A central teaching common to many Protestant denominations is that Jesus Christ kept the law in our place. This teaching is then used as a way to discount the clear-cut biblical commands to keep the seventh-day Sabbath and the biblical Holy Days. Many who were once in God’s Church, who should have known better, have fallen for this line of reasoning in the last decade.
What does it really mean when we are told that Jesus Christ came to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17)? Does this mean that He kept it so we do not have to, or does it mean something far different?
It is important to understand the answer to this vital question. To help us do so, we will start by looking at an important prophecy contained in the Old Testament— Isaiah 42:21—a fundamental key to understanding what Jesus came to do regarding God’s law.
A Prophecy of God’s Servant
The prophet Isaiah wrote at a very difficult time in his nation’s history. He saw the rise of Assyrian power to the east and their subsequent invasion of the Promised Land. The northern ten tribes—the House of Israel—went into Assyrian captivity during Isaiah’s ministry. Later, Assyrian armies advanced southward and threatened Isaiah’s own nation of Judah; in fact, they overran most of the land and demanded Jerusalem’s surrender. When King Hezekiah refused their demands, the Assyrians laid siege to the city. After Hezekiah’s heartfelt prayer to the Creator, God sent an angel to destroy the Assyrian army in a single night, and the next morning a terrified King Sennacherib began a hasty retreat to Nineveh (Isaiah 37).
Isaiah realized, however, that not all of Judah’s troubles were over. He recognized that the national repentance was shallow, and would therefore be short-lived. In this context, he prophesied of a future Babylonian invasion when Judah would not be spared. This time of future punishment would be the result of national sins, and idolatry was the fountainhead from which those sins would flow. Rejection of the Creator in favor of the gods of the surrounding nations leads to a rejection of the laws that the Creator God has given His people. This rejection of God’s instructions leads into every imaginable sin.
Several chapters in the latter part of Isaiah lampoon idolatry, and hold it up to the ridicule it so richly deserves. Idols are contrasted with the Almighty God and shown to be useless. After all, idols are unable to declare the future in advance, or to bring to pass either good or evil (Isaiah 41:22–24). The idols are empty, and their works amount to nothing (v. 29). Yet because the human race has had a desire to trust in what can be seen, idolatry has held an almost universal allure.
God had called Israel as His special servant people (Isaiah 41:8–9), who entered into a covenant with Him at Sinai. However, idolatry led Israel of old to become a useless servant, no longer able to see or hear the Creator’s instructions. Though Isaiah foresaw God’s coming chastisement of the people, he also looked beyond to the time when the Creator would “give to Jerusalem one who brings good tidings” (v. 27)—a reference to Israel’s coming Messiah, the righteous servant.
Isaiah 42 opens by describing Jesus, the Messiah, as the faithful servant whose example would contrast with that of Israel and Judah. Matthew 12:18–20 quotes the opening four verses of Isaiah 42, applying them directly to Christ. The true Messiah would not come as a rabble-rouser or would-be revolutionary, as did so many of Israel’s false messiahs (vv. 2–3). However, He would succeed in what He set out to do (v. 4).
Ultimately the Eternal will come forth, after having held His peace, to punish the nations and bring His people back from captivity (vv. 13–17). His deaf and blind servant, Israel (vv. 18–20), would not recognize the significance of what God had entrusted to the nation at Sinai; in response, God contrasts their behavior with that of His true Servant, the Messiah, who would “magnify the law and make it honorable” (v. 21). Understanding this verse is vital to understanding Jesus Christ’s relationship to the law.
What does it mean to “magnify” the law? The Hebrew word used in Isaiah 42, gadal, is used several times in the Old Testament. In Genesis 19:19 it describes God having magnified His mercy to Lot. In 2 Chronicles 1:1, we learn that God magnified, or enlarged, the scope of Solomon’s kingdom. The word gadal carries the meaning of “making greater in size and importance.”
We are all familiar with how a magnifying glass enlarges print, or helps us to notice details that we had never seen before. Do you remember looking through a microscope in a high school biology class, and seeing things on a slide that had been invisible to your naked eye? That is what Jesus Christ would do to the law! He would bring things to light that had previously been overlooked or unnoticed.
Isaiah 42:21 also states that He would make the law “honorable.” The Hebrew word adhar means to “make something glorious or more majestic.” In the book of Exodus (15:6, 11) it is used to describe God in the aftermath of the great miracles by which He vanquished Pharaoh and the Egyptian armies, through which God’s glory became more evident for all to see.
This is exactly what the Messiah would do. He would magnify the law to bring to light things previously overlooked. He would reveal its glory and splendor more fully. Understanding this prophecy from Isaiah helps us to grasp what Jesus Christ was revealing in the latter part of Matthew 5.
Not To Destroy, But To Fulfill
Jesus declared to His listeners: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). Amazingly, in spite of Christ’s plain statement, many professing Christians assume that Jesus in some way came to get rid of the Old Testament law and our need to actually obey it.
This is ironic when you consider that Jesus said He did not come to destroy the law. The Greek word for “destroy” is kataluoo—a word used in Matthew 24:2 to describe the building blocks of the temple being thrown down in the coming Roman destruction. In other words, Christ did not come to cast down or destroy God’s law, but to fulfill it.
Matthew’s gospel uses the Greek word for fulfill more frequently than any other book in the New Testament. Most often, Matthew quotes from an Old Testament passage, and shows how a particular event in Christ’s life fulfilled it—brought that prophecy to life. Matthew mentions Old Testament scriptures referring to the Messiah’s virgin birth, His birth in Bethlehem, Herod’s slaughter of the infants, Christ’s brief sojourn in Egypt with his parents, and His growing up in Nazareth, all in connection with the phrase “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets” (Matthew 2:23). Jesus fulfilled the words of the prophets of old by doing what they had foretold centuries earlier.
What else can we learn from Matthew’s use of the word “fulfill”? Matthew recounts Jesus giving a parable: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away” (Matthew 13:47–48).
The Sea of Galilee was home to a thriving fishing industry with which Jesus’ listeners were all familiar. Jewish fishermen drew ashore nets full of fish, and promptly separated those that were usable (the clean fish) from those that were unclean and had to be cast back into the water. The word Matthew used to describe a net full of fish is the same word he used in Matthew 5:17 to describe what Jesus intended to do to the law. Christ’s explanations and actions were going to make the law full, just as the fish would make the net full.
Another example is found in Matthew 15:37: “So they all ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets full of the fragments that were left.” This is the story of Jesus feeding a crowd of four thousand men (along with the women and children present) with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. After all had eaten their fill, the disciples gathered up seven baskets full of leftover food. Just as the people filled the baskets to the brim with physical food, so Jesus filled the law to the brim with His teaching and explanation.
Several other verses use that same word translated “fulfill” in Matthew 5:17. In John 12:3, we learn that when Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointed Jesus’ feet with precious ointment a few days before His crucifixion, “the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” Later, in John 16:6, we find that when Jesus talked of going away to where His disciples could not come, sorrow filled their hearts. In Acts 5:28, the chief priests, who had earlier commanded the Apostles to cease preaching in Jesus’ name, angrily accused them of having “filled Jerusalem with your doctrine.”
Jesus fulfilled the law by filling it full. Just as fish fill a net, food fills a basket, and a scent fills a room, so also did Jesus fill the law. How exactly did He do this?
Filling up the Law
In Matthew 5:21–47, Jesus illustrated what He meant by filling up the law. He gave five illustrations from the law, and proceeded to magnify them and make them more glorious than ever. He quoted precepts from the law with which His hearers were familiar, and showed aspects of those precepts that his hearers had never considered before. In each case, He filled the law to the full by bringing out its full meaning and implication. In doing so, Jesus repeated the formula: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you.”
He began by quoting from the Ten Commandments: “You shall not murder” (v. 21). Jesus explained that this commandment encompassed the spirit of murder as well as the literal act. To hate someone, or to hold them in utter contempt, is the attitude of murder. Jesus magnified that commandment, and showed His audience that it contained far more than they had ever imagined.
Next, Jesus quoted another of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not commit adultery” (v. 27). He explained two different ways of violating that commandment: harboring lustful thoughts, or engaging in divorce and remarriage except upon narrow biblical grounds. Jesus’ hearers could understand that the seventh commandment actually precluded far more than they had realized.
In verse 33, Jesus addressed the subject of oaths by referring to the injunction contained in Leviticus 19:12: “And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.” Many of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day used very elaborate reasoning to identify which oaths were more binding than others. All of their legal sophistry missed the whole point of what God actually intended. Jesus filled that injunction of the law to full measure by explaining: “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matthew 5:37). God simply wants us to tell the truth!
Jesus continued with an illustration from the civil statutes: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (v. 38). This precept is repeated three times in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), and emphasizes the importance of fairness in making the punishment fit the crime. In ancient Israel the judges were forbidden to mete out punishment more severe than the infraction that had been committed. This is the spirit of justice. In Jesus’ day, the Jewish nation seethed with resentment against the unfairness of Roman rule. Roman authorities committed injustices almost constantly. Did this statute mean that the Jews should seek to retaliate and “get even” with the Romans in the spirit of “justice”? Jesus filled that injunction to the full by showing that His listeners should cheerfully submit to unfairness as individuals, and thereby leave justice to God.
Jesus’ fifth example was the well-known injunction from Leviticus 19:18, exhorting us to love our neighbors as ourselves. The scribes and lawyers of Jesus’ day readily acknowledged that the only more important command was that we should love God with all of our heart and soul and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5). It is one thing to acknowledge a principle as true; it is quite another to practice it in your daily life. Notice one lawyer’s response to Jesus after acknowledging the importance of this injunction: “But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Luke 10:29). Though all who attended the synagogue were familiar with the command to love their neighbor, they did not in fact “get the point” of what God had intended. Again, Jesus filled it to the full by magnifying the scope, and showing that there was far more contained in this vital precept than any of His audience had ever seen before.
What Does God Truly Seek?
Did you know that one of the reasons for which Jesus Christ came was so that the righteous requirement of God’s law might be fulfilled in us? Christ lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father during which “He condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Living for thirty-three-and-a-half years as a real human being, Jesus Christ set us a perfect example as He totally exercised the power of God’s Holy Spirit—the same Spirit available to you and to me—to completely overcome the pulls of human nature.
The righteous requirement of the law will be fulfilled in us if we walk according to the Spirit rather than the flesh. If we follow the lead of the Spirit rather than the pull of the flesh, we will truly be the sons of God (Romans 8:14). It is through the Holy Spirit that the love of God is poured out in our hearts (Romans 5:5). This love is what enables us to fulfill God’s law (Romans 13:8–10).
“God is love,” the scripture tells us (1 John 4:16). We are to respond to God’s love for us by loving Him and loving others. This love will be demonstrated by our obedience to His commands (1 John 5:3) and by the way that we treat others (1 John 4:20–21). When Jesus fulfilled the law, He filled up the injunctions that God had previously given His people, by showing their full scope and intent both through His example and by His explanations. We are to mature and develop spiritually, growing toward Christ’s fullness (Ephesians 4:13).
Jesus told His followers that the ultimate purpose of obedience from the heart is so that we might become just like our Father in heaven (Matthew 5:48). Jesus Christ in no way “did away with” or even “watered down” God’s law. Rather, He filled up the law by revealing its fullness and glory to us. Not only that, but just as He demonstrated the full intent of God’s law by the life He lived on earth 2,000 years ago, so also will He live that same kind of life in each of us today through the power of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 2:20).
Jesus Christ fulfilled the law when He walked the earth as a human being. He will also fulfill it over and over again—in your life and mine—if we will let Him live in us!