Week 26 · Day 3: The Law and the Gospel
Fulfilled, Not Abolished
Christ did not set the law aside; He completed it.
What the labels mean
- Scripture explicitly says
- This states what the biblical text itself says, in the passage being read.
- Direct quotation or allusion
- One part of Scripture quotes or clearly alludes to another. The citing reference is named so you can check it.
- Canonical theme
- A connection across the whole Bible. The passages develop the same theme; one is not quoting the other.
- Interpretive conclusion
- A conclusion drawn from the text. The reasoning is given so you can weigh it against the passage.
- Application
- A step, prayer or question for the reader. Not a claim about what the passage states.
Today’s verse
Loading Matthew 5:17…
Matthew 5:17
Today’s focus
The truth of the day
Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount by ruling out a misunderstanding before it can take hold. He has not come to tear down the law and the prophets. The verb He uses instead, fulfill, points to completion, bringing something to its intended goal.
What follows in the sermon shows what that fulfillment looks like. Jesus does not lower the law's standard; He raises the reader's understanding of it, tracing murder to anger and adultery to lust, showing the law's full intention rather than its minimum requirement.
Today’s reminder
Scripture explicitly says- Fulfillment is not abolition; it is completion.
- Christ intensifies the law's meaning rather than relaxing it.
- The law and the prophets find their goal in Him.
Deeper insight
What the passage says in its own setting
The sayings that follow in Matthew 5, you have heard it said, but I say to you, are often misread as Jesus contradicting the law of Moses. In each case He is contrasting shallow interpretations with the law's actual depth: not merely refraining from murder but dealing with anger at its root (5:21-22), not merely avoiding the act of adultery but guarding the heart from lust (5:27-28). This is intensification, not relaxation.
Fulfill also carries the sense of Christ being what the law and prophets pointed toward all along, its sacrifices, its priesthood, its moral demand, converging in Him. Hebrews 10:1 calls the law a shadow of good things to come, and a shadow is not abolished by the arrival of the substance that cast it; it is simply seen for what it always was pointing toward.
Christ connection
Where this leads to Jesus
Canonical themeEverything the law and prophets anticipated, sacrifice, priesthood, kingship, righteousness, meets its completion in Christ, which is why Luke 24:27 shows Him opening all the Scriptures to explain the things concerning Himself.
Reflection
ApplicationWhere have you settled for the minimum reading of a commandment rather than its full intention as Christ reveals it?
Today’s action
ApplicationTake one commandment from the Sermon on the Mount and examine your heart, not just your actions, against it today.
Today’s prayer
ApplicationLord Jesus, You did not come to erase what God had spoken but to complete it in Yourself. Teach me to see the law's full intention and to find its fulfillment in You rather than in my own performance. Amen.
Another layer
Keep going into the library
- The deep chapter study of Matthew 5
- Everything on The Law in the library