This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Sermon on the Mount” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 9, 1986.
About this sermon
Matthew 5:17 raises three exegetical questions at once: whether Christ changes the law, what ‘fulfill’ means, and how that fulfillment fits the six contrasts of 5:21-48. Two common errors about 5:17-20 fall short. The verse demands more patience than either allows.
Sermon transcript
reading this morning is from Matthew chapter five, and we are reading from verse seventeen through verse thirty-two. This is Matthew five, verse seventeen, and we are reading through verse thirty-two. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
For verily, I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, He shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
He had heard that it was said by them of old times thou shalt not kill. And whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment, and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raka, shall be in danger of the council. But whosoever shall say thou fool shall be in danger of hellfire.
Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath fought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him, left at any time the adversary deliver the judge and the judge deliver the officer and down the path into prison. Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. He occurred that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery.
But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery. And whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery.”
Our Lord, we would have all of you. We would be done with the flattery of ourselves. The presumption. Surely we would not think more highly of ourselves than we are. And Lord, we would beseech you that we would stand out of the way, that Jesus Christ would shine forth brightly, and that by him this word would be illumined. We pray, Father, that with the light given by him, we with all humility and with all seriousness might live before you that we might shine forth brightly ourselves as lights in a dark place. This we pray through Christ our Savior.
Amen. This morning. I can say to you. Without the least bit of exaggeration. That I am faced with the most difficult preaching assignment. Of my ministry. Now there is one yet outstanding. On the considerations that commence. And that is the Book of Romans. If I’m here when I’m sixty, we might get to the Book of Romans. But truly, I am faced now with the most difficult preaching assignment of my ministry. and being quite honest, I feel hardly adequate for it. But the time has come, and the task cannot be avoided.
Therefore, by God’s grace, I am compelled to forge ahead. Standing before us Matthew five, seventeen, and following. Running on the forty-eight. A section of Matthew’s gospel and Jesus sermon on the Mount. That has proven particularly difficult and especially controversial oftentimes resistant to satisfying penetration. So here we go. We come to this portion of God’s Word by a somewhat circuitous route. You will recall that we began our messages on the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes last year. We covered the first sixteen verses of Matthew five in a series that ended in the spring, and for the Easter season and the week that followed.
We then turn to the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel to consider Matthew’s declaration of Christ’s resurrection. But interestingly, our consideration of that final chapter in Matthew brought us to the so-called Great Commission. And you may recall that we noted there, in those closing verses of this gospel, the prominence of Christ’s words in that commission, namely, that his disciples were to teach the nations to observe whatsoever he had commanded them. It was, therefore, his emphasis upon his commandments.
And the prospect of returning to Matthew five and taking up where we left off at verse seventeen. That drove us to consider the Old Testament roots for any further reflection upon what Jesus could possibly mean by his teachings on the law and the commandment. Therefore, we have spent some time now reviewing the Ten Commandments. To what end?
Our hope has been to appreciate the commandments afresh, not as Jews, but as Christians, not as moralists, but as the Lord’s redeemed. To see them in the light of God’s glorious climactic act in Christ, in the light of the risen reigning Lord. to see in them something of the difference that Jesus Christ makes to even as basic a consideration as the Lord. All this in the interests of the most basic contention. Nothing is the same since Christ came.
Not even the Lord. Here we are at Matthew 517. But as we begin, let me attempt, however imperfectly, to acquaint you with the problems before us as we take up this weighty portion of Scripture. The first problem. Quite serious. Difficult. The first problem is this.
If we stand by the contention that we have asserted. That nothing is the same since Christ came. If we stand by that contention, how can we then square that contention with what we find in verses 17 and follow? In fact, many a reading of these verses has claimed just the opposite. As far as the law is concerned, so it is asserted, nothing has changed whatsoever. Therefore, Christian obligation finds itself pursuing, albeit with new intensity or even deeper insight, the same, precisely the same, ethical line as we find in the Old Testament. The law is merely being republished and reissued by Jesus.
This problem leads us to a second. And here the fight is enjoined in earnest. And any one of you here this morning who has taken up these verses in debate with someone else knows that inevitably the focus of the debate is going to center on one were. The word is. What does. Jesus says. I did not come to abolish, or in the authorized version, I did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill. Well, here we go. What are our options?
There are at least three major schools of thought about the force of that word. Some have contended that fulfilled means to bring to full expression, to bring to full expression, or to bring to light the true me, to bring to light the true me, or to set forth the proper intention, the intention that was there beneath the surface.
Now this interpretation, you should understand, banks upon a distinction made within the law itself. A distinction between an outer and inner character for the law itself. And it is this distinction which Jesus now makes plain. The Old Testament, we are told, according to this interpretation, majored on the outer. Jesus Christ brings about a penetration to the inner core of the commandment, the law. The New Testament focuses on the inner.
This interpretation also has a specific perspective on Christ. For those who hold it, they assert the intention here is to set forth Jesus Christ as the new Moses, who provides the people of God with the proper, final interpretation of the law. the latter-day Moses family, bringing to light the law’s inner meaning. All right, that’s one approach to this word fulfillment, and there are many who have embraced it, even some within Reformed circles. There are others who have approached the word in a more covenantal fashion, with an emphasis falling upon the continuity of the covenant God’s dealings with his people.
The idea here is that Jesus claims, with the word fulfilled, to establish the law, and by that claims to validate the law. Or, as Dr. Greg Bonson of Theonomy fame claims, and many other reformed people with him, Jesus here is saying nothing more than that the law is confirmed and reasserted by him. On this position, the law itself is a constant, which in its integrity has been lost from view by Israel Jesus Christ is therefore the covenantal executor, a legal figure certifying the law’s perpetual validity and administrating it in keeping with its original intent. The law then here, reasserted, confirmed, validated by Jesus Christ. who in the legal fashion certifies the law’s perpetual validity and administrates that law, keeping with the original. First, we had Jesus as the new Moses, and now we have Jesus the lawyer, and now we move on to a third position.
There have been those who have seen this word fulfill as meaning to fill up or to fill just taking the word apart. They have concluded that the sense in which Jesus means it is in this sense, to bring to conclusion, completing all that the law truly stood for. Not that the covenant is lost from view, But the stress is more upon the historical distinction between the old administration and the new, and also upon the transition that has been affected in and by Christ. Therefore, the emphasis falls upon Jesus as the end point of the law. not only as the one who perfectly fulfills, or fills full, the will of God, but the one about whom, note this point, the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote.
In fact, Jesus himself, the Son of God, now incarnate, now appearing in the world, is the one in whom the new promised covenant appears. And from the vantage point of the new, his shadow, Jesus’ shadow, falls back over the Old Testament, making it plain that the fulfillment, which he himself is, is what the law and the prophets were aiming at all along.
I betrayed myself. It isn’t my objective this morning to settle this debate. But I think that you probably have guessed where I stand and in what direction I mean. Nevertheless. If we make a choice between these options that are before us, they may appear a bit subtle to you right now. But hopefully we’ll endeavor to make them more clear as we make our way through this passage. If we are forced to make a choice between the options or even in our own nation. Come up with another option.
It should at least be clear to us that our choice must bear the weight of what we find in verses seventeen to twenty. That in the entirety of that section and also the weight of what we find seventeen. So that’s going to be the task, the undertaking. You see, in choosing one of these options concerning the interpretation of the word fulfill, it is in fact confirmed by what we find by our study in the rest of the verses.
We talked about two problems. Now, we have another third. And that third problem appears to you as you make your way from verse 21 on to the end of the chapter. Well, as we do that, we are struck, we cannot help but be struck by the refrain. Jesus reiterates again and again. You have heard it from the ancients. but then he concludes, but I say unto you, you have heard from the ancients, but I say unto you. This refrain in various language is repeated six times as you move to the conclusion of the chapter. How are we to take the contrast introduced to us in this fashion by Jesus.
You see, the problem is quite difficult. Because the statements of verses seventeen through twenty are so very strong concerning what seems to be a positive assessment of the Old Testament administration and the Old Law. While the statements of verses twenty one to twenty forty eight seen in some sense. In some sense.
To either lay aside or go beyond. The Commandments the law as it was specifically spoken in the Old Testament book. Is it as some have claimed that Jesus, in these verses, 21 through 48, is merely deepening the demand of the law? Or is it, as others have claimed, that he is actually radicalizing the law, so that the law itself is undergoing some sort of strange, mysterious transformation? At his hand. By him. Well.
This sermon might be quite difficult. You might feel that you weren’t prepared for this. You didn’t come with pen and pencil or with some paper. I hope that sermons down the road can bring some light as well as reflect the life of the passage that is before us. The problems are then set in front of us, problems that we are going to face in the coming weeks, ones that we will want to keep in mind as we study out this portion of God’s Word. But as I conclude this morning, I want to point out a couple of features. Which I hope will not only help you in understanding what is before you here. But also comfort and challenge. As well. Please. Don’t lose sight. Of those to whom Jesus is speaking. If there is a common mistake among interpreters, it is found here, followed by a second, which I’m about to mention. But don’t lose sight of those to whom Jesus is speaking.
You see, over and over again, it is suggested by many scholars that Jesus intended audience is the anonymous unbelieving Jewish establishment. That has launched against Jesus a charge of fanatical antinomious anti-law. And here, so it is claimed, Jesus is making his defense against those accusations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is not speaking to the anonymous unbelieving Jewish establishment about their charges against him of a fanatical anti-law. You see, his audience in 517 is the same as the audience in 516. That audience is the believing church. His intimate disciples, you, his own, the people of God. He is speaking to you.
And the basic power of 5.17 and following is the fact that there is something about what has proceeded which necessitates Jesus speaking the way he does in verse 17 and following. Now, what is it that necessitates in speaking in the way in which he does against the background of what he is already said in verses three sixteen.
I believe that that something is brought out in verse seventeen itself. that something is Jesus’ estimation of and his declaration of the significance of his own person and appearance. His appearance means nothing less than the coming of the kingdom of heaven and its blessedness, and because of that, he is able to say in the series of the Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, etc. As I have already intimated, this fact cannot, must not be lost sight of as we read clearly, openly, verse seventeen. You see, the other thing that you must keep in hand as you take stock of this seventeenth verse, beyond the matter of the audience, is what you find plainly on the surface of that seventeenth verse. The heart of the verse is not, first of all, the question about the abolition or the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. The heart of the verse is the coming of the one who speaks his person and significance. The heart of the verse is I came.
I came, and the coming of Christ makes all the difference, and now mandates the way in which we are to see all that Who is the one? The Son of God. Emmanuel. God with us. The glorious King. To whom has been given the Earth and the Heavens. He has appeared in human flesh to fulfill all righteousness, and to save His people from their sins. Hear Him. Listen. Even though He may say things that are difficult to understand, and take a great deal of concentration on your part, hear. Your eternal destiny. Is in the.
Father, may we never lose sight of Jesus Christ, that one who stands at the center of the word given, thereby making it plain that our relationship to you and our life with you is all of grace. May this reality and truth be plain and clear to us as we study over. Father be patient with us. And be patient with your people everywhere. But father we ask that. By your spirit. There would be that proper right grabbing hold of. Your word the intention of your son, the divine purpose, these things made clear to us so that we may please you in everything. Hear us, Lord. Our hearts cry out to you. We look to you for satisfaction and for illumination.
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