This meditation on Matthew 5:17-20 was given to Canon Court Evangelical Church on 29 May 2022. The transcript can be found below.
Good morning brothers and sisters. It has been a few years since I have been able to be with you here at Canon Court, so if we haven’t met before, my name is Alex and my wife’s name is Sarah. When I was last with you back in 2020, I was working as a lawyer in the City of London and a member at Bermondsey Gospel Hall. However, since then I have transitioned to serving in ministry fulltime and am now the assistant minister at GCG. From the start of this year at GCG, we have been working through the book of Matthew together and a few weeks ago we began looking at the Sermon on the Mount. Later this evening, I will be speaking from the start of that sermon, the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12. However, this morning, I would like us to turn to 5:17 together to read a few verses there as we prepare to remember the life and death of our Saviour through partaking in the Lord’s Supper.
Our passage is only four verses long. And yet, like the rudder of a boat or the steering wheel of a car, the importance of our passage vastly outweighs its small size. For here, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus himself explains how we must put our Bibles together, how the Old Testament and New Testament relate to each other, and how he himself stands at the centre of all God has said and done in history. Like a good poem or pithy saying, he expresses in a few words, realities and truths that would take years to be fully unfolded, indeed in it takes the rest of the New Testament to unravel its meaning. However, this morning, as we approach the Lord’s Supper, I want to consider two simple truths: (1) What Jesus did not come to do; (2) What Jesus did come to do.
1. WHAT JESUS DID NOT COME TO DO
That is where Jesus begins in 5:17: ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets...’. Perhaps he was anticipating an objection he was already hearing in his ministry, it can often be wise when you are going to say something that could be misunderstood, that you warn people beforehand what you do not mean. And so to avoid any confusion, Jesus begins by making clear that he is not here to dismantle or destroy the ‘Law and the Prophets’. The idea of abolishing there is that of tearing down a building, you might think of a bulldozer ploughing into the side of a house, or a wrecking ball swinging through an old tower block. Jesus begins by explaining that his ministry is not that of demolition. He has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. Those two terms are often used in the Bible to signify the whole of the Old Testament – Genesis to Malachi. And so, Jesus is saying that his mission is not to rip up the Old Testament, uproot God’s previous revelation. In fact, we shall see he is a continuation, rather than a cancellation, of what God has already said to his people. Sometimes we can slip into viewing the Old Testament like those half-finished construction projects you sometimes see. Someone had a great idea, planned a beautiful block of apartments, started construction, got the foundation laid, the walls halfway up and then they ran out of money. And so a half-finished building sits around for years, everyone looking at it while they drive past and talking about when someone might finally get round to finishing it off. When someone does eventually buy the site and take on the project, they inevitably have to knock the half-finished building down and start over again. However, Jesus is saying the Old Testament isn’t like that. It isn’t a half-finished building project he has come to demolish and start over again. No, Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and Prophets.
Of course, this makes sense when you think about what the Law and the Prophets, the Old Testament, is. As the unchanging, unalterable Word of God, it can’t just be swept aside. As Psalm 119 teaches, God’s Word is firmly fixed in the heavens, his testimonies are founded forever. This morning I was reading in 119:160, ‘The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.’ God’s laws cannot be abolished like our human laws can. A bit of a debate in Parliament, a few votes, Her Majesty’s signature and immediately a law that was once on the books is no longer in effect. What was once illegal, even punishable, suddenly becomes permissible and acceptable. No, God’s laws are eternal, his standards never change, his requirements cannot not be altered. There can be no debate, there is no Parliament to petition, the King in heaven does not alter or abolish his laws. As Jesus himself explains in 5:18, ‘For truly I tell you, 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.’ One of the places in the Old Testament that the Law is summed up for us is in Leviticus 11:44, where God commands his people: ‘be holy for I am holy.’ That is the standard God set, and his entry criteria for all who would come into his kingdom is an unalterable requirement, an unchangeable decree. A holy God cannot have a sinful people, he must punish wrongdoing, he must sentence criminals, he must exile those who rebel against him, he must purge all who are not perfect out of his paradise. The Law and the Prophets teach us God must deal with sin. And Jesus did not come to change that. Jesus did not come to lower the bar, to reduce God’s requirements, to smooth the way for sinners to saunter into the presence of the holy God. Jesus is not like that cool laid back teacher at school, the one who didn’t really mind if rules were broken as long as he was popular with pupils. Jesus’ rules are every bit as exacting as those in the Old Testament, indeed in 5:20 we read how his followers’ righteousness must exceed and surpass what anyone had previously imagined. Later, near the end of the sermon, in 7:12 he sums up the whole Law and Prophets in a single commandment and requires that of his people. He says, ‘in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.’ O do not go to Jesus if you are looking for a loophole in God’s law. For Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets.
2. WHAT JESUS DID COME TO DO
What did he come to do then? Well in 5:17 he explains, ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.’ Here we see that Jesus is not the cancellation, but the culmination of the law. He did not come to abolish God’s requirements, but to accomplish them. He came to fulfil – that is bring them to their appointed end, become the reality to which they pointed, reach the goal that they set out to achieve. So far in Matthew, the author has said much about fulfilment. Throughout chapters 1-4, he has repeatedly noted how Christ’s birth and early life ‘fulfilled’ what was spoken by the prophets: the virgin birth (1:22); the flight to Egypt (2:15); the slaughter of infants in Bethlehem (2:17); his residence in Nazareth (2:23); his ministry in Galilee (4:14) are all said to fulfil what was spoken by the prophets. Similarly, when pressed for a reason why he should be baptised in 3:15, Jesus tells John the Baptist it is ‘to fulfil all righteousness’. Fulfilment so fills the early chapters of Matthew, some even argue that it is the great central theme of the whole book (France). Matthew goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. That far from Jesus’ ministry and the New Testament bulldozing the unfinished project of the Old Testament and beginning again, they in fact finish what has already been started. If the Old Testament is where God lays the foundations and begins building the walls halfway, Jesus’ ministry and the New Testament see those very same walls finished, the roof put on top and the building project on its way to its final completion on the last day. When we get to the end of the Old Testament, we do not arrive at a dead end. No, we arrive at the destination. Jesus is the destination that God was bringing this whole world towards through the Old Testament. Jesus is the sea into which all the streams of the Old Testament flow. He came to complete, to finish, what began in the Law and the Prophets. He came to achieve what they pointed to all along. Jesus came to create a people who would be holy just as God is holy, who would have a righteousness surpassing even that of the Pharisees, who would shine as lights in this dark world and sprinkle salt across the earth (5:13-16). Jesus came to accomplish the Law and Prophets.
And he did this in the two ways that he speaks of in 5:19: ‘Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly 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.’ Jesus is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven because he came to both practice and teach these commands of the Law and the Prophets. We see the second of those, his teaching, throughout the rest of chapter 5, where Jesus reveals the Law’s requirements, teaches its true standards relating to murder, lust, divorce, oaths, justice and love for enemies. And those are but six examples he picks, for in 5:48 he sums up the whole Law by repeating the same holy standard given in Leviticus, urging his people, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ Jesus came to teach his people to be holy as God is holy, to be a perfect picture of their perfect Father. And yet, had Jesus only done that, repeated these requirements, he would have failed to fulfil the Law and the Prophets. Indeed, he would have been like every prophet before him, teaching God’s standards to those who could never measure up, to a people who did not have the power to be perfect as their Father is perfect. For Jesus to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, he not only had to teach them, but he had to practice them, live a life as perfect as his Father, to be as holy as God himself, and then offer himself up as a sacrifice for our sins.
Here in Matthew 5, Jesus fulfils the Law and the Prophets by teaching on a hill in Galilee. However, later in Matthew, he will fulfil them by dying on a hill outside Jerusalem. On the cross, Jesus, the perfect teacher and keeper of the Law and Prophets, took the place of his sinful people, suffered the punishment we deserve for not being holy as God is holy, for not being perfect as God is perfect. He did not come to reduce the requirements of God’s law for us, but to suffer the punishment of God’s law for us. To bring us into God’s kingdom not by changing the entry criteria, but by changing us: taking away the guilt of our sin, giving us the righteousness of his own perfect live and then sending his Spirit so that we too will begin to walk as he walked, learn to live a holy life.
Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. Jesus came to accomplish them: by teaching them to us, by keeping them for us and by producing them in us. This morning, as we remember his death in our place on the cross, as we see these elements on the table, we are reminded of the lengths to which our Saviour went to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, and can rejoice, in the words of the hymnwriter Augustus Toplady, that ‘the terrors of law and of God; with me can have nothing to do; my Saviour’s obedience and blood; hide all my transgressions from view.’
ALEXANDER ARRELL