(1) Speaking positively, Jesus recognized the law as a Ἐξ εὶς as a divine institution, and therefore as invested with indefeasible divine authority. He expressed His sense of this authority in the strongest possible language ; and, with the idea of the law as embodied in writing present to His mind, declared that ‘till heaven and earth should pass, one jot or one tittle should in no wise pass from the law till all should be fulfilled’ (Mt 58, cf. Lk 167). It has been asserted that Jesus, whose attitude {as we shall see) to certain parts of the law was at least critical, could not have used such language, and that it belongs to the Judaism of the Firat Gospel. But it is found also in the Third, which is Gentile or Pauline rather than Jewish, and the assertion is pedantic. Jesus certainly believed that the law embodied a revelation of God ; it was, in short, God’s law; and without considering in what respects it might be subject to modification or expansion, He could say broadly that just because it was God’s law, not the dot of an i or the stroke of a ¢ could be abrogated by any power on earth. And when confronted, as He is on both the occasions when He uses this strong language, with the deformed righteousness of the Pharisees (Mt 5%, Lk 1617), by which the law of God was virtually annulled, we can easily believe that He could and did express Himself thus vehemently. This seems truer, psychologically, than to say with Wellhausen (Israelitische u. Judische Geschichte?, p. 382) that He found room everywhere for His soul, and was not straitened by what was little in the law, so highly did He exalt the worth of that which was great: the latter one should do, the former not leave undone. It is a more placid and
| controlled statement of Christ’s relation to the
law in principle which is found in Mt 5", the text or theme of the Sermon on the Mount: ‘ Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.’ The law and the prophets is a compendious expression for the
74 LAW (IN NEW TESTAMENT)
ancient religion as embodied in the OT. To no vart of this—neither to the statutory elements in it nor to the elements of promise, neither to its morality nor to its hopes—was Jesus in any sense hostile. There must have been something in His conduct or teaching to raise the question, some- thing which created difficulty for men who identified the law with the current interpretation of it in the Rabbinical schools or in the religious practice of the day ; but when it was fairly stated, it created no difficulty for Jesus. In His con- science there was no sense of antagonism or antipathy to the old revelation either of God’s will or of His purpose. On the contrary, He had come to identify Himself with that revelation, and to consummate it. The πληρῶσαι in Mt 5” applies to the OT in both its parts. It is true that in the rest of Mt 5 it is the law alone which is taken account of, and this has made it possible to doubt whether πληρῶσαι means ‘ toshow the full meaning of,’ or ‘to keep perfectly’; but the very absence of the object in v.’’, and the disjunctive # (the law or the prophets), show that Jesus was thinking of the OT as containing elements at once of require- ment and of promise, and asserting that all it meant in both kinds would be brought to its con- summation in Him. Hence in principle there is no antagonism between Jesus and the law, be- tween the NT and the OT. For the conscience of Jesus they needed no reconciliation. The New Testament was in Him, and He was thoroughly at home in the Old.
It agrees with this that Jesus refers freely to the law as a religious authority, and as the way to lite. ‘If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments’ (Mt 1917, ‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, What is written in the law?’ (Lk 10). ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them’ (Lk 16”). It agrees further with this, that in the most un- sparing denunciation of Pharisaism and hypocrisy,
e safeguarded with scrupulous care the sanctity of the law they hedged” and abused: ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: all things therefore that they say to you do and observe’ (Mt 23%), Like Mt 5'8 this saying has been impugned on the ground that Jesus could not, in consistency with His real opinion, have spoken thus. This is the criticism of persons who have never spoken to a crowd, and who do not know that the large consistency of leaving a sound and homogeneous impression on the mind is in- different to the abstract precisian consistency which dictates such doubts. Why should not Jesus say, ‘As interpreters of the law of God, show them all due reverence; as keepers of the law of God, beware of following their example’? They were poor interpreters, no doubt, but the function itself was a legitimate one, and all that they did in the exercise of it was, primd facie, entitled to respect. Even if it were not so without