INSPIRE NEWSCAST

One day Jesus is sitting on a mountainside talking to his disciples and a great crowd of people, and he decides to address the question of the law. It’s a tricky topic, but he’s not in the habit of avoiding tricky topics, even though everyone in the crowd would have had an opinion about the law and how it was to be interpreted.

He starts off by saying: 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. What was he saying? Well, here’s a way of understanding it. If there was a game of football, and part way through the game, the umpires called for the game to stop and told everyone to go home, the game would have have been cancelled – or abolished. If the game was allowed to come to its natural end, it would be fulfilled.

When Jesus came, he lived within the law of the land, and the religious law. He did not abolish the law while he was one earth. But at his death on the cross, Jesus cried out, “it is finished.” At the cross, the law had reached its fulfilment.

Jesus went on to say to the people there on the mountainside:  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. If we argue that the law is still in place we suggest that Jesus death did not accomplish all he set out to do. We’re claiming that the cross was only a partial accomplishment, which goes against Jesus’ own teaching, and the whole teaching of the New Testament, that in his death, Jesus accomplished all that God had sent him to do.

So what does that mean in practical terms? Watch out for next week’s blog when I get into the nitty gritty of observing the law.