Christ – The Fulfillment Of The Law

Matthew 5:17-20

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. 18 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. 19 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. 20 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. (Matthew 5)

Absolute Ideal God’s Impossible Standard

20 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. (Matthew 5)

Pharisees and teachers of the law competed with one another in strictness. They had atomized God’s law into 613 rules – 248 commands and 365 prohibitions – and bolstered these rules with 1521 emendations. To avoid breaking the third commandment, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord,” they refused to pronounce God’s name at all. To avoid sexual temptation they had a practice of lowering their heads and not looking at women (the most scrupulous of these were known as “bleeding Pharisees” because of frequent collisions with walls and other obstacles). To avoid defiling the Sabbath they outlawed 39 activities that might be construed as work. How can an ordinary person’s righteousness ever surpass that of such professional holy men?

(Philip Yancey, “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.132)

Absolute Ideal2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.”

(Matthew 23)

2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practise what they preach… 5

Everything they do is done for men to see: they make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; 6

they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; 7 they love to be greeted in the market-places and to have men call them ‘Rabbi’… 28 … on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

(Matthew 23)

Absolute Ideal

Radical Righteousness“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!”

(Matthew 23)

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5)

Using the Torah as a starting point, Jesus pushed the law in the same direction, further than any Pharisee had dared push it, further than any monk has dared live it. The sermon on the Mount introduced a new moon in the moral universe that has exerted its own force of gravity ever since. Jesus made the law impossible for anyone to keep and then charged us to keep it.

(Philip Yancey, “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.132)

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. 18 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. 19 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.

(Matthew 5)

Three Absolutes

Three Absolutes

Permanence

Fulfillment

Authority

10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

(James 2)

The Curse Of The Law

10 All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”

(Galatians 3)20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather through the law we become conscious of sin.

(Romans 3)15 because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression. (Romans 4)23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… (Romans 3)

Absolute Grace God’s Incredible Gift

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

(Romans 3)

Absolute GraceJesus did not proclaim the Sermon on the Mount so that we would despair over our failure to achieve perfection. He gave it to impart to us God’s Ideal toward which we should never stop striving, but also to show that none of us will ever reach that Ideal. The Sermon on the Mount forces us to recognize the great distance between God and us, and any attempt to reduce that distance by somehow moderating its demands misses the point altogether. The worst tragedy would be to turn the Sermon on the Mount into another form of legalism. Legalism like the Pharisees’ will always fail, not because it is too strict but because it is not strict enough. Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.

(Philip Yancey, “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.132)

Absolute Grace

4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. (Galatians 4)

Absolute Grace

5 And in him is no sin. (1 John 3) 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming

a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

(Galatians 3)21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

(2 Corinthians 5)

Absolute Grace

If God were not just, there would be no demand for his Son to suffer and die. And if God were not loving, there would be no willingness for his Son to suffer and die. But God is both just and loving. Therefore his love is willing to meet the demands of his justice.

(John Piper, “Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die”, p.20)

Absolute Grace

25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

(Romans 3)

10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

(1 John 4)

Absolute GraceBeing justified before God and being forgiven by God are not identical. To be justified in a courtroom is not the same as being forgiven. Being forgiven implies that I am guilty and my crime is not counted. Being justified implies that I have been tried and found innocent. My claim is just. I am vindicated. The judge says, “Not guilty.” … Justification is not merely the cancellation of my unrighteousness. It is also the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to me. I do not have a righteousness that commends me to God. My claim before God is this: “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ” (Philippians 3:9)… What does it mean that God made the sinless Christ to be sin? It means our sin was imputed to him, and thus he became our pardon. And what does it mean that we (who are sinners) become the righteousness of God in Christ? It means, similarly, that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, and thus he became our perfection.

(John Piper, “Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die”, p.38, 40-41)

A Surprising Salvation

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

(John 1)

Response

Jesus proclaimed so unmistakably that God’s law is so perfect and absolute that no one can achieve righteousness. Yet God’s grace is so great that we do not have to. By striving to prove how much they deserve God’s love, legalists miss the whole point of the gospel, that it is the gift from God to people who don’t deserve it. The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God. (Philip Yancey, “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”)

Accept God’s Gift of Grace

Worship in Thanksgiving

47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little. (Luke 7)  

Let us not trifle with God or trivialize his love. We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of his wrath against us. But when, by grace, we waken to our unworthiness, then we may look at the suffering and death of Christ and say, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the (wrath-absorbing) propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

(John Piper, , “Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die”, p.21)