Not to abolish the Law
The Matthean Jesus on interpreting the Torah
(Well, I was going to write about the beatitudes one-by-one, and I have a few book posts piling up. But Ryan keeps needling me, so this is the first of two posts dealing with his engagement on the Sermon on the Mount. This week I'll discuss the basis of the exegetical pattern in Matthew 5:21-48 by looking at the initial principle in 5:17-20; next week I'll talk about loving your enemies (by piling burning coals on their heads).
Matthew 5(:21-48) contains six 'topics' which Jesus tackles. I don't think the traditional antitheses label is a good one, because I don't think he's providing counterpoints to the Law. I also suspect a few things about these: that they aren't exhaustive for what Jesus taught about the Law, but rather they are representative; that Jesus taught frequently and repeatedly the same things; that what we are shown in Matthew is a pattern of how Jesus taught; and that not everything Jesus had to say about these topics is related in these 28 verses.
What is Jesus doing then? Primarily, I think he is conducting a bible study. That's a very non fancy way of saying, "Jesus in his Messianic role as the Prophet like Moses (Dt 18:15), is providing a Spirit-led Wisdom-orientated exegesis of the Torah to deepen its meaning in a way that shows its truer and deeper intent".
But vv21-48 depend upon vv17-20, and so some account of those verses is necessary first. Which brings us into a minefield because it's a key text in the complex question of the relationship of Jesus to the Torah. Here are my key points:
"The Law and the Prophets" expresses (i) the whole OT Scriptures, (ii) the very idea of Torah as Instruction, (iii) that the Prophets interpret and extend the story of the covenant people, (iv) that it operates within Matthew's overall fulfilment and New Covenant foci, that Torah is as much, if not more, about the story of God's gracious dealings with Israel than it is about specific commandments as legal obligations.
Here’s how Scot McKnight's lays out the chain of interpretation:
v17 is a claim of fulfilment: Jesus fulfils the Torah and Prophets
v18 elucidates that claim: everything in Torah is true
v19 gives the consequence of that elucidated claim: everything is to be observed
v20 gives the elucidation of the consequence: your obedience must surpass the experts.
v17 definitely seems to suppose that some people understood Jesus to be lax or to be against the Law. And certainly Jesus' teaching at some points seems to do that: there are key points of Jesus' ethical teachings that seem to contradict established practice, or he appears to be a kind of minimalist (just love everybody already). But the use of the term 'fulfil' is very deliberate. Jesus mission brings the Torah to its redemptive-historical end. The goal, the purpose, of the story of redemption of Israel and its gracious covenant through Moses, find their resting place and enduring significance in the coming of the end-times Messiah.
That means at least two things:
The Torah is not abolished. There's a way of reading this text in protestant circles that sounds something like, "well, it's all fulfilled in Jesus so it's mostly irrelevant for us Gentile Christians these days". No, the text straight out rejects an abolition reading.
But also, The Torah can never be read in the same way again. Having come to its fulfilment, it is cast in a new light and new role. This seems more implicit in Jesus' teaching, but no less true.
v18 affirms the permanence of the Torah. I think it's important to say, because I think many people are liable to get this wrong, that this doesn't mean "all people forever are obliged to keep the terms of the Mosaic covenant". That's not what it means to say the Torah is permanent. It's one of my personal bugbears that Gentile Christians often seem to believe that they are guilty of sin because they haven't kept the Mosaic covenant; no, that's not how the Scriptures frame sin, but I can see why people often end up there.
If Torah is the redemptive Word of God spoken to Israel in the context of God's redemptive gracious work and includes the covenant, but is not defined narrowly and merely as the legal code given at Sinai, then its permanent relevance persists until all it points forward to is fulfilled: that is both a messianic and eschatological endpoint. The Torah is moving towards the fulfilment of all God's will for humanity, and yet the way that Torah remains 'in effect' is interpreted and expounded by Jesus.
v19 I think R.T. France really strikes something when he says that it sounds like "do" means you just have to keep following the rules of the OT just like before Jesus. If that's the meaning, then it runs against the grain of the New Testament and Jesus' own teachings including in Matthew's gospel. "Doing" must shift to mean "doing in light of the Torah's fulfilment in Jesus". I think Paul's answer to that question is Law as Wisdom, and so it's telling that Jesus approach in this sermon is also sapiential in shape.
Torah for Christians is embodied in Jesus and instructed by Jesus so that his followers obey, and teach, Jesus' commandments (Matt 28:20)
v20 is a trap for Protestants. Because they are conditioned to read 'righteousness' in Pauline terms, they find it hard to hear Matthew on his own terms. But Matthew's use of righteousness is much more like James than Paul. We dilute Jesus' teaching when we read this verse and say, "oh, well, obviously that is impossible, and so Jesus really means that we need to get a righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees', which means trusting in Jesus' righteousness on our behalf and so receiving right-status as a gift." That's not what Jesus is saying in v20, even if it be true from other parts of the New Testament.
At the same time, righteousness here is not "literal obedience to rules and regulations" (R.T. France) - it can't simply be being more strictly obedient than the Pharisees. They were at the top of that game, and Paul talks about the fact that he was best of the best at it.
In Matthew, I think 'righteousness' has a meaning that naturally derives from OT usage, "right behaviour in relation to other human beings"; my view on this remains somewhat the same as this older post. In New Testament terms this becomes "right behaviour to others that conforms to God's will as taught and revealed in Jesus Christ", which needs further nuancing, because it rests upon the fulfilment of the Torah by Jesus as the goal of salvation history and the temporal reality of the Kingdom's coming. Because of who Jesus is, and what he does, primarily in his death and resurrection, greater righteousness becomes both possible and necessary.
So, that is that righteousness? In light of the Sermon on the Mount's general tenor, and the way it critiques Pharisaic righteousness (especially in chapter 6), the key element that we see played out in vv21-48 is this: external keeping of the Torah's rules is insufficient, surface, shallow; what is needed to be obedient to Jesus is an internal reorientation of the heart, which far outstrips the literal keeping of the Mosaic Covenant, with a far more pervasive commitment, from the very depths of one's being, to doing God's will as revealed in Christ.
And that is what Jesus begins to teach us in the following six cases.
Thanks for writing this up! What follows is kind of a gut reaction, so if I'm fuzzy or confused, let me know.
I think I may see where our approaches are diverging, and it has to do with the meaning of fulfill. I'm not looking at it in the sense of finish up, or what you call the messianic and eschatological endpoint of the law. I think of fulfillment as complete obedience to the law (and that complete fulfillment is what righteousness is). Someone who does what the law commands has fulfilled the law, and that would include anyone before Jesus as well (though, that wouldn't happen...for Pauline reasons). So I don't think that fulfillment in its basic sense as a concept requires a messianic or eschatological endpoint (though that is important, but perhaps for different reasons). As such, I think that means what Jesus offers here isn't a unique messianic interpretation of the Torah which is binding on Christians as if there was a sense prior to Jesus that it could be interpreted another way. I think that approach starts us off on the wrong foot and suddenly we have to figure out how to reconcile Jesus's interpretation of the law from our "independent" interpretation of the law (the Torah actually says X, but Jesus interprets it as Y; not saying you do that, but I do see that commonly employed). Instead, what I think Jesus is doing is explaining HOW to fulfill the law. It's not by doing each command or avoiding each prohibition, but by having a transformed heart. The commands, then, are not ends in themselves, but they point to something more fundamental. They are examples of an underlying order that God has baked into his creation. The commands point us to that underlying reality, but that is all they can do. Only a good heart (Matthew's contrast between the good heart and evil heart is pronounced) will bear good fruit, namely, fulfill that underlying reality to which the law points. I think that is what Jesus is teaching in this first section of the Sermon on the Mount.
This is, perhaps not coincidentally, what I think Paul is saying in a passage like Romans 8. Matthew speaks less in terms of how the Holy Spirit enables us to do that (because the New Covenant is tied to the promise of the Spirit and the New Heart), but I think they have the same general approach .