S.O.T.M. Christ Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets [Matthew 5:17-20]

We come again today to this section in the sermon on the mount where Jesus is talking about the Old Testament. Last week we laid down two main principles in regard to the relationship between the Old Testament scriptures and the gospel. First, in verses 17 and 18, Jesus says that everything He is going to teach is in absolute harmony with the entire teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures. Second, in verses 19 and 20, is that this teaching of His which is in such harmony with the Old Testament is in complete disharmony with, and an utter contradiction of, the teaching of the Pharisees and scribes.

We saw last week the Jesus believed all the scriptures, down to the minutes detail, and that they all pointed to Him. Today we will look in more detail Christ fulfilling the Law and the Prophets.

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 5:17-20]

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ fulfills and carries out everything that has been written about him in the Old Testament scriptures. This subject is an important one in a day when many Christians are unsure about what to think about the Old Testament. Or how the Old Testament applies to us today, this is not anything new. The apostle Peter hits at this as well in his second Epistle.

He is writing to comfort people who were living in very hard and difficult times and who were experiencing persecution. He is now an old man and realizes that he has not long to live. He wants to give them some final comfort before he goes. He tells them various things; how, for instance, he and James and John had the privilege of seeing the transfiguration of our Lord and how they even heard that voice from the excellent glory which said, ‘This is my beloved Son, hear him.’ ‘And yet’, says Peter in effect, ‘I have something even better than that to tell you. You need not place your confidence on my testimony and experience. There is the “more sure word of prophecy”.

Go back and read your Old Testament prophets. See their verification in Christ Jesus and then you will have the strongest foundation of faith that man can ever obtain.’ This, then, is something of vital importance. Our Lord claims that He is the fulfilment, in and of Himself, of that which was taught by the Old Testament prophets. The apostle Paul makes a great and comprehensive statement about this in 2 Corinthians 1:20 where he says, ‘All the promises of God in him are yes, and in him Amen.’ Now that is finality. All the promises of God are, in this wonderful Person Jesus Christ, yes and amen. That, in effect, is what our Lord is saying here.

We cannot go into this fully every detail about Christ fulfilling the OT; I must leave you to work out the details for yourself. The fulfilment of the prophecies is truly one of the most astounding and remarkable things that one can ever encounter, as has often been pointed out. Think of the exact prophecies as to His birth, the place of His birth even—Bethelehem-Judah; or He’s be born of a virgin, all these were fulfilled exactly. The extraordinary things that are foretold of His Person make it almost incredible that the Jews should ever have stumbled at Him. It was their own ideas which led them astray. They should not have thought of the Messiah as a worldly king, or a political person, because they had been told the opposite by their prophets.

They had had these prophets read to them, but they were blinded by prejudice, and instead of looking at the words, they were looking at their own superimposed ideas—a constant danger. But there we have the prophetic record down to the smallest detail an extraordinarily accurate description of the type of life He lived—‘a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench’—and that wonderful description of His Person and life in Isaiah 53. Think of the accounts of what He was going to do, the foretelling of His miracles, His physical miracles, the kind of thing He was likely to do and the teaching involved in that. It is all there, and that is why it is always such an easy and wonderful thing to preach the gospel out of the Old Testament. Some people are still amazed at it, but in a sense you can preach the gospel as well out of the Old Testament as out of the New. It is full of gospel. Because the whole bible is His story, it’s all about Christ.

You have the prophecy of His death and even the form of His death. Read Psalm 22 for instance, and you will find there a literal, accurate description in detail of what actually happened on Calvary’s cross. Prophecy, you see, is found in the Psalms as well as in the prophets. He fulfilled literally and completely what is foretold of Him there. In the same way you find even the resurrection quite clearly foretold in the Old Testament together with much wonderful teaching about the kingdom which our Lord was going to establish.

Still more amazing, in a sense, are the prophecies concerning the bringing in of the Gentiles. That is really remarkable when you remember that these oracles of God were written in particular for one nation, the Jews, and yet there are these clear prophecies regarding the spreading of the blessing to the Gentiles in this extraordinary manner. In the same way, you will find clear accounts of what happened on that great day of Pentecost at Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit descended upon the infant Christian Church and people were baffled and amazed. You remember how the apostle Peter faced it all and said, ‘You should not be surprised at this. This is that which was said by the prophet Joel; it is nothing but a fulfilment of that.’

We could go on like this endlessly, just showing the extraordinary way in which our Lord, in His Person and works and actions, in what happened to Him, and in what resulted from these events, is in a sense doing nothing but fulfilling the law and the prophets. We must never drive a wedge between the Old Testament and the New. We must never feel that the New makes the Old unnecessary. I feel increasingly that it is very regrettable that the New Testament should ever have been printed alone, because we tend to fall into the serious error of thinking that, because we are Christians, we do not need the Old Testament. It was the Holy Spirit who led the early Church, which was mainly Gentile, to incorporate the Old Testament Scriptures with their New Scriptures and to regard them all as one. They are bound together, and there are many senses in which it can be said that the New Testament cannot be truly understood except in the light that is provided by the Old. For example, it is almost impossible to make anything of the Epistle to the Hebrews unless we know our Old Testament Scriptures.

So let us see look at....

How Christ fulfills the Law

This is a wonderful thing and should lead us to worship and adorn our Lord. First, He was ‘made under the law’. ‘When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law’ (Gal. 4:4). It is very difficult for our finite minds to grasp what that means, but it is one of the essential truths concerning the incarnation that the eternal Son of God was made under the law. Though He is eternally above it, as Son of God He came and was made under the law, as one who had to carry it out. At no time has God shown more clearly the inviolable and absolute character of His own holy law than when He placed His own Son under it.

It is an astounding conception; and yet, as you read the Gospels, you will find how perfectly true it is. Notice how very careful our Lord was to observe the law; He obeyed it down to the smallest detail, example His baptism, John the Baptist said, you need to baptize me, but Jesus said let it be so to fulfill all righteousness. Not only that; He taught others to love the law and explained it to them, confirming it constantly and asserting the absolute necessity of obedience to it. That was why He could say at the end of His life that no-one could find any wrong in Him, no-one could bring any charge against Him. He defied them to do so. No-one could arraign Him before the law. He had lived it fully and obeyed it perfectly. There was nothing, not a jot or a tittle, in connection with it which He had to the slightest extent broken or failed to fulfil. You see that in His life, as well as in His birth, He was made subject to the law.

Which brings us to the very center of our whole faith…the cross of Calvary. I would suggest that without a clear understanding of the law of God, we will not really understand fully the meaning and beauty of the cross. Some talk about the cross in a purely sentimental manner or even as a kind of moral influence upon us, but that’s not the biblical teaching to the crosses meaning. The cross is not to arouse pity in us, nor is it just a general display of the love of God, while it is a display of His love…that’s not all it is. The cross is fully understood only in terms of the law. What was happening upon the cross was that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was enduring in His own holy body the penalty prescribed by the holy law of God for the sin of man.

The law condemns sin, and the condemnation that it pronounces is death. ‘The wages of sin is death.’ The law pronounces that death must pass upon all who have sinned against God and broken His holy law. Christ says, ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’ One of the ways in which the law has to be fulfilled is that its punishment of sin must be carried out. This punishment is death, and that was why He died. The law must be fulfilled. God cannot put it on one side in any respect, and the punishment cannot be put on one side. God in forgiving us—let us be clear—does not do so by deciding not to enact the punishment that He has decreed. That would imply a contradiction of His holy nature.

Whatever God says must be brought to pass. He does not go back upon Himself and upon what He says. He has said that sin has to be punished by death, and you and I can be forgiven only because the punishment has been enacted. In respect of its punishment of sin God’s law has been fulfilled absolutely, because He has punished sin in the holy, spotless, blameless body of His own Son there upon the cross on Calvary’s hill. Christ is fulfilling the law on the cross, and unless you interpret the cross, and Christ’s death upon it, in strict terms of the fulfilling of the law you have not the scriptural view of the death upon the cross.

This is absolutely wonderful when we view the cross rightly, by so dying upon the cross and bearing in Himself and upon Himself the punishment due to sin, He has fulfilled all the Old Testament types. Go back again and read the books of Leviticus and Numbers; read all about the burnt offerings and sacrifices; read all about the tabernacle, and the temple ceremonial, all about the altar and the laver of washing and so on. Go back to those details and ask yourself, ‘What do all these things mean? What are they for, the shewbread, and the high priest, and the vessels, and all these other things? What are they meant to do?’ They are shadows, types, prophecies of what is going to be done fully and finally by the Lord Jesus Christ. He indeed has literally fulfilled and carried out and brought to pass every single one of those types.

He is the high priest, He is the offering, He is the sacrifice, and He has presented His blood in heaven so that the whole of the ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Him. ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’ By His death and resurrection, and the presentation of Himself in heaven, He has done all this.

Let’s take it a step farther...

Christ fulfills the law also in us and through us by means of the Holy Spirit

That is what the apostle Paul said in Romans 8:2–4. He tells us quite clearly that this is one of the explanations of why our Lord died. ‘For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’

This is most important and significant, for the apostle here links together two things: the way in which our Lord fulfilled the law Himself and the way in which He fulfils the law in us. That is precisely what our Lord is saying at this point in Matthew 5. He fulfils the righteousness of the law, and we are to do the same. The two go together. He does this in us by giving us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives us a love of the law and the power to live by it.

‘The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be’, says the apostle Paul in that same eighth chapter of Romans. But we who have received the Spirit are not like that. We are not at enmity with God, and therefore we are also subject to the law. The natural man hates God and is not subject to His law; but the man who has received the Spirit loves God and is subject to the law. He wants to be so and is given power to be so: ‘that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’

Look at it in this way. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God gave a great promise. He said, in effect, ‘I am going to make a new covenant, and the difference between the new and the old will be this, that I am going to write My law in your minds and on your hearts. No longer will it be on tables of stone outside you, but on the fleshly tables of the heart.’ The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews takes that up in the eighth chapter where he glories in the new covenant, the new relationship, because under it the law is within us, not outside us. It is because the law has been written in our minds and our hearts that we are anxious to fulfil it, and are enabled to do so by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So then...

What is the relationship of the Christian to the law?

We’ve seen how our Lord Jesus has fulfilled the law and prophets, what remains is what is our position in regards to the law? In regards to the ceremonial law, our Lord has fulfilled every type, sacrifice, and offering. The veil of the temple was rent in two at His death, access to God has been made available once and for all through His death…no more sacrifices are necessary.

The judicial law, was specifically for the nation of Israel as God’s theocracy, but you remember at the end of Jesus ministry Jesus said to the Jews, “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits of the kingdom.” Matthew 21:43, 1 Peter 2:9, makes it clear that that new nation is the Church…therefore the judicial law is fulfilled.

The moral law, is different in that it is permanent, God laid down the moral law as perpetual. Our Lord makes clear, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.’ That is permanent. That is not for the theocratic nation only; it is for the whole of mankind. The second commandment, He says, ‘is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Thus the moral law, as interpreted by the New Testament, stands now as much as it has ever done, and will do so until the end of time and until we are perfected.

But we still didn’t answer the question of our relationship to the law...The Christian is no longer under the law in the sense that the law is a covenant of works. That is the whole argument in Galatians 3. The Christian is not under the law in that respect; his salvation does not depend upon his keeping of it. He, the Christian, has been delivered from the curse of the law; he is no longer under the law as a covenant relationship between himself and God. But that does not release him from it as a rule of life. Now I think the whole trouble tends to arise because we become confused in our minds as to the relationship between law and grace.

The Christian is under a covenant of grace. We tend to have a wrong view of law and to think of it as something that is opposed to grace. But it is not. Law is only opposed to grace in the sense that there was once a covenant of law, and we are now under the covenant of grace. Nor must the law be thought of as being identical with grace. It was never meant to be something in and of itself. The law was never meant to save man, because it could not.

Some people tend to think that God said to the nation, ‘I am now giving you a law; you keep that law and it will save you.’ But that is ridiculous because no man can save himself by keeping the law. No! the law was ‘added because of transgressions’. It came in 430 years after the promise was given to Abraham and his seed in order that it might show the true character of God’s demands, and that it might show ‘the exceeding sinfulness of sin’. The law was given, in a sense, in order to show men that they could never justify themselves before God, and in order that we might be brought to Christ. In Paul’s words it was meant to be ‘our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ’.

That’s what I mean when I said the OT was full of gospel…the law is full of the gospel, it’s full of grace, because it shows us our sinfulness and thus leads us to Christ…the law points us to Christ and our desperate need of a savior. It’s as looking in a mirror and seeing all of our faults and flaws and points us to the need of something outside of ourselves in order to be justified before God. The law, as Paul puts it is to be our teacher bringing us to Christ. Some have this idea that law and grace are apart from each other and have nothing to do with each other.

Remember what Paul said in Romans 6, “some say I am not under the law, but under grace, therefore it does not matter what I do.” He said this to deal with that attitude… “shall we continue in sin, so that grace may abound? Absolutely not!” The whole purpose of grace, in a sense, is just to enable us to keep the law. Let me put it in this way. The trouble with us is that we so often have a wrong view of holiness at this point. There is nothing more fatal than to regard holiness and sanctification as experiences to be received. No; holiness means being righteous, and being righteous means keeping the law. Therefore if your so-called grace (which you say you have received) does not make you keep the law, you have not received grace. You may have received a psychological experience, but you have never received the grace of God.

What is grace?

It is that marvellous gift of God which, having delivered a man from the curse of the law, enables him to keep it and to be righteous as Christ was righteous, for He kept the law perfectly.

Grace is that which brings me to love God; and if I love God, I long to keep His commandments. ‘He that has my commandments, and keeps them,’ Christ said, ‘he it is that loves me.’

We must never separate these two things. Grace is not sentimental; holiness is not an experience. We must have this new mind and disposition which leads us to love the law and to desire to keep it; and by the Holy Spirit’s power He enables us to fulfil the law. That is why our Lord goes on to say in verse 19, ‘Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

I know this lesson has been in many ways a difficult one, but at the same time it’s a glorious truth. In that we’ve seen how our Lord has fulfilled all the law’s demands, He has fulfilled everything written about him in the prophets. And how God enacted the punishment for sin upon the cross of Christ, which should give us a deeper love and reference for the grace of God which abounds so fully and free. Friends the substitutionary doctrine of the atonement emphasizes that Christ has carried out the law fully. And because of what Christ has done, those who believe on Him are the beneficiaries.

The effect of this glorious, redeeming work is not only to give forgiveness to us miserable, law-breaking rebels against God, but to make us sons of God—those who delight in the law of God, those indeed who ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’ and who long to be holy, not in the sense of having a wonderful feeling or experience, but who long to live like Christ and to be like Him in every respect.

We will stop there today and next week pick up on what it looks like for righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees.

I pray this morning we walk away from here with a renewed view of God’s law and His marvelous grace, a deeper reverence for our Savior’s work upon the cross, and refreshed by the glorious truth of the word of God that has been fulfilled in Christ.