What is the Law? • Michael Sciarra

Opening Prayer

Lord, this morning we pray that you would help us to value your word, as Christ shows us here. That we would take it as true, and therefore we would expect to encounter the living God in it.

Lord, some of us have come here distracted. Some of us have come here downtrodden this morning. Discouraged. We pray now that you would fix our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, beholding him in your word in such a way that it renews us. That it uplifts the downcast soul. That it strengthens each of us. And that by your spirit it would be used to accomplish mighty things in our lives.

We pray also, Lord, that you would give us a willingness to obey it and to live it out no matter the cost. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction: Kids and Understanding

I think many of you in this room have been in the middle of parenting children at some point. And if you haven't, you've probably been in a room with children or interacted with small children at some point. And you know that kids are clever. Kids are sharp. They often know more than they let on. They can be cunning even. They remember things, they pick up what we say, and sometimes like an elephant, they don't let us forget it.

And being rather clever, sometimes kids try to trip their parents up. Not that it's also always for nefarious cause, but I'm pretty sure, I'm certain that most of us have done this at some point. You know how it goes: you ask one parent for something, and they say no. Or just give you any sort of answer that's not what you were hoping for. And so you find the other parent. And either reframe your question so that it's not the same, or simply say, "Mom said I should ask you," which may or may not be true.

Other times kids totally miss what we're saying. I had one of these encounters with my children this weekend. They were continuing a conversation we had earlier and just jumped right into it, and I said yes to something that I did not mean to say yes to in any way, because I thought we were talking about something different. And sometimes in the weirdest way, the physics of no coming out of my mouth as a parent bounces off a fan in a ceiling and a rug and sounds like maybe or yes or if you ask again, sure you can have it.

Kids are often looking for an angle. Even in their childlike innocence at times, all of us try to get the right outcome from life in the ways that we want. Think about the way that a parent's words can be misconstrued and mishandled. Meaning something that was never intended, sometimes added onto, sometimes amended or altered or subtracted.

The Danger of Misconstruing God's Word: Legalism

You and I and so many people often do that with the Word of God. We can pick up a Bible passage and we can try to apply it to ourselves in a way that feels nice rather than how it should be, in a way that feels right or fits an outcome I'm hoping for. But if we're honest, sometimes we just rip things out of a context and we've all seen it happen, and we abuse the meaning of God's Word.

The worst form of using God's word the wrong way, of actually missing what God is trying to get at, is legalism. Here's a definition of legalism for you: it's where you or I seek to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God. Legalism is where you or I seek to achieve forgiveness from God or acceptance by God through obedience to God. Because we can fool ourselves into thinking that the root cause of our right standing, of our right relationship with the Lord, might be some act of our own obedience.

This is exactly what the religious leaders in Jesus' day, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the ruling class had come to believe. They had taken so seriously the Word of God and his law, his commandments, that in order to not ever possibly misstep, they added layer upon layer, rule upon rule, requirement upon requirement on top of God's law, in addition to the Word of God. Creating a law more comprehensive and complex than everything than anything God had intended for them. And it was in this self-formulated law that religious self-righteousness meets an all-time high.

At one point Jesus, confronting the Pharisees' false religion, even calls them whitewashed tombs. "You look clean on the outside but you are dead, full of dead bones on the inside." The law-keeping and self-focused self-righteousness of the Pharisees or of anyone cannot justify. Rule-keeping legalism cannot gain us fellowship with God. Our own keeping of any rule or set of rules cannot secure us justification. It cannot even keep you in salvation as if you were saved by another means, but God will continue to like you because of what you do. All such notions are false religion, false righteousness, whitewashed tombs. We never want to simply think that we can clean ourselves up on the outside and that somehow that will find its way into our hearts.

The Opposite Danger: Antinomianism (Hyper Grace)

Legalism is hyper-law. And if you flip the coin of legalism over to its other side, you'll find another common pitfall: antinomianism, anti-law, or what we could term hyper-grace. Hyper-grace teaching would stress the opposite of what the Pharisees did. They thought their law-keeping, their obedience, their good works were their salvation. But hyper-grace antinomianism teaches that works are not even a part of living faith in any way, shape, or form. It would teach that you and I are saved by grace through faith. Amen. Yet it would say that God's declared moral truth is optional for us. The commandments of Christ, what Paul would call the law of Christ, is an optional second add-on to your salvation. Take it or leave it. They would say Christ is Savior, but they would not call Christ Lord or Master. This is what James would call dead faith.

Jesus Fulfills the Law and the Prophets: Christ Is the Center of Scripture

These are two distorted views of God's Word. They're out of focus and they miss the truth that the Bible teaches. Both are to be repudiated and avoided. And if that is true, then what does the Bible say about how you and I interact with God's Word, with God's commandment, with what could rightly be called law? Prescriptive commands for you and I. If Christ does call us to obedience, to follow him, to deny ourselves, then what does the Bible say about how we interact with the law? What does it even say about how you and I interact with the whole of the Old Testament and the laws found there?

We come now to Matthew 5:17 as we work through the Sermon on the Mount, and we come to the real body of the Sermon on the Mount. Everything that has come up to this point in large part has been introductory. Jesus's preface. And now we have the body. In fact, basically everything else found on the sermon and the mount, except for the tail end of Matthew 7, is all based on Matthew 5:17-20 and is an exposition of what Jesus says here. This is Jesus's thesis, his main point for his sermon.

I'll remind you that Jesus is establishing and showing us his kingdom purposes. Kingdom citizens were marked by the beatitudes and those characteristics and being salt and light, what God has made us to be. And now we understand how those realities, how those characteristics, those marks of grace, play out in our lives. We learn that obedience is paramount, yet not in a way that secures righteousness by fulfilling the law ourselves, but ultimately in looking to Christ, the one who fulfills all righteousness for us. Christ fulfills the law for us.

Jesus's detractors were legalists, and here Jesus's teaching is going to show us that he has not come to get rid of God's commands but to uphold them. We'll see three points this morning that begin to show us God's heart behind the law, Christ's understanding of the Word of God. We'll see that Christ, number one, fulfills the law. Number two, Christ upholds the law. And number three, Christ fulfills the law in us.

Look down at verse 17. "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." What does Jesus mean by the Law or the Prophets? It's somewhat helpful to understand what Jesus's Bible looked like. You and I have what we often describe as 66 books. Jesus simply had the Old Testament, over 60% of your Bible, or around 60% of your Bible. And Jesus's Bible was not broken up like yours and I's, where we thought of the first five books of the Bible as the Torah, or the Law, or the Pentateuch, the writings of Moses, and then we kind of get some history and then we throw in some wisdom literature and then we get to the Prophets. And there's major and minor prophets. Well, Jesus's Bible was broken up into the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets. The Law being all of Genesis basically through the end of 2 Kings. And then the Prophets being what you and I often think of as the Prophets, the major and the minor prophets. And the Writings being those wisdom literature, and some historical literature even like Daniel would have been grouped in there.

Now Jesus isn't trying to exclude that third element there. He's using the term here, "the Law and the Prophets," to tell us, "I'm talking about the whole of the Bible that you know of at this time. All of God's inspirated revelation to us, that's what I'm referring to." And so as he refers to God's Word, it should seem obvious to us that he's not come to do away with it. His words are telling us something different, but many have thought that Christ was doing away with the law here. We know that that's what the Pharisees of Jesus' day thought. They often accused him of just this, especially as it came to their regulations of the Sabbath and how Jesus and his disciples lived that out.

This has also happened throughout church history. Marcion in the 2nd century rewrote the New Testament and removed Old Testament references. He truly sought to remove God's law. He removed Matthew 5:17-20 altogether. Others throughout church history have despised the Old Testament. One in the 4th century named Dr. Faustus hated the Old Testament and declared to hate the Old Testament's God, pitting the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament against each other. He misunderstood and he twisted Jesus's words here, to say that Jesus was getting rid of the Old Testament and all that God had written there and simply replacing it.

But Jesus shows us that he is not getting rid of the law, which can be shorthand for all of the revelation of God, God's Word, and sometimes specifically the law of Moses, the Old Covenant. Jesus shows us realities about the law and that he does uphold the law and fulfill the law throughout the rest of Matthew 5 where he says, "You heard that it was said, but I say to you," not in any way undermining that teaching but clarifying it.

But Jesus doesn't just say that he's come to teach the law or help us understand the law. He says, "I have come to fulfill them." The Law and the Prophets, the entirety of the Old Testament writing, Jesus says, "I'm fulfilling this." At the end of verse 18 he says, "All will be accomplished." Friends, all of Scripture points to Christ. It is legitimized by him. It is upheld by him. He is the aim, the telos, the ultimate landing point of all you and I read in our Bibles. Jesus is the center of God's kingdom program from Genesis to Revelation.

Christ Fulfills the Law in Various Ways

Matthew Banks, one author, rightly said, "The Mosaic Law points forward to the teachings of Christ as he has been revealed in them in a profound manner." Consider with me for a moment the trajectory of redemptive history. All of God's plans and purposes in accomplishing his redemption, his salvation for mankind. If you turned in your Bibles to Genesis 3:15, and you do not need to turn all these places. In fact, I think I've included too many references here, so we'll see if I give you all of them. But friends, there is a mountain, a mountain of fulfilled prophecy, of pointings, of signs, of types, of shadows that lead us to Christ throughout the Bible. Genesis 3:15 is this first promise of a seed. "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring" – offspring is also a seed – "and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." There's a promise serpent crusher to come. One who would do away with evil and wickedness and defeat the plans of Satan, opposing God.

In Genesis 12 you see that same language picked up. Verse 2, "I will make of you a great nation." This is the Abrahamic covenant beginning here. "And I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." We read later on in Genesis 15 and 17 that this is a covenant God is making with Abraham as the head of his family, and it goes throughout generations to all of his offspring, his seed, promising blessing to the nations.

In Exodus 19 and 20, after God has redeemed his people from slavery, God makes a covenant with them. And he promises that they will be redeemed by him, to be a people for his own possession, to be a nation of priests unto God, again even for the blessings of the nation. As God redeems Israel, even in Exodus 4:22, he describes Israel as God's firstborn son. The thread of that seed from Genesis 3:15 continues on through the promises in Scripture. You could skip forward even more and you could go to 2 Samuel 7, where the promise of the Davidic covenant is made known. Here there is a coming seed, an offspring from the line of David who is going to establish an everlasting kingdom that brings blessing under God's rule, and whereby the obedience of the king will be counted on behalf of his subjects, as Psalm 132:11 will tell us.

You can go to Isaiah and over and over in Isaiah we see promises of a coming Messiah. Isaiah 7:14 promises one, a virgin to give birth to Immanuel, God with us. Isaiah 9:6 and 7 you might know well, a future child described as a king, a wonderful counselor even, who will rule on David's throne forever. Isaiah 53 talks about the one who is from the stump of Jesse, as Isaiah 11 says, who's a servant king, who takes the punishment for the sins of others, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, and on him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

And then you come to Matthew 1, you fast forward to the New Testament, and Matthew 1:1 you read these words: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." He's entered the scene, and that genealogy there proves that Christ is the one even back from Genesis 3, who has long been promised. He is the one John 1:29 as John the Baptist sees Jesus, is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The lamb from Isaiah 53, led to the slaughter. The lamb pictured so many times in the Old Testament on the Day of Atonement that covers the sins of the people.

You come to Matthew 3:15 and you see that Jesus has been baptized to fulfill all righteousness. You see in Matthew 4:17 that now Jesus comes as the Davidic King, as the Messiah long promised, to establish God's rule. He says, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." He tells us that he has come to proclaim a gospel, the good news of God's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. And in Matthew 5 here he lays out his kingdom values. You can think about the many promises in the Old Testament. Jeremiah 31 of a new covenant where God's people would no longer walk in disobedience but would have the law written on their hearts and would be able to have the spirit within them enabling obedience. And then in Luke 22:20 you have Jesus instituting the Lord's Supper that says, "This is the new covenant in my blood."

You go all the way to the end of Scripture in Revelation 1, you have one like the Son of Man, a phrase that hearkens you back to the prophecies of Daniel. And he has the keys of death and Hades because he is the one who died and rose again. In Revelation 5 you have the one in verse 5 who's described as "the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David." And he has conquered so that he can open the scroll, so that he can unleash God's final end-times plans of writing every wrong and establishing his perfect rule and his perfect reign on the earth. Jesus is worthy to open that up. Why? Because he was slain and by his blood he has ransomed a people for God. And think back to when God first redeemed an entire people. He called them a kingdom of priests. And there in Revelation 5 you have made them a kingdom of priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. Pointing us all the more forward. Revelation 22, the one who shows John everything that will soon come says, "I am coming soon."

From beginning to end, the entire testimony of Scripture is centered on Christ, of his fulfillment of promises long promised ago, and of his work to bring about all the fulfillment of God's future promises, to secure salvation for his people, to establish his perfect rule and his perfect blessing for them. Jesus is the center of Scripture, the center of God's kingdom program. This is why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20, "All the promises of God are yes in him," in Christ. They culminate in him. They point to him. They're fulfilled by him.

Jesus fulfills many Messianic predictions. The Old Testament has a plethora of these, like the birthplace of Christ in Micah 5:2, and the crucifixion even seen in Psalm 22. Christ's call from Egypt in Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I call my son," repeated here in Matthew 2:15. And there's even more. Jesus's principal fulfillment of the law is to meet every Messianic promise and notion and fulfill each one of them.

Jesus fulfilled the law by dying on the cross and satisfying the demands of that law, even the curses that come from disobedience that are against those who would have trust and faith in him. The entire sacrificial system in the Old Testament points to Christ. They prepared the people of Israel, God's people, by instilling in them the reality that sacrifice means death, that the wages of sin as we know from Romans 3 and Romans 6 is death. They prepared the people of Israel for Jesus's death on the cross, to recognize it for what it was. Jesus fulfills and fills the full picture of what the sacrificial system, all of it, had long pointed to.

Jesus himself perfectly kept all the commandments of the law. Galatians 4:4 tells us he was born under the law. Again Matthew 3:15 tells us he has fulfilled all righteousness. He kept the law perfectly, without sin, even being tempted as we are, yet without sin, Hebrews 4 would remind us. Jesus brings all of the great doctrines of the Old Testament to fulfillment by his teaching and his person.

JC Ryle puts it this way: "The Old Testament is the gospel in the bud. The New Testament is the gospel in full flavor. The Old Testament is the gospel in the blade," think of a small blade of an ear of corn just sprouting out of the ground, "The New Testament is the gospel in full ear," fully grown, seen, revealed in Christ. Jesus fulfills the law and the prophets in a multi-faceted, dynamic way without destroying the law. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them. I have come to fulfill them." Christ is the author of the law and its fulfiller.

Christ Upholds the Law: It Will Not Pass Away

Christ has therefore authority, which with which he then puts forth through the rest of the Sermon on the Mount the truth of the Old Testament. And through the rest of Matthew 5, we'll see next week and the week after, how he clarifies God's intent even in giving the 10 Commandments and all the laws of Israel that lived those out thereafter. And so Christ fulfills the law, and secondly, we see that Christ upholds the law. In fulfilling God's law, Christ shows us the importance of the law of God. None of it is to be dismissed. All of it is to be valued and cherished and upheld, not just by Christ, but by us.

He tells us in verse 18, "I say to you," and "until heaven and earth pass away." Everything you and I know, until that's done away with, "not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished." How real is it? How important is it? How much does Christ value it? How real is the reality around you of the universe and the world? Heaven and earth. If it all crumbled down, then it would be done away with. Jesus is making a profound point that nothing will be done away with in God's law. He says, "not an iota and not a dot." You can think of the 66,000 instances of the tiniest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It looks like an apostrophe. None of those will be done away with, minimized, undone by Christ. Not one of the innumerable tiny markings will pass from the law. It's not simply that the Old Testament contains truth. Jesus says what he repeats in John 10:35, "Scripture cannot be broken." That's what he's telling us here.

Seasons change, weather fluctuates, topography shifts, your moods go up and down all day long. Tectonic plates shift under the earth. Friends, Pluto couldn't stay a planet for long. That even changed. We learned it in school and then it was undone. God's Word will not pass away, will not fail, will not be undone. I want you to think of this reality of these tiny markings. Some of you learned cursive. Some of you started to learn cursive if you're my age, and that didn't carry throughout our education. But if you think of cursive writing, and you think of the small connections between one letter to another that gives it some of its beauty and marks it out as what it is. Well, think of that tiniest bit. And if all of God's law was written in cursive, not one of those small connections, not one of those little embellishments on the end of an uppercase B or an S at the end, none of it will be undone. None of it will be done away with. God's Word is inspired and immutable. That mean it does not change. God does not change and so his Word will not change. The Scriptures are the most enduring thing in the entire universe. Jesus himself said in Matthew 24:35, very similar to what he says here, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. They will remain forever."

Every part of the Bible should be eagerly upheld, eagerly obeyed, eagerly lived out. The Old Testament is the authoritative Word of God. There is not a different God that displays himself in the Old Testament that then changes or morphs in the New Testament. What God says, he has meant. Every piece is inspired. Every piece is completely and wholly true. It's inherent without error. Psalm 119:89 tells us, "Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens."

Jesus shows us with authority what God's law means. And so we want to value it, to uphold it, to in every way possible as we read our Bibles seek to understand the true heart of the law. There are some who have tried to divide God's law, the Old Testament and the commands therein, into three categories. And they're helpful categories as you study, of the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law. But friends, the moral, God's heart for his people and right living is thread throughout all of them, from beginning to end. We may not directly obey a law that tells us that we can't eat certain foods or we can't wear certain types of clothing. But we can understand from that law God's heart and his intent for his people. And we can follow that. We can look to Christ and how he displays the heart of the law, and that it's not about mere externals but it's about heart obedience first and worship of God first and commitment to his priorities first, and follow that.

You and I should delight in therefore and learn from every part of God's Word. Psalm 119, starting in verse 7, tells us, "The law of the Lord, his word is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward." The Psalmist does not speak this about the New Testament commands and the beautiful pictures of Christ and Christ's sacrifice only. He's speaking of every part of God's Word, that it is useful.

You and I, therefore, wherever we find ourselves in Scripture, should have a rich devotional life. All of Scripture should bring before us the glory of God. Do you believe that it's true that even when you're slogging through Leviticus at the beginning of the year, that God's Word has something for you there, that by his spirit God can illumine his Word to you, display it to you, help you understand it, and therefore show you more of himself? Your devotional life is to be rich, rewarding, blessed, illuminated, inspiring faithfulness in you through all of God's Word. You encounter the living God as much in the minutiae of Leviticus as you do in John's vision of heaven in Revelation. There is precious honey for you to taste in Habakkuk and in Hebrews. Wisdom for you to uncover both in Exodus and Ephesians. Grace to sustain you in the Psalms. Joy to propel you in Philippians. Strength to fill your bones. Courage in the Book of Joshua. Warnings to be heeded throughout books like Judges. Hope to fill your heart in 1 Peter. Righteousness and the beauty of God's righteousness revealed in the book like Romans.

There is so much more. We could go down the list of all the ways that God's Word can build you up and strengthen you and give beauty to your Christian life. God's Word is precious, friends. It's a treasure, desired even more than gold and every ounce of riches in this world.

I remember being a junior higher and my mom giving me a book written by a pastor in the persecuted church in China. And it was littered with stories that are wild. But one of the things that stuck out to me most, and the story I remember most, is a story of these persecuted pastors traveling hundreds of miles to meet one another. These believers had Bibles stripped from them, taken away, burned, eviscerated. And they would gather together to impart to one another the parts of God's Word that they had memorized, so that they could bring that back to their churches. And these brothers would spend time memorizing all of the gospels over a month, and it would be in their minds and in their hearts. And that's what they would be able to feed their people from. Friends, do we treasure the Word like our life depends on it? Jesus tells us this is his Word. It is important. It is upheld by Christ. We should not minimize it. The Word of God so easily becomes a commodity in our pockets. Friends, I have copies of the Bible I have probably not opened in years that collect dust because I got a better version. I got one that had a little bit of a better layout or a ribbon I liked. There's a whole industry here around getting exactly the Bible that fits you. And so it's really easy to look at God's Word as another thing we consume that tickles our fancy.

This is not how we should treat the Word of God. We should just consume God's Word as if our life depends on it. This is why Jesus, when tempted by Satan, Jesus himself, what is the fuel he uses in Matthew 4 and in Mark 4? The Word of God. "Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." Do not starve your Christian life and your spiritual vitality by keeping the Word of God away from yourself. Every moment with the Word is worthwhile.

Kids, anybody 18 and younger in the congregation, God's Word can be precious to you too. God's Word is not something only for those who can read or only for those who are adults and you think might be smarter than you to explain your questions. Let me encourage you children, hide God's Word in your heart today. That it might not depart from you and that you would not sin against God. That you might in everything, in all of your life, kids, be pointed to Jesus, that God would use you as he shapes you by his Word for mighty things you could have never accomplished on your own.

Parents, give your kids God's Word. Do not neglect time together as a family around the Word of God. Take every opportunity you can, even in the hard moments of discipline, to remind them that God's Word is true, that God's Word shapes us, that it's worthwhile. Christ places a correct value here on the Word of God and tells us, "All will be accomplished." He upholds the law. It all culminates in him. He shows us the value we ought to have of God's Word. I'll repeat the words of 2 Corinthians 1:20 again, "All the promises of God find their yes in Christ." It's all meant to point you there.

Christ Fulfills the Law in Us

Third and finally, consider how Christ fulfills the law in us. Christ fulfills the law himself as its aim and its outcome. Christ upholds the law, the Word of God as important, and he fulfills the law in us. Verse 18 and sorry, verse 19. "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." Our righteousness, he says in verse 20, is to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees if we're to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus brings a new righteousness, not a righteousness that is opposed to the old righteousness, but rather one that shows us the true implication of God's righteousness throughout Scripture. We'll see this as we study again the rest of Matthew 5. Jesus makes clear the actual reality of God's law. He corrects false understandings, legalistic distortions of God's law, and shows us that God's law is a gracious gift of God for the good of his people. But ultimately the righteousness that Christ calls us to is a radical righteousness that Christ teaches, and it's not radical because it's new but because Christ himself lived it. Christ came to fulfill all righteousness, including the righteous requirements of the law, blessings for obedience and cursings for disobedience.

You remember James 2:10 when we were studying James months ago, "Whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles in one point has become guilty of all of it." And when we come to Christ, we see that he is the one who did not stumble for a moment. Again, Hebrews 4:15 tells us, "He was tempted as we are, yet without sin." Jesus is the perfect one, the only one, the holy one, the one who can stand in the gap for sinners. The law shows us the righteous demands of God for sinners. It shows us the high holiness of God and the high standards of God, and it exposes how far you and I fall short. The only way that you and I, lawbreakers, can be made right with God is through the righteousness of Christ. Because Christ brings not a tattered righteousness, not "I kept these and not that," but a perfect righteousness. And so when we trust in him, we receive his merits as he takes on our punishment. Christ actively obeyed the law of God, and even that active obedience is imputed to us. And therefore he's able to bring us peace by the blood of his cross.

You and I can't keep the law in order to earn righteousness for a moment. Our works play no part in our justification. Turn with me real quick to Romans 3. Romans chapter 3 shows us our own sinfulness, that God's righteousness will be upheld. But in verse 21, it makes really clear how you and I can come across a righteousness not our own. Romans 3:21 says, "Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness manifested is Christ. The righteousness of God through faith." Through works? No. "Through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by our works?" No. "By his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to received received by faith." Faith that lays hold of the promises of Christ, faith that rests on the work of Christ.

"What becomes of our boasting?" Paul says in verse 27. "It's excluded," because of faith. Only Christ can redeem. Only Christ can save. Only Christ can fulfill and keep the law and give us a righteousness that we need, a righteousness that is greater than the righteousness that the scribes and Pharisees had. For theirs was external. The people in Jesus's day would have thought, "Greater than the scribes and Pharisees? These guys have more rules than I find in my Bible and they keep them all. How can that happen?" "I won't get there." You're right. Christ accomplishes it. The law reveals our sin and Christ covers our sin.

If you have come here today and you have not trusted in Christ, if you have not looked to him as the only one who can make you right with God and cover all your failings, all your wrongdoing, all of your sin, let me plead with you, turn to Christ today. Do not wait a moment. Do not wait until you think you've cleaned yourself up or you've arrived at a certain place in life. Christ says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden" with a burden of sin, "and I will give you rest for your souls." Turn to Christ, the only one, the God-man, who can save you, who lived for you, who died for you, who rose for you, defeating sin and death. So that all who trust in him would be given righteousness and not just righteousness but life and life eternal. You only need to trust in Christ. And then you too can have your sins forgiven and a righteousness given to you that is even greater than the scribes and the Pharisees.

Does Christ's fulfillment of righteousness of righteousness mean that we go lax and easy on ourselves? Does it mean that we should take the easy road? I want you to remember those two pitfalls, legalism, adding to God's Word and keeping it to earn favor with God on one side, and antinomianism, not keeping God's law in any way on the other. Look at Romans 3 again, verse 31. How does Paul tell us the righteousness we receive that is from God in Christ, how does it play out? In verse 31 he says, "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? Do we undo the law? Do we no longer need to obey?" "By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law."

The righteous requirement for salvation is met in Christ alone. He does what the law and our hands can't do. He keeps it, but this tells us that the law in our lives is present and Jesus enables us to keep it. To keep it perfectly in order to merit something? No, but to keep it, to live righteously, to understand the heart of the law and all of God's commands, Old Testament and New, and to obey it from the heart? Yes. You and I, Christian, are empowered by the Holy Spirit, which Romans 8 tells us, is the spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. That powerful spirit, eternally God. That kind of power enables us to live out the precepts of God's law to the full.

So we understand then that when we follow Christ, it's not an impulsive thing where we just give away to inner desires and notions and whatever feels right. Our discipleship of Christ, our following of him, our commitment to him involves knowing what he desires and understanding the teachings of his Word and being empowered by the spirit. Not our own strength, his strength to obey it. He supplies all we need. When Christ commands something, he does enable you to fulfill it. All because of grace. Those who are filled with the spirit and enabled to live out God's law are the poor in spirit, are the hungry for righteousness, are the meek. Those who know they can't make it on their own.

Romans 8 tells us that God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. For what purpose? In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. Walking out the righteousness of God by the power of God. The New Testament makes clear at least in two places that there is a law of Christ. Galatians 6:2 says that when we bear one another's burdens, we fulfill the law of Christ. 2 Corinthians 9:21 Paul describes himself as under the law of Christ rather than the Mosaic law. Christ exposes, makes clear to us, explicates how we're to understand God's law in the Old Testament and gives us commands to obey in the New Testament. As it's been said, the more light we have, the more we ought to love God. The more we see our own complete and full forgiveness in Christ, the more heartily we ought to work for his glory. And so it's our joy to walk in obedience.

John 14 Jesus says, "If you love me," in verse 15, "you will keep my commandments." A phrase just like that is littered all throughout the book of 1 John. In John 15:10, Jesus says, "Keeping my commandments is how you abide in my love." And this is what we need to remember. 1 John 5:3, that "his commandments are not burdensome." God does not heap rules on you. Christ does not heap rules on you that are meant to weigh you down and discourage you, but that are meant to enliven you, that are meant to invigorate you, that are meant to call you to obedience and through his strength obey, that are meant to increase your joy. And the enjoyment of all that God gives you in the world.

Sinclair Ferguson uses the illustration of a steam engine to describe the commandments of God and how we obey them. He talks about Christ's work in our love for Christ as the steam, the energy, the power, the spirit within us as that power that drives the train. And he talks about how God's law provides the tracks for us, and that those tracks give us freedom to move in a God-ward direction. Otherwise we'd get nowhere, otherwise we wouldn't know where to go. And walking in obedience, Jesus finally tells us as he fulfills the law in us, that there is in Matthew 5 great reward.

"Whoever relaxes one of these commandments, the least of them, and teaches others to do the same, is least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Notice your options there: great or least. There's some element where it seems like both categories might be here. We obey others, we obey God's Word and teach others to do the same, both by our words and by our life that others can follow. We want to keep the imperatives of Scripture and understand that it is not our primary objective to obtain a greater reward, but it is a motivation for us. And it is a grace of God to say, "You will be rewarded for your obedience on the final day." Not an obedience that will make us look great, not practicing our righteousness before men so that they see us, but so that they see our Father and glorify him. And so that on the final day, we will lay even that reward down at the feet of Christ so that he receives praise and he receives glory for all of it. Keeping God's Word, abiding by God's law is a grace to us and enables us to participate in even more glorification of Christ on the final day. And there's endless joy in that.

Call to Action / Conclusion

Friends, let us strive to hold to God's Word like Jesus does. To see Christ on every page. And as we see Christ, to worship him, to adore him, to grow in affection for him, to see more and more his beauty and his magnitude, and to love all of God's Word as it works in that way in our life. Let's commit ourselves to set our sights on Christ, the one who secures righteousness for us that we could not come up with on our own, and yet that he graciously gives to all who look to him. Christ, the one who accomplishes all of God's law. Friends, look to Christ each day and trust him for the strength to endure. Trust him for the strength that leads to obedience. That you and I might reach the golden shores of heaven someday, full of strength, full of life, full of vigor, holding fast to Christ and receiving a reward that we will lay at the feet of Christ in glorious praise and in endless worship.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Lord,