ualification (and in part, of course, it was not, as Jesus immediately goes on to show), the qualifica- tion could be left to take care of itself ; the main interest of the moment was to expose the Pharisaic practice Be which the law was so wickedly annulled. hat making void (ἀκυροῦν) the law of God (Mt 15°|| Mk 718) which Jesus laid to the charge of the Pharisees was exactly the opposite of the πληρῶσαι, which He used to define His own relation to it. With them, in spite of all the hedges which guarded it, it lost its rights; with Ein, in spite of all His freedom, it came to its rights.
(2) Besides this positive attitude of Jesus to the iaw as a whole, we have to take account in His life of what may be called a more critical attitude.
Without any sense of hostility to the |
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law, He was conscious of its imperfection; this is implied even in His having come to fulfil it. Of this there are various indications.
(a) He speaks of the old revelation as a whole, as of a thing which has had its day. ‘The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the kingdom of heayen is preached’; it isa new era, in which they have no longer the same significance (Lk 16°, Mt 11°). There is a para- bolic hint of this also in Mk 2 and || Mt 917, Lk 5%,
(6) He delights in summaries of the law, in which it is at once comprehended and tran- scended. ‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets’ (Mt 7%, cf. Mt 22°'-#), Such summaries lift the soul above all that is statutory and positive in the law; in other words, they enable it to conceive of religion as the keeping of law, and yet as without any element of legalism.
(c) He presents a positive new standard of life from which legalism has disappeared. Sometimes it is His own example (Jn 13), interpreted as in Jn 13 into a new commandment of love like His own. Sometimes it is the example of the heavenly Father, whose love, impartial and inexhaustible, is the pattern for His children (Mt 5“). It is by this standard of love that all the nations are un- consciously judging themselves now, and will be judged by Him at last (Mt 25°"), Sometimes it is represented as ‘the will of my Father who is in heaven’ (Mt 72! 12°), All these modes of conceiv- ing the standard of disciple life, though not annulling ‘the law’ but fulfillin it, are neverthe- less indifferent to it, either as a historie decument or as a national institution. :
(d) Jesus distinguishes within the law oetween its weightier matters—judgment, mercy, an faith ; and its more trivial ones—the tithing of mint, anise, and cummin (Mt 23% || Lk 11"). ‘This is not exactly the same as to say that He subordinated the ritual to the moral, though no doubt He did. Nothing could put this more forcibly than Mt 5%, A man is to leave his gift before the altar, to be reconciled to his brother. There is no law except love ; no statute that can be pleaded against it, no rite so solemn but must give way to it. The tendency of legalism is to reduce command- ments to a level; they are all parts of a divine law, and it is not for men to pick and choose be- tween them; and the Jewish conscience, to which the law was one law and God’s law, could not find itself at home in the division of it into ritual and moral. For it there was a moral obligation to keep what we call the ritual law. But as this distinction of Jesus mastered the mind, the sense of moral proportion came back, and it was felt, by some at least, that there were elements in the law which were waxing old and ready to vanish avey.
(e) Jesus expressly and formally criticised the law as it was interpreted in the conscience and practice of His countrymen. In Mt 5% we have a series of illustrations. The sixth commandment (v.24), the seventh (v.2"), thelaw of perjury (v.*""), the lex talionis (ν. 358.) the law as to the treatment of neighbours and enemies (v.**""), are discussed in succession. It is not always clear when it is the letter of the OT itself, and when it is only the current legal rendering of it, which is under review; but in either case Jesus adopts a free critical attitude towards it, and exalts it to a new power. On one of the subjects touched in this chapter, in connexion with the seventh command- ment, namely, the law of marriage and divorce, Jesus on another occasion tacitly withdrew a per- mission which He recognized as conceded by the Mosaic law (ἐπέτρεψεν Μωυσῆς), in the interest of the ideal of marriage. ‘ Because of your hard:
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