Think not that I am come to make void the law or the prophets; I am not come to make void, but to fulfil.
The Sermon on the Mount had just described a blessedness unlike anything Israel expected. That raised an obvious question. If Jesus brings in something new, what happens to Moses and the prophets? His answer settles both the authority of the older Scriptures and the meaning of His own coming.
The verses before this describe a new kind of blessedness. That raised a worry for anyone taught to honour the law:
Here was a new kind of blessedness, quite foreign to the thoughts of Israel as a natural people. So how did the law relate to Christ's teaching and to the new state of things about to come in? Did not the law come from God through Moses?… Weaken the authority of the law, and it is clear that you destroy the foundation on which the gospel rests; for the law was of God as certainly as the gospel.
Commentators press for something wider than "keep":
To "fulfil" does not mean obeying at all. It simply means giving the fulness. The Lord, like the gospel, fully confirms the law as coming from God.
One writer draws it as a portrait matched at last by its living original:
The law was like a beautiful portrait, the portrait of a perfect man… When Jesus came every feature of it found living expression in Him. He was the original. He filled out its every smallest detail, brought out all its beauty and made it alive.
He names two things, and together they stand for the whole Old Testament:
"The law and the prophets" was the recognized phrase for the whole Old Testament. They belonged to a period already past, but they had not passed away with it… Christ did not come to destroy the law and the prophets. He came to fulfil, or rather complete — fill them out. What would the Old Testament be without the New? Very much like a finger, pointing into empty space!
By fulfilling them, He also vouches for them:
Read the Gospels with a simple heart, and you will find the whole life and teaching of Jesus woven through with the truth of the law and the prophets as we have them in our ordinary Bibles. To remove their authority, you would have to tear away all the revelation of Christ in them… He was born in Bethlehem, because by God's will the prophet had said so.
He is not defending the law as an outsider. He speaks about it as its Author:
We now see our Lord speaking as the One who is greater than Moses. Sitting on the mountain, He speaks with greater authority than Moses or anyone before Him, because He has greater authority. The One who speaks about the law and the prophets, confirming and expanding them, is the One who gave the law to Moses. His fingers wrote on the tablets of stone. His Spirit revealed the visions to the prophets.
What follows presses the law into the heart. That honours the law and leaves every hearer exposed:
He then presses the law home in its deepest spiritual meaning. He searches down into the hearts of the scribes and Pharisees and shows their guilt. He magnifies the law, but in doing so, proves all to be under sin. Then, in infinite love, He goes to the cross and bears the penalty of a broken law for all who believe on Him.
Some quote this verse to prove believers must live under the law of Moses. Commentators reply that fulfilment argues the opposite:
Now what Christ's fulfilling the law has to do with putting me under it I never could understand. I should have thought the opposite was true: if it is fulfilled, that is the end of the matter. He fulfilled the sacrifices in the same way, and all the more since He speaks of the prophets as well. The word "fulfil" is used of both, and that gives it a force quite different from what people try to make of it.
What He gives is not a lower standard but a deeper one, spoken on His own authority:
Our Lord is going to expand the great moral principles of the law into commandments that come from Himself, not just from Moses… He recognized the full value of the ten commandments. But He was about to open out the mind of God in a way far deeper than anyone had thought before.
- Fill, not kill — "Fulfil" does not mean obeying. It means giving the fulness, completing what the older Scriptures had only begun.
- Filled in Him — Every feature of the law found living expression in Christ. He was the original the portrait pictured.
- Filled out to the whole Book — "The law and the prophets" means the whole Old Testament. Without fulfilment it would be a finger pointing into empty space.
- Filled to the cross — He presses the law into the heart and proves all to be under sin. Then He bears the penalty of the broken law for those who believe.
- Filled, therefore finished — Since He fulfilled the law, this verse cannot put the believer back under it. His own words are now the deeper standard.
For verily I say unto you, Until the heaven and the earth pass away, one iota or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all come to pass.
In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord promises that His new teaching does not cancel the Old Testament. Two questions follow. What does it mean that the smallest stroke of writing is safe? And does that leave the Christian under the law of Moses?
(Older translations read "jot and tittle" and "till all be fulfilled" where the ESV has "not an iota, not a dot" and "until all is accomplished.")
The verse opens with "for," giving the reason behind verse 17. One writer says "fulfil" means more than a life of law-keeping:
There is no doubt that the Lord obeyed the law. But that is not what fulfilling means. He gave the law and the prophets their full scope. He did even more, for He revealed God in Himself by His words and His ways, and He made known those secrets of the kingdom that were entirely hidden in earlier days... But nothing in the new could weaken the authority of God in the old.
The two words at the heart of the verse are marks of handwriting, not points of doctrine:
The "jot and tittle" were the smallest marks in the Hebrew alphabet. The jot, or yodh, matches our "i" — a very small letter in Hebrew. The tittle was not a letter at all, but a small mark that told one letter apart from another. So we might put it this way: "not a dot to an 'i,' or a cross to a 't.'"
The promise reaches that far down: "inspiration is here claimed for even a single letter and even a part of a letter" (A. J. Pollock).
Many read the last clause as "until people have obeyed it all." One writer finds a different Greek word here than in verse 17:
Our version translates this as "be fulfilled," but it is a different word from the one just used. Such coming to pass could not mean the keeping of commandments. No one would speak of the ten commandments as something that had to come to pass. This coming to pass has to do with the law in its wider sense, which one would say must include the prophets as well.
"Until" implies a date. One writer places the full keeping of the law in the coming reign of Christ, not in Israel's past:
Nothing of the law will pass away until it is fulfilled in the millennium, in a way Israel's history has never yet seen. The words "till all be fulfilled" point ahead to the glorious reign of Christ as King. Then every Old Testament prophecy will come true, and every word of the law will be kept.
The Lord measures His word against heaven and earth, and His word outlasts them. One writer draws both comfort and a warning from that:
This is very sweet to us. What a priceless treasure we have in the word God has given us! It is steadier than heaven or earth, more solid, more lasting. That is what we have to build on for eternity! So how careful we should be never to corrupt God's word! The Pharisees cancelled it and set it aside by their traditions.
People often use this verse to argue that believers must still keep the law of Moses. One writer answers that a lasting law is not a ruling law:
No; the law stands in all its details. So it stands within all the limits it sets for itself, and for all the purposes it was given for, and for no others. This is simple enough to understand. Yet people who use words like these to lay the yoke of the law on the necks of Christians do not understand it.
Another writer says those who press this verse "only take what is convenient and ignore the rest." For the believer, he adds, "the law the law has been fulfilled in Christ" (A. J. Pollock).
If not one stroke can be dropped, then sin cannot be waved away. It has to be dealt with:
Nothing upheld the majesty of the law like the death of Christ. He kept it in full at every step of His life. He made it great and honoured it. Yet He bore the law's curse for those who had broken it... The law demanded what man could never give, and cursed him for not giving it. Grace first blesses a man, and then makes him able to do far more than the law demanded.
- Not one letter — the promise reaches the smallest letter and the mark that tells two letters apart. God's word is safe down to a dot.
- Not cancelled — Christ gave the law and the prophets their full scope, and nothing new He brought weakened the authority of the old.
- Not yet finished — "until all is accomplished" points ahead. Writers tie the full keeping of the law to the coming reign of Christ.
- Not a yoke — the law stands for the purposes it was given for and no others, so lasting does not mean ruling over the believer.
- Not ignored — Christ honoured every letter at the cross. He kept the law in full, then bore its curse for those who broke it.