Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Jesus did not come to lessen the law. Even the sacrificial system which has obviously ceased was not abolished so much as it was fulfilled in the one perfect sacrifice of the lamb of God. The liturgies of priest and temple therefore find their fulfillment in the representation of that sacrifice every mass. Jesus did set us free from the need to fulfill the ceremonial works of the law, but did so not because they had been deficient, but rather because their purpose had been served. They had served to separate Israel from the surrounding nations so that God could prepare her in a special way to receive the Messiah. But the Messiah had now come and he would tear down the barriers separating the nations, uniting everyone in his Kingdom. He removed the temporary safeguards of protection in order to bring to completion his promise to Abraham that in his offspring "all the nations of the earth" (see Genesis 22:18) would be blessed.
You have heard that it was said to your ancestors
Before Jesus began his transformation of the law with his "But I say to you" he wanted to be clear that he was not abolishing the commandments. It was rather that he was deepening them to include the internal and subjective realm of the heart as well as the merely external. He was clear that the Kingdom required more than a merely external conformity with the law such as that for which the scribes and the Pharisees were known. It was evident that mere external observance to the law could be used to mask deep hypocrisy within, and that, without the deeper organizing principles provided by Jesus, the law could be fragmented, and the fragments could be weaponized to tear others down. This was how the Pharisees condemned by Jesus used the law, which was good, but made of it a weapon to build themselves up at the expense of others.
You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you,
whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment;
"I've never killed anyone", we sometimes tell ourselves when we want to reassure ourselves that our morality quality, if not exemplary, is at least not drastically below average. And yet, we, who have never killed anyone, have we cherished thoughts of violence about others? And by this we don't even mean the obvious violence of entertaining fantasies of it in the imagination. Rather, we also mean all those thoughts that make less of others, that regard them as less than human, such as wishes to dominate others or to silence them. We are nonviolent in our acts. But don't our thoughts tell another story? To be non-violent in our hearts toward everyone from bad drivers to perpetrators of grave injustice, to love broadly and without exception as God loves, this is something which only Jesus can bring about in us.
You have heard that it was said,
You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Sin has such a hold on us that once we learn the rules of action we often like to know just how close we can come to a sin and remain safe. In short, while not actually sinning we still cherish the idea of sin. We are like the man whose doctor told him to stop eating melons because if he had even one more it would certainly kill him, and who stopped eating melons as a consequence, but postered his room with pictures of melons and filled his browser history with sites describing them. Jesus knows that if we continue to cherish sin external obedience won't amount to much. When we do so we become like those Israelites who were free from slavery in Egypt but over whose hearts Egypt still held sway.
We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic (see Numbers 11:5).
Divorce was never something intended by God. He put up with it by regulating it, but in Jesus Christ the true intention of permanent union between husband and wife was reestablished because finally, in him, grace was given to make it possible. After all, a merely external relationship between husband and wife was obviously insufficient, and just going through the motions was obviously lacking. Only Jesus could bring about the healing of hearts needed to make a truly wholistic bond possible.
Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No.'
Anything more is from the evil one."
Jesus called his listeners to stop abusing oaths to promise what they ought not promise because either it was entirely dishonest or because it was beyond their control. For his followers, animated by the Spirit of Truth, a simply 'Yes' or 'No' was meant to carry more weight than these cheap oaths Jesus condemned. Those who made such oaths devalued regular speech, and even the oaths they took for evasive and designed, they imagined, to help them avoid consequences for breaking them.
We should remember that Jesus gave these commandments because they would be for our good, fulfilling not only the law, but also his intentions for us as creatures, making us to thrive. After all, if we are dishonest, and cherish violence and lust in our hearts, how can we ever expect to be happy? To live up to what Jesus commands sounds arduous, perhaps even beyond our control. And humanly speaking this is certainly so. But we are not meant to rely on our strength alone, because God gives us the grace for what he himself commands. Therefore what Sirach wrote applies also to us:
he has set before you fire and water
to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.
Before man are life and death, good and evil,
whichever he chooses shall be given him.
When we stretch forth our hand toward life we become the mature who begins to understand the inner logic of a wisdom that is hidden from the world at large. When we do so we already begin to taste the promise about which Paul wrote:
What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,
and what has not entered the human heart,
what God has prepared for those who love him,
this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
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