– Matthew 5.17 - 20 –

The Sermon on the Mount 4: Jesus and the Law

Introduction

Having set forth the blessings of the new covenant, Jesus turns to the Law. Knowing he is going to make some ground shaking statements, he first states where he stands regarding the Law as a whole.

Lesson

“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets” (17). Jesus says this because, in first century Galilee, what he is going to say would naturally lead to the conclusion that he is annulling the Law. Jesus is clearly taking a wrecking ball to something, and it has something to do with the Law, so what is it he’s destroying? It’s not the Law but the Scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus wants to bring the people to see that the Scribes and Pharisees are the enemies of the Law. He wants to lay waste to the Scribes and Pharisees while exalting the Law. So, Jesus says emphatically that he did not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets (17). Then, he says it again (18), and again (19a), and again (19b). And indeed, everything Jesus would require was already under the Law. When Jesus says that we are not to hate, He is echoing Leviticus (Leviticus 19:17-18). When Jesus says, “Love your enemy,” He is echoing Moses (Exodus 23:4) and Solomon (Proverbs 25:21-22). When Jesus says that lust is a form of adultery, he is merely applying the Tenth Commandment (Ex 20:17).

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (20). This statement no doubt sent shock waves through the crowd. How could their righteousness exceed those who ate, slept, and drank the Law? But implicit in Jesus statement is the charge that the Scribes and Pharisees neither kept nor taught the Law. As Jesus would later say, the Scribes and Pharisees were hypocrites who acted super spiritual while being greedy and self-indulgent, who strained at gnats while swallowing camels, and who excelled at setting aside God’s commands in favor of their own traditions (Mt 23.13-29; Mk 7.9; Lk 12.1). Jesus’ disciples must not be guilty of the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees.

Jesus vindicates the Law. After 2000 years, the Law continues to be confusing and controversial. In spite of Jesus’ words, we tend to persist in believing that the Law was a problem that Jesus came to get rid of. The problem is that we tend to assume the Law was a covenant of works requiring moral perfection through which Israel was to earn her salvation, or else learn that she couldn’t do so. But the Bible presents the Law as a marriage oath between God and His people (Is 54.5; Jer 2.2; 3.14; Hos 2.2, 5, 7, 15-16). The Law was not given so Israel could earn her salvation, but because God had saved her (Ex 20.2). The Law showed Israel how to love God in return (Dt 6.4-5; Mt 22.37-40). Faithfulness under the Law did not require moral perfection, but heartfelt loyalty, confession and forgiveness of sin based on substitutionary sacrifice, and repentance (Lv 4.20, 26, 35; 5.10, 13; 19.22). This is why the Scripture can say, for example, that John the Baptist’s parents “were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (Lk 1.6).

Thus, as God said in Malachi 2.4-5, the old covenant truly was a covenant of life and peace – not of earning life and peace, but of walking in the life and peace God had freely provided. How then does Paul call the old covenant a ministry of death (2Co 3.7)? Because, though it held forth life and peace, it ended in death because of Israel’s chronic unfaithfulness. But Israel’s unfaithfulness was not under a covenant of works requiring moral perfection, but under the covenant of life and peace which provided for forgiveness. This is how the Law demonstrated the utter sinfulness of sin (Rm 7.13). If the Law required moral perfection, falling short would not demonstrate the utter sinfulness of sin. So, the Law was a problem only in the sense that a wedding vow is a problem to an adulterer. The Law condemned Israel’s spiritual adultery the same way a wedding vow condemns a cheating spouse’s sexual adultery. But the Law and the wedding vow aren’t the problem (Rm 7.13). The problem is the sin (Rm 7.13-14).

Paul ties this all together in his most detailed treatment of the law (Rm 7.1-4): 1 Do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. 4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another – to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.

In Paul’s analogy, it is not the Law that dies, but the first husband. The effect the first husband’s death is to release the bride so she can marry a new husband. Notice that marrying the new husband puts her under a new law, for one cannot get married without taking an oath and coming under the law of marriage. The real problem in this analogy is not the law or the first husband or the fact that the bride is bound. The real problem is that the bride is under the death penalty for adultery. The solution comes when her first husband dies, thus releasing her from her marriage oath and its penalty. Then, she is free to marry the new husband, who Paul identifies as Christ. Who, then, was the first husband who died? Christ.

Notice where Paul ends up with this whole argument: “What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rm 8.3-4). In Christ, the Law is vindicated, the bride is freed, the resurrected Christ remarries her and writes the Law on her heart by the Spirit.