What About the Law?

Pick up your Bible. Find the dividing page between the OT and the NT and put your finger there. Now look at how many pages are on either side of the division. The OT is about three times larger than the NT. The OT makes up 75% and the NT only 25%.

Yet if you were to track how much time Christians spend in their Bibles, you’d probably find that they spend 75% in the NT and only 25% in the OT. And when they do go into the OT, they are often at a loss to know what to make of it.

- they know isolated stories, but they don’t understand their significance

- they find sections of it strange and almost bizarre - why are they there?

- they don’t really understand the overall message of the OT

- even the name Old Testament implies that it is old and out of date, obsolete, superseded by the New Testament.

But the OT is a vitally important part of the whole BIble. It belongs. It is relevant. It has much to teach us about Jesus Christ. In fact, without the OT, you cannot really understand who Jesus is or what he came to do.

When Jesus arrived on the scene in Israel, he came to a people who were steeped in the Old Testament. They were known as the “people of the book.” They didn’t call that book the OT however, they called it the Law. That was their name for the Scriptures. The Law - Torah; and Torah means “the way revealed by God.”

Every society has a group of people who are the elite. They are on the top rung of the social ladder. In ancient Israel, the elite class were not the kings and nobles. They weren’t politicians or military leaders. They weren’t entertainers or athletes. They were the men who studied the Law. They were the scribes and the Pharisees who gave their lives to the study of Torah. They were the rabbis who interpreted the Law and who taught the Law to the people. These were the elite. These were the men who shaped the values and the thinking of the whole nation of Israel.

Now when Jesus began his public ministry, he very quickly gained a reputation among the people as somewhat of a maverick. He was a great teacher. His stories and parables were spellbinding. He could answer any question, and the answers he gave left you breathless with astonishment. His teaching was like nothing the people had ever heard before. It certainly wasn’t anything like the teaching of the rabbis and the Pharisees!

While they were arguing and debating the fine points of the Law, and setting up very restrictive codes of behavior, Jesus was talking about things like grace, and faith, freedom and forgiveness. When Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, the Pharisees came up with a list of reasons why he was way out of line for doing so. They even kicked the poor fellow out of the synagogue for being grateful to Jesus for healing him!

No, Jesus didn’t do things the way the Pharisees did. He even criticized the Pharisees. That was a very daring thing to do, given the power and prestige of the Pharisees. Jesus almost seemed to go out of his way to break the traditions and the laws of the Pharisees. He didn’t follow their list of do’s and don’ts.

And he didn’t hang around with the elite either. He spent a lot of time with the simple folks - fishermen, farmers. He went to dinner with tax collectors. He stopped and talked to the kind of people that the Pharisees would never talk to for fear of contaminating themselves.

So it’s no wonder that the question on everyone’s mind was “What does Jesus think about the Law? Does he believe the Scriptures or doesn’t he? Has he come to do away with the Torah? Is he trying to tell us that the Law is passé, that it’s obsolete, that it’s not important anymore? Does Jesus agree with the teaching of the prophets, who called us to obey the Law? Is Jesus a radical? Or is he a traditionalist? Is he a liberal or is he a conservative?”

That’s why Jesus tackles this question early on in his Sermon on the Mount. It’s a very important question, because the way he answers it is going to determine our attitude toward the Old Testament.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us how to become a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. That’s what the Beatitudes are all about. He says that if we’re going to enter the kingdom of heaven, we’re going to have to become poor in spirit before God, we’re going to have to mourn over our own sinfulness, we’re going to become meek in our dealings with others, we’re going to have to gain a new appetite for God’s righteousness, and all the rest.

Now where does that teaching stand in relation to the Old Testament Law? Is it at odds with the OT? Is it something that replaces the OT? Well, let’s look again at what Jesus said about it.

Matthew 5:17-20 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. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus is saying two important things about the Law in these four verses.

1. My teaching about the kingdom of heaven is in complete harmony with the Law. Not only is it not against the Law, it actually fulfills the Law. So don’t think that I’ve come to throw out the OT. I’ve come to fill in the blanks that the OT was pointing to. I’ve come to complete the sentence that the OT began. I’m not here to abolish it, I’m here to fulfill it.

2. I’ll tell you what I am against. I’m against the Pharisees’ interpretation of the Law. I’m against their view of the Old Testament Law that claims to honor it in letter while breaking it in spirit. If you want to get into the kingdom of heaven, you can’t go the way the Pharisees are going. That’s a guaranteed non-starter. The Pharisees claim to know how to be righteous. But their do-it-yourself righteousness just doesn’t cut it with God, and he ought to know, since he invented righteousness! No, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Those are pretty strong words!

There are people today who try to make out that Jesus was just another Pharisee. He may have had his arguments with the Pharisees at times, but overall, he was well within the Pharisaic tradition. His orientation to the Law was really no different from that of the Pharisees. (I took a course with a conservative Jewish rabbi at the University of Denver who claimed just that. You’ll find most modern Jewish scholars will hold this viewpoint.) Jesus was just a good Jew. The Romans killed him for his political views. Jesus defended the Jewish status quo when it came to the Torah.

It was Paul who was the real villain. Paul was the antinomian. He was the one who tried to do away with the Law. This is the educated Jewish view of Christianity. They place a wedge between Jesus and Paul, and they say “What a tragedy! If only Paul hadn’t come along and spoiled everything. If you Christians had only followed Jesus and ignored Paul, you still would have been Jews.”

But there’s another equally wrong view of the relationship between Jesus and the Law. This view doesn’t come from outside the church, it comes from inside the church. It’s actually quite common. It says that Jesus abolished the Law. Now that Jesus has come, we can ignore the Law. Now that we’re under grace, the Law doesn’t have anything to do with us anymore. Take that 75% of the Bible and chuck it. Instead of driving a wedge between Jesus and Paul, this view tries to drive a wedge between Jesus and Moses.

But both of these errors come from failing to understand what Jesus meant when he said “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.”

What does he mean by “fulfill”? Well, the word fulfill means to complete, or to carry out by doing. At the beginning of the semester, a university professor hands you a syllabus for his course. At the top, it says something like this: In order to fulfill the requirements of the course, students will… and then there’s a list of the work you have to do. If you do the work, you fulfill the requirements, and you pass the course.

Jesus said that he came to fulfill the Law. When we think of the Law, we find it convenient to divide the Law into three parts.

1. The moral law - all the commands that have to do with your personal morality, such as the Ten Commandments.

2. The religious law - all the commands and regulations that governed the religious practices, the sacrifices, the feast days, the construction of the Tabernacle and all its furnishings. It all had to be done a certain way.

3. The civil law - all the commands and regulations that governed Israel’s life as a nation, to teach them how to live together as a unique society.

Now Jesus said “I’ve come to fulfill all that by carrying it out.” Not just the moral law, but the civil law and the religious law too. All of it. How did he do it?

Well, for starters, Jesus carried out the moral law by living a perfect life. He never sinned. He was the first person ever to live his whole life in obedience to the moral law of God. The Bible says that when Jesus was born, he was born under the law. And he kept the Law perfectly. When he was brought to trial before the Sanhedrin, no one could lay a charge against him. He was pure. He was innocent of any wrongdoing. There was no sin to be found in him. So Jesus fulfilled the moral law of the OT by living a perfect life.

Secondly, when Jesus died, he fulfilled the religious law. All of the OT laws and regulations concerning the sacrifices, and the feast days, and even the articles of furniture in the Tabernacle point to a fulfilment in the death of Jesus Christ. When Christ died on the cross, he was dying as a substitute; as a sacrifice to take away the sins of the whole world.

You may wonder, as you read the OT, why God gave Israel a religion of blood sacrifice. God designed it that way to show His people that the penalty for sin is death. The only way to pay for sin is to die. But God, in his grace in the Law, allowed for a substitute. In the OT, the substitute was an animal. Not that the blood of that animal could take away your sin - that animal sacrifice simply pointed to the sacrifice that Jesus would make for your sin when he died on the cross. So Jesus fulfilled the religious law of the OT in his death on the cross.

Thirdly, the civil law. God gave those laws to the Israelites to govern their life as a community. Those laws contained principles for living in harmony with one another. The Israelites were God’s chosen people among the nations. They were unique. They needed those civil laws to keep them unique, to keep them pure and strong, and to keep them living in harmony. Why? Because God wanted them to be a witness to all the other nations on earth of what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

Now Jesus took the principles embodied in Israel’s civil laws and gave them to his disciples. The details are different, but the principles are the same. As Jesus disciples, we are God’s people in the world today. That’s why Jesus taught us to love one another and to live in harmony with one another. That’s why Jesus told us to keep ourselves pure and spiritually strong and not to let ourselves be pressed into the world’s mold. Why? Because he wants us to be a witness to all the other people on earth what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus fulfilled in his teaching to his disciples the civil law of the OT.

When Jesus came, he didn’t bring no law, and he didn’t bring a new law. He came and fulfilled God’s law in every detail.

So when we come to the OT, we come to that part of the Bible which points to Jesus Christ. You cannot properly understand the OT unless you see in it the signposts that are pointing you to Jesus Christ. Every obscure incident, every strange detail of the OT bears some relationship to the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. It may be difficult for us to discern just what that relationship is, and we must be careful not to read too much into the OT and try to make it say more than it does.

But you will find that the principles expressed in the OT Law are all reiterated in the teaching of Jesus. Because God doesn’t contradict himself. When he gave the Law, he wasn’t expressing some temporary set of rules. He was giving us eternal truth that will never pass away. Jesus said not even a jot - that’s the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet; not even a tittle - that’s the little tail on some letters that distinguishes them from other letters - will pass away from the Law until all of it is fully carried out.

So when you become a follower of Jesus, that doesn’t put you into conflict with the OT Law. Far from it! You become a person in whom God begins to bring to fruition all of the principles that are expressed in the OT Law. That’s why Paul said in Romans 8…

Romans 8:3-4 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

You know what this means? It means that if you are following Jesus, you’re going to carry out the righteous requirements of the Law as a natural outgrowth of your obedience to Him. Your spiritual energy for doing so is going to come from the Holy Spirit. For a Christian, the Law isn’t like a mountain you have to scale in order to get to God. It’s more like a sea that you sail on with Jesus as your pilot and the wind of the Holy Spirit in your sails.

Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. He came to fulfill them, first in himself, then in you. But you’ve got to follow him to see it.