Grace and Law XIV: Is the Law Fulfilled?

The Law and the Gospel in Reisinger’s Book

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Steve Crampton, and we're looking at the theme of the law and the gospel. And one of the big helps we've been using through the whole of this series is Ernie Reisinger's book, The Law and the Gospel.

Reisinger was a Reformed Southern Baptist, and really one of the key men to help establish the Founders Movement within the Southern Baptist denomination, those that wanted to return to the founding doctrines of that group.

The Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes

We are looking at chapter 11 in the book on the relationship between the law and the Savior, and next time when we're together we'll look at law and grace, and they're very similar, but we're just going to limit ourselves to the law and the Savior, and for that Reisinger points us to one of the most significant passages for this, and that's the Sermon on the Mount, and particularly verse 17 through the end of verse 20.

Now the Sermon on the Mount has an introduction, that's the Beatitudes, and it's important to understand the role of the Beatitudes, or you can kind of get, you know, you get off on the wrong foot immediately.

You're on the wrong path, and no matter how hard you work at the Sermon on the Mount, if you don't understand the entrance to that sermon, which is the Beatitudes, then you really cannot have any hope of understanding or obeying it, and the Beatitudes describe the character of a subject of Christ, and they also give us really a glimpse into the process by which one is brought into that kingdom.

So in other words, the Beatitudes show us that wonderful work of conversion and regeneration from the point of God stripping away everything that we thought made us acceptable or significant, and when we reach a point where we feel that we have nothing and we hunger and thirst for righteousness, He fills us, and then what follows in the second half of the Beatitudes is the evidences of that filling.

There's a mercy, there's a single-mindedness or a pure heart, you know, there's the desire to be a peacemaker, not just between warring people, but between humanity and God, and you become salt, you become light, and you become persecuted by a world that misunderstands, misrepresents, mistreats you.

Christ Came to Fulfill the Law and the Prophets

So having understood that, you're ready for Christ's statement, starting in verse 17. Let me read that to you. Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill, for truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So what do we have in the Sermon on the Mount? It really is such a privilege, and perhaps, you know, our familiarity with that passage causes us to be indifferent.

We have a restating of the law, a clarifying, a scraping off of those, you know, those layers of human tradition, the shellac that the scribes and Pharisees have put on top of the law, so that that's removed, and then, you know, you're brought down to the pure law, the moral law of God, and it is explained, it's applied, it's amplified.

Christ shows us what the law always intended for us to understand, moving, you know, beneath just the surface issues of, kind of, you know, ethics that people can view, all the way down to the heart and the motivational level.

So the King explaining the law of the realm of grace, of His kingdom of grace, so that we can understand the real nature of law and the real benefit of it, and again, to, you know, to remove from us the shackles of the legalism of the Pharisees.

Reisinger points out that there are two great conclusions we can take away from verse 17 through verse 20, and the first is this. Jesus demonstrates that His ethical teachings in no way are contrary to the Old Testament moral law.

While He does contradict the Pharisees' misapplication of that law, He does it in a way that demonstrates, without a shadow of a doubt, that He is in complete harmony with the Old Testament moral law.

Second, He says, Jesus demonstrates that the Pharisees and scribes, where He says, well, you have heard it was said, but I say to you. The Pharisees and scribes and their view of the law, they have misunderstood the true nature of moral law, they have misapplied it in such a manner that anyone whose righteousness does not excel that kind of righteousness, which the Pharisee and the Sadducee had, or the Pharisee and the scribe, they could not rightly claim to, you know, to ever enter the kingdom of heaven.

They have no right to say, I'm a follower of Christ. Now, one thing, Steve, I'm gonna toss you a pitch here. One thing that I have heard in response to that kind of a statement in verse 20 is that when Christ says your righteousness has to go beyond the righteousness of the Pharisee, or you can't really be a citizen of this kingdom, what Jesus is talking about is justification by faith.

I think that that's a misunderstanding of that particular passage. Of course, justification by faith in the finished work of Christ is the way that we have a righteous standing before the Lord. But do you think that's what Christ is.

Pointing to at this point? No, and I appreciate the distinction. Obviously that's a truism. Justification is by faith alone, we know that. And in that sense, you can't get there ever by the law, whether your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees or not.

You just can't get there, right? And so as you alluded to, what Christ is doing in this passage, I believe, is refocusing, bringing, as you indicated, a full and complete, clear exposition of what the law was.

And we have, as you put it, I think, sort of the barnacles built up by the traditions of the so-called experts. By the way, we have a similar problem today, beware trusting the experts. But when Christ is addressing this particular topic, the temptation that a lot of our antinomians in particular, but really I think there's a lot of believers out there, John, that would say, hey, Christ said he came to fulfill the law, and Christ has already come, then therefore the law is fulfilled.

Accordingly, we don't have to deal with the law anymore. It's really been kind of made void or something. But when you stop and think about this passage, and the opportunity Christ had to address that particular point, this would be the ideal moment if he was going to say, the old law is no longer in effect.

I'm here to give you the new law. That's not what he says. As you say, what he addressed is, you have heard it said. Not the law said, but I say to you. He never draws that contrast between himself and his declaration as if somehow he were a new lawgiver, but rather the contrast is between what the law really meant and what men said about it.

So Christ makes very clear, he did not come to destroy the law. You just read the verse 17. He came to fulfill. And you're gonna address, I think momentarily, very key question, what exactly do we mean in this context, fulfill?

And let me just throw out, you know, from the legal side of things, you have contracts and orders, we have them here at Mediagratiae, and well, when we get an order and it is filled, we might say that order has been fulfilled, and then you can set it aside.

That is not the meaning here. He makes abundantly clear, it seems to me, in verse 18. I don't know how you can take that verse any other way, when he says that not one jot or tittle will pass away until all is fulfilled, that the law, as we've said before in previous broadcasts, is a perpetual obligation.

It lasts even longer than heaven and earth. That is a pretty plain statement here. And again, he who breaks the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so shall be considered the least in the kingdom of heaven.

He who obeys and teaches others shall be called great in the kingdom of God. What sense would it be to tell us, you should be teaching others to keep the law after I'm gone, right? This is to the disciples, to the Church, to come, if the law had been made void.

It is completely nonsensical. So let me also add, there are basically two different issues I think Christ was addressing. One, the law versus the traditions of men. We've just discussed that. And second, how does the law, as taught by men, miss the boat?

And in that context, what Christ does, I think, above all else, is to bring us back to the point that the law is spiritual. The law is directed to the heart. The Pharisees and the scribes were experts at externalism.

They made it all into a package that you could keep outside of your most inner being. Christ blew through that and made clear to us that the law must deal, and is intended to deal, with the heart. As Christ points out to us, the law is only about the heart.

All our wickedness comes from within. It's not from without, right? It's one of the, I think, key things, for me at least, that brought home my utter inability to keep the law or to reach any closer to God by attempting to do things.

It's not about doing, it's about being. And so the Pharisees and the scribes had entirely missed the boat there, and Christ brings.

Us back to what it's all about. Right. So I wanted to read, he gave a specific list of some things that the Pharisees and the scribes did in the misuse of the law, and I think that brings us back again to that question of, when he says our righteousness has to excel theirs, is he talking about justification?

No, he's not talking about the positional righteousness attributed to us by imputation, Christ's righteousness placed on our account, but he's talking about a practical righteousness. And the context helps us understand that.

You know, the Beatitudes have already talked about a person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, and that's been fully given. A foreign righteousness placed upon my account, received through faith.

Justification. I am in a right standing before God and His law. But then, sanctification, the right living, the application of the new life within, and the new love for the law that the believer has, the application of that to very practical living.

We have to have every Christian will have an obedience, a practical daily obedience that excels the appearance of obedience that the Pharisee had, because they, as you mentioned, they had an unengaged heart, you know, they had just the external kind of a mask.

So Reisinger gives this list of what were the fundamental ways in which the scribes and Pharisees perverted true religion, or misused the law. Number one, they were more interested in details than principles.

Number two, they were more interested in outward appearance than inward motives. And number three, they were more interested in doing than being, and you hit on some of that already. So one thing I think we should ask when we read those things, so as to kind of prevent us from looking at the Pharisees and saying, how could you people be so stupid, you know, because Phariseeism kind of lives in everyone.

Why would a person spend all this time in religion, and yet be guilty of the misapplication of the law like that? And I think the answer is, it is so very tempting to use the Christian religion, so to speak.

Its ethics, its doctrines, its history, its community, you know, its duties, to be engaged in all of that, it's tempting to use that to make you a good person, a right person. I'm going to be a good, you know, young couple get married, they're not very interested in Christ, they start to have children, they think, well we need to go to church, you know, we were brought up in church, we should go to church, and so they go to church, and they begin to use church to kind of make them the right kind of parents.

The Pharisees used the law to make them look good, to make them feel satisfied with themselves, I'm sure they thought to make me really right with God, but you are forced to take the Pharisees approach every time, if you do not have the new birth, without the regeneration of your heart, without the new nature, without the life of God in the soul of man, as Henry Schugel said, the Pharisee is the, that's everybody, you know, we use, and because we can't keep the law perfectly, and because, you know, even though we want to use religion to make us better people, we still, we keep falling short, without a new heart, we just have to keep adjusting religion to fit us, which is of course what the Pharisee did, he looked like he was a expert in the law, really what he was, is he was an expert in understanding how to slightly adjust the law, he had just enough theology to kind of mask his self-centeredness.

Yeah, may I just.

Add that whole idea of the self being made, really placed on the throne, all appearances must be just right, and even to rationalize within yourself that I am good with God, when we put Christ on the throne as he ought to be, there is, I think, an inevitable byproduct that sometimes we don't look too good to others, because we are falling and still struggling with sin, and the kind of the worst case will come out, and should come out.

We ought to be confessing our sins one to another, and so it's almost at odds with the pharisaical approach, it is at odds, where you must at all costs preserve appearances. Yeah. He talks.

About the fact that Christ has not come to destroy but to fulfill, and as you mentioned, we want to hit that a little more carefully. Reisinger says if you don't want to misstep here, if you don't want to follow the Pharisee down the wrong path, you don't want to follow the antinomian down the wrong path, then you're going to have to get a good definition for these two words, and so he gives a kind of a fuller, amplified definition.

He says that the word destroy in Greek can mean dissolve, undo, invalidate, or even dishonor. So did Christ come to dissolve the law? No. Did he come to undo the law? No. Did he come to invalidate or dishonor the law?

And that it's just so very clear that that is not what Christ came to do. He came to fulfill, but as you mentioned, the word fulfill can be, depending what context it's used in, it can mean, okay, you did what was required, and now that thing is no longer pressing on me.

You know, the contract's paid, you know, the homework's finished, and I fulfilled the requirements for my degree. You know, you get the little document that says John Snyder fulfilled his, this is, you know, for the fulfillment of his requirements of a bachelor degree, and so I don't still have anything to do with the bachelor degree.

I'm done with that. So why don't we say that Christ fulfilled and then set aside the moral law, and one of the reasons is what you already mentioned, the rest of the New Testament. Clearly, neither Christ nor the apostles set aside the moral law as unnecessary.

They don't say, now that Christ has perfectly obeyed, God is now okay with lust, greed, deceit, and idol worship. But another answer to that is that Greek word fulfill, and Reisinger points out that it means to carry out to the fullest measure the intent and purpose of the law.

In other words, Jesus Christ, as man, becomes the embodiment of the moral law. His obedience is so wholehearted, so full, complete, so flawless, that if you watch Jesus of Nazareth, at any age, you see the perfect fulfillment of all the moral law calls for.

He does what the law always intended for men to do, and he fulfills that wonderful purpose in a life of perfect devotion to the Father. So he does not come to remove the moral law, Reisinger says. In other words, like I said, lying, stealing, lust, idolatry, these still offend God, and you remember we talked in the early chapters that even before any written law was given, there is the conscience, the law written on the heart, where we know, Adam knew, we know, even before we read a Bible, that there's something wrong about murder, and deception, and theft.

So that has not altered, because that's rooted in the unchangeable perfection of God. He's not come to remove it, but also, and this is, I think, where we wouldn't say it, but this, I think, is a constant temptation to the evangelical who understands salvation through the finished work of another, received by faith.

And the temptation is to say that the cross, and the obedience, and the death of Christ are so significant in the plan of redemption, that somehow the law has been reduced. So we're still not allowed to steal, and cheat, and kill, and commit adultery, and worship other gods, but really, in some way, we think grace, because of the cross, grace means the law, which was just so high before, has been.

Brought down to a more reasonable level. And after all, the penalty's already been.

Paid, so... Right, right. So again, the idea that Christ has come to Problem is, of course, with that lie, is that you do not see in the New Testament any apostles saying, talking to the church, you know, and it's a great opportunity, these people come from Roman and Greek cultures, and you know, very wicked, and Paul doesn't say to the Jewish Christians, who are gathered with Gentile Christians, now listen Jews, you need to understand, because of what Christ did, the moral law has been reduced.

So your brother and sister, who grew up in a pagan environment with a lot of those sins running rampant, that vice was admired, you need to understand that a little bit of that now is okay. But no, Paul rather says, because of Christ, you know, and he upholds the highest expectations of consecration and devotion to God, and the moral law is.

Over and over used as the path of that devotion. And so the section that Reisinger picks up on is fulfilled and yet perpetual. And it goes back to something you said a moment ago, John, that it is a reflection of the moral perfection of our great God.

How can that ever be reduced or fulfilled in the sense of done away with? It can't. And another way I want to throw in the definition of fulfilled in the sense of, the wife might say, this marriage has fulfilled all my expectations.

That doesn't mean that now she's done with the marriage, it means she's come to the full enjoyment of that marriage, and I hope many of us can say that. And in that sense, as you kind of pointed out with Christ, that's the fulfillment, it's what it's always meant to be.

Filled full is, I think, literally how the term derived in the English language, at least. And so while, yes, we can never look back and say, we need the law in order for justification, we know that, but it is never done away with.

And one of the things that Reisinger takes us to, we've talked in the past about the three different kinds of the law. We have the judicial, or sometimes it's called the civil law, which consists in the law as applied in particular to the nation of Israel as God's people.

In that sense, Christ has fulfilled the law one way, which is somewhat surprising to me, Reisinger makes the argument, by breaking down the wall of partition that separated the Gentiles from the Jews.

Christ has fulfilled it and said to us, which he didn't say to the Jews, you are a chosen people, a holy race, right, a royal priesthood. And in that sense, that judicial civil law has been fulfilled and frankly completed in the way that we talked about fulfillment not meaning in another way.

But there's another way, of course, that's pretty obvious, it's by Christ's perfect obedience to the judicial law, insofar as the principles of that law really were consistent and an outplaying of the moral law, which is eternal and perpetual.

Secondly, we have the ceremonial law, and I think there's pretty well universal agreement, correct me if I'm wrong, among Orthodox believers today, that the ceremonial law has clearly been fulfilled and done away with, and the reason that we can say Christ fulfilled that law is because it's so beautiful in its typology.

Christ himself is the sacrifice, typified by the Old Testament sacrifices. He is the offering, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is even the altar himself, and ultimately the high priest who, after the order of Melchizedek, continues perpetually.

And remember in Hebrews 9 and 10, it's Christ himself who presents the blood of his sacrifice to the Father in heaven. So there's a beautiful portrayal, I think, of Christ literally fulfilling that ceremonial law and all that it meant to represent.

And then finally, of course, you've already mentioned the moral law, which he fulfilled in his perfect obedience, and the other thing that we haven't talked too much about today is he fulfilled the moral law by means of becoming the curse for us, which had to be paid, propitiated, in order to fulfill the law in its penalty because of all of our sins.

So Christ fulfills the law, and the moral law.

Remains as perpetual. Reisinger gives a list of five things that Christ does in fulfilling in this context. How does Christ fulfill the law? He says to obey the precepts. Fulfilling means that he obeyed the precepts of the moral law in its conventional form.

He endured the curse of the Lord's people, you mentioned, so we could say the positive fulfillment and negative in the sense that he does all that's required, he suffers all the law demanded that the lawbreaker suffers.

Third, to verify the various types and figures of the ceremonial law, you mentioned, to introduce the spiritual system of government of which the judicial law was an emblem, which I think is a...I mean, that's a point that I never had thought about, that, you know, when believers gather together, and as we mentioned earlier on in this series, the judicial law, its principles still have wonderful applicability, though we are not Israel, and it does not apply in the same exact sense, because, you know, America is not a Zionist nation, we are not a people with a special relationship to God, but all creatures are under Him, and these principles ought to govern us, but if you imagine a group of believers getting together, and the way we treat each other, the way we are...we're thoughtful toward each other, when a vibrant and healthy and thoughtful Christianity is being practiced, we are seeing those judicial principles working themselves out, even though we would say the judicial law has...does not continue in that same way.

So we become the expression of that in the way that we live with each other, and finally he says that Christ accomplished all the various predictions in the prophets respecting the Messiah. Now at the end of the chapter he gives yet...he says, well, there are a couple of more things we could say, so it's kind of like, you know, it's like a good preacher, he gets to the end, he thinks, oh, but wait, I didn't mention this, but it's just too good to leave off, okay?

So he mentions the fulfilling of the law in the sense that Christ, having fulfilled the law on our behalf, having done and suffered, he brings us into that relationship with God, and by His Spirit indwelling us, making us alive in Him, we share of that perfect righteousness.

The law, of course, has become a friend to us. It's not reduced or put away, but it has a different view of us, because we're in a different camp, no longer in the camp of enemy lawbreaker, but now in the camp of the adopted child of the King.

And yet the adopted child of the King, more than anybody, wants to please, wants to do what pleases the King. So the law comes alongside of us as the friend, as we've mentioned before, from the hand of Christ instead of from the hand of Moses, not to expose and condemn me any longer and drive me to a Savior, but from the hands of the Savior, it is satisfied and it becomes a friend to guide me in the life of love.

How do you love the King? How do you love a God, the God? Well, this is how. So he says, and in that sense, you know, what Paul says in the Philippians, to the Philippians, chapter 2, that because of God's work in us, He is working in us the ability to desire and to do the will of God.

So we want to work that salvation outward into every area of life. So that's one way that he fulfills, is that is in us, like Romans 8 says, by the Spirit the law is being fulfilled. We are being transformed into His image, and that includes walking the path He walked of obedience.

But at the very end of the chapter, he gives something that I had not thought of, and that there will be a future fulfillment of the law, and it's something we want to end with, and that is Christ will fulfill, ultimately, the justice of the law.

He will, if you think of it this way, the eternal God united to our humanity, a humanity which knows what it is to obey this law in a wicked world and has done so perfectly, knows how horrible sin is because He suffered the infinite wrath of the Father for His people.

This person, this God-man, is given the responsibility of judging all the nations. We know this. So He will fulfill the law, finally. That final aspect is, He will bring the law's just penalty on every person who has not only rejected the rights of God to command us, but has also rejected in a way that no, you know, no fallen angel has ever done, has rejected the astonishing mercy in the gospel, preferring self to God, self-righteousness to God's righteousness, self-rule to Christ's rule.

And that is a terrifying thought, that the one being who is law-giver, law-keeper, will also be the one who applies the law's full and enduring and everlasting penalty on every lawbreaker who has refused Him.

So, when we think of Christ coming to fulfill the law, don't just think of obedience, obedience provided for the believer, obedience working itself out in the believer, but also Christ will see that the law is honored in the crushing of every enemy.

Next week, we will look at the law and the gospel again, but we will be looking at the law and grace. We hope you can.

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