Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19)
I am aware of the common expositions of the passage, and take issue with them. Keep in mind that Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven, the realm He was preparing for His own coronation. He wasn’t restricting this to just the Covenant of Moses, which was near its end, but the New Covenant in His Blood. Thus, the Law and Prophets are binding in some sense going into that New Covenant.
This passage stands in the wider context of the Sermon the Mount, wherein Jesus reinstates the Hebrew Mystical approach to serving His Father. A chief exhibit in this was the Beatitudes that come just before this passage. Jesus invested a lot of effort in reconnecting the Law to the Person of the Father. It was eastern feudalism; Law is merely the approximate shape of your loving commitment to the Father. It was quite flexible; there were priorities that would eclipse many of the provisions. It was meant to be sensible, setting you free to avoid getting wrapped up in the nonsense of people who miss the forest for the trees.
Thus, Paul advised us to take this all very seriously as we give ourselves to studying the Old Testament Scripture (2 Timothy 2:15), which was the only Bible they had at the time he wrote that. There were plenty of places where Jesus and the Apostles flatly stated that some provisions of Moses simply didn’t apply to us. Even more important, though, was how much of it applied differently under the New Covenant.
Isn’t it sad that so many people get hung up on that one phrase out of Romans 6, where Paul says “for you are not under law but under grace” (v. 14) and miss the entire context of what he is trying to get across. The context is several chapters together, in which he seeks to disentangle the nonsense about “law” in the minds of Christian Jews. For many of the them, there remained an awful lot of Talmudic teaching that they considered “law.” And the really dangerous issue was how Talmudic teaching was so legalistic. It was always a matter of “works of the law.”
Paul keeps raising the issue of “justified by faith.” The problem is that Western Church heritage has filled that word “faith” with a lot of false baggage. It’s not like “faith” is a castle to be defended. Rather, it’s original meaning in Hebrew was a commitment from the heart, a determination to serve with full ardor the One who pays the price to bring you into His family. So this business of being “under grace” sets you free from Talmudic legalism, but it does not set you free from the intent of the Law of Moses. The mission of manifesting the Father’s love and grace still has to follow the shape — not necessarily the details — of the Law as Moses received it on Mount Sinai.
People who were enslaved to their fleshly nature were free from any concerns about actual righteousness (Romans 6:20). Once that fleshly nature has been put under a death sentence from the Cross, we are free to discover the privileges that the Law was intended to give those who actually loved their Lord. And so it goes, in which Paul keeps using the word “law” to refer to the Talmudic approach, not what Moses brought down from the mountain.
This is wholly consistent with what Jesus had to say in the Sermon on the Mount. There’s a parable there, and I’m sure most people miss it. Jesus brought us up onto the mountain to be with God and receive the divine revelation just like Moses did. But it’s first-person personal, instead of need a human priestly figure as go-between. We go up to receive a new heart, not stone tablets. Commitment to obeying your convictions is the Law. We need the written revelation to inform the fallen brain so it doesn’t get off track. But as soon as we get the mind trained to obey the heart of conviction, we get this glowing sense of divine Presence that overwhelms our fleshly failures.
The Covenant that Moses actually taught, with the intent of that mass of code bringing us to the Father’s heart, is what Jesus insisted would not pass away until He returns.
