Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: Did Jesus Come to Cancel the Law?
What do we, as Christians, do with the Law, that is, the Law of Moses. Or, more broadly, what exactly do we do with the Old Testament? How are we to regard the Law that God gave to his people? Are we required to follow The Law? Did Jesus come to do away with or even just relax some or all of the rules and regulations He handed down? Jesus addresses that here. Let’s get started.
“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. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes 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 does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-20).
Jesus explains here that he did not come to overthrow or even relax God’s Law, but to fulfill it. Another way we can say this is, Jesus completes the Law, deepens it, and internalizes it. And that’s what God meant when He said he would write his Law on the hearts of his people. God himself will fill his people with the desire to do what pleases him.
Listen, Jeremiah 31:33, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: (He’s talking about the New Covenant) I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Jesus, in making the New Covenant (by his shed blood) doesn’t do away with the Law, he fulfills the Law, he deepens the Law, and causes it to be internalized and it’s the Holy Spirit who is involved in that work.
But let’s do a little discovery to grow our understanding of what this means for us: Jesus announced that not a single command of God will pass away. Every word and letter will remain until everything has been accomplished. What does this mean and what does it not mean? Is Jesus talking about the dietary rules? Do we need to start eating Kosher? What about the sacrificial system? What about the judicial laws? Are we supposed to keep the theocracy that the Law of Moses established? Well, first of all, just a greater understanding of the Scriptures helps us tremendously here. But I want to share something with you that I have found very helpful in my thinking on this.
First the Reformers (like Luther and Calvin), and then later the Puritans came along to help us sift this question.
They separated the law into three distinct sections: The Moral Law, The Ceremonial Law, and the Civil Law. Of course, the OT doesn’t make these clear-cut divisions and we need to be careful not to read our own ideas and assumptions into the Bible; that’s dangerous. But I don’t think that it’s wrong to notice certain helpful distinctions, and these divisions have most certainly been helpful to me in better understanding the OT and what exactly has been fulfilled. I feel good about them. I don’t feel that they’re artificial divisions. Let me explain each of these.
- The Moral Law includes all of the ethical and moral commands. So, the 10 Commandments would fit into this category. There is a moral standard that is at the heart of God that separates right from wrong. And these are indelible.
Those who attempt to relax the moral commands of God, teaching people that they aren’t bound by the kind of moral lifestyle that pleases God, will be least in the kingdom, Jesus says. But those who follow these, living within the moral boundaries that God gave us, and teaching others to do the same, will be great in the kingdom.
There are certain behaviors and attitudes that are sin and that are wholly separate from God’s character and nature. God’s moral Law reveals these sinful behaviors and attitudes.
- The Ceremonial Law on the other hand had mainly to do with worship. There was a strict sacrificial system set up around God that demonstrated God’s holiness and what that holiness required. For example, no one could approach God without the blood of a sacrifice, because sin = death. The life of one that is unblemished must be given in exchange for the life of the one who is blemished. Of course, Jesus is the fulfillment of that system (in fact, he’s the whole point). This system was put in place to point to Jesus and what he would do. Thus, he’s the fulfillment of the sacrificial system. He was appointed once to die for sin. -So, we don’t do animal sacrifice anymore. We don’t go to worship at The Temple of Lord made with human hands. So, are we transgressing the Law? No. Rather, we have the true and better fulfillment of these laws.
Ok, - What about the Judicial (or Civil) Law? These are all the laws pertaining to the civil and social behavior of the nation of Israel. So, within the Theocracy that was established by the Law, this was the judicated, legislative, government-forming body of the Law. Well, the question is, should we still be seeking this kind of Theocracy and government? -With the in-breaking of the kingdom of God at the inauguration of Christ, the focus of our worship changed from an inward focus (meaning that the people came to the nation of Israel, came to Jerusalem, to the Temple, to observe, worship and pray) this changed to an outward focus (meaning that the church, having witnessed the fulfillment of the Scriptures and being filled with the Holy Spirit, go out into the world and tell the world about these things to make God known). We don’t have a come and see missional focus any longer, but a go and tell missional focus. So, establishing a centralized, Theocratic government in this broken world is not the mission of the church. Now, ultimately there will be a city on a hill, the New Jerusalem, and at the second coming of Christ, he will bring his kingdom in full and govern the world with complete justice and inaugurate shalom, a complete peace in all the cosmos. But for now, we have a citizenry of heaven here in the local church. And although the heart behind the civil OT Laws are still valid, many of the specifics are fulfilled in Christ, deepened, and internalized.
Finally, Jesus says something that must have really shocked his hearers, “Unless you are more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom” (v.20). The scribes and Pharisees were known for their meticulous attention to following the Law of Moses. They not only followed the Law; they had other rules also which they followed in addition to the Law. The idea that one had to be more righteous than these religious leaders must have been staggering. Jesus meant, however, that although the scribes and Pharisees were careful to follow the particulars of the Law on the surface, on the inside, their hearts were sinful. Their sin problem was not ultimately a behavioral problem, but a heart problem.
Jesus taught that all the teaching of the Law and the Prophets could be summed up in these words: “Love the Lord your God will all your heart… and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 12:29-31). Although the scribes and Pharisees paid close attention to certain aspects of the Law, they missed the point, which was loving God and loving others.
But even as we discuss what commands still apply and what laws have been fulfilled there’s one extremely important fact you need to understand: Jesus was the only one who obeyed God’s Law perfectly. When he took God’s wrath for our sin on the cross, he broke the power that sin held over us and his righteousness was credited to us if we have faith in him. Because we live in the freedom Jesus purchased for us, we can live new lives of obedience, with new hearts committed to loving God and loving others. Our obedience does not sit on the surface, as was the case many of those scribes and Pharisees, but God has written it deep in our hearts.
