When Jesus made this proclamation, He was doing two things.
First, He was telling those who questioned His validity that He was not the heretic they thought Him to be. Anytime someone comes along to challenge the conventional wisdom, there are those who immediately rise up and denounce the challenger. They may not hear what he or she has to say, or they may only hear “enough” to make a judgment. Almost always, this judgment is one of rejection and derision.
So it was with Jesus. From the beginning of His public ministry, there were those who questioned His intentions and His devotion to their understanding of the Scripture. The first inclination of this comes from Mark 2:1-12. Jesus had returned home. By this time, His fame as a healer and teacher had spread, so that the house where Jesus was teaching was so crowded that people had to stand outside to hear.
Among those in the crowd were some men who had brought a friend to be healed. The man was unable to walk, so the friends had brought him on a palette. Being unable to carry him into the building, but also being determined to see him healed, they took him up to the roof. The friends then proceeded to make a hole in the roof and lowered their friend to Jesus. The Bible says, “When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’” (Mark 2:5).
The response was immediate. “Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” (vs. 6-7).
The opposition grew as Jesus healed on the Sabbath and said and did other things that went against conventional thought and teachings.
So it is that Jesus comes to this point in His ministry that He makes the declaration that, far from abolishing the Law or the Prophets, Jesus has come to fulfill them. Jesus, who is the Word of God has come to give flesh to the word (cf. John 1:1-14). He has come to show what it truly means to live out that which God has decreed from the beginning to the present.
Jesus affirms the Scripture by declaring that the word shall be valid for as long as this time exists. Only when all of God’s plan for salvation—Jesus on the cross, Jesus resurrected, Jesus returning in glory—will the need for the Scripture be fulfilled and will no longer be needed.
So, Jesus’ first reason for addressing His relationship to the Law and the Prophets is to assure His listeners that He takes it very seriously. As a result, He expects His followers to take Scripture seriously, too. Which leads us to the second point. Jesus expects His followers to have the same respect for Scripture as He does.
Almost from the moment Jesus first began to gather disciples, there seems to have been an argument among the disciples as to who will be the greatest (after Jesus, of course) in His kingdom. Greatness was to be measured in place, power, esteem. Each wanted to be the greatest. Jesus, as He does throughout His teachings, lets us know that greatness in the kingdom comes not from position, but from obedience to Him and a desire to encourage others to also obey Him.
I can imagine the smiling nods that must have been coming from the teachers of the law and the Pharisees as Jesus said, “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, and whoever practices and teaches these commandments will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (v. 19). This is what the Pharisees prided themselves on (cf. Philippians 3:1-12). They consider themselves to be the keepers of the Law, the ones who not only preached God’s Laws but who also protected the Law by adding countless laws of their own to act as buffers against violating God’s law. The thinking was that if we made enough rules of our own making, then if someone should break one of our laws, they would not be able to get close enough to break God’s law. These men were proud of themselves and of their ministry. And Jesus’ words seem to confirm them.
The smiles faded as Jesus made the next statement: “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (v. 20).
Jesus’ words here elevate the doing of the law to a point far higher than the Pharisees had ever thought to take the law or the prophets. No longer was the kingdom to be satisfied with doing things that would relate to the law. Now, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is a relationship with God. It isn’t the doing of the law that matters so much as the being in right relationship with the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit. The law is important, yes, but it will be seen through God’s eyes, not man’s interpretation.
Conclusion
In making this declaration, Jesus tells us that there is so much more to being a part of the kingdom of God than following certain steps and rules and regulations. There is something greater that God expects from us. And it is something that God intends to extend to us only through His Son, Jesus Christ. It is only when we put our faith in Him that we can enter into relationship with the Father and begin to experience what it means to live as children of God in the kingdom of heaven.
© 2020 Glynn Beaty