Jesus, the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets

Matthew 5:17-20 Part 1

Do not assume that I came to do away with the Law and the Prophets; I did not come to do away with but to fulfill. For in truth I say to you, until such time as the heaven and the earth disappear, neither one iota nor one mark shall disappear from the Law, until all things have happened. Whoever loosens one the least of these commands and instructs people likewise will be named least in the kingdom of the heavens. But whoever performs and instructs, this one will be named great in the kingdom of the heavens. For I say to you that if your righteousness does not abound more than the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of the heaven. Matthew 5:17-20

For seventeen years, I attended Neighborhood Church of Redding (now Pathway Church). The pastor, Bill Giovanetti, often remarked that he is a recovering legalist. The primary theme of grace in his preaching was personal for him, and he surmised rightly that others needed the message of grace too.

 I could identify. 

Even though I cannot put my finger on how I became an internal legalist, in some way the Southern Baptist culture of the Deep South molded my psyche toward that end. The inherent honor and especially shame culture (“shame on you” was still a common phrase growing up) bred a rule-bound ethos of do’s and dont’s that were, in retrospect, the antithesis of freedom in Christ. 

Though covered with a heavy veneer of Christian theology and practice, the legalism present throughout the Christian South was just another form of the world’s game of blame, censure, condemnation, with a massive dose of passive-aggressive behavior (“Bless your heart”).

I’ve spent decades in recovery.

For those who take scripture at face value, the words of Jesus in this passage, read in the context of Christian religious legalism, only seem to pile on the problem. 

“Righteousness” in Southern Baptist terms might not entail keeping the minutia of the Torah, but it does further the sense of doing things the “right” way (and not doing other things) and being shamed for any deviation.

As you might imagine, my study of this passage leads me to a very different assessment of the very topic Jesus addresses. 

Legalism of sorts is there … but not from Jesus. 

Jesus’s words speak to an entirely different topic, the topic of how to read scripture. 

The depth of this discussion will take several posts, so hang on.

Do not assume

Jesus begins this new section of the Sermon (these verses are a major turning point) by clearing away a possible misconception of what he has already said—and clearing misconceptions of what he is about to say.

He begins with “Do not assume that I came to dispense with the Torah and the Prophets.” 

Different translations usually have “think” or “suppose” for the Greek term nomizō, but I use “assume.” Those translations are fine if we understand what Jesus wants. 

He wants his listeners to purge their minds of the very thought that he desires to get rid of the Law and Prophets. 

Whatever the true nature of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus was in no way opposed to their contents.

To the contrary.

Jesus follows up with the tour de force statement: “I came not to dispense, but to fulfill.”

To understand this statement, we need to back up and read carefully what Jesus said and what he didn’t say in the first statement. 

The Law and the Prophets

In his “do not assume” statement, Jesus did not just say Law, but used the composite phrase for the Hebrew Scriptures: the Law and the Prophets. 

Right off, Jesus broadens his topic beyond Torah understood as the Mosaic laws. 

“The Law and the Prophets” were the regular way of referring to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures (sometimes adding the Psalms), at least from around 200 BC. His Jewish audience would have caught this right away.

Fulfill

When Jesus said he came “to fulfill,” he referred to the entire revelation of God in the Old Testament. 

But what he means by fulfill is definitely in dispute.

The translations are all over the place. 

Many just have “fulfill,” a number of others have “fulfill them,” others have “complete/complete them,” two have “give them their full meaning,” another has “make them come true,” another “make their teachings come true,” and still another “make them all come true.” 

We are not done yet: “bring about what they said,” “accomplish their purpose,” “fulfill what is written,” and “do what they say must be done,” complete the list from the fifty or so translations I have access to. No doubt this variety is reflected in commentaries (and I have a list of five common views and my comments on them at the end of this post for paying subscribers).

Of all these, “fulfill” is the most literal but must be interpreted, while the CEV’s “give them their full meaning” gets close to the intent, and the NLT’s “accomplish their purpose” is in the ballpark.

When the translations are so varied, it is a good sign that the passage needs to be considered afresh.

I came to fulfill

One thing we can say is that “I came to fulfill” (Greek plērōsai) is the opposite of “I came to dispense with” (Greek katalusai, also “annul” or “destroy” or “do away with”). 

With this contrast Jesus unequivocally affirmed the validity of the Hebrew Bible as revealed scripture (as do the New Testament writers to a person). 

As we go through the rest of the Sermon and the entirety of Jesus’s teachings, this point cannot be overemphasized.

What Jesus did not intend by fulfill was the minute keeping of the 613 laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, or the development of those laws by the rabbis.

Instead, Jesus spent his entire ministry showing that the attempt to keep them as a way to please God was a fool’s errand. That was never their purpose.

The many conflicts he had over Sabbath illustrate this assertion. Jesus definitely broke the Sabbath according to their definition, and in numerous cases directly challenged their Sabbath keeping rules. But Jesus had no problem with Sabbath as spoken in the Ten Commandments. I will take up the nature of the Law in the next post.

What does fulfill mean, then? “Give them their full meaning” and “accomplish their purpose” move to the meaning. But I would render it “to bring their trajectory to its logical conclusion.” 

I will explain this statement in a bit, but first want to show its confirmation in the next verse: For in truth I say to you, until such time as the heaven and the earth disappear, neither one iota nor one mark shall disappear from the law, until all things have happened.

This solemn statement of reality by Jesus (“In truth I say to you”) with an extreme limit (“until such time as the heaven and the earth disappear”) invokes the phrase at the end “until all things have happened.” 

Jesus was not saying that he intended to fulfill the legal code of Torah, but that the endpoint of the Law and Prophets would be brought to completion by him. “I came to fulfill” and “all things have happened” are synonymous. At that point there will no longer be a need for the Law.

Still, what does it mean that the endpoint of the Law and Prophets would be brought to completion by him?

Jesus, the endpoint of a messianic trajectory

Because Jesus was outside of the world’s game he saw with absolute and exact clarity the way the world works, because he was not part of its machinations.

Yet he himself was the linchpin of God’s purpose to transform the world’s game to God’s game (aka the kingdom of God).

When Jesus spoke the word “fulfill,” he indicated that he was the Messiah of God.

This Messiah was not necessarily the fulfillment of the hopes of the people, which were all over the place and often connected with the violence of the world’s game—a political or warrior messiah to overthrow Rome or whatever earthly power existed.

Rather Jesus referred to the Messiah projected in the Hebrew Scriptures of Deuteronomy (prophet after Moses), Psalm 2, 32, 110, as well as in the persecution psalms of David, and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (and so many other places in the prophets as the seed of David).

And this understanding of “fulfill” fits Matthew’s context (and the other Gospels). 

The whole narrative flow of Matthew to this point indicates the fulfillment of the designation in Matthew 1:1: “The book of the genesis of Jesus Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham.” Then Matthew’s first four chapters connects Jesus’s birth and ministry to the “Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus knew that the Law and the Prophets did not exist to set out a rule system, but instead to show humanity for the corrupt, violent, death-filled race that it is.  That was his first role as Messiah: to tell the truth, to paint a picture of the world and a picture of God’s redeemed humanity—which he does in the Sermon on the Mount.

His second role was to live out the consequences of holding to the truth, to willingly go to Jerusalem where he knew that he would meet his end in death … and where God would vindicate him in the resurrection.

This is what Jesus meant by “I came to fulfill.”

---

---

Fives Views of the meaning of “I came to fulfill” (followed by Observations on the Greek Text)

There are several interpretations and views regarding what Jesus meant by “fulfill” in Matthew 5:17.  Here are five perspectives and my comments.