He did not tear the law down, and He did not leave it running forever. He filled it full, carried it to its goal, and the covenant it belonged to passed away right on schedule.
When we say Jesus fulfilled the law, we mean He did to the law of Moses exactly what the Greek word says. He filled it full. Every promise, shadow, sacrifice and command reached its goal in Him.
He did not abolish it by knocking it over, and He did not leave it standing over His church as a permanent code. The law stood whole until everything was accomplished, and in the covenant transition that ran from the cross to AD 70, it was. Christians now live bound to Christ, not to Sinai.
That last sentence makes people nervous from two directions at once, so we will walk through Matthew 5:17 to 20 slowly.
Fulfill means keep going. Jesus did not abolish the law, so Christians are still under it, whether that means the Sabbath, the feasts and the food laws, or the Ten Commandments as a binding code.
Fulfill means fill up and bring to its goal. The law stood intact until everything it pointed to was accomplished. Then the covenant it belonged to was finished, and a new one took its place.
The misreading deserves to be heard at its strongest. Jesus said not an iota or a dot would pass from the law, and heaven and earth are obviously still here. So the law must still bind. It is a sincere argument, and it gets pressed hardest on new believers who cannot yet answer it. They are told their faith is incomplete until they add the Sabbath, or the feasts, or a list.
There is a ditch on the other side too. Some Christians hear that Jesus fulfilled the law and conclude that holiness is optional and God does not much care how we treat people. That is also wrong. The law was fulfilled, not insulted. What it was reaching for, justice for the poor, honesty in business, faithfulness in marriage, care for the foreigner, is still what love looks like.
We think the first reading takes Jesus seriously and then stops one verse too early. For the practical question of which commands still apply, see which Old Testament laws still apply. Here we stay with the passage itself.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
Matthew 5:17To make full, to fill. Thayer's lexicon gives the proper sense of completing something as to fill up “to the top.” Picture a vessel poured to the brim.
To carry into effect, to bring to realization. Matthew uses it again and again for Scripture reaching its goal in Jesus.
Kataluō, the word translated abolish. It means to tear down, to dissolve, to destroy.
Matthew uses kataluō for the temple. Not one stone left on another that will not be thrown down (24:2). I am able to destroy the temple (26:61). You who would destroy the temple (27:40).
That last row matters. The Gospel that says Jesus did not come to tear down the law also records Him saying the temple would be torn down. He did not destroy the law. He fulfilled it, and once it was fulfilled, the temple system built around it had nothing left to do.
Fulfill is also a prophetic word, which fits the phrase He chose: the Law or the Prophets. The whole story Israel had been living in was arriving at its goal in Him. After the resurrection He told the disciples that everything written about Him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms had to be fulfilled (Luke 24:44). The law was a promise as much as a code. More on that in how many prophecies Jesus fulfilled.
One bit of popular preaching needs correcting, even though it sounds like it helps our side. Jesus did not break the law of Moses. The Sabbath fights in the Gospels are over the Pharisees' rules, not the commandment itself. Paul says Jesus was born under the law (Galatians 4:4), and He kept it without failing. That is part of what fulfilling it meant.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
“For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
Matthew 5:18This is the verse the debate turns on. Notice it has two until clauses. The law stands until heaven and earth pass away, and until all is accomplished. Jesus sets a limit on the law's standing and tells you what the limit is.
The iota is the smallest letter, and the dot is keraia, a little horn, the tiny stroke that tells one Hebrew letter from another. Nothing would lapse early.
Most readers take heaven and earth as the physical universe, and careful scholars hold that view. But look at how Matthew uses the same words later.
In Greek, heōs an panta genētai. The law stands whole until all things take place.
The same construction, heōs an panta tauta genētai, tied to this generation. In the next breath: heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not.
John 19:30. The sacrifice the whole system pointed to is offered, and the new covenant is ratified in His blood.
“What is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” Paul, whom we believe wrote Hebrews, says this while the temple still stands.
Rome destroys the temple and the sacrifices end, within the generation Jesus named.
Same writer, same verb, same until. We read Matthew 5:18 and 24:34 as describing the same fulfillment.
We are not alone in reading 5:18 as a covenant event rather than the end of the cosmos. Mateusz Kusio, writing in The Biblical Annals, ties the verse to the darkness and earthquake Matthew records at the crucifixion, and concludes: “Consequently, at that point the Torah ceases to be the central and unique legal code for Matthew and becomes mediated by Jesus' own teaching.” He places the moment at the cross, and we would stretch the frame from the cross through AD 70, but the direction is the same.
Here is the Sound of Heaven position. The law of Moses was never abolished. It stood whole until everything it pointed to was accomplished in Jesus: His life under the law, His death, His resurrection, and the covenant transition that closed when the temple fell in AD 70. The old covenant is finished. Christians are not under Sinai in any part. We are bound to Christ.
To be honest about text and argument: reading heaven and earth as covenant language is an interpretation. We think it is a well supported one, since the prophets used falling stars and rolled up skies for the fall of nations (Isaiah 13:10, 34:4). Faithful readers who take it as the physical cosmos are left with a law that still binds in full, and yet nobody argues that Christians should offer the sacrifices that same law requires.
“Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:19 to 20Verse 19 is the one used to argue that every command still binds. Read it inside the time frame verse 18 just set. While the law stood, through the whole of Jesus' earthly ministry, nobody was free to loosen it. He was speaking to Jews under the Mosaic covenant, and that instruction was right, and time bound exactly as verse 18 said.
Some suggest these commandments points forward to Jesus' own commands in the rest of the sermon. The grammar does not settle it, so we hold that loosely.
Verse 20 is the real surprise. The Pharisees were the most careful law keepers in Israel. Jesus says His followers need more righteousness than that, not more rules. Then He shows what He means.
You have heard it said, do not murder. Jesus goes underneath the act to the contempt that produces it (Matthew 5:21 to 22).
Here Jesus does more than deepen the law. He sets part of it aside and replaces retaliation with something the law never asked for (Matthew 5:38 to 39).
Love widens past anything Moses required, to the people persecuting you (Matthew 5:43 to 44).
That is what fulfilled righteousness looks like. It does not come from a longer list. It comes from a changed heart, the law written within that Jeremiah promised. More in what righteousness means in the Bible, and the commandments side of it in the Ten Commandments in the Bible, where nine are restated in the New Testament and one is transformed.
Jesus did not lower the bar by fulfilling the law. He moved it from the hand to the heart, and then He gave the Spirit so the heart could actually get there.
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
Romans 10:4Paul says in one line what Matthew takes a chapter to show. The word end is telos, and it carries more than stop.
The point something aims at, its purpose. The law was pointing at Christ the whole time.
Where something concludes. A race has a finish line because it has a goal. Reach one and you reach the other.
Paul is not calling the law bad. He is saying it was never the road to being made right with God. Christ is.
Jew and Gentile alike (Romans 10:12 to 13). The law belonged to one nation. Righteousness in Christ belongs to anyone who calls on Him.
In Galatians the law was a guardian until Christ came (Galatians 3:24). A guardian's instructions still tell you what the Father cares about. You just do not live under them anymore. The new covenant is not a revised edition of the old one. It is a different covenant with a different law, the law of Christ, which Paul sums up as love.
When Paul calls Christ the telos of the law in Romans 10:4, what does he mean?
Telos holds both ideas at once, goal and finish line. The law was good and it pointed somewhere. When it arrived at Christ, its job as the path to righteousness was done.
Some people read this and feel relief. Others feel a knot in the stomach, because they were taught God's approval depended on getting every rule right. If that is you, hear this plainly. Jesus did not fulfill the law so you could spend your life failing it. He fulfilled it so you could stop carrying it. You are not on probation with God.
If you would like someone to pray with you about that, our team would be glad to. You can send us a prayer request, and nobody will lecture you.
Here is why this matters on an ordinary Tuesday. If Moses still bound you, your standing with God would rest on a list you could never finish. If the law meant nothing, you would have no picture of love. Jesus answered both by filling the law full in Himself.
Everything the law was trying to produce, He was. Everything the sacrifices pictured, He did. Everything the prophets promised, He brought. So we do not look back to Sinai for our instructions. We look at Jesus, the final and complete revelation of the Father, and we let the Spirit write His life into ours. That is the kingdom of God, present and active now, not a rulebook waiting in the wings.
The Old Testament stays open on our tables, the story that led to Him, read through Him. That is how we handle all of Scripture, as what we believe explains. For related ground, see the law of Moses and the posts above on the law of Christ, the new covenant and the Ten Commandments. And if you are on Long Island, come visit us on a Sunday.
Jesus fulfilled the law by filling it to the brim, living it, dying as its final sacrifice and bringing its covenant to a close by AD 70, so we are bound to Him rather than to Sinai, and love is what that looks like.
If someone has told you your faith is incomplete without the Sabbath, the feasts or a list, send us your question. Somebody at Sound of Heaven will walk through the passage with you.
It means Jesus filled the law of Moses full and brought it to its goal. The Greek word plēroō means to make full or complete. He kept the law perfectly, embodied what it was reaching for, and fulfilled what the Law and the Prophets promised about Him. Matthew 5:18 says the law would stand whole until all was accomplished. We believe that was accomplished in Jesus and the covenant transition that closed in AD 70, so Christians today are bound to Christ rather than to Sinai.
No. Jesus said plainly that He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. The word for abolish, kataluō, means to tear down or destroy, and Matthew uses the same word for the temple being thrown down. Jesus did not tear the law down. He fulfilled it, which is a different thing. A kept promise has not been abolished. It has been completed. That is how the old covenant could become obsolete, as Hebrews 8:13 says, without anyone throwing it away.
Many read it as the end of the physical universe. We read it as covenant language, the way the prophets used cosmic imagery for the fall of nations. The same verse says the law stands until all is accomplished, and Matthew 24:34 uses the same Greek phrase for what would take place within that generation, right before Jesus says heaven and earth will pass away. We believe the old covenant world passed in the events running from the cross to the fall of the temple in AD 70.
The Greek word for end is telos, which carries both goal and finish. Christ is the goal the law was aiming at, and He is the point where the law finishes as a way of being made right with God. Paul adds that this righteousness is for everyone who believes, Jew and Gentile alike. The law was good and it pointed forward. When it arrived at Christ, its role as the path to righteousness was complete, and faith in Him is how anyone is made right.
Not as a covenant. The law of Moses was given to Israel as the terms of the old covenant, and that covenant was fulfilled in Jesus and passed away. Christians live under the law of Christ, which is love for God and neighbor, written on the heart by the Spirit. The Old Testament laws still teach us what God cares about, like justice for the poor and care for the stranger, but they no longer govern us as a code.