Jesus and the Law

The Man and the Mountain

The Sermon on the Mount stands as the paradigmatic event in the Gospels that most clearly reveals Rabbi Jesus’ attitude toward the law. As the true Israelite and obedient son, he returns from forty days of testing in the wilderness (rather than forty years, as Israel did), having conquered temptation with the law-Word of God. Our Lord then goes up on the mountain as the greater Moses to explain, teach and confirm the law. It is worth noting that the law did not begin to have relevance with Mount Sinai or with this paradigmatic sermon. As Vern Poythress has explained:

The law of the Old Testament is not a mere datum or a mere code book, but the personal word of the great King of the universe. And who is this King? From eternity to eternity the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1). The King is the trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Son was always at work from the beginning. The law of Moses is a reflection and foreshadowing of the absolute perfection and righteousness of Christ, rather than Christ being a reflection of the law.[1]

All people in all ages have been obligated to love their creator and their neighbour—the summaries of the law reiterated by Christ. Since the law of God had such relevance and power prior to Moses, we would likewise expect that it would have no less force after the passing of Moses. Notably, the kings of Israel were required to read the law every day and make a copy of it for themselves (Deut. 17:18–20). We would therefore expect that the greater Son of David, the Messiah-King, would endorse and apply the law of God in its fullness as both author and Lord of the law. This is precisely what we see in Matthew 5–7. Here, “[h]e proclaims the coming of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 4:17; cf. 3:2; 5:3, 10, 19–20, etc.), and the Sermon on the Mount amounts to the proclamation of the ‘law’ of that kingdom, . . . .”[2] Indeed, the Sermon on the Mount shows that Jesus presupposed the validity of the law and binding authority of the Word of God:

Don’t assume that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfil. For I assure you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches people to do so 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 (Matt. 5:17–19).

Jesus is clearly referring to the totality of His law, which will remain in effect until the end of history as we know it. To teach and practice God’s commands will mean being called great, not in some past dispensation, but in the kingdom of God. Breaking God’s law and teaching others to do the same will mean being the least. The meaning of the Word fulfill (Gk. plēroō)—which has been much discussed—is surely settled by the context of abiding validity and the presence of the kingdom of heaven, so at the very least, the law’s validity is being confirmed.[3] It cannot mean an ending or setting aside of the law, or else the entire Sermon becomes a self-contradiction. On the contrary, it means that the law and the prophets—those who called people back to obedience to God’s law—are not yet complete, and Jesus Christ is going to bring them to full expression.[4] Christ will bring righteousness to its fullest expression and teach and live it fully so that people will see what it means to live the law as one should.

Thus, rabbi Jesus was not setting aside God’s law, nor adding something quantitatively to the law as a supplement, but giving it the rightful measure God had always intended. Herman Ridderbos is to the point: “Fulfillment . . . [means] the effectual assertion of the demands of the law. The word suggests a vessel that is being filled. The ‘vessel’ of the law is given its rightful measure. For this purpose, Jesus has come.”[5]

This means that when the Master in his Sermon repeatedly uses the expression, ‘You have heard that it was said…but I tell you,’ he is neither refuting nor correcting God’s word but ‘filling out’ its meaning by dealing with abuses and misunderstandings that had arisen. And he does so with total authority as well as originality as the author of the law. The grammar of the Greek expression allows for the meaning, ‘in agreement with that,’ I say to you! So, the meaning of murder, adultery, divorce, oath-taking, just retribution, generosity and love of neighbor are all taken up and filled out. The practices of true worship, facing worldly cares, distinguishing between good and evil, following Christ, and accepting His authority are all addressed in the Sermon in reference to the wisdom of God’s law. In doing so, Rabbi Jesus gets to the root of our heart’s motives.

The Lord’s climactic call to ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect’ (Matt. 5:48) echoes the words of God’s law, ‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy’ (Lev. 19:2). Discerning how each aspect of the law is confirmed and ‘filled out’ in and through Jesus’ life, redemptive work and teaching involves the careful task of rightly dividing the word of truth under the yoke of Christ in the Spirit’s power.[6] But there can be no question of abolishing or setting aside the law, as Richard Barcellos rightly explains:

. . . [T]he law Christ expounded in the Sermon on the Mount and revealed in the epistles through His apostles includes portions of the very things Moses wrote, and sometimes without qualification. . . . Paul quotes the Decalogue in Romans 13:9 without any New Covenant contrastive qualifications. . . .

[I]n Matthew 5 Jesus is indeed introducing a contrast, but not between the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ. Rather, the contrast is between a true understanding of the Law of Moses and the false understanding evidenced in the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees.[7]

Jesus and Disciple-Making

A disciple is nothing without a master to follow and obey. If we really claim to follow Christ and desire to have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), we “. . . should fulfill the law the way he taught it because he was the one who filled it up to its full intent and potential.”[8] Part of that intent of the law is manifest in what we call the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20). Here, the Master makes it clear that the commandments have a continuing role in evangelism, discipleship, and the advancement of God’s kingdom. Shattering the restrictions of national Israel (Matt. 21:43), the international people of God, both Jew and Gentile, now disciple all nations, which includes teaching the full content of God’s law. “‘Everything I have commanded you’ naturally includes the Sermon on the Mount, and within the Sermon, it includes Jesus’ statement about the continuing force of the law: . . . .”[9] In addition, we are given the personal assurance of our divine rabbi that his everlasting presence will empower and accompany us in our mission. We are, therefore, to imitate Christ by teaching the law and understanding it through his life and work. As Greg Bahnsen points out:

The Christian being condemned by the law, saved by Christ’s obedience to the law, and sanctified by the Spirit in accordance with the law, is to propagate the Christian gospel in conjunction with pressing home the demands of God’s holy law. Teaching the nations to observe the commandments of God is a definite obligation laid upon Christians by Christ; . . . [T]he Christian life and God’s kingdom are theonomic through and through, as evidenced by both the Lord’s prayer (“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”) and the Great Commission . . . .[10]

When all is said and done, to be a Christian is to walk with the Master. To truly be his disciple, we must tread the same sod by honoring the same Father, loving the same law, teaching the same commandments and imitating his life of faithful obedience. As Ridderbos exhorts us, “The theonomy of the gospel is subjection to the law, and any attempt to eliminate the category of law from the gospel is frustrated by the continuous and undeniable maintenance of the law by and in the gospel.”[11] The words of the Priest-King confirm this from his heavenly throne, the same Lord who engraved his law on the stone tablets at Sinai and expounded Torah on the mountain:

But the cowards, unbelievers, vile, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars—their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. . . . Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying (Rev. 21:8; 22:15).

 

[1] Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses, 92–93

[2] Averbeck, “The Law and the Gospels,” 413.

[3] The Aramaic word qûm may well lie behind plēroō, thereby reinforcing the distinct idea of “confirm.”

[4] See Douma, The Ten Commandments, 376.

[5] Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, 294.

[6] Jonathan Burnside’s discussion of “Law in the hands of Jesus” is, in my view, the gold standard for explaining Jesus’ use of the law: See God, Justice, and Society, 404–25.

[7] Barcellos, In Defense of the Decalogue, 75–76.

[8] Averbeck, “The Law and the Gospels,” 413.

[9] Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses, 271–72.

[10] Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, 254–55.

[11] Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, 307.