The Law Fulfilled

 

Jesus said He came to fulfill, not abolish the Law at the Sermon on the Mount so that a new relationship with God could be born. He was asked the question by the Pharisees trying to tempt Him in Matthew 22:36, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"  Jesus went on to quote Deuteronomy 6:5 (love the Lord with all your heart) and Leviticus 19:18 (love your neighbor as yourself) and then made the following statement in verse 40, “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." The Old Testament revelation of God points directly to and is fulfilled in these two principles.

God’s Presence 

When Moses came down off the mountain with the two tablets in Exodus 32, he observed the people, led by his brother Aaron, worshipping a golden calf. Although every one of the 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 people were eyewitnesses of God’s miraculous deliverance from Egypt through the Red Sea, they were not willing to wait the 40 days while Moses was on the mountain with God. They were still insecure about God’s love. The miraculous demonstration of God’s love toward the people was not enough to get them to recognize His personal love. Ultimately, it would take the appearance of the Divine Son to manifest His personal love to the world.

In Exodus 33, God told Moses to lead the people toward the promised land, but His Presence would not go with them because of their obstinance. Instead, an angel would lead them and drive out their enemies in the promised land. This distressed the people greatly; to please God, they put off their outward adornments (jewelry) as a sign of remorse. God promised Moses that His Presence would go with them in the form of the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night and would be with them throughout their time in the wilderness. It would take this physical manifestation of God’s Presence to confirm His love. Without any vision of God, the people would be unrestrained (Proverbs 29:18).

Husband and wife

Paul defines for us the intended relationship that wife should have with husband and husband with wife in Ephesians 5. Verse 22 tells us that wives should submit to husbands as the head of the family. He is speaking about respect; the man needs to be respected by his wife. On the other hand, husbands should love wives as Christ loves His church (verses 28-29). What we have here is a picture of the difference between the old and new covenants. The emphasis of the old covenant believer is reverence of God and honoring others while the new covenant is all about love. 

When you look deeply into Old Testament Scripture, you will see that the critical aspect of the peoples’ relationship with God is the fear (yare - reverence, respect, honor) of the Lord. In Psalm 15, David asks the question, “who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy hill?” In verse 4, this one, “honors those who fear the Lord”. This reverence and respect of the Lord is the avenue into His wisdom (Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10, Job 28:28). The new covenant is all about the husband, the bridegroom, Jesus loving the wife, the bride, His church.

In Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”. These verses are foundational of the old covenant as the “creed of the Jews”, the beginning of the “Shema”, morning and evening prayers. The Hebrew word translated one is echad and means not only one, but also unified. It speaks to the fact that Yahweh Elohim is not just the only true God, but He is unified as the trinity, to be revealed at the appearance of Jesus, the Messiah in the new covenant. Every Hebrew letter has a numeric value and the value of echad is 13. This is significant when you consider that mashiach, the Hebrew word for messiah and symbolic of the new covenant has a value of 358 while the Hebrew word for Moses is mosheh (representing the old covenant) and its value is 345. The difference in the new covenant compared to the old is echad, one God, expressed in the command to love God. The new covenant agape love of God has not only visited man, but also indwells him.

Love does no wrong

In Galatians 5:14, Paul says, “For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF’”. Some scholars suggest that the ten commandments can be segregated into two categories, the first five related to the love of God while the other five deal with the love of neighbor. This is consistent with the passage in Romans 13:8-10 in which Paul states that loving neighbor fulfills the Law and he identifies the last five commandments as being “summed up in this saying, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF’”. He concludes in verse 10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law”. Love of God and neighbor completes the old covenant and becomes the foundation for the new covenant. 

“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized [came into existence] through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). The fullness of our relationship with God is realized in the person and work of Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:9), whose work is defined by grace and connects us to truth. Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves, the very definition of grace and He embodies the truth (John 14:6).  The believer’s faith in who Jesus is (“Thou art the Christ”) and that He accomplished full forgiveness of sin (1Peter 2:24) opens the door into being moved and motivated by God’s agape love (2Corinthians 5:14). 

Royal Law

This kind of love, agape love starts with God. In 1John 4:19, “We love, because He first loved us”. To know God is to know Him by His love. Everything that we learn about God is to bring us to His love. In 1Timothy 1:5, “But the goal [objective] of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere [literally, non-hypocritical] faith.” James refers to this love as the royal (regal) law (James 2:8) and says that it should be applied without partiality or one transgresses the law of Moses. In Leviticus 19:34, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” The neighbor is anyone near you, no matter what culture, background, outward appearance, or belief system he may have. To love the stranger in this way is not a natural thing, but requires a supernatural love to fulfill. The new covenant is the environment where God’s love has been unshackled to operate without restriction.

“Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14). 

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