Matthew 5:17-20
17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."
As we continue the discussion of the Sermon on the Mount, we are now examining our relationship to the "law" as citizens of Jesus' kingdom versus being a citizen of the kingdom of Israel or Judah. If you study the Old Testament, you will find early on that there are a lot or rules that God set down for His people in their earthly kingdom in order to demonstrate how they are set apart from the rest of the world. This was with the intention of them to be a nation of priests pointing the whole world to God as a result of God's blessing based on their obedience and their relationship with Him.
However, they failed, and they were unable to be the shining light to all of humanity that they were intended to be. God in His faithfulness did not abandon His people. There were consequences for their actions; long, desperate times of oppression and persecution and outright near obliteration, but God maintained His end of the covenant agreement. Despite all of His chosen peoples self-determination that resulted in their downfall, the Messiah still came. God used them to bless all of His creation. Jesus came as a Jew from the line of David and in fulfillment of every promise God made. Jesus IS the fulfillment of God's promises. In Him there is life, hope, peace and the promise of everlasting rest in the presence of our creator God . . . yep, Jesus is truly amazing in His grace and awesome in His person.
In the passage quoted above we see that Jesus didn't come to destroy what was previously put into place. He didn't preach against the law or say it was wrong or should be overthrown. Most people who are seeking to establish a "new order" to things want to eradicate everything that came before them. Not so with Jesus. He spoke of the law as being from God, pointed to its importance and revealed its proper interpretation based on a personal relationship with a living God. He exposed the Old Testament law for what it is, the great revealer of our desperate need for a Savior, because we cannot save ourselves despite what humanists insist on teaching that humanity is the apex of everything. They are wrong.
Paul put it this way in Romans 3:19-20:
"Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin."
So our weakness and inability to be truly righteous is pointed out in our inability to keep what the law sets down as a standard for righteousness. But just as God did not abandon His people and fulfilled His promises to them in Jesus, He is doing that for us. Paul went on to say in Romans 3:21-24: "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 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."
Jesus sets forth an expectation that His followers will be able to do something that no one had been able to do before. Be righteous in accordance with the law. Whoa, wait a second, I just said that we can't do that, no one but Jesus can, so how does Jesus expect me to be righteous even more so than the guys who were experts and taught the law their entire lives? "We just can't do it Captain, we don't have the power." (Imagine that with a Scottish accent and you are on board the Enterprise).
So has Jesus given us an impossible infuriating task that will leave us alone and abandoned? No, He never does. The righteous requirement of the law, the wages of sin being death, was taken care of by Jesus on the cross. He did it - the "jot" and "tittle" of the law Jesus mentioned was a reference to the smallest grammatical mark and tiniest part of writing the alphabet. None of it is left undone.
Paul says in Galatians 2:16: "knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified."
The scribes and Pharisees mentioned above had a nasty habit of writing their own versions of the law and creating their own "hedge" around the law with their own rules that enabled them to have an appearance of righteousness. They looked as though they respected the law and were attempting to keep the law, but in reality they had ways of circumventing their own rules while trying to maintain the appearance of being right. Jesus called them hypocrites and described them as "whitewashed tombs. "They looked good on the outside but had only death on the inside.
Citizens of Jesus' kingdom are not a people of pretense, pomp and pageantry. The torn down temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt as followers of Jesus, His people are the temple. Do you not know that you are the temple and dwelling place of the Holy Spirit according to Paul, and that Jesus satisfied all of the requirements of the perfect sacrifice for us?
He is our sacrificial lamb once and for all: "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him," according to 2 Corinthians 5:21. Peter said, "knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."
So the law of the Old Testament points out our desperate need for the Savior. Galatians 4:24-26 says, "But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor."
Then Jesus demonstrates how He is the fulfillment of the law, the accomplisher of all of the promises between God and man and in Him is the hope of the future fulfillment of all we haven't seen accomplished yet. We can know with confidence that it will be done because of Who He Is.
So, are we incapable of being right? Are all rules meant to be broken?