique and important role in theology and the life of the Christian. The Law is God’s expectation of humans. It is Scripture’s thou shall’s and thou shalt not’s. It is God’s demand of us. The Gospel, on the other hand, is what God has done for us. It contains no expectations or demands. It is simply a truth to be received by faith. And so, many of us learned in Catechism class the “S.O.S.” acronyms for the Law and the Gospel. The Law “Shows Our Sin”, while the Gospel “Shows Our Savior.” The two doctrines must be sharply distinguished, and yet they are intimately related to one another. The Christian life is a constant back-and-forth between God’s Law and His Gospel. The Law convicts us of our sin. The Gospel then gives us the sweet words of absolution. Then the Law directs us how to live as the forgiven children of God. When we inevitably fall short, the Law again accuses us, and we run back to the Gospel. On and on the cycle goes in the Christian life.

But notice how the Law is not a bad thing. Though it condemns us on account of our sins, it also guides us in how to live as Christians. And even the condemnation of the Law is not truly a bad thing. It is merely an exposure of the cancerous sin which is within us. It is only when that sin is exposed that we can find healing in the Gospel. So it is that the Law of God is good. It is God’s eternal will for creation. And God’s will can never come to an end. Therefore, let us consider our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel.

Christ says:

“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).

Our Lord is clear here that He has not come to destroy Scripture or the commands of God. And so that there is no opportunity to misunderstand, our Lord doubles down on this claim in the very next verse:

“For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18).

Indeed, the Law of God is eternal, for Christ did not come to destroy it. But why is it, then, that there are aspects of the Old Testament Law which we do not observe today? Of course, there are the sacrifices and Levitical purifications. There are the Kosher dietary laws. There are the religious festivals, such as the Feast of Tabernacles, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and so on. We observe none of these things, and the New Testament does not compel us to do so. But how can we reconcile this with our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel?

The key word to understand this seeming contradiction is our Lord’s word “fulfill.” He did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. Thus, the New Testament Gospels go to great lengths to show us how Christ fulfilled every aspect of the Law perfectly. Even when He was too young to act on His own, His parents brought Him to the temple to fulfill the Law perfectly. This matters because it is only in fulfilling the Old Testament Law perfectly that Christ was enabled both to be our pure, sinless sacrificial Lamb—the once-for-all sacrifice which fulfills the Old Testament sacrificial laws—and this perfect fulfilling of the Old Testament Law also enabled Him to institute a New Testament in His Blood, having rendered the old one null and void by His fulfillment of it.

And so, it matters that Christ has kept the Law perfectly where you and I were not able to. For now that He has taken away our sins upon the cross, He has instituted a New Covenant, freeing us from bondage to the old. Recall that He said:

“Assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18).

But now that all things stand fulfilled based on Christ’s declaration from the cross—“It is finished” (John 19:30)—now that the Law stands fulfilled, we are not bound to the Old Testament Law in any way. In fact, in one of his sermons, Martin Luther goes so far as to say that not one part of the Law of Moses applies directly to Christians. This means that we are not even bound to the Ten Commandments, per se. But before anyone gets the idea to run out and descend into anarchy, we need to recall this important fact: Through Christ, we are still bound to the moral aspects of God’s Law. This is because the Law is God’s eternal will for creation.

Though we are not bound to Moses directly, the Ten Commandments do still apply to us because Christ says so. He says things like:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder’…But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22a).

With these words and others like them, our Lord not only reinforces, but also doubles down on the Ten Commandments as applicable to Christians. Thus, through Christ, the Ten Commandments do apply to Christians, for they are a summary of God’s eternal will for creation.

(As an aside, the Third Commandment is the only exception to this rule. Time fails us now to consider why it is the case that of all the commandments, it is only the Third which does not apply to Christians in a literal way. You can ask me why later, if you are curious.)

New Testament Christians are still bound to the moral aspects of God’s Law because of Christ’s affirmation of it. However, we are not bound to the ceremonial aspects of the Law because their eternal fulfillment is Christ. These laws have not passed away, they have simply met their end and goal in Christ.

So it is that we should reject the increasing trend in some Christian circles to re-establish the Old Testament dietary laws, feasts, and liturgical calendar. The sects that do this fail to understand what we have said about the nature of how the Old Testament Law has been fulfilled in Christ. They selectively and inconsistently apply the Law of Moses to our time in a way that distorts the work of Christ to fulfill the Law for us, thus placing people back under the law. Not even the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 sought to impose the Law of Moses on Gentile Christians. For we are not under the law. We are under grace (cf. Romans 6:14).

Dear friends in Christ, we are free in the Gospel. But our Gospel freedom is not a freedom from the Law. For the Law is God’s eternal will for creation. Rather, our freedom is a liberty from ceremonial laws and obstacles which prevent us from approaching God directly through Christ. The moral aspects of the Law remain in place to guide our life together, grounding us in God’s eternal will. But our salvation and Christian life is founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen for you.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.