One of the most confounding passages in the bible is this one:
‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks 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 5:17-20
Stopping there you want to ask Jesus, "Wait… So if you have fulfilled it, what's left to follow?" As if Matthew knew we would ask that question, he shows Jesus getting specific with a radical re-interpretationof the Law of Moses – the 10 Commandments. Without going into the amass of exegetical arguments that exist over this srange tenson in the most famous sermon in the New Testament, one solid reading is that Jesus is speaking eschatologically. It is he who the prophets have spoken about bout all along and it is he who will reveal the purpose of the law by being the only one in human history to fulfill it.
Yet he continues by saying the law persists in spite of his fulfilling it. So what does this tension mean? It has to be understood in the antithetical commandments that follow and the beatitudes that precede the passage. Jesus as the fulfiller of the Law does so with the revelation of mercy and it is this merciful love on which the commandments and the law are to be seen through. Thus murder and anger, adultery and lust, swearing oaths, retribution, and love of enemy are all re-interpretations of the law that get to the heart of the kind of Kingdom that God will reveal – one built of mercy, compassion, and love. It is in this way that the law exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees. As Rudolph Schnackenburg writes:
What outrages Jesus is the misuse of the legal commandments through the practices of the teachers of the law, whose tedious interpretation places unbearable burdens on the people (23:4) and thereby blocks their access to the kingdom of heaven (23:5, 13). They neglect the most important and wieghtiest matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith (23:23, cf. Michan 6:8). The same critique is heard in the discussion on the clean and unclean (15:1-20) (p. 117).
Something that left me alienated from the church for several years, was exactly what outraged Jesus. There was no or very little mercy to those the church deemed unclean, improper, or inappropriate. There was even less mercy and compassion towards those who followed Jesus in a way that was outside the bounds that the church had inscribed. How many people are blocked from the mercy of the Lord due to human constraints and boundaries on what we think is correct and right? How many in the church are with a piety intended to follow Jesus keeping Jesus out? Jesus fulfilled the law by revealing God's mercy. Shouldn't Christians be the first ones to respond to that revelation in kind?
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