"What About The Law?" Matthew 5:17-20

OK.  So Jesus tells us clearly that He did not come to abolish the law, rather, to fulfill it.  He then gives a stern warning to not alter or even relax the law until it has been accomplished.  Next, however, He tells us that the law-based righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, the religious elite, would not be good enough to get us into the Kingdom.  What is Jesus saying here?  Are we as followers of Jesus bound by the Old Testament system of laws, or not?

If we base our understanding of our current relationship to the Old Testament law only on what Jesus is teaching here, we will likely remain perpetually confused.  Fortunately, this is not the only place where Jesus taught about the law.  And, even here we get a few clues that will help us come to a good understanding.

Jesus said here that He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.  He also implies that one day the law will be accomplished or completed.  Let's keep those thoughts in mind -Jesus will fulfill the law, and it will be accomplished or completed.  The questions, then, must now be: did this happen -if so, when, and what is our relationship to the law in light of what Jesus did?

You might remember that in His final moments while dying on the cross for our sins, Jesus said, "It is finished," meaning "it is completed," or "it is accomplished."  Just so we grasp the significance of that statement we need to know that Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, which begins with the words "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"  The last words of Psalm 22 are, "He has done it."  (He has accomplished it -it is finished.)  Psalm 22 is a Messianic prophecy -a prophecy concerning the death of the Messiah and what would be accomplished.  In quoting Psalm 22, Jesus was both claiming to be the Messiah, and claiming to fulfill the prophecies and the work of the Messiah.  Jesus had accomplished what He came to do.  And according to our passage today, at least part of what Jesus came to do was to fulfill (not abolish) the law.

In Jesus' death and resurrection, the whole of the law, including the penalty of the law, was accomplished and fulfilled.  The Old Testament covenant was completed.  We now have a new covenant, a new agreement with God.  So, now that the old laws have been completed, what is the arrangement -what is this new agreement?

The new agreement is actually not new at all, rather it is the ability to enter into a relationship with God that God has desired from the beginning.  It is the most fundamental and profound agreement in the history of human kind: to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, with all of our souls, with all of our minds, with all of our strength -and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  The new/old law of the Kingdom of God -in fact, the only true law of the Kingdom of God is the law of love.