(Synoptics: Matthew 5:17-20) Christ’s teaching includes much about grace, as does this Sermon on the Mount. It was already evident to the Pharisees that he taught that spiritual satisfaction is not found in the ceremonies, or in keeping them.
Here are six ways in which Christ fulfils the law:
{
1. He is the first and only person (he is man and God) ever to keep it. He alone keeps it perfectly and does not transgress it in any way, so his righteousness is credited to us. He is therefore qualified to be our Saviour, our sin bearer.
2. He fulfils the law because he perfectly teaches it. The scribes and Pharisees had twisted the law until there was an ocean of misunderstanding. The Old Testament teaches the outer and inner obedience that God requires. At the same time the Old Testament taught you must come to God by grace. Do you say, ‘I have no time for the Old Testament; I want the New Testament.’ Yes, but the New Testament throws light on the Old Testament.
3. He personally fulfils all its prophecies and predictions. This is why he distinguishes the law and the prophets. There are different kinds of predictions in the Old Testament. This is why the ceremonial law is said still to stand; it is a form of prophecy. The ceremonial law is not done away with, it is now embodied in Jesus Christ.
4. He literally completes it. There is a little more to add to the law. Some things in the Old Testament are hard; he makes them clear. But some things are brand-new, for instance the Acts of the Apostles, and the pastoral epistles. All this is new, though prophesied. How do we know the Bible is the word of God? For the Old Testament the answer is easy – Christ authenticated it.
5. He fully satisfies the penalty of the law. He pays, discharges, and meets the penalty. He has paid in the dreadful agony he endured.
6. He fulfils its ultimate purpose: to create a holy people, special to God. This is the aim of the law. The Jews were not this. They were not full of light, joy, holiness. The law had not succeeded, but Christ came so that it was successful. Because he has come, he can produce the very kingdom that the law did not produce. ‘I will so transform their hearts that they will be saved.’ ‘For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit’ (Romans 8:3-4).
}
Some people think the Sermon on the Mount changed the law. The Old Testament was ferocious and the New Testament is milder. They think this is what Jesus was doing. They see two different God’s in the Bible, a severe God, a God of retribution, in the Old Testament, and a kind, forgiving God in the New Testament. That is a fatal mistake and a misunderstanding of both Old and New Testament. God’s character does not change but has always included the attributes of justice and holiness, as well as mercy and grace. There is grace in the Old Testament and there is law in the New. Christ says more about hell than he does about heaven. God instructs in the right order, and law comes before grace, to show mankind his need of grace. Types and shadows come before the reality in Christ. ‘Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law’ (Romans 3:31-4:1).