Law tends to have a bad image in many people's minds. It's not that we don't like having laws - most of us understand that we need laws to protect us - but that it conjours up images of having to do something because we have been told to. Many of us will have grown up with caring parents who understood the need to set boundaries and they will have told us to do things that we didn't really want to. It's not our parents fault but we tend to see "law" as being something that we have to do but don't really want to (a bit like taxes I suppose - we know we have to pay them for all kinds of good things that the Government provides but we still don't really like having to pay up).
So then when Jesus gets on to the subject of the Law we might well feel that this is going to be boring and we don't really want to know anyway. We are looking here at the sermon on the mount found in Matthew 5: 17 - 20.
However, the law in the Old Testament is very important because it helps us both to understand what God is like and what God expects of us. For instance, when God says that we must not steal that tells us that God is not dishonest and that we should do our best to behave like God.
Now I'm not going to explore all aspects of Old Testament Law in this article - there is just too much ground to cover - but instead I'm going to claim (and I think there are some very good reasons to make this claim) that when Jesus talks about the Law here he is talking about the ten commandments and the laws that relate specifically to those commandments. Some law relates to the society in the ancient world and I don't think these are included in what Jesus says here.
Anyway, Jesus now says two very important things about the Law: a) he has come to fulfill the law, b) we are still expected to keep it.
That Jesus says he fulfils the Law is very powerful stuff. He isn't going to say that the old Law doesn't matter any more but that it exists in Him. The Law is not some wish list that God has penned for his New Year resolutions but is actually the way things are. And from now on we are to understand that the Law is Jesus. Everything that the Law is now exists in Jesus.
Jesus also talks about fulfiling the prophets which in face value may seem easier to understand than fulfilling a law. But the two really go hand in hand - especially in the mind of the people Jesus first addressed these words too.
It is not unusual to here people talking about how things are now different under Jesus than under the Old Testament. In one sense they are right to say this (otherwise we wouldn't have a NEW Testament or convenant or agreement or marriage or whatever you want to call it). Yet Jesus here is pointing out that the Old Testament still exists but it is now in him.
We then find that instead of letting us off the hook over the Law he gets even tougher over it. We aren't looking at it in this article but much of what Jesus says after he tells us he fulfills things is to give us even harder tougher laws (although really he is just explaining things for us in more detail). Jesus is trying to help us understand what the Laws actually means. We must not just take the Law as being about a literal understanding - we are all right if we can find a way to keep the literal meaning of the words (what most of the Pharisees were doing) but we must try to keep the meaning that God intended to convey. So it is not enough just to avoid adultery in a literal sense, we commit adultery if we even think about it.
I don't want to get stuck in thinking about particular laws here because it is important to understand that Jesus both fulfills and teaches the law. Jesus isn't turning Law into wishes as though somehow being good is now just a matter of doing what you fancy but instead he makes it clear that what God wants from us is to be even more committed to trying to be good. Of course God helps us to do that - if we let Him - and at times we will fail but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Christopher Brown is an online pastor and web developer. He has been building websites since the early days of the Internet. He is very keen on helping people explore who Jesus Christ is, so that they can make informed choices for themselves. His blog can be found at: http://www.jesuscourse.info/blog and his website about Jesus is at http://www.jesuscourse.info
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