13 June 2017 - fulfilled in us

Today's Readings (Audio)

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

The problem isn't with the law or with the prophets. After all, what are they at the core?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (se Matthew 22:37-40).

Prophets like Elijah call people back to the love of God when they forget him and serve idols.

Elijah appealed to all the people and said,
"How long will you straddle the issue?
If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him."
The people, however, did not answer him.

We need to hear the words of the prophet Elijah so we can turn from our own idols to serve the living God. We serve a God who speaks, who acts, who calls down fire upon the sacrifice. Yet all too often we give our allegiance to modern Baals who can't satisfy us or answer us. For "no one was listening."

The problem is not with the law or the prophets. The problem is with us.

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed (see Galatians 3:23).

We are not able to escape from sin on our own. Only by faith in Christ do we receive the grace that we need to fulfill the law. We are baptized and put on Christ. Clothed in Christ we have a new relationship to the law and the prophets.

For 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, 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 (see Romans 8:3-4, emphasis added).

Let us hear the Spirit convict us about the one true God. Let us respond, walking by the Spirit, living by the truth that impels us to love of God and neighbor.

You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.