The Torah, the Israelite Law, was revealed by God through Moses in the Old Testament. In the passage for this Sunday, Jesus says about some aspects of the Law: You have heard said…, but I say to you. For a mere human, such a statement would be terrible presumption. For any one of us to speak in such a way about God's law would be nothing short of blasphemy. But Christ can speak that way because he is not a mere human. He is God Incarnate. He is the Lawgiver Himself. Since the Law comes from God, Christ, who is God Incarnate, can speak any way he wants about the Law.
We see in the passage that Jesus comes not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. He shows the fuller, deeper meaning of the Law and the relationship with God that the Law is pointing toward. In the process, he will set aside certain precepts that prepared the way for Christ but are no longer needed now that the grace of Christ has been given to us. In doing so, Jesus is not abolishing parts of the Law, but is allowing the deeper meaning of the Law to flourish. In interpreting the Mosaic Law, we can say that the Old Testament precepts are to be followed by Christians only to the extent that Christ restated or reaffirmed them.
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Photo Credit: Storm by Francesco Gamba from Wikimedia Commons.
