“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Romans 10:17

Prayer of the Day: Lord Jesus Christ, You are the fulfillment of the Law and the righteousness of all who believe. Show us our sin through Your holy commandments, comfort us with Your perfect obedience and saving death, and lead us by Your Spirit to love and keep Your Word; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

“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. 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. 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.”

“Thou, O Christ, art all I want; more than all in Thee I find. Raise the fallen, cheer the faint, heal the sick, and lead the blind. Just and holy is Thy name; I am all unrighteousness, false and full of sin I am; Thou art full of truth and grace.”

Fellow redeemed in Christ,

We know that we are saved by faith alone in Jesus Christ. We know that there is nothing we can do, nothing we have to do, to save ourselves, because Jesus has already done it all for us. We also know that we are supposed to live the way God tells us to live and obey His Law. We are supposed to listen to what the Bible says is right and wrong. How does this all fit together?

From God’s Word this morning, we see that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. Jesus perfectly obeyed all of the Law for us. We live righteously before God by faith in Jesus.

Jesus’ enemies were constantly accusing Him of disobeying God’s Law. For example, the Old Testament Law said that it was a sin to work on the Sabbath, on Saturday. Many times, Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath. He let His disciples pick and eat grain on the Sabbath day because they were hungry. It was lawful to help someone and to get something to eat on the Sabbath. But Jesus’ enemies condemned Him because they thought He was working on the Sabbath. They did not believe in Jesus, so they completely misunderstood Him and what He had come to do.

Jesus says, “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.” Jesus did not ignore the Bible or disobey it. The fourth chapter of Galatians says that Jesus was born under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law. Even though Jesus is God, He placed Himself under His own Law so that He would obey everything the Law tells us to do.

Scripture says that Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are, yet He remained without sin. Jesus perfectly understood and obeyed everything the Bible tells us to do and not to do. Jesus did not do away with the Law. He perfectly carried out every one of the Law’s commands for our salvation.

Jesus says, “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.” Jesus also says, “The Scriptures testify of Me.” Often, the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—point out things Jesus said and did in fulfillment of the prophecies in the Old Testament. Jesus fulfilled everything that the Old Testament said the Messiah would do. Therefore, Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

John tells us, “The Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” God, through Moses, gave the Ten Commandments. Jesus preached repentance and faith in Him as the Savior. Jesus did not do away with the moral Law of right and wrong that Moses taught. Jesus has not given us a new and different moral Law.

Jesus helps us correctly understand what God gave us the Law for: to show us that we are sinners who need God’s forgiveness. The Jews of Jesus’ day believed that if they tried hard enough to obey all the rules, they would get to heaven. But when we look at what the Law demands—do this, do not do that, be perfect—we realize that there is no way we are going to get to heaven by trying to obey the Law. Jesus lived a perfect life in our place. We do not have to try to be good enough to save ourselves. We cannot get to heaven by the good things we do. When we place our faith in Jesus and His perfect life, we are saved.

Jesus says, “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.” He tells us in another place, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.”

Rather than doing away with the Law, Jesus makes it clear that the Law is valid as long as the earth exists. Not even an iota, not a dot—the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, or even part of a letter—will pass away from God’s Law. Even the smallest detail of the Bible is important. We do not want to ignore or do away with even one verse of the Bible.

Jesus says, “Not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” The Old Testament goes into great detail about how God’s people were supposed to live back then and how they were supposed to worship Him. Those laws served in one way to teach the people about the coming Messiah, who would live a perfect life of obedience to the Law. The Old Testament sacrifices pointed to Jesus Christ as the perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We do not sacrifice animals anymore because Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross. It is not a sin to work on the Sabbath anymore because Jesus gives us perfect rest and peace for our souls. It is the same with all the civil and ceremonial laws, with all those types of laws that God gave to His Old Testament believers but has not repeated for us New Testament believers.

Not an iota, not a dot, will pass away from the Law until all is accomplished. The reason those Old Testament laws are not repeated in the New Testament is that they have been perfectly fulfilled by Jesus.

Jesus says, “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.” God expects us to obey His commands in the Bible. It is not up to us to pick which ones we will obey and which ones we will not.

God forbid that we would ever defy what He tells us in His Word and, by our words and actions, teach others to join us in our defiance. We can stray from God and His Word to the point of not making it to heaven.

Jesus says, “Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” We fear God. That is, we love God and hold Him in the greatest reverence and respect. That means we are not trying to see how much we can get away with before we are in trouble. “Well, I know what God says right there, but I am going to push that to the limit.” That is not showing the fear of God. That is not love and respect for God. As the Lord helps us to live according to His Word, and by our words and actions teach others to do the same, Jesus says that we will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day thought that they were better than everybody else. But they were hypocrites who refused to see that they were sinners just like everybody else. Jesus tells us, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We are sinners. Only Jesus can save us. Only Jesus can enable us to live lives that are righteous in God’s eyes.

Before he was brought to know Jesus as his Savior, the Apostle Paul had been a super-Pharisee. Yet once he knew Christ, Paul said of his former work-righteousness in which he had trusted, “What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.”

The Bible says about us by nature, “All our righteous deeds are as filthy rags.” “There is none righteous, no, not one.” “There is none who does good, no, not one.” “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The prophet Jeremiah calls Jesus “The LORD our Righteousness.” We are not going to earn our way to heaven by trying to obey God. We love God, and we want to do what He tells us to do. Believing in Jesus, covered by Jesus’ righteousness, God is pleased with us, and He is pleased with everything we do in faith and love for Him.

We are saved by faith alone in Jesus and not by anything we do. God expects us to obey His Law and live the way He tells us to live. There is no contradiction. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. Jesus perfectly obeyed all of the Law for us. We live righteously before God by faith in Jesus.

“Plenteous grace with Thee is found, grace to cover all my sin. Let the healing streams abound; make and keep me pure within. Thou of life the fountain art; freely let me take of Thee. Spring Thou up within my heart; rise to all eternity.” Amen.

—Pastor Terrel Kesterson

Ascension Lutheran Church Batavia, IL

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