Wednesday, Week of 3 Lent

“Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18).

I once read a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet that explained Jesus’ words this way: if a person has a contract the build a house, he builds the house until it is finished. Then, when the house is finished, the contract is over and the man no longer has to build the house. The contract has been ended, but not abolished; it has been ended because it is fulfilled, accomplished. The pamphlet went on to say that this is a perfect metaphor for what happened with Jesus and the Law: Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Law and the prophets, so now the Law no longer applies. No more law for us. Except for the 10 commandments – that part of the Law gets to stay. That’s different because, well, it’s at the beginning, plus Jesus talks about stuff like that.

Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

The other is that Jesus really means what he says: we must keep the Law. And not only that: we must go beyond it. In the rest of the passage, Jesus says that not only must you not murder, but you must not be angry (Mt 5:21-22), you must not insult (5:23), you must forgive your brother before giving your offering (5:23-24), you must befriend your accuser (5:25-26). Jesus does not contradict the Law: he goes beyond it. He means for us to keep the Law, and then some.

Jesus later elaborates on what we are meant to do in following and exceeding the Law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. That is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:37-40).

Since the whole of the Law and prophets grow from and hinge on these two things, keeping – and exceeding – the Law is a matter of following these commandments with our whole being. It may seem simple compared to the manifest rules of the Mosaic law, but the truth is the demands placed on us in these commands is far greater than any rigid adherence to a set of rules could ever be. Truly loving is always harder than following a law.

We’re still left with the question of how to deal with the biblical laws modern Christianity has rejected (and which even post-temple Judaism has to deal without). If Jesus tells us to keep the whole letter of the Law, how do we justify having done away with it? Do we resort to the answer that it is no longer valid because, in Jesus, the house has been built?

The laws which Christianity has rejected have to do with purity – a kind of purity essential to worship in a temple with different levels of purity requirements depending on how close you are to the inner sanctum. The laws which we have rejected, then, all have to do with a certain style of worshiping God, of loving God with our whole hearts, and minds, and souls.

But there are more ways than one to worship God, more than one way to love Him. The way established in the minutiae of Jewish law and related to the temple are one way, and a valid way. They have not been abolished. But Jesus has rebuilt the temple in his body, opening up many new ways to love and worship God that do not depend upon the purity linked with temple worship and sacrifice. Jesus is the pure sacrifice. Worship and love of God are free to evolve so long as they are centered on the total-loving that Jesus lays out in the two commandments.

We would do well to remember, in this age of fractured churches and renewed ecumenism, that God has given us many ways to worship and love Him, many ways to fulfill the Law.