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.
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Matthew 5:18 — "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."
The Lord's Testimony to the Permanence of Scripture
This verse stands as one of the strongest affirmations of the authority and inspiration of God's word ever uttered. A. J. Pollock shows how sweeping its claim is:
A. J. PollockThink not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till earth and heaven pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Matt. 5:17-18). If this is not a clear and emphatic claim to verbal inspiration, then words have no meaning.
He presses the weight of the actual terms the Lord chose:
In the passage just quoted the law stands for the five books of Moses, and with the prophets and psalms, embraces the whole of the Old Testament... In the Scripture we have just quoted, our Lord does not refer to words, but to parts of words. What is a "jot"? The smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, answering to the letter, "I," in our English alphabet. What is a "tittle"? It is even less than part of a word. It is part of a letter, consisting of a small mark to distinguish one letter from another... If the very "jots" and "tittles" are inspired, then every word is inspired.
So the Lord's statement is not a vague tribute to Moses — it reaches down to the smallest stroke of the pen. J. G. Bellett, writing on the value Jehovah puts upon His revelation, traces the same note right through the ministry of Christ:
In His teachings, He is ever referring to that word, rebuking the Jews for their value for anything else, for their use of traditions, and their neglect of it, and giving them to know that not a jot or tittle of it can in any wise fail; that the scripture cannot be broken.
Not to Destroy but to Fulfil
The great question Matthew 5:17-18 raises for a Jewish hearer is this: if Messiah is announcing a new kind of blessedness, does He set aside the law? William Kelly frames it plainly:
William KellyIf there was this new kind of blessedness, so foreign to the thoughts of Israel after the flesh, what was the relation of the law to Christ's doctrine and the new state of things about to be introduced?... 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.
Kelly then takes "fulfil" in its largest sense — not merely obedience, but a complete vindication of the law in the person and work of Christ:
In His own person the Lord fulfilled the law and the prophets, in His own ways, in righteous subjection and obedience. His life here below exhibited its beauty for the first time without flaw. His death was the most solemn sanction which the law ever could receive, because the curse that it pronounced upon the guilty, the Saviour took upon Himself. There was nothing the Saviour would not undergo, rather than God should have dishonour.
And more: Christ expounded the law as no one else could:
There is an expansion of the law, or δικαίωμα (righteous requirement), giving to its moral element the largest scope, so that all which was honouring to God in it should be brought out in its fullest power and extent. The light of heaven was now let fall upon the law, and the law interpreted, not by weak, failing men, but by One who had no reason to evade one jot of its requirements; whose heart, full of love, thought only of the honour and the will of God... For the commandment of God is exceeding broad, whether we look at its making an end of all perfection in man, or the sum of it in Christ.
"Till All Be Fulfilled" — Does This Put the Christian Under Law?
A common error treats verse 18 as though the Lord were binding His disciples to the law as a rule of life. J. N. Darby answers this directly:
J. N. DarbyThat Christ maintained the authority of Law and Prophets no one doubts, and, as far as fulfilled, they are fulfilled in Him. The question is, Does He put us under the Law as law?
His answer is no. He holds every word of verse 18 at its full strength — and insists that its "fulfilment" is in Christ Himself, not in the believer's ongoing subjection to Sinai:
"Least" echoes "least," and it is maintaining every jot and tittle of the Law, even the smallest, which I fully believe, but to be fulfilled by Christ, not carried on, though many things in it may abide, but it must (genetai) never be set aside, but fulfilled by Christ as God's own word.
Darby presses the distinction that governs the whole Sermon on the Mount:
Christ fulfilled the law no doubt — He was born or came under it; that does not say He put us under it after He was risen and no longer under it, having borne its curse. And the kingdom had taken a wholly new form, the King being rejected and hid in God.
And again, contrasting the law and Christianity as two wholly different standpoints:
The Law, as a rule, is what man should be for God — Christianity is what God is for man, and God in Man, and that is our full pattern... In this, Christ was in life before redemption. But for us the full character is also what He did in redemption.
The Result
Kelly sums up how the Lord's words honoured the law even as He carried His hearers far beyond it:
Far from annulling the law, the Lord, on the contrary, illustrated it more brightly than ever, and gave it a spiritual application that man was entirely unprepared for before He came.
Put the threads together and Matthew 5:18 says two things at once. First, it is the Lord's own unqualified seal upon the inspiration of the Old Testament — down to the smallest letter and the smallest stroke. Nothing in the law or the prophets can fail; heaven and earth themselves will pass away sooner than one mark of it. Second, that complete, unbreakable law finds its fulfilment in Christ — in His spotless life, in His bearing of its curse on the cross, and in the spiritual expansion of its moral element which He Himself gives in the verses that follow. To destroy the law would be to overthrow the gospel's foundation; to place the believer back under it would be to deny that Christ has already met its every jot and tittle on our behalf.