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 Question Behind "Think Not"
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.
What "Fulfil" Means
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.
Not Just the Law — the Prophets Too
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.
The Authority of the One Speaking
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.
Where the Fulfilling Ends
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.
Does This Put the Christian Under Law?
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.
Summary
- 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.