Reflection

When Jesus says that he came to “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets (Matt. 5:17), he means that both the Mosaic law (Israel’s national contract with God that was first given to Moses at Mount Sinai) and the Prophets pointed forward to his teaching. They brought the purposes of God to a certain point in the salvation story, and now Jesus picks up their message and completes it.

Unlike the Mosaic law, the Sermon on the Mount is not giving specific instructions on how to run a government or a nation. The law was just a seed, but Jesus is the mature blossom— the fulfillment. The eternal principles that were at the core of the law come into full bloom as Jesus teaches his disciples what it looks like to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom within a sinful world.

Christ wants his people to live a life of doing what is right (“righteousness”; v. 10), but it is different than the so-called “righteousness” of the rule-keeping scribes and the Pharisees. Their basic problem was that their hearts didn’t match their claims or actions (23:3–7). They said and did many of the right things, but their hearts were far from God (15:8). What Jesus wants from his disciples, therefore, is obedience that flows from a changed heart.

Reflection

After three chapters of brutally exposing our sin, at last Paul gives us a reason to rejoice. Jesus Christ has made it possible to have a right standing before God “for all who believe” the gospel (Rom. 3:22). Yes, the sinful human condition is universal and deadly (v. 23), but believers are declared righteous (“justified”) by God’s “grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (v. 24).

The term “redemption” (v. 24) brings up the idea of slaves being purchased and freed. Paul also says that God sent his Son to be a “propitiation” (v. 25): this word means that Jesus endured the wrath of God in our place when he died on the cross. Because of the cross, our sin was punished, and yet we are simultaneously declared “not guilty” in God’s courtroom. This is what Paul means when he says that God is both “just” and the “justifier” (v. 26). Because of Jesus, both justice and salvation have been accomplished. Our hearts are moved as we marvel at a God whose wisdom provided a way to rescue guilty sinners without compromising his justice and holiness. We marvel, too, at a God whose love is so gracious that he would send his own Son to accomplish this salvation.