The Fulfillment of the Law

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law of the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

- Matthew 5:17

Recently some comments I received to a previous post got me to thinking more deeply about the Law and our relationship to the Law as Believers.  The Law I am writing about is capitalized, as it is in this passage from Matthew, because it refers specifically to the first five books of the Bible, and also to the Mosaic law given to Israel.  For the most part my references in this post to the Law will be general references to the rules and laws given to Israel by God.

The Law is a difficult guide for living.  Not only are there a lot of rules, many of which are burdensome and downright odd, but the Law is a thing taken in its entirety, so that regardless of whether some parts are "greater," all of it has to be kept in order for a man to be righteous.

Therefore whoever relaxes 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 does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:19-20)

Jesus seems to be saying two things here, but since God does not contradict himself, let's figure out what the one thing he's saying is.  First of all he says that we have to keep the whole Law, even the little stuff.  So when the law says not to wear garments woven from both wool and linen, you'd better obey.  The second thing he says is that you can't keep the whole law.  Did you catch that?  "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees."  You see, the scribes and Pharisees were expert in the details of the law, and consequently they upheld it to the letter in their own lives.  Paul was himself a Pharisee, and he says (under inspiration of the Holy Spirit) that be was blameless under the law; he kept all of the commandments (Philippians 3:6).  And Jesus tells us that, unless we are more righteous than the likes of Paul, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

These apparently contradictory statements are resolved in the man who said them.  As Jesus says, he is not abolishing the law but fulfilling it.  Where the law, in its entirety and kept perfectly, conferred righteousness, now Jesus is given as our righteousness.  As the sacrifice for all sin for all time, Jesus becomes the righteousness of God's Law, and we have only to accept him as our own to be completely righteous before the Lord.  The Law, however, does not pass away.  That is, we are not off the hook for our behavior just because we are saved by Jesus Christ.  While I don't think God cares if we wear linen/wool shirts, He does care about how we behave.  He is still just and holy and abhors sin, and He knows that it brings disruption and chaos into our lives.  But He isn't mad at us, and He doesn't keep a record of our wrongs.  The Law is just that: a record of our wrongs, a record of what we can screw up.  By fulfilling the Law Jesus gives us the gift of freedom from the burden of trying to do everything right.

There is more that can be said, and mine is not a final word of any kind, but take away this at least: "For our sake he (God) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

 

Mercy, not Sacrifice

There is a verse of scripture that I can't get out of my head.  Ever.  It rolls around in my mind and makes contact with my spirit on a regular basis.  It's something Jesus said to some religious people.  These are typically my favorite things that Jesus says, because it has become my life's work of sorts to strive against religiosity.  Here's what he said that I can't get over:

"I desire mercy and not sacrifice..." - Matthew 12:7

The context in Matthew 12 is that Jesus and his disciples are walking through grain fields on the Sabbath.  His disciples were hungry, so they plucked some of the heads of grain and ate them.  When the Pharisees saw this, they said it was unlawful.  The Pharisees taught that you could do nothing on the Sabbath that might be considered work.  So you would prepare your meals the day before, and finish your other chores as well, so that you could spend the Sabbath doing nothing.  Resting.  This was the command of God, to rest on the Sabbath.

Here we encounter what is typical of a religious person, and before I go further I'd like to define religious.  By religious I mean someone who sets the rituals of life, the outward signs of piety and religion, above the more important aspects of a godly life, such as love, compassion, intimacy with God, and so on.  A religious person may very well believe that their ritual and activity are evidence of their love or intimacy with God, but this is rarely, if ever, the case.  Religiousness is self-focused - what I can do - whereas true religion is focused on others, particularly on the Lord.

So the religious people accuse the disciples of doing what is unlawful.  You can imagine a similar accusation in your own life.  Someone asks you why you celebrate Christmas, since it's a pagan holiday, or why you don't celebrate since it's a Christian one.  Or why you use birth control.  Or why homeschool.  Or why you don't homeschool.  Or why you don't go to church, or why your church plays rock music instead of hymns, or why you drink alcohol, or why you don't take communion every week, or why you don't have a Quiet Time, or why you read the wrong translation of the Bible.  And so on and so on.  This happens to us all the time.  We are constantly running into Pharisees who have etched out their own interpretation of righteousness and are ready to accuse us of falling short.

Jesus has a response that is incredible.  He asks them if they remember the story of David when he and his men were hungry when they came to Ahimelech when David was on the run from Saul.  David asked the priest Ahimelech for some bread, but the only bread the priest had was the Bread of the Presence, which was holy and only to be eaten by the priests.  David and his men take this bread and go on.  Jesus then tells them "something greater than the temple is here" and delivers the smackdown:

"And if you had known what this means, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," you would not have condemned the guiltless." - Matthew 12:7

You can practically feel the tension when you read this, even if you yourself don't understand what "I desire mercy and not sacrifice" means.  Which I'll admit I didn't.  I knew when I first read this that the phrase was significant, but I just didn't quite get it.  Jesus is quoting from Hosea 6:6, which reads:

"For I desire steadfast love (mercy) and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offering." (ESV)

Since Hosea was one of the prophets of Israel, you can bet that the Pharisees were familiar with this phrase.  But they didn't understand it either, even if they thought they did, as Jesus points out.  So Jesus is saying to them in essence, "If you understood God's word, you would be doing right.  Since you don't, you're doing wrong."  They knew the word of God, but only as far as it informed their religious perspective.

This verse from Hosea sheds all the light we need on this small phrase of Jesus.  It means that God desires knowledge of Him over bunt offerings.  He desires the intangible relationship over the tangible activity.  He desires our devotion over our ritual.  He desires the thing we know He wants, which is our hearts.

Sacrifice in this phrase is representative of the religious approach, and mercy the Godly one.  When God gave Israel the laws of His covenant, it wasn't really about the laws at all, it was always about the covenant.  God never intended for His people to become like the Pharisees, who did what was lawful because they felt they had to, and because it made them feel important and righteous.  God wanted his people to desire to be intimate with Him, and be willing to abide by the laws in order to get and stay in a place of intimacy, of "knowledge of God."

We of course are in a new covenant, the one that Jesus paid for, and so are not bound by the Law.  But the knowledge of God can escape us as surely as it escaped the Pharisees.  The truth of the matter is that God desires mercy, and not sacrifice, all of the time.  He has always desired it.  The Bible says in Ephesians 1 that God chose us, humanity, through the person of Jesus, to be holy and blameless before Him, and that this happened before the foundation of the world.  God always knew that Jesus would be the sacrifice that brought us back, but it was not the sacrifice He desired, it was the mercy behind it.  God always knew that His creation would fall away from him, but so great is His love that mercy never escaped Him.

You see, our sacrifices do not satisfy the Lord, and they never have.  Religious ritual does not satisfy God.  Right living does not satisfy Him.  Good intentions do not satisfy Him.  But mercy does.  So does a contrite heart.  So does humility.  God is after sincerity above all else, above discipline or leadership or (gasp!) evangelism.  Above all of the things that we do that we could put our name on, God wants our sincere love.  He wants our hearts, absolutely nothing less.  If God desires sacrifice, it is this: living sacrifice.  He wants us to lay our lives on His alter and just love Him because He is good.