Jesus Fulfilled the Law

As we continue our study of Jesus’ sermon on the mount, Jesus teaches us that our only hope for righteousness is in Him alone. The things Jesus says in this passage can only make sense if Jesus is indeed the Son of God, the Saviour, the Messiah. This has a huge impact on us, our understanding about God, about ourselves, about how we live as Christians.

Remember, Christians are defined in the beatitudes. A Christian is someone who understands his spiritual depravity, mourns the sins we and others commit, is meek, hungers and thirsts for righteousness, is merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, and stands up under persecution. We are to be in the world, but not conformed to the world. We are to demonstrate who Jesus is in every aspect of our lives, not just by going to church on Sunday, but every day, living out the incredible joy of our salvation, the incredible freedom we have in Christ, the incredible hope for the future, all the while basking in the perfect love of God which drives out all fear.

There are antinomians in every age. Anti, meaning against, and nomian meaning law. In every church, in every denomination, in every society, in every place, there are people who are anti-law. And Jesus addresses such people in this portion of his sermon on the mount. He knew his audience, there were antinomians present, and there were pronomians present. There were those who saw the utter sinful abuse of the law perpetuated by the Pharisaical system, and who went the opposite direction. This is whom he addresses first.

Law and Prophets

What was the role of the law and the prophets.?People who are pro-law, pro rules and regulations, love quoting laws from the Bible. But such people forget that the law was given under Moses, some 2600 years after Adam, and 1200 years after God’s covenant with Abraham.

But the law was given right at the time that the nation of Israel was rescued out of bondage and slavery to sin and were about to enter the Promised Land as God’s people. God gave them the law so that they would know how to live rightly before him, and before all the other nations, teaching the other nations about the one true God.

The law teaches us God’s heart. In the law, God’s character, his integrity, his purity, his holiness, his love, his peace, his plan for all humanity is perfectly on display. All the law and the prophets can be summarised so succinctly: love God and love your neighbour.

God knows us, God created us, in Him we discover true truth, true love, true justice, true righteousness, true grace, true peace. God is the greatest, and there is no other. God’s love for us, even us sinful, depraved, rebellious, enemies God loved us, and died for us, so that we can truly love others, and even die for others.

The law then, shows us God’s heart, mind, and soul. It tells us all about him. The prophets continually called Israel back to the law, to obedience, to right living, reminding them the consequence of disobedience is punishment, exile, and death. The result was a roller coaster ride of obedience and sin, with a definite progression toward greater and greater sinfulness.

Fulfilled

So, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit took action together. They implemented their perfect rescue plan, Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, lived a perfect life in order to fulfill the law.

Jesus fulfilled it, perfectly. He is God. He lived out His Father’s, His own, character, morality, integrity, perfectly. He did so, as someone who is fully God, and fully human. This is vitally important, here’s why: human beings are created in God’s image, they were created by God to reflect—image—God’s morality in the world, by ruling the earth and subduing it. But humans sinned against God, fell from their high position, and became God’s enemies. God, in His great love, did not immediately give humanity over to the wages of sin, which is death, but rather, He provided a way of salvation from sin. That way of salvation is through Jesus—fully God and fully man.

Jesus lived a perfect life, and fulfilled all the law and the prophets. When we talk about the law, we have to understand that the law given by God through Moses came in three aspects: moral law, judicial law and ceremonial law.

We’ll look at each, briefly. The ceremonial law given to Israel prescribed the duties of the priesthood and the people of Israel as regards their relationship with God, how they were made right with God through the sacrificial system, which itself all pointed to Christ, who fulfilled it. Indeed all the ceremonial law pointed to Jesus. Thus, all who offered their sacrifices to God in faith, who trusted Him to take away their sin, had their faith fulfilled in Christ Jesus.

The judicial law governed the people of Israel as regards their interactions with each other. It governed property, relationships, belongings. It delineated the punishment for every form of wrongdoing. Christ demonstrated his fulfillment of the judicial law by dying on the cross for our sins, the sins of all humanity. He perfectly fulfilled God’s justice, God’s righteous wrath against sinful humanity.

In Christ Jesus, all the ceremonial laws and all the judicial laws are fulfilled. They are over. They no longer apply. We are in the New Testament, the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, shed once and for all. We are a new nation, a royal priesthood, that includes all humanity, Jews, Gentiles, men, women, slave and free.

The moral law, then, summarised in the Ten Commandments, is also fulfilled in Christ as the only one ever, who kept it perfectly. The moral law is eternal. It is the proper way to live before God, and it is the proper way to live in harmony with each other. It will never, ever fade, not one jot or tittle will pass from it. Those who know Christ, those who have experienced His grace, desire to keep it. Now to the least and greatest.

Least and Greatest

So, in speaking to the anti-nomian, the anti law Jesus makes this bold statement: whoever breaks the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

This is reinforced by Jesus in Matthew 7 when he says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” This law, the moral law of God continues and applies now.

Anti-law so-called Christians want to get rid of it. They want to let people live by grace, they want people to do life their own way. They do not want to call sin, sin, and they want everyone to be free and happy.

But here’s the thing, here’s the truth. If you, if I, have truly encountered the grace of Jesus Christ, the very last thing we will desire is to live by our own standards. Rather, we will desire more and more to live by the law, that is what is meant by hungering and thirsting for righteousness. So, what about exceeding righteousness?

Exceeding Righteousness

When we hunger and thirst for righteousness, it is because we have received the amazing grace of Jesus, and that has transformed us, from the inside out, from law breakers to law keepers! And we do that by the power of the one who kept and fulfilled all the law, we keep the law, not by our own effort, or power, but through Christ living in us—All glory and praise be to Him!

The presence of Christ in us is the means by which we keep and fulfill the law of God. It is something that we practice daily. We invite Jesus to lead us and guide us through His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit imparts Christ’s righteousness and holiness to us, and we exercise it, through faith. Holiness is being like Jesus.

Now for everyone who was listening to His sermon that day, the scribes and the Pharisees were the holiest people they knew. In reality, the scribes were the farthest thing from it holiness, due to their woeful misunderstanding and misinterpretation of God’s law. This is ironic, given that they gave their whole lives to study and illustrate the law. They copied it, they lived it. And for that reason, people looked up to them, but their religion was utterly empty.

The Pharisees (the name means separatist) likewise set themselves apart, and above others. They made their code even more difficult and unyielding than anything in the Old Testament. An example comes from Jesus when he contrasted the Pharisee and the sinner. The Pharisee boasted that he fasted twice a week. But the Old Testament required only one fast, and only once a year. This illustrates how much they added to the law and made the system much more difficult, all so that they could exercise control over the people. How many of us grew up with far more than a simple command to “Not give up on gathering for worship as some are in the habit of doing” that prevented riding bikes, swimming, or having any kind of fun on Sunday? See, it is the same thing, it is Phariseeism.

The Pharisees, like some pastors, lived outstanding, holy, sanctified, lives. Indeed, their whole profession was to be set apart and to set an example for all.

So what is Jesus saying in that our righteousness must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees?

The crux is this. Jesus showed the people, those who depended upon the scribes and the Pharisees, that their teaching was hollow, empty. Jesus then taught what is true, or full and real.

The righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees was external only. They gave a tenth of all they had, even down to their spices. But Jesus knew that all they did was on the outside only. Their sinfully fake religion brought out his greatest wrath, just look at the woes to the Pharisees that are recorded in Matthew 23!

The Pharisees were deluded, and we must take care as not to delude ourselves! How easy it is to go through the motions without engaging our heart and soul. How easy it is to fill up our mind about God, and never truly know God as Father, friend, Lord and king! They were hypocrites—and don’t be fooled, hypocrites aren’t just in traditional and conservative churches, they’re in liberal ones too! They were hypocrites, but here’s the scary part—they didn’t even know it!

So to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees is to be on guard against an entirely external religion, which ignores the heart altogether. Let us always, always examine our hearts. What are we spending our time doing? What do we do when no one is watching? What do we devote ourselves to? The heart that is untouched by grace, the heart that is still made of stone will not desire, truly desire, the things of God. It will go on desiring the things of the flesh, of sin.

It is easy to be religious around other people. How religious are you when you are by yourself? What comes out of you, out of your heart? Is it a love for God, or a love for self?

The Pharisees were also far more concerned about the ceremonial and not at all about the moral. Watch yourselves, but watch also your leaders, watch me, watch the elders and the deacons. I’ve served in places where the moral law was ignored, blatant sin was ignored in order to keep up the appearance of the ceremonial, the facade that everything in the church was good. The outside looked great, but the inside was rotten.

Finally, the Pharisees were totally self-centred. They grew fat and rich, while people like the widow who gave all she had went without. They gladly added her two pennies to their riches, rather than selflessly serving her out of the abundance of what they had. Not only did they deprive her of physical treasure, what was even worse was they led her to believe that giving her last two pennies made her right with God. They robbed her of her money, and they robbed her of true life in Christ.

What about you? What about me? Do we seek Christ who has fulfilled the law? Do we live our lives not for ourselves, but for him? Do we rest upon our own strength or will or determination? Are we stuck in a rut of Pharisaical, sinful blind hypocrisy?

The good news is that Jesus preached this sermon so that we wouldn’t be stuck there. The Holy Spirit is at work in you and in me, so that we can let go of our pride in ourselves, humble ourselves and trust in Him. He has opened our eyes to see, so let us receive His grace with gratitude which spurs us on to keep God’s perfect moral law always. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15). If we love Jesus, we will not only keep his commandments, we will hunger and thirst for them! Amen.