Keep the law as Jesus kept the law!

Mat 5:17-19

17 "Don't suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures-- either God's Law or the Prophets. I'm not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. 18 God's Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God's Law will be alive and working. 19" Trivialize even the smallest item in God's Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honour in the kingdom.

Food for thought!

Again and again Jesus broke what the Jews called the Law. He did not observe the hand washings that the Law laid down; he healed sick people on the Sabbath, although the Law forbade such healings; he was in fact condemned and crucified as a law-breaker; and yet here he seems to speak of the Law with a veneration and a reverence that no one could exceed. How can a law breaker be a law keeper?

What then is the real principle behind the whole Law, that principle which Jesus came to fulfil, the true meaning of which he came to show?

When we look at the Ten Commandments, which are the essence and the foundation of all law, we can see that their whole meaning can be summed up in one word--respect, or even better, reverence. Reverence for God and for the name of God, reverence for God's day, respect for parents, respect for life, respect for property, respect for personality, respect for the truth and for another person's good name, respect for oneself so that wrong desires may never master us--these are the fundamental principles behind the Ten Commandments, principles of reverence for God, and respect for our fellow men and for ourselves. Without them there can be no such thing as law. On them all law is based.

That reverence and that respect Jesus came to fulfil. He came to show us in actual life what reverence for God and respect for men are like. He is the living example for all of us. He constantly shows us that reverence and respect does not consist in obeying a multitude of petty human rules and regulations. They consist not in sacrifice, but in mercy; not in legalism but in love; not in prohibitions which demand that we should not do things, but in the instruction to mould our lives on the positive commandment to love. Jesus is indeed the fulfilment of the law; He is our role model.

Jesus showed us that the reverence and the respect which are the basis of the whole law can never pass away; they are the permanent stuff of man's relationship to God and to his fellow-men. Respect other people and they'll respect you, give to others and you will get, or as Jesus told us yesterday, forgive and you will be forgiven. Let us keep the law, taking Jesus as our example, our model, our standard.