DID YESHUA FULFILL THE LAW?
There is a popular
question out there, “is the glass half-empty or half-full?’ The question seems redundant. Either answer fails to change the level of
water in the glass, and leaves us wanting more.
But, what if the glass is the Law of YHVH (Torah)? Do we look at the law as an incomplete
portion? Did Yeshua come to fill the Law
to the brim for us to drink, or to drink it in our stead?
What did Yeshua say he came to do? In his only recorded sermon, popularly known
as the sermon-on-the-mount, he said this, "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. For truly, I say to you,
until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the
Law until all is accomplished. (Matt 5:17-18)
Growing up in the church, we all
have been taught that this statement means the exact opposite of what he
actually said. We learn that he said, “I
didn’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, I came to do it all so you
don’t have to.” Using our analogy of the
glass being the law, we could restate that as, “I came to fill up the glass and
drink it myself.”
What about the second half of his
statement? He said, “…not an iota or dot
will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
What did he accomplish so that
the law could pass away?
The church would have us believe
that he accomplished his destiny at the crucifixion and now the law has been
done away with. When he said, “It is
finished” that means all the iotas and dots would pass away.
See how that works? By plucking a verse here and tacking it onto
a verse from somewhere else, we can piece together a picture we want to see…not
necessarily what we should see.
Is the glass of the Law (Torah)
half full, half empty or did Yeshua fill it to the brim? And if he filled it to the brim does that
make it pass away?
WHAT
DOES FULFILL MEAN?
The Greek word for ‘fulfill’ is pleroo (pronounced ple-rue-o). It means to render full, or in other words,
to complete and FILL TO THE TOP so that nothing is wanting. Fill to the brim! Provide understanding!
The Church would have us believe that we have
been granted a reprieve from the Law! He
filled it full to the brim! Right? Then he said, ‘it’s finished’ so we’re off
the hook!
I suppose if we think the Law was
somehow incomplete this would make sense.
But, is that what he meant when he said he came to fulfill the law? Was the Law incomplete?
Or would it be more accurate to say that the
portion of the law [the Penalty for breaking it, i.e. You Sin You Die] was
taken out of the way?
Or could we say that he came
to help us to fully understand the heart of the law: why it is good, perfect,
and useful for life?
Or was it both?
WHAT
IS THE LAW FOR?
Was the Torah given to us just to
prove we couldn’t possibly attain its standards? Or was it given to us for our instruction so
that we would know how to live in harmony with our Creator and with our fellow
man?
I
do not believe the notion that says the law is too hard to follow and is some
sort of impossible goal that the Father gave us just to prove how inferior we
are and how great He is.
He doesn’t need the Law to show
His greatness! All you have to do is
look at the world He created and consider the magnificence of the One who made
everything. That’s why the Psalmist
said:
The heavens declare the glory of
God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
(Psalm 19:1)
And Paul said:
For his invisible attributes,
namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever
since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are
without excuse. (Rom 1:20)
So why did He give us the
Law? And if He gave us the law just to
‘put us in our place,’ why are we still here now that Yeshua has ‘fulfilled’
the requirements of the Law?
BACK
TO OUR ANALOGY
If the glass represents the Law,
and Yeshua filled it to the brim, does that mean that the Law was incomplete? Or
do we misunderstand what the glass represents altogether?
How was it that Yeshua filled up
the law?
The best answer is that he came
to fully implement, demonstrate and teach the beauty and love inherent in
Father’s instructions. He came to restore the pure word of the Father
by removing the man-made traditions that diminished the Law. (Mat 15:3 …
He said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for the
sake of your tradition?)
The Church has twisted his words
to say that the Law was bad and only the death of the ‘Son of God’ could remove
it out of our way. It seems, from that
point of view, that the Words that YHVH gave to Moses were just temporary. They were just waiting for someone (God
himself) to do it all perfectly so those pesky commandments could be abandoned
for ultimate freedom!
Does that even make sense?
What if we (rightly) look at the
Law as the Way of Salvation?
But, but….that’s why Jesus
came! He is our Savior! He paid it all! He nailed the Word of YHVH (Torah) to the
cross!
Sometimes when I verbalize the
sequence that I learned in the Christian Church, it sounds so utterly
ridiculous that I am amazed I ever believed any of it.
YESHUA
AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN
Years ago, I thought it would be
marvelous to do a word study on 'water' in the Bible. It is probably the most all-encompassing
subject in there! I became discouraged
by the sheer magnitude of the concept.
But, Yeshua pared it all down for
the Samaritan woman.
Yeshua replied to her, “If you
knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’
you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman tells Him, “You don’t have a
bucket, and the well is deep. Then from where do You get this living water?
Yeshua replied to her, “Everyone
who drinks from this (well) water
will get thirsty again.
But whoever drinks of the water
that I will give him shall never be thirsty. The water that I give him will
become a fountain of water within him, springing up to eternal life!”
(from John chapter 4)
What was the ‘living water’ that
Yeshua would give? What was it he came
to do?
He came to fully teach (pleroo) the Torah and do the Father's will.
The Christian church puts the emphasis on his
death and resurrection (AND THAT IS SIGNIFICANT, don’t misunderstand) but it
ignores the bulk of his LIFE, and that is what we should learn from. Otherwise his life is meaningless! It only
matters that he ‘saved’ us from death?
Yikes!
Don’t we still want the glass of
water? Can we fill it with living water,
and what does that look like? Do we
pitch it when it is full? Is it only for
Yeshua to drink, or is it for us?
WHAT
IS INCOMPLETE ABOUT THE LAW?
The short answer is there are two
aspects of the Law. There are
instruction and the reason behind the instruction. When we were first given the Law (on stone
tablets) it was given with this caveat:
You shall love the LORD your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these
words that I command you today shall be on your heart. (Deu 6:5-6)
The words He commanded us were to
be on our HEART! Letter and Spirit; Law and Heart! Never one or the
other!
We don’t understand why we have
to follow it! We don’t see the benefit
because we see it as a chore, and not a beautiful loving way of life. We go through the motions, but our heart isn’t
in it.
HOW DID YESHUA FILL UP THE GLASS OF THE LAW?
Yeshua taught the law has to come
from our heart! He said that the
greatest commandment is to love YHVH and love your neighbor as yourself. He then said, keep the commandments! (Deu 6:5
& Matt 19:16-19)
So, if keeping the commandments
is our half-full glass, then loving YHVH and our neighbor fills up the rest of
the glass. Yeshua said so! We can say he taught that keeping the law
along with love for YHVH and our neighbor is what leads to eternal life. (Matt 19:16)
Two halves of the whole: A full glass contains Law and Love!
DIDN’T
HE FILL UP THE LAW BY FOLLOWING IT?
Yes! Yeshua followed the law in
perfection! And in that way he DID fill
up the law. He kept all of the
commandments and he did it out of love for the Father and for us! He made the law complete by his actions and
his intentions.
Yeshua said, “I am the way, the
truth and the life.” The church would
have us believe that means he filled up the law and abolished it so we don’t
have to. Does it begin to seem like
that couldn’t be the case?
A proper understanding of his
statement would be to paraphrase it like this: “I am your perfect example of
the Way, I am walking out the Truth, all that follow me and do what I do have
Life.”
He demonstrated it. He walked it out! He taught the people it wasn’t just words on
a page (or chiseled in stone) it was supposed to come from our hearts! He filled it to the brim with understanding! Everyone knows that Yeshua was the epitome of
love, for greater love hath no man than he that lays down his life for his
brother.
Does that mean he is above our
ability to emulate his example?
He said he came to do the
Father’s will.
We all want to think he followed
the law so we don’t have to. He died so
we don’t have to! But, reality
check! We all die, just as he did. But, if we are to enter into the life eternal
that he did, do we leave the glass half-full or do we drink from it with a full
measure of understanding?
Yeshua enlarged our
understanding. He filled up the law with
meaning! “Don’t even look at a woman
with lust or you have committed adultery already!” Isn’t that what he taught? It’s not the letter of the law but the spirit
of the law! Don’t go through the
motions, but understand that the Law is given to show us our heart and to mold
us into what He is. Didn’t he tell us
that the entire Law and Prophets were suspended upon Love?
BUT,
PAUL!
Paul is difficult to understand! It is easy to misinterpret Paul’s
letters. But if our understanding of
what Paul wrote conflicts with what Yeshua taught, it must be abandoned! Who should we put our faith into? Paul or Yeshua?
Paul didn’t really teach against
the Law, as is commonly supposed, but it fits our ‘Jesus paid it all so I don’t
have to’ doctrine. It is popular to say that it is even ‘trampling the blood of
Jesus underfoot’ if we follow the Torah!
But, what if what is popular is not what is true?
This is what Paul actually said:
What then shall we say? That the
law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have
known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not
said, "You shall not covet." (Rom
7:7)
Isn’t he saying the same thing
that Yeshua said in Matthew 5: 7-8? Doesn’t the law expose
our inward state? Doesn’t it convict our heart and expose our sin, just like it
did for Paul?
We should begin to understand the
purpose of the Law. It was not given to
frustrate us. It wasn’t given to set us
up for failure. It was given so that we would
understand internally what the Father desires for us eternally.
All of the words from YHVH are
for us! Why would we think Yeshua filled
the glass full to the brim just to drink it for himself? Do you see that love and
understanding completes the law? Will
you drink from the water of the word; the words of eternal life? Or is your glass half-full; law without
understanding, and without love?
The Law is YHVH’s heart, and when
it is written upon our own we become like Yeshua, the image of the Father! Yeshua believed that he would be resurrected to
be eternally with the Father. That faith
is what caused him to walk in the Torah!
And that same faith should be in us too!
We too can have the faith of Yeshua and join him (the First Fruits of
the resurrection) by following in his footsteps. He’s not carrying you. He is leading the way!
Yeshua said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty
again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be
thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of
water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13 -14)
