Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.
Jesus of Nazareth
Last weekend we began an overview of the financial implications of the Sermon on the Mount and we come now to what I think is the most astonishing statement Jesus made.
It’s easy for those of us who are not Jews to underestimate Jesus’ words quoted at the start of this Reflection! 'The Law' was the Torah, the guidance for life: in fact, I think that 'guidance' is a better translation of 'Torah', although that still doesn't quite capture all of the original meaning. 'The Prophets' summarises the corrective guidance given by God through men and women who spoke for God when society drifted away from the Torah. Together, 'the Law and the Prophets' were the sum and summary of all the God expected of his people and it had stood unchallenged for centuries.
Generations of Jewish scholars had interpreted and applied the Torah, some even to the point where the original intention was lost, such as when they criticised Jesus for healing people on holy days. But no scholar or teacher would have ever dared to try to set it aside. For Jesus of Nazareth even to suggest that people might think that was his intention would have been seen as the most arrogant presumption!
But then, Jesus goes even further. He said that he had come to fulfil the Law and the Prophets – to fulfil everything that God expects of people! That would have sounded like the most arrogant conceit, if not blasphemy!
As we shall see during the next three weekends, Jesus came to correct what the professional scholars taught and to restore God’s ways. The Torah had originally been given by God to a people who had specifically asked him what they should do to express their gratitude to him. It was not to be taken absolutely, like most of the Pharisees applied it. This was why the writer of Psalm 119 could see personal liberty and fulfilment in keeping the Law while most of the Pharisees and scribes (religious lawyers) taught it as restrictive censorship. It is why, for example, a farmer who should not work on a Sabbath could nevertheless rescue an animal that had fallen into a ditch.
Jesus fulfilled the Law by keeping every detail of it. He did not, of course, keep it as the Pharisees understood it but as the writer of Psalm 119 understood it, as God himself intended it. Jesus did not fulfill it superficially, theoretically or ceremonially but inherently, essentially and naturally, as only God the Son, the Messiah who uniquely never sinned, could possibly do.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was teaching the lifestyle that God approves. On another occasion, Jesus explained, ‘The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works’ (John 14:10).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was teaching the lifestyle that God approves. On another occasion, Jesus explained, ‘The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works’ (John 14:10).
At the heart of the Sermon is Jesus' warning not to try to serve both God and money or to worry about the essentials of life that most people rely on money to get. We need to take that into our heart as well as our minds, to let it sink deep into our lifestyles.
Many of the Pharisees were lovers of money, in spite of being the most scrupulous observers of the Torah. Not all of them were hypocrites, however. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were sincere Pharisees and there is good reason to believe that Jesus' own brother, James, who later led the church in Jerusalem and wrote the earliest of the New Testament epistles, was also a Pharisee, although it was a long time before he accepted Jesus as Messiah!
But as Jesus explained in the Sermon on the Mount, God's people needed a quality of righteousness that exceeded even the best of the Pharisees. The key was not to be more scrupulous in their adherence to the dos and don’ts of the Torah, as if an external compliance was enough for God, or to be doubly devout in religious devotions like worship and prayer, but to absorb God's intent and principles into their lives.
In his great prayer of repentance (Psalm 51), King David acknowledged that, ‘You delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart’. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God promised to replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh: see Ezekiel 11:19 & 36:26.
This is why our attitude to money and the ways we think about it are more important than how we get it and spend it. Our lifestyle choices must be more than obeying a set of rules. ‘Do not be conformed to this world', St Paul wrote, 'but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect’ (Romans 12:2). Such a transformation is necessary if we’re truly to live rightly as Jesus disciples.
© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.
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