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Grace-based biblical teaching and sermons with Pastor Jason White. Messages that focus on Life in Christ and practical application as New Covenant believers.
Series: “That’s Not What That Verse Means”
Week 4 – Matthew 5:17
So today we are continuing our summer message series titled, “That’s Not What That Verse Means,” where we are looking at several verses that are commonly taken out of context and said to mean something they don’t really mean.
And so far we’ve looked at Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
1 John 1:9 that says, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
And last week, we looked at 2 Chronicles 7:14, “14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
And of course if you missed any of these, you can always watch or listen to them on our website, YouTube channel, or on our podcast.
But today, we will look at another verse, and that verse is found in Matthew 5:17…
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Several years ago, Natalie was at a Women’s Bible study, and the teacher was focusing on this verse. And she basically used that to say that the Old Testament Law is still in effect today.
Since Jesus said that He didn’t come to abolish the Law, then that means that we still live by the law today.
But it wasn’t just this verse, it was also the immediate verses right after this one that were also used to reinforce that this is what was really meant. Because here is what Jesus went on to say…
18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
And boy as you can see, at first glance that does kind of sound like what we are supposed to do then…practice and teach the commands…
And so she just kept drilling into everyone at the Bible study how important it was to know the law and to do our best to live by trying to obey God’s commandments.
So when Natalie came home, I mean it was like real bondage. There were these feelings of needing to make sure that she knew them all and wasn’t missing out on something she was supposed to be doing or not doing.
She did not want to disobey or displease God by not following all of His commandments, and it caused a lot of stress…anxiety…worry…
Honestly, there was a real fear of where she stood in her relationship with God based on doing or not doing everything He commanded.
Now, for some of you who are here this morning, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal? I mean, isn’t that what this whole Christianity thing is about anyway? Following the rules…being religious, right?”
Well, let’s look at that. The question we are asking is this: “Is that really what this verse means?”
No, THAT IS NOT WHAT THAT VERSE MEANS!
So, what does it mean? Well, first, let’s talk about the Old Testament Law…
The Law refers to the commandments of God…things like the 10 commandments, but really there’s so much more. There’s actually 613 commandments in the Old Testament Law…things that God instructed the nation of Israel to do and things they were not to do.
But one of the questions you might have is, “Why did God give the Law in the first place?”
Well, it’s generally assumed that there were 3 main reasons God gave the Law:
(1) To reveal his character to the people of Israel and demand that the people conform to it.
See, the thing about God is that He has to be the one who reveals Himself to us. The only way that you can know who God is and what He is like is if He takes the initiative to reveal who He is.
I mean, you can’t just think about God and decide what He is like for yourself because you could be wrong. You aren’t God.
And so if there is a God and He created all things, then only He knows who He is and what He created His creation for…which includes us.
So God chose to reveal Himself to the nation of Israel in order to work through them for the whole world to know who He is as their Creator and what He created them for.
And one of the ways He did that is through the Law that He gave them to follow.
For example, when God gave them the commandment not to murder people, we see the character of God in that commandment. He is a God who values and sanctifies human life.
And so you could read through the Law of God in the Old Testament and see the character of God through those commandments.
But there’s more to it than just that. Because God didn’t just give them these commandments to reveal His character…He gave them to them to conform to His character…
In Leviticus 11:45 for example, God says…
“I am the LORD who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy”
So they learn more about who God is…He is holy…but they also learn that to be able to relate to Him, they are expected to be holy as well…
They are to do things that match up with His character and to avoid things that didn’t…to avoid things that were unholy.
So you can already see how there is a problem here because there are 613 commandments. There’s no way that you can obey all of those all of the time, right???
And you can’t just pick and choose the ones you think are important… “Well, I won’t kill anyone but I’m not gonna rest on the Sabbath.”
I mean in the book of James in our Bibles we see that whoever stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it! So this a problem, but we’ll talk more about that in a second...
But here is the second reason the law was given:
(2) to supervise Israel in the time before Christ.
Here is what we are told in Galatians 3:24…
24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.
In biblical times, it was common to have a guardian in the home who was in charge of educating and directing the ethical conduct of the sons of the household.
So Paul here relates that to the function of the law for the Israelite nation. It was a guardian to educate and discipline Israel to keep the nation set apart for His special purposes to reveal Himself to the world through them.
But notice that it says, “until.” The law was time-limited. It was only meant to be in effect until Jesus came.
But here is the final reason the law was given, and it ties into what we were saying earlier about having to follow all 613 commands…
(3) To imprison Israel and, by extension, all people under sin.
Here’s the deal, we wouldn’t even know what sin was without the law. Romans 3:20 says…
20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
When we are told not to lie then we become aware that if we’ve lied before then we are sinners.
But the even worse news is that the law doesn’t just reveal sin, we see that we are prisoners to sin.
Paul even talked about this later on in Romans 7… He said, “once I was told not to do something, all I could think about was doing that thing! He would even go on to say that he was a prisoner to sin… that there was nothing he could do to stop sinning.
And that is one of the main reasons that God gave the Law: to show us that we are slaves to sin. That all people are sinners and that we are stuck in our sin and separated from a God who is holy and perfect.
And that is why He was sending Jesus…to rescue us from our imprisonment to sin. And there were even all of these prophecies in the O.T. about Jesus (God was pointing to His rescue plan)
And in order to do that, Jesus had to fulfill the law for us! Which is exactly what He said that He came to do in Matthew 5:17…
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
And Jesus did fulfill the law and all the prophecies written about Him in the Old Testament. Jesus, was born into this world fully God and fully man, and He lived a sinless life. And because He didn’t have any sin to pay for Himself, then out of His love for us, He took all of our sins to the cross and paid the penalty for them, which was death.
And 3 days later, He was raised from the dead, defeating the power of sin and death forever!
And because He’s fulfilled the righteous demands of the law, then He can offer forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal life to all people. And He does. He even offers it to us as a free gift that we can receive by placing our faith in Him to be our Lord and Savior.
And as soon as we do, then He forgives us and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us, and we have new life spiritually in Him now and forever!
And so now that all of that has been accomplished, we don’t live under the Old Covenant Law any longer.
And that is exactly what the rest of the New Testament confirms…
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. (Hebrews 10:1)
13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete. (Hebrews 8:13)
4 Christ is the end of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4)
4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.(Romans 7:4-6)
I mean I just don’t think that could be any clearer than that right there. We no longer serve in the old way of the written code (law) but now we serve in the new way by the Spirit!
So, again, Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, but He came to fulfill it. And now that He has fulfilled it, we no longer live under or by the law.
We live in the new way by the Spirit… in union with Christ as he expresses His life, character, and righteousness in us and through us!
Okay, so now that we have seen what the Law was given for and that Christ has fulfilled the law, and that we don’t live by the law but rather by the Spirit now, let’s go back and look at the rest of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17-20…
18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Okay, so here is what I want you to notice…there are 2 “until clauses” here. The first one seems to be pointing to the fact that the Law isn’t being abolished and will still be around, but the second one seems to be pointing to the fulfillment that was coming in Jesus’ finished work on the cross.
Here’s the way biblical scholar, R.T. France words it in his commentary on Matthew…
The law is there to be fulfilled, not discarded, and that is what Jesus has come to do. The second “until,” then, is not speaking of the time of their abandonment but of their intended goal. We might paraphrase the whole saying as follows: “The law, down to its smallest details, is as permanent as heaven and earth and will never lose its significance; on the contrary, all that it points forward to will in fact become a reality.” Now that that reality has arrived in Jesus, the law will be seen in a new light, but they still cannot be discarded.
So, even though the Law has been fulfilled, we do not abandon the Old Testament. It’s still part of our Bibles, and it’s useful, but they are seen in a different light now that Jesus has come and fulfilled the law.
But they are still important for us to study and understand in their proper context, which is what Jesus gets into next… Matt. 5:19
19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Okay, so again if you look at this on the surface level, then you could think that Jesus once again is saying that we are to practice and teach the Old Testament law…that we are to live by them.
But again, we’ve already covered that the Old Testament Law was meant to supervise Israel UNTIL Jesus came. Jesus has come.
And because of that we saw all of those Scriptures earlier that said “the law was only a shadow,” “the old is obsolete,” “Christ is the end of the law,” and “We no longer serve in the old way of the written code.”
So again, this can’t be what Jesus is saying here… And I think when we take it with what Jesus has already said about being the fulfillment of the law and what He says next in verse 20, then we really see what Jesus is talking about here.
20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now this would have been mind blowing to the original audience because if there was anyone who was seen as righteous in this day and age, it was the Pharisees and teachers of the law. They followed the law very strictly and were so careful to obey the old covenant commands…
But Jesus says you’ve got to be even more righteous than them to enter the Kingdom of God!
And then what we see Jesus do after this is reveal to them and all of us how big of a problem we really have…how unrighteous we are. If you keep reading in Matthew 5, Jesus says things like…
“The law says don’t murder, but really if your angry in your heart you will face judgement.”
“The law says don’t commit adultery, but if you even lust then you’ve broken that commandment.”
And he just keeps going and going until finally He says, “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect!”
Uh-oh! We’ve got a problem. None of us can do that.
Jesus was showing them that external obedience won’t cut it. You are a sinner, and you are in need of a Savior.
Here’s my point. When Jesus talks in verse 19 about practicing and teaching the Old Testament law, we see now in this context that He is talking about it within the proper context on the other side of His finished work on the cross.
For example, when we look at the whole Bible together, we see it’s one big story: Creation, The Fall, Redemption, Glory
We see God’s faithfulness all throughout, even though Israel couldn’t keep the covenant.
We see God’s holiness and His character.
We see our sin and need for a Savior.
These are a few of the ways we see the Old Testament within the proper context of the other side of Jesus’ finished work on the cross…
But the thing we don’t see is that we are to still live by the Old Covenant law today. And so as we look at this verse (Matthew 5:17) today, we see that when Jesus says that He didn’t come to abolish the law, that it doesn’t mean that we still live by the law today.
We see that Jesus has fulfilled the law, and now we live by the new way which is Christ in us and through us by the Holy Spirit…and if you’ve put your faith in Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, then His character is written on your heart, and your job is to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, abide in our abiding, and walk in dependence on Him.
But if you are here today and you’ve never put your faith in Jesus for salvation, then as we look at the standards of God under the Old Covenant, you see that you have a problem. You can’t live up to those standards. You are a sinner and have fallen short of His glory…
You are separated from Him because a holy and perfect God can’t be in the presence of sin. And if you die then you will be separated from Him for all of eternity…
But the good news is that if you’ll put your faith in Jesus to rescue you, then you will be forgiven, he will come to dwell in you, and you will have eternal life in Him.
The Christian life isn’t a life of religion; it’s being in a relationship with God through Jesus and living dependently upon Him.