The Law of Moses: All or Nothing, Matthew 5:17-18

This passage is a problem for teachers of Covenant Eschatology (CE), seeing that the Feast days are a part of the Law. So are all the jots and tittles. This would mean that all Jews were obligated to obey all of it. Yet that would mean that grace was unavailable. Because Law and Grace are antithetical to each other, as fundamentally opposed as water and fire.

It is also, for similar reasons, a problem for futurists.

5. The Law of Moses: All or Nothing, Matthew 5:17-18

The Law is a whole (for those under the Law to eat pork is disobedience, is not loving God with all ones heart).

But it was also in effect for a specific people in history (to those it was given, not to their forefathers) until a specific time (until it was canceled, nailed to the tree, fullfilled).

I noticed recently that all through the Old Testament God tells Israel that He will do what the law could not - if they would turn to Him, turn from wickedness, then He would forgive their sins.

Looking back I don't think pastors mentioned this when preaching about the Old Testsment. But even when the Old Covenant was in place we read that God was faithful to forgive although this would be impossible under the Law.

asterisktom said:

This passage is a problem for teachers of Covenant Eschatology (CE), seeing that the Feast days are a part of the Law. So are all the jots and tittles. This would mean that all Jews were obligated to obey all of it. Yet that would mean that grace was unavailable. Because Law and Grace are antithetical to each other, as fundamentally opposed as water and fire.

It is also, for similar reasons, a problem for futurists.

5. The Law of Moses: All or Nothing, Matthew 5:17-18

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I am a futurist and I have no problem understanding why the Law of Moses was given to the nation and people of Israel as a temporary operative principle of divine dealing and it was not given to gentiles. It was added to the Abrahamic Covenant after 430 years as an Addendum to it to condition them for the covenant blessing which we know now is the gift of the indwelling Spirit of Christ of all believers making all Jews the spiritual children of Abraham. This is what Paul means in Galatians when he blesses the "Israel of God." He means only those of the stock of Abraham who have received the Spirit. Gentiles who are saved the exact same way, by believing in Christ, his gospel, his death burial and resurrection, and receiving the Abraham Covenant promise that all families of the earth will be blessed through his seed, the Spirit, and will share the exact same status as sons of God. There is no difference. The Galatians were among the strangers of Israel's ten tribes who were the subject of Hosea's prophecy and who were cut off and dispersed from their land in 722 BC by the Assyrians. This is the reason the Judaizers were so engaged there concerning the law. They insisted on a Christian faith that made certain elements of the Law mandatory for salvation. This is false and would have confused the grace of God, the gift, the new birth by the Spirit.

1 Ti 1:8 But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;

The covenant of Law was given as a principle of divine dealing to Israel because they were sinners and the perfect Law would magnify their sin and drive them to Christ who could take it away. That was the idea. The Law was not taken away, just the operative principle of divine dealing by the law with Israel was taken away. The operative principle of divine dealing with the whole world now is grace where God gives the righteousness as a gift that the Law demanded..

The futurist knows that grace will one day end as the operative principle of divine dealing and will be replaced with righteousness as the principle but the Abrahamic covenant will be fulfilled in it's entirety, every jot and tittle. which means Abraham and Israel are raised again to occupy their promised land as a nation just like God promised him. Grace will not end, only grace as the operative principle of the rule of God.

Ga 3 explains my reasoning here. The pronouns in these verses, I believe, related to Jewish Christians in the historical context It is profitable for our learning for the rest of us..


21 Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.
22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster [to bring us] unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
29 And if ye be Christ s, then are ye Abraham s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

In order to understand what our Lord is saying in vs. 17-18, it will be helpful to read again the whole of Chapter 5 before proceeding. In v17, He is making a qualification. His teaching up to this point has been absolutely remarkable- speaking of the poor in spirit, the meek, the hungry, the persecuted and calling them ‘blessed.’ Obviously this is the reverse of what we see in our society. Today we say, blessed are the rich, the confident, the physically beautiful, those with high self-esteem. Blessed are the footballers’ wives; for they shall get higher divorce settlements. But our Lord’s words were also the opposite of what the Pharisees would have believed. They would have said, blessed are those with a righteousness of their own; blessed are the proud and those who are well thought of. So strange and remarkable was this teaching of the Lord Jesus that it was natural for people to ask, “Has this Jesus of Nazareth done away with the Scriptures? Is this preaching of his something entirely new?” So wise teacher that He is, He immediately deals with this question head on.

“Don’t imagine,” He says, “That this teaching of mine is replacing the Old Testament Scriptures. I’ve not come to do away with the Scriptures; I am their fulfilment. I am where they have been pointing and heading.” Elsewhere He declared, “these are [the Scriptures] that testify of Me” (John 5:39). This is most important to understand. When Paul declares in Rom 10:4, ‘For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,’ he doesn’t mean that Christ has put an end to the law as, say, divorce puts an end to marriage. Rather it’s the way that a terminus is the end of a railway line. It’s where the train was always headed; its fulfilment, its very purpose indeed. That is why not one jot nor tittle- not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen- shall disappear from the law until the end of time (v18).

I need to clarify this a little. There are three parts to the law given by Moses, Ceremonial, Judicial and Moral. The ceremonial law is all the sacrifices and other stuff that the Jews had to do. These were signs and types of Christ. He is the Burnt Offering, the Grain Offering, the Fellowship Offering, the Sin Offering, the Guilt Offering the Yom Kippur, the Red Heifer, the turtledove and the two pigeons. All these sacrifices looked forward to Him in their various ways and He is the fulfilment them all (cf. Heb 10:11-14). They served their purpose and are finished.

Then there are the judicial laws. These included the laws governing the land of Israel and also the sanctions against sin. Adultery, homosexuality, witchcraft and other sins were punishable by death. These laws were given to Israel as a theocracy, but with the coming of Christ, and the Gospel going out into all the world, the penalties no longer apply. They do show God’s hatred of these sins and He will certainly punish those who commit them and do not repent, but we are no longer stoning adulterers, but calling upon them to repent and trust in Christ for forgiveness. “Go and sin no more!” (John 8:11).

Thirdly, we have the moral law, summarized in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments, and summarized still further by the ‘Royal Law’ as given by the Lord Jesus in Mark 12:29-31 etc. The Decalogue is special in three different ways. Firstly, all ten of the commandments given in Exodus 20, can be found either in Genesis or in Exodus 1-19 if one looks for them. Secondly, these commandments alone were written by God Himself on tablets of stone (Deut 5:22). The rest of the Mosaic law was given, apparently by angels (Acts 7:53; Gal 3:17; Heb 2:2), to Moses who relayed it to the people. Thirdly, and following on from this, we see from Romans 2:12-15 that the Decalogue is actually written on the hearts of all men, Gentiles as well as Jews. This writing is smudged, defaced and barely legible because of the fall of man and resultant sin, but it survives in the human conscience. People know instinctively that murder, adultery and lying are wrong even if they continue to commit these things. Likewise I suggest that people also know in their hearts the claims of God on their lives even if they reject Him, which is why God will be just when He judges them.

A moment’s thought will reveal that these same commandments applied in the garden of Eden. Imagine that Adam had strangled Eve or built an altar to the sun in the middle of the garden. Do you suppose that God would have said, “That’s alright, Adam! Just so long as you don’t eat the apple!”? The very thought is ridiculous. No, no. The Decalogue represents the eternal righteousness of God and His just demands on all people. And it is in this respect that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. You sometimes hear it taught these days that the Christian has nothing to do with the ten commandments, but has only to walk in the Spirit. Walk in the Spirit by all means, but if you think that the Spirit is telling you to break one of the commandments , then I beg leave to question whether it’s the Holy Spirit of God that you’re hearing. It is the moral law of God of which the Lord Jesus is speaking in v19 and calling ‘commandments.’ Read the verse again before continuing.

But not only are we to teach and keep these commandments, but we are to do so in a very different way to that of the scribes and Pharisees. Our righteousness is to be greater than theirs.

What is the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? It is an outward obedience to the law, not from the heart; a legal but not an evangelical obedience. The Lord Jesus describes this righteousness in Matt 23. “But all their works they do to be seen by men…..Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith……..For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence…….For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (vs 5, 23, 25, 27). If you read on in Matt 5 from v21, you will see various examples that our Lord gave of legal and evangelical obedience. It’s not enough, He says, not to murder; you must not have hatred in your heart. It’s not enough merely not to commit adultery; you mustn’t so much as look lustfully at someone to whom you’re not married. It’s not enough to love your neighbour; you must love your enemy too, and those who are attacking and abusing you. And you need to perform this righteousness perfectly and continually always.

Now someone is going to say to me, “Now come on, Martin; no one can achieve that sort of perfection!” Quite right! That’s why the Bible says, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ That’s why Paul says, ‘For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one….”’ (Rom 3:9-10). But you may say, “Why is God so picky? Why can’t He accept that I’m doing my best and put up with that?” It is because of the holiness of God. People today, if they think of God at all, tend to imagine Him a a sort of jolly Santa Claus in the sky; far too soft and feeble to punish sin. But the truth is that ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (Heb 12:29). First of all, He is utterly holy. The prophet declared, ‘You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon wickedness’ (Hab 1:13). ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD God of Hosts!’ When Isaiah came face to face with the Lord, the first thing he was conscious of was his own sinfulness. “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:3, 5). Likewise Peter, when he first came to realise who Jesus might be, wanted to be as far away from Him as possible. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).

The second point is that God is utterly just. Because of His justice, He must punish sin. Psalm 7:11 tells us, ‘God is a just judge, and God is angry with sinners every day.’ So what hope is there for us? ‘Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin’ (Rom 3:19-20). We have no righteousness of our own, and we can find none in our efforts to keep the law, since we inevitably fall short. Where shall we find a righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees?

‘But now a righteousness from God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets’ (Rom 3:21). We need a righteousness that is not in ourselves; we need a righteousness that comes from God, and in the Lord Jesus Christ we have it. He has lived the life of perfect obedience to God’s law that we cannot live (Heb 4:15 etc.) and He has died the death that we deserve to die. ‘For [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’ (2Cor 5:21). There on the cross, God heaped upon Him all the sins of you and me (if you have trusted in Christ), and He imputed to us all Christ’s perfect righteousness and obedience. ‘But of Him you are in Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God- and righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ (1Cor 1:30). That’s the righteousness we need; a righteousness from God that far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, and it is attained by faith. Do you have it? Have you seen yourself as a sinner, justly under the condemnation of God, and have you trusted in Christ for your redemption. I don’t ask if you have believed that there was someone called Jesus of Nazareth who lived a long time ago and did some good stuff, but have you grasped hold of Christ like a drowning man might grasp hold of a lifebelt, crying out ‘For your name’s sake, O LORD, pardon my iniquity, for it is great’ (Psalm 25:11)? If you have, then you can know your sins forgiven and that you have eternal life. If not, then in God’s name, do it now. Lay hold of Christ and get that righteousness that far exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

[Taken from my blog post A Greater Righteousness ]