Difficult Texts

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.


In the Sermon on the Mount the Author of the law made clear the true meaning of its precepts, and the way in which its precepts, would find expression in the thinking and living of citizens of the kingdom He had come to establish. The great Lawgiver Himself now reaffirmed the pronouncements of Sinai as binding upon those who would be His subjects, and announced that anyone who should presume to annul them either by precept or by example would "in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:20).

The assertion that by fulfilling the moral law Christ abrogated that law is not in harmony with the context of Christ's statement. Such an interpretation denies the meaning Christ obviously intended to convey, by making Him virtually say, contradictorily, that He did not come to "destroy" the law, but by fulfilling it to "abrogate" it! The interpretation ignores the strong antithesis in the word alla, "but," and makes the two ideas virtually synonymous! By fulfilling the law Christ simply "filled" it "full" of meaning—by giving men an example of perfect obedience to the will of God, in order that the same law "might be fulfilled in us" (Rom. 8:3, 4) -- Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary.

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