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17 “Don’t misunderstand why I
have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the
prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose.
18 I tell you the truth, until
heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will
disappear until its purpose is achieved.
19 So if you ignore the least
commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in
the
20 “But I warn you—unless your
righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law
and the Pharisees, you will never enter the
17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the
law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their
purpose.
“Don’t misunderstand why I
have come.”
Jesus, like many celebrities, was subject to the basic human problem: We all want our heroes to fit our selfish ideas. So some thought Jesus was a Rabbi; others a revolutionary; others a world leader in the making; others a free lunch; still others liked his moral teaching but not his diagnosis and solution to their human condition. We still do. A cursory scan through the internet will bring up such a multiplicity of views of Jesus and his purpose in coming to this world that we get confused and depressed. That is why I believe we should be studying the Word of God as revealed in the Bible. To find out from the source what the truth is.
Grace is a huge word in our gospel. The idea that instead of punishing us for our sins, God finds another way of dealing with sin and death by sending Jesus to die for your sins and rise again to give new life. Well it is so revolutionary we still have difficulty in believing it. Some of course cannot conceive of a God who loves us. Others that Whoop-ee! Now we can do what we like.
Jesus said:
17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the
law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their
purpose.
Romans 6:1-4 tells
us this :
1 Well
then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his
wonderful grace? 2 Of course not! [Or better translated “Don’t
even think it!] Since we have died to
sin, how can we continue to live in it? 3 Or have you forgotten that
when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? 4
For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live
new lives.
Jesus did not come to
allow us to ignore the Law. . I
did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I
came to accomplish their purpose.
The Law, that is
the first 5 books of the Bible, have their purpose. Jesus came to complete that
purpose.
Paul puts it this way:
Galatians 3:23-25
23The Law
controlled us and kept us under its power until the time came when we would
have faith. 24In fact, the Law was our teacher. It was supposed to
teach us until we had faith and were acceptable to God. 25But once a
person has learned to have faith, there is no more need to have the Law as a
teacher.
So how does Jesus accomplish the purpose of the Law? The heart of the Law is our relationship with God. It defines how we can relate to God and, the obverse, what separates us from God. Because we are sinners, we find ourselves on the wrong side of the Law. There is nothing we can do to make it right. We are without hope, doomed to hell. But this is where Jesus transforms the Law from something destructive to something creative. He steps into our hopelessness and provides a way that the Law can be satisfied – he died for our sins, and that we can have a restored relationship with God – he rose and entered heaven to be speaking to God on our behalf. The Law is about the standard of relationship, Jesus is the means to make that relationship happen. But he does not just say the Law of Moses but also the writings of the prophets. He came to fulfilled the prophecies about him and to bring about the transformation that the prophets spoke about.
Jesus then adds a second sentence on the subject:
18 I tell you the truth, until
heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved.
This is serious
stuff. We must not regard Jesus as a soft option. The Law is going to
out-survive the created universe! Salvation by grace does not mean sin is no
longer a problem, it means you have been forgiven from it.
Jesus then sets the standard clearly
19 So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same,
you will be called the least in the
Remember, he was talking to his disciples who were to carry this message in a generation throughout the known world. Their teaching is of considerable significance. We can’t just stick with some collection of Jesus’ sayings and ignore the rest because that is failing to listen to the teaching of Jesus. The whole of the New Testament is about what Jesus taught, not just the gospels.
The Jews hold there are 600 odd distinct laws in the Old Testament, so is Jesus saying that we should obey every law ceremonial law, health law and moral law?
I think not. Jesus came to accomplish the Law and some of its provisions cease with his sacrifice. There can be no further sacrifice for sin, so the sacrificial and ceremonial becomes obsolete. On the subject of health, we frequently forget that they lie at the heart of our health and hygiene. Whether it is frequent washing, or care is what foods we eat or how we deal with our excrement, God’s way has always been shown to be best practice. When we come to moral matters, I am convinced that there can be no better authority than God himself. He created us to be in community and he knows what is best for individuals and communities. His laws are good for us as well as good for our relationship with him.
19 So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same,
you will be called the least in the
Jesus then makes the most amazing statement:
20 “But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better
than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the
These are the very
people he will clash with endlessly about their overbearing legalism and minute
detail. And yet he says unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of
religious law and the Pharisees, you
will never enter the
If you want to be a
disciple of Jesus this is dismaying news. The Pharisees set standards few would
even dare to attain. To illustrate, they tithed herbs which in terms of tithing
was like driving at 5 mph less than the speed limit to make sure you never
exceed it. They were so determined to carry out the law they set details rules
to avoid ever breaking the law. Some of those rules still hold today in
Orthodox Jewish Communities, so they set up boundaries to define home so that
they can move freely on the Sabbath rather than be limited to ‘a Sabbath day’s
journey’. They strictly separate all utensils between milk products and meat
products to avoid ‘ boiling a kid in its mother’s milk’.
And Jesus says, you
have got to do better than that!
You have two choices, to ignore this and assume that somehow Jesus got it wrong or face up to the challenge of Jesus’ righteousness.
To understand Jesus, you need to read on! But I warn you this sermon of Jesus has “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5: 48) and that in the context of loving your enemies.
Jesus knew that you could never be righteous by following
the Pharisees way because the Pharisees way was to change the action rather
than change the heart. Instead of asking God to transform them, they sought to
do it themselves. And that is why we need to link this passage with what Jesus
said at the beginning of this teaching. We are sinners, seeking righteousness.
We are failures, wanting perfection, and Jesus offers it in a new and unique
way. He deals with the sin of the past, rather than overlook it, he deals with
the source of our sin – our Souls by giving new life to our inner person. The
objective is not to be better than the Pharisees but to be like our heavenly
Father. These verses are followed by an explanation of how and why your righteousness is better
than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, the objective being verse 48
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”
The ‘how’ is the subject of the gospels and they are all about what Jesus said and did, because your righteousness is never going to better the Pharisees if you try to do it on your own.
For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.
That is what Romans 1:17 says.
Ultimately the problem with the Pharisees was that they could not trust God, so Jesus offering himself as the sin-bearer did not make sense. Jesus came from God whereas their concept of righteousness was only ‘what we have to do’. They missed the point that righteousness was about relationship and God was passionate about his people and was going to make way that sin could be atoned for.
The verses between 20 and 48 give specific guidelines as to the different approach to the Law. That is not so much about what you do but how you think. But that is for future weeks.
I want to finish by considering a third aspect of why
unless your righteousness is
better than the righteousness of the teachers of
religious law and the Pharisees, you
will never enter the
The Pharisees were trying to earn their salvation, which they could never do by keeping the Law.
Your salvation is not based on obedience to the Law but on the forgiveness that comes from accepting Jesus as your personal saviour and knowing that your sins were paid for by his death on the cross.
But that does not mean the Law is obsolete. The Law is our guide to what our response to his love should be. It tells us when our love is being perverted by temptation and sin. When you came to Christ you were born again, cleansed and made whole. And that process continues. But as we heard last week salt can lose its value, lights can be hidden. Our response to the love of God is to want to be like him. So our righteousness will be better than that of the Lawmen because it is a response of love rather than fear, a desire to please a God who loved us and gave himself for us, rather than win the favour of a God who is angry with us.
Righteousness is and
will always be a struggle but Blessed is those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Knowing God is more than a nice feeling inside. It is keeping in step with the Holy Spirit, with a heart and mind that consciously turn towards God and his ways.
In summary then, Jesus teaches us that the grace does not make the law obsolete, rather that Jesus accomplishes the law by fulfilling its demands, setting you free from death and hell.
That we are concerned about carrying our God’s Law not to earn our salvation but to be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. Our righteous is to be better than the righteousness of the Pharisees because it begins with forgiveness and cleansing and moves on into a growing relationship with God as the Holy Spirit infuses every part of our lives and we respond to the love of God in Christ Jesus.
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