Jesus View of the Law (Part 2)

Fulfilling The Law of Moses (Matthew 5: 19-20)

I suggested last time that we as Christians now fall under the greater more perfect law of Christ, which does not as some suggest replace the Old Testament law, it fulfils it. Under the law of Christ, nine of the 10 commandments are repeated under not only in the beatitudes but elsewhere also. But do you know what one is missing, can guess which one’s missing. The law about keeping the Sabbath because the essence of the whole of the New Testament is about us now being under grace. We are now under the law of love and if you follow that law, you will by nature fulfil the moral law because a sets of religions rule and regulations based around worship and atonement through sacrifice have now been replaced by the sacrifice of Jesus and you now fall under his love and grace. No Better passage sums this up for us than Romans chapter 13

8Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore, love is the fulfilment of the law.

(Romans 13: 8-10)

Now the law given to Moses says things like, do not murder do not commit adultery do not steal, do not bear false witness etc, and we still must keep these, but New Testament says you’re not under that Mosaic judicially anymore we are under the law of Christ in this regard. Paul here points out that the only thing you need to remember is to just go love one another Paul argues that if you understand this and you are truly loving one another the way God loves you, you’re going to automatically fulfil the law anyway. If I love you, am I going to kill you? If I love you, am I going to steal your property, or your wife or your reputation, of course not. But here’s the big issue, we are now under grace which is why Hebrews 4: 16 tells us

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

(Hebrews 4: 16)

What we have in the law of Christ is the grace and the power to do what he said we should do, and how we should be in the future. God will give us the grace to love the other person who has sinned or offended against us. I am now able to keep the law because I no longer need to try and do it in my own strength now, I can depend on the grace of God to forgive them, just as I know I have been forgiven. Jesus later when asked about this will say, “The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself far as Christ is concerned the whole thing is bound up in the law, but the law of love and you get the ability to live that way as a gift of grace.

Let’s return to the main text in Matthew

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. 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: 19-20)

Please note this is the conclusion of all this teaching up to this point is that we are no longer under the law of Moses, rather we can now fulfil the law of Moses because all the big issues it pointed out have been death and resurrection of Jesus. These two main issues are actually addressed here specifically in these verses and I’m going to try and deal with them today, but in the reverse order. In verse 20 it says, except your righteousness will exceed the righteousness describes the Pharisees in no way will you enter the kingdom of heaven. So, the issue in verse 20 is about entering the Kingdom. The issue in verse 19 is not about getting there everybody in verse 19 is there. It’s being about being considered the least or greatest in that Kingdom. Everybody is there in verse 20. In verse 19 it is talking about how things are for those in the Kingdom and verse 20 is about how we get there in the first place.

I’m going to deal with these two issues in reverse order because I think it’s first helpful to talk about how we get there before we talk about what it will be like for us when we get there. So how do we gain the Kingdom well, it seems you need to have to have a righteousness that is greater than the one taught by the religious leaders of Jesus day . Now these guys who were the religious leaders of the day put all the emphasis on the external obedience to the law. In the next episode we’re going to look at what they said, versus what Jesus said. But just to give you a quick example Jesus is going to say things like “You’ve heard it said now shall not murder I say unto you if you have people in your heart you committed murder already”

The point Jesus will be making is that you're going to need more than an external type of righteousness, you’re going to have to have internal righteousness. Don’t think you’ve got off the just because you have never murdered anybody. Jesus will say if you have ever had hate in your heart then you have already committed murder. That’s a higher much standard, and he will apply it across several of the commandments and in doing so he tells us that this will now be the new higher standard we shall be measured against. A standard which points out that there is no one righteous, no not one. When measured by the internal standard we all come short of the glory of God. But it gets worse because it not only points out the fact that we are all sinners but now it tells us that the penalty of sin is death. But it only gets worse because it going to get better because the New Testament also tells us that Jesus Christ the son of God died and pay for our sins and rose from the dead.

The New Testament teaches us that by trusting in Jesus Christ you are declared righteous by God. That is the entire purpose of the Book of Romans, in fact the first five chapter of that book focus on this thing called, “justification by faith” and the word justification means being declared righteous. But it gets even better because I’m not just declared righteous, I am gifted, imputed, the very righteousness of Jesus Christ.

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

(Romans 5: 21)

In Jesus we can stand before God in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So, in order to enter the Kingdom of God you have to have righteousness that is greater than the righteousness taught by the scribes and the Pharisees and you just have to trust in Him as your saviour, not yourself you then gain the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

How absolutely straightforward is this, how perfect is this, it takes nothing else other than recognising that you are not good enough and that you have not lived a life without sin. By accepting that, by simply accepting that, your salvation must come from somewhere outside of yourself, you can be made right with God. This makes perfect sense to me in that salvation must lie within God himself, the perfect God who created us. Knowing that that is not your own moral uprightness or some code of decency that comes by obeying a bunch of laws is the thing that makes you right with God. Being made right with God comes by trusting Jesus Christ and presenting his perfect life and ministry as a substitution for your shortcomings.

Let me show you another passage that clearly states this. Paul here is speaking about himself and comparing his own moral righteousness with that of Jesus Christs. Right at the beginning of this chapter he talks about all that he has to his credit and how he kept the law matter of fact he says beginning in verse three.

3 For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, 4 though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: 5 circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; 6 concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.

He’s talking here about the legalistic external righteousness he had followed as a Pharisee. But he they say how you have got to have more than that to get into the kingdom of heaven

7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,

You see that you’ve got two options you can stand before God and say look at what I’ve done and how I’ve lived my life, you might even say, look, I never killed anybody, and I didn’t rob a bank and you may very well have the righteousness of the law. But Jesus says that is not the measure anymore, it’s not the standard you have to have a greater righteousness than that. Now you have to have the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ, because then you are clothed (you appear before God) in his righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. Then and only then will you get to enter the Kingdom of God. Not because of what you did but because of what Jesus did. Like Jesus himself said in verse 20, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. It takes greater righteousness that that to enter to the Kingdom of God.

Lets drop back into Matthew chapter 5 verse 19 and find out what it will be like when we get there.

(Matthew 5: 19)

I want you to notice this fascinating verse. So we now know how we gain heaven, but what happens if we break the law now. We know if we don’t know Jesus and we break the law, we are still judged under the old law and the judgement for sin is death and eternal separation from God. But here in this verse it is clearly talking about people who have already entered the Kingdom and it talks about the greatest and the least. Anyone who comes along and says that if as a Christian you fall back into sin you will lose you salvation, tell them you wrong and quote this verse to them. There are consequences for sin not only in this life but also in the life to come, but not in the way that some teach. Those who teach if you break the law and sin as a believer, you won’t gain heaven, well, that’s just not correct not according to this passage and many others. If you mess up you now fall under the law of Christ, the law of love, and you will be positioned in heaven according to the same standard that you set and judged other people in this life, and this passage tells me that some are going to be called great in the Kingdom of God, and some less so.

When we get later in this Gospel of Matthew, we will witness a huge debate between Jesus and the apostles over who’s going to be greatest in the Kingdom and Jesus will deal with that discussion by saying it’s going to be the exact opposite of what you think it might be. He will clearly teach later in this book that the greatest in the Kingdom are those who are the least, the servants of others, and true service is nothing more than an expression of God love to other people.

If you understand this passage in the context of the book of Matthew and in the context of the New Testament, and in the context of the Bible you fulfilled the law not by trying to keep a set of religious rules and rituals but by loving and serving others. Why should this be such a mystery to so many people, including some Christians. How obvious does it have to be, can they see that when God came down and walked this earth that is all he did.

The law of Christ means that now by God’s grace we can declared righteous and by trusted Christ and by building your life upon his example and by been given the gift of the Holy Spirit we are truly able to love people like he loves people. On some occasions the type of love we express will appear very different to the type of love the world expects. The world loves to define what love is and they usually do it by cobbling together a few moral statements mix in a few religious rules and if that wasn’t bad enough, they throw in a few man made rules of their own. And they try put you under that way of living but its just another man-made type of law. But when they try and live the way, two things happen.

One is they can’t do it. You can’t live under any law or moral system because we’re not perfect we have a sinful human nature. What usually happens is people fall short and they either give up trying or they feel guilty all the time because they have no possible way to atone for the fact, they can’t meet the standard.

Or the second thing that happens is people kid themselves that they are doing fine, and they walk around thinking because I do these things I am now righteous, and it changes the direction of your life from seeking internal righteousness to showing off external righteousness to other people. It changes you whole attitude and personality.

But if you understand the law of love you will understand that before God you have nothing of your own to bring. Remember that from the beatitudes about being poor in spirit, knowing that without Christ we have no righteousness of our own and no hope of heaven. It’s about the internal attitude that what God is after. It’s an attitude of gratitude and dependence upon him who pleads for us before the thrown of God. And as an aside, he is already doing that now today for us when we fall short or get things wrong. Because as the resurrected saviour in heaven he is constantly interceding on our behalf before His father God. Living under the law of loves means we are now able to allow Christ to pay the debt we have accumulated by trying to live under our own religious or moral code.

Have you ever owed the inland revenue some money, and have you ever waited until the last possible minute and then wrote the check begrudgingly. You have then met the demands of the law, but you heart probably wasn’t in it. God is not the tax man. If you were living by external law, you might put things off until the last minute and do it begrudgingly. But you going to be missing out on what Gods plans are for you and the blessing he wants to give you today and in the kingdom.

If you really understand what grace is about then you can settle that debt of sin before God immediately, and if you haven’t done it yet, then do it today and do it with a heart of gratitude.