Jesus said, “I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.”

It is a repeated theme, that Jesus died, was buried, rose again, and ascended, “in accordance with the Scriptures.”

The Apostle Paul writes, that all God’s promises are “Yes” and“Amen” in Jesus; He is God’s “Yes” and “Amen” to all His promises.

The Law is prophetic; its purpose always has been to point to Jesus Christ, God’s All in All, the One God the Father exalts over all creation, the One who descended to both the heights and the depths that He might fill all creation. Jesus is the One of whom God declared, “Serve YHWH with fear; rejoice before YHWH with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” The Law exists solely to bring people to Him.

Jesus came to fulfill the Law and the Prophecies. He came to be the fulfillment of the Law and the prophecies. (The Book of Hebrews is a beautiful explanation of how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law, the whole purpose of which was to foreshadow Him and His redemptive work;in fact, the figures shown throughout the Old Testament point to Jesus, who is endlessly superior to them all.)

 There is so much in the Law that points to Jesus; who can know whereto begin, and who can cover even the half of it? In the very beginning, in Genesis, there stands, in the center of Paradise, the Tree of Life, a picture of Jesus and His cross, for He said, “I am the Life,” and it is through His death on the cross that we receive that life. Later, when God gave the animals to Noah for food, He declared that the blood is life, thus showing that we will live through drinking the blood of God the Son. Then, God gave the Israelites the Paschal Lamb as a foreshadowing of Jesus, the Perfect Sacrifice, whose blood would protect God’s people from the Judgment of Eternal Death, and whose body would become their food. God gave them the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement, the Scapegoat who would go out into the wilderness bearing the people’s sins, to foreshadow how Jesus would suffer in darkness outside the camp bearing our sins, and the Lord’s Goat whose blood would be sprinkled on the Mercy Seat,to foreshadow how it is through Jesus’ blood that we can approach the Almighty God.

Then, there was the Sabbath Rest of God, the Rest of which the author of Hebrews speaks, quoting Psalms, “So I swore in anger, they shall never enter My rest,” and “Today, do not harden your hearts,”the rest which remains for all of us to enter through Jesus, the rest that Joshua did not give them, for both the Sabbath and the Promised Land are only foreshadowings of the rest of Christ, who said, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”The Sabbath Rest into which God calls Christians is Today. It is eternal. It is Jesus Christ Himself. It is trusting in Christ. It is knowing Christ. It is walking by the Spirit, who gives peace and life, instead of by the flesh. It is living in the victory of the Resurrection.

 Jesus Christ did not abolish the Law. He fulfilled the Law. He is the fulfillment of the Law. The Law has been fulfilled!

God does not annul anything He ever says. He does not take back a single thing. He does not change His mind. His mind, in all things,has always been on His Beloved Son. Everything God does, He does with His One and Only Beloved Son in mind. For this reason, everything points to Jesus, and everything is fulfilled in Him, and He abolishes nothing. It is He – the Son, the Word – who lasts forever.

 God wants to put the fire of His own love for His Beloved Son into our hearts. He wants us to burn with love for Christ alone. He wants us to see His Son in everything, for He sees His Son in everything. He wants us to know that everything is fulfilled in His Son. He wants to include us in the overwhelming joy of His fiery love for His Beloved Son – He wants to share His joy and His love, His treasure,with us. He wants us to see and enjoy His treasure – Jesus, the Beloved Son, in whom He is well-pleased. He wants to make us one with Him.

The Law does not stand apart from Jesus. The Law is fulfilled in Him.We should not look at the letter, at the external expression of the Revelation. To follow not the letter of the Law, but the Spirit of the Law, means to love Jesus Christ. It means to see Jesus, to enter into Jesus. For one example, I will return to the question of the Fourth Commandment, to keep the Sabbath. We are not called to keep an external Sabbath of rules and regulations, but to keep the Eternal Sabbath which is always Today, to which we are invited in Jesus: to rest in Jesus’ love forever and ever, as much in times of external quiet and rest, as much in times of external chaos and work. The real Sabbath is the rest to which Jesus invites us, independent of times and dates and circumstances, and as much superior of the foreshadowing under the Law as the priesthood of Jesus Christ is to the priesthood of Aaron, and as the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ is to the sacrifices of the Law that could never take away sin.

Jesus did not abolish the Law. He fulfilled the Law. He is the fulfillment of the Law. When He was teaching His disciples, He said,“Moses said unto you this, but I say unto you this.” Jesus’ teaching reveals the true spirit of the Law, what God had always intended, and He alone can fulfill it! Only He is the fulfillment!God does not want us to look to the Law, but to the Fulfillment of the Law, Jesus Christ, the Beloved Son. In so doing, He wants to make us like His Beloved Son.

 “But we all, who will unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

“Dear children, we do not yet know what we shall be. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure.”

 Let’s ask God the Father to cause to burst into flame in our hearts the very same love He has for God the Son!

 

Copyright 2018 Raina Nightingale