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 merely supplant the previous revelation by God to Moses and the prophets, though sometimes his relationship to the law made this type of misunderstanding possible. He criticized merely human traditions that the Pharisees had come to regard with the same seriousness as the law itself. He pointed the external ordinances of the law toward the interior conversion of heart that they were always meant to entail. He set aside accommodations made for the peoples' hardness of heart. All of this required more fidelity to the original moral spirit of the law and not less. But as to sacrifices and ceremonial regulations, these would indeed end, but not as though they had simply been removed or replaced. Rather, they were fulfilled. Every sacrifice in some way pointed forward to the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus. Every mediator between the people and God pointed to him. Every place of worship looked forward to Jesus as the true temple where humanity would worship God in Spirit and truth.
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 (see Romans 8:3).
The ceremonial aspects of the law and the moral requirements of the law were both incomplete until they were fulfilled by Jesus. In different ways they both called out for the one who could come and transform them into something which would be truly life giving. The statues were meant to actually result in the people who followed them being so close to God that others would take notice, saying, "what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?" But without the grace of Jesus the law more often served to show the distance of Israel from what God intended.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
Now that Jesus has fulfilled the law he has made the commandments into the good news they were always meant to be, and the path by which we really can draw near to the living God. Thus, the command of Moses to Israel applies all the more to us:
However, take care and be earnestly on your guard
not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen,
nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live,
but teach them to your children and to your children's children.
Even already at this early point in the history of revelation we can see that the commandments were never meant to be carried out in their own outside of the context of the living relationship of God with his people. In order to truly embrace them we need to remember what God has done in salvation history and in this way appreciate how the law is fulfilled by Jesus. We need sacred memory of salvation history, and also of our own walk of faith with the Lord, to put the law in proper context. So let us remember the good things that the Lord has done so that we can embrace all that he still desires to accomplish in the world.
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