Matthew 5:17

The Interaction of Law and Religion, Harold J. Berman, professor of law at Harvard University, developed a significant thesis. He notes that Western culture has had a massive loss of confidence in law and in religion.

Berman concludes that you cannot have workable rules for behavior without religion, because only religion provides an absolute base on which morality and law can be based. The author fears that western society is doomed to relativism in law because of the loss of an absolute. When men break away from the idea of an authoritative religion, and even from the concept of God, they break away from the possibility of absolute truth.

Their only remaining resource is existential relativism,

Professor Berman notes that “Thomas Franck of New York University [has observed that law] in contrast to religion ‘has become undisguisedly a pragmatic human process. It is made by men and it lays no claim to divine origin or eternal validity.’ Berman says that this observation leads

Professor Franck to the view that a judge, in reaching a decision, is not propounding a truth but is rather experimenting in the solution of a problem, and if his decision is reversed by a higher court or if it is subsequently overruled, that does not mean it was wrong but only that it was, or became in the course of time, unsatisfactory.

Jesus’ warning, do not think, indicates that most, if not all, of His hearers had a wrong conception about His teaching. Most traditionalistic Jews considered the

When the Sadducees tried to trip Him up by asking which of seven successive husbands would be a woman’s husband in the resurrection, that is in heaven, He replied, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). The question itself was foolish, He said, because its very premise was wrong, “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (v. 30). He then went

It soon became obvious that Jesus fit none of the common molds of the religious leaders. He obviously had a high regard for the law, but at the same time He taught things completely contrary to the traditions.

They had developed 248 positive commands, and 365 negative laws,

Scripture itself makes clear that all of God’s commands are not of equal importance. When a lawyer among the Pharisees asked which commandment was the greatest, Jesus replied without hesitation: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.” He then went on to say, “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (Matt. 22:37–

Mark 7:7 But in vain do they worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the commandments of men.

The Talmud had in it commenteries Mishnah, then there was a commentary on the commentary, the Midrash, You keep the Sabbath Holy.x Pharisee 100; 100 The separated ones, 135-106, stayed away from the hellenistic influence of Hyrcanus rule, never more than 6000, they could be cruel with those

If there is no religious absolute there can be no basis for real law. People will not respect or long obey laws that are only judicial guesses. An evil, godless society, floating about on a sea of relativism, realizes that it has no foundation, no anchor, no unmoving point of reference. Law becomes a matter of preference and order a matter of power. A democracy where power is ultimately vested in the people is particularly vulnerable to chaos.

Is there an absolute basis for truth, for law, for morals, for real right and wrong; and if so, what is it? Those questions are the essence of what Jesus teaches in Matthew 5:17–20. The absolute, He says, is the law of the eternally sovereign God, God has laid down His absolute, eternal, abiding law and made it known to men. And as God’s own Son, Jesus declared unequivocally that He did not come to teach or practice anything contrary to that law in even the slightest way, but to uphold it entirely.
Neo-orthodoxy is the term used to identify an existentialist variety of Christianity. Because it denies the essential objective basis of truth—the absolute truth and authority of Scripture—neo-orthodoxy must be understood as pseudo-Christianity. Its heyday came in the middle of the twentieth century with the writings of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Those men echoed the language and the thinking of Kierkegaard, speaking of the primacy of “personal authenticity,” while downplaying or denying the significance of objective truth. Barth, the father of neo-orthodoxy, explicitly acknowledged his debt to Kierkegaard.

Matthew 5:17 “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”

Some think that the verb “fulfill” must mean the opposite of “abolish,” since the last clause demands an obvious opposition (“not … to abolish … but to fulfill”). So they take Jesus to mean, “I have not come to abolish the Law but to maintain it or preserve or keep it.” But does Jesus really see his mission in such terms, especially if the maintaining or keeping of the Law is understood simply in terms of its demands and prescriptions?

Even in some of the antitheses that follow (5:21–48), it sounds as if Jesus is introducing at least some modifications?

Jesus introduces some changes to the food laws in Matthew 15:1–20 and Mark 7:1–23

Mt 15: 6 he shall not honor his father. And ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition. 7Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, 8This people honoreth me with their lips; But their heart is far from me. 9But in vain do they worship me, Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.

In the past God predicted something; now he “fulfills” his word; he brings to pass what he promised. That is always what Matthew means by the verb (he uses it frequently).
So here Jesus says, in effect, that he has not come to abolish the Law, but to do something quite different: to bring to pass all that the Law predicted.

Such fulfillment will go on until everything predicted by the Law is accomplished, to the very end of the age (5:18).

All of this presupposes
1. that the Law has a predictive function (a commonplace in the New Testament);
2. that Jesus does show the true meaning of the Law and Prophets, not in some abstract sense, but in their prophetic fulfillment, the true direction in which they point;
3. that Jesus interprets his own mission as prophetic fulfillment of the promises inherent in the Law and the Prophets.

He thinks of himself neither as someone who destroys all that has come before and starts over, nor as someone who simply maintains the antecedent tradition. Rather, all previous revelation points to him, and he brings its expectations to pass.

Many of these religious people foolishly think they are “safe” because they “have the law of the LORD” even though they do not obey it, a common theme in the prophets, but in this case the problem is massively exacerbated by “the lying pen of the scribes” who have “handled it falsely” (Jeremiah 8:8).

This is the first Old Testament reference to “scribes” as a class—and the people whose duty it is to study, preserve, and expound the Scriptures mishandle them. Perhaps they pick up elements they like and create a synthesis that pleases them, ignoring the whole; perhaps they deploy clever techniques to make the Law say what their presuppositions and theology demand.

Does that sound familiar?

The kingdom of heaven is an important theme in Matthew’s Gospel, and it becomes central in the beatitudes. Jesus is taking pains to relate his teaching to the Old Testament.
Jesus says that those who practice the norms of the kingdom and therefore bear witness to the kingdom will not only enjoy great reward in heaven but will find themselves aligned with the prophets

The Sermon on the Mount promises not only to give us some challenging thoughts about poverty of spirit, righteousness, love, forgiveness, and the like, but also promises to reveal something of the way Jesus himself sees his place in history, the relationship between his kingdom-preaching and the Old Testament Scriptures.

Moreover, if we understand that Jesus taught as a first-century Jew to first-century Jews, we shall expect his teaching to be framed in categories comprehensible primarily to his audience, and
aimed at least in part at correcting first-century impressions and beliefs which he considered erroneous.

Matthew 5:17f. portrays Jesus’ high view of what we call the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus did not come to abolish these writings; rather, he acknowledges their immutability right down to the smallest letter, the “jot,” or right down to the least stroke of the pen.

These observations also bring us difficulty. If Jesus did not see himself abolishing the Law and the Prophets, but fulfilling them, why, for example, is there good evidence that he abolished the food laws Mark 7:19)?

Why do New Testament writers, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, insist that the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is at best no longer necessary, and in principle abolished (Heb. 8:13; 10:1–18)?

Why do not Christians today try to follow the detailed Old Testament law?

Matthew records Jesus as saying, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John” (Matt. 11:12f.).

Not only do the Prophets prophesy, but the Law prophesies. The entire Old Testament has a prophetic function; and Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament.

Some of it is prophecy in the simple predictive sense; and, from the New Testament perspective, it is clear that the Old Testament prophecies focused on the Messiah. For example, the place of his birth is foretold (Mic. 5:2; Matt. 2:5f.). But some Old Testament prophecies cited by Matthew are not nearly so clear.

There are many hints in Matthew’s Gospel that this form of “prophecy” is not uncommon.

The New Testament interprets the Old as pointing forward to Christ and the blessings he brings. For example, the sacrificial system pointed toward Jesus’ sacrifice (Heb. 9:8f.; 10:1f.). Indeed everything had to be fulfilled that was written about Christ in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44), and therefore the resurrected Lord could explain to his disciples what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself—beginning with Moses and all the Prophets (Luke 24:27). The Scriptures testify about him (John 5:39).

In Matthew 5:17f we must rid ourselves of conceptions of fulfillment which are too narrow. Jesus fulfills the entire Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, in many ways. Because they point toward him, he has certainly not come to abolish them. Rather, he has come to fulfill them in a rich diversity of ways, a richness barely hinted at in these paragraphs.

Not a single item of the Law or the Prophets shall fail, says Jesus: not ever, until heaven and earth disappear, until everything is accomplished. The clause “until heaven and earth disappear” simply means “never, till the end of time”; but it is qualified by the further clause, “until everything is accomplished.”

Jesus does not conceive of his life and ministry in terms of opposition to the Old Testament, but in terms of bringing to fruition-that toward which it points. Thus, the Law and the Prophets, far from being abolished, find their valid continuity in terms of their outworking in Jesus.

The detailed prescriptions of the Old Testament may well be superseded, because whatever is prophetic must be in some sense provisional. But whatever is prophetic likewise discovers its legitimate continuity in the happy arrival of that toward which it has pointed.

All this presupposes that a fresh approach to the Old Testament is being inaugurated by Jesus, and existing with the transformed perspective brought about by the advance of the kingdom. Indeed, Jesus himself later teaches just that. He says, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old” (Matt. 13:52).

In Matthew 11:12f. we see that the Law and the Prophets exercise this prophetic function until John the Baptist.

From John the Baptist on, the kingdom of heaven advances (Luke 16:16f).
Jesus moves on from talking about the Law and the Prophets to talking about the kingdom: “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments, “these commands” does not refer to the commands of the Old Testament law. Rather, to the commands of the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom mentioned three times in verse 19f. They are the commands already given, and the commands still to come, in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus came not to abolish the Old Testament but to fulfill it, fulfill it in the sense that he himself was the object toward which it pointed. Therefore, it is folly not to listen to his commands, the commands of the kingdom. (Heb. 2:1–3.) What is required is a “righteousness [which] surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law” (5:20), for otherwise there is no entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

Indeed, even ranking within the kingdom is dependent on obedience to Jesus’ commands (5:19); but that is not surprising when we remember the tremendous emphasis which the Sermon on the Mount places on obedience to Jesus (cf. Matt. 7:21–23),

The Old Testament pointed to the Messiah and the kingdom he would introduce; Jesus, claiming to fulfill that Old Testament anticipation, introduces the kingdom to his followers. In doing so, he stresses obedience and surpassing righteousness, without which there is no admittance. It is worth noting that Jesus’ closing words in Matthew’s Gospel again emphasize obedience: the believers are to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded (28:18–20). Jesus’ commands are highlighted, much as in 5:19.

The Sermon on the Mount is not a put you to sleep sentimentality designed to induce a kind of feeble-minded do-goodism. Nor do these chapters tolerate the opinion that Jesus’ views on righteousness have been so tempered with love that righteousness slips to a lower level than when its standard was dictated by law.

By this means the Sermon on the Mount lays the foundation of the New Testament doctrines of justification by grace through faith, and sanctification by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.
Small wonder Paul, that most faultless of Pharisees (Phil. 3:4–6), when he came to understand the Gospel of Christ, considered his spiritual assets rubbish.

His new desire was to gain Christ, not having a righteousness of his own that comes from the law, but one which is from God and by faith in Christ (Phil. 3:8f.).