Matthew 5:17

II. CHRISTIAN PIETY DISTINGUISHED FROM JUDAISM, Matthew 5:17 to Matthew 6:19.

The Saviour next proceeds to show the relations in which his GOSPEL stands to the previous dispensation, as being the fulfilment and confirmation of true Judaism, and the reformation of degenerate Judaism.

1 . Christianity the completion of pure Judaism, Matthew 5:17-20.

17. Think not The crowds who came to the great gathering at the Mount had their thoughts. What will this great Jesus do? Will he destroy the law by letting all commandment go, and fulfil the prophets by a great and glorious kingdom? Or will he wholly destroy Moses, and set the Old Testament at naught? Our Lord gives them a powerful think not. Believe not, O ye people, whatever I may say of your elders as false interpreters, that I for a moment disparage Moses. Think it not, whatever your false shepherds may hereafter charge against me. Nor think ye, my disciples, who are to preach my doctrines, that while ye must rend away the false interpretations of the doctors, ye must overthrow the foundations laid by God’s ancient word.

It is remarked by Alford that rationalism generally commences by doubting the Old Testament. Paley had said before him, that infidels generally endeavour to wound the New Testament through the Old. Indeed, in the second century a half Christian, Marcion, endeavoured wholly to abandon the Old Testament, and retain Christianity wholly separate. And as these words of Christ were in his way, he altered the text and made it read, “What think ye? That I have come to fulfil the law or the prophets? I have come to destroy, but not to fulfil.”

I am come Not I am born. He is the great Comer. He has come for a work, and what that work is he will now pronounce. By so doing he answers the question, Art thou He that should come?

The law, or the prophets The Law and the Prophets was a customary phrase for the whole Old Testament. See Matthew 7:12; Matthew 11:13; Matthew 22:40. But the Law and the Prophets are here viewed not as merely separate books of the Old Testament. Law, as God’s commandment, and prophecy, as God’s promises or threatenings for the future, are blended in the whole Old Testament. The law Christ fulfils not only by his own obedience and atonement, but by perfecting its obedience in his saints, and executing its penalty upon the impenitent. The prophecies he fulfils not only in his own life and sufferings, but in the establishment, glory, and perpetuity of his kingdom.

The law, as requiring the Mosaic ritual and the Jewish state, was fully accomplished, and both ceased at the required time. So that Christ does not require any obedience to the peculiarities of the Old Testament in the New. On the other hand, the Old Testament remains divinely sanctioned by Christ as the first volume to the New. Its law was God’s law; its prophets were God’s prophets. So that no one can strike at one Testament without striking at the other.

Destroy the law… but to fulfil The ceremonial law, consisting of types and shadows, would be fulfilled in the Anti-type, Christ. The moral law, which requires man to do right, and only right, and which is mainly embodied in the Decalogue, is perpetual. Prophets They are not destroyed, but their authority is forever established by the fulfilment of all their predictions. Christianity, therefore, is not the destruction, but the completion of Mosaicism. A greater than Moses carries the work of Moses to an honourable consummation.