Dear Brother
Faull,
Jesus fulfills the Law.
Matthew 5:17-19, 17 Think
not that I am come to destroy
the law, or the prophets: I am
not come to destroy, but to
fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
law, till all be fulfilled. 19 Whosoever therefore shall break
one of these least commandments, and shall teach men
so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven:
but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall
be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
I believe that Jesus fulfilled the Law by completing His life
and not breaking a single Commandment. He is the only
one who has ever lived who did not break the Law. We
are to try our best to keep these commandments.
God knows that we are human and weak, thus He
extends His grace to us through Jesus Christ, that He
took our sin upon Himself to give us eternal life not
through works but through grace.
Do we have any agreement here? Translation can clarify
or lead us down the wrong path to understanding.
Answer:
We are saved by faith in what Jesus, the sinless one, did
on the cross. It is not that He was sinless that saved us
but that He was sinless so He could be the Lamb of God
that would take away the sins of the world by giving His
life.
The wages of sin is death. He paid it. He said so when
He died. The King James Version says, “It is finished” but
the word means, “it is paid in full”. If He had not died,
there would have been no salvation but had He not
fulfilled the Law perfectly, He could not have been the
sacrifice.
The passage you refer to about nailing the Law to the
cross is beautiful. Back then, if you were my brother and
you owed a debt, it was made public. I come along and I
have the where-withal to pay it, so I redeem you. I pay
the debt. The man, who was paid the debt, folded the
notice of debt and smeared the ink that testified against
you and drove a nail through the notice. My payment of
the debt allowed me to publicly declare that the debt was
paid in full.
Now, I could not pay your debt for sin because I am
bankrupt too, because I am a sinner. Jesus could pay the
wages of sin. He paid it with His own body on the tree.
He abolished the Law of Moses in His flesh.
See Ephesians 2:15-16
The Law could not save for we have all sinned and God
took 1500 years to prove that by the Law, no man can be
justified. It took the blood of an innocent victim to pay the
cost of sin. The blood of bulls and goats cannot take
away sin, but the blood of the sinless Lamb of God could.
See Hebrews 10:1-10
The God-Man had a body and the offering of the body of
Jesus Christ saved us. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sins.
So, the Old Covenant was removed. Jesus established a
New Covenant in His own blood. He taketh away the
first that He may establish the second. We are saved,
not according to the Law that He gave when they came
out of Egypt, for He found fault with man because man
cannot keep it. Jesus is the mediator of a better
covenant, which was established upon better promises.
If the first covenant would have been faultless, then
should no place have been sought for the second.
When you speak of a new covenant, it makes the first
old. See Hebrews 8:6-13
By the Law shall no flesh be justified. We are not saved
by keeping it, for we cannot. Peter says, “Neither we or
our fathers were able to bear it.” It is weak because of our
flesh. So the debt was paid by someone who could pay it
and if by faith we will accept His payment, then we can be
free of the debt. By the works of the Law shall no flesh be
justified. We are saved by our faith in Him who paid the
debt. It is not faith only, for faith without works is dead
"From the cowardice that shrinks from
new truth, from the laziness that is content
with half truths, from the arrogance that
thinks it knows all truth, O, God of Truth,
deliver us."
B-5472 THE GOSPEL UNASHAMED April 2009
and we are not saved by a dead faith. We live by faith in
the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.
If you and I are enemies and you find yourself in an
unfamiliar restaurant and thought you had money to pay
the bill and did not, you must pay or wash dishes. But I
am there and offer to pay. You insist that you will not let
me pay the debt. If you do not let me pay, then you will
have to wash dishes. If a man will not accept the
payment of Jesus on the cross, then he must pay the
penalty of death himself.
Now before Christ died, if you taught people not to obey
the Law, you would have been denying the current
covenant. Jesus told the lawyer to obey the Law and He
would live. Of course, the young man had tried but failed
due to his greed.
Jesus did not come to destroy the Law, but fill it full or
fulfill it. He fulfilled the covenant. There were two curses
in the Law.
1. Cursed is he who does not continue in all
things written in the Law.
Everyone was cursed, but Jesus.
2. Cursed is he who hangs on a tree.
Jesus was hung on a tree and thus became a
curse for us, as He did not die for His sins, for He
did not have any. He allowed Himself to become
a curse for us.
He fulfilled the Law. Payment was made. He made a
New Covenant and if we tell people they have to keep the
old one, we have fallen from grace and return to salvation
by Law keeping. Read the book of Galatians to see why
we are not obligated to keep the Law.
Jesus did not come to destroy the Law, but fill it full.
When a man is engaged to a girl and makes a covenant
with her to marry, does he destroy the covenant or fulfill it
when he marries her? Obviously, he did not destroy the
engagement; he fulfilled it.
Likewise, Jesus did not destroy the Law but fulfilled it.
The one Gospel said, “Till heaven and earth will pass
away, not one jot or tittle will fail.” The other Gospel
makes it plain as to what He meant. It says, “It would be
easier for Heaven and earth to pass away than it not
be fulfilled.”
I think you can see the clearness of what He is teaching.
Heaven and earth could pass away before the Law failed
to be fulfilled. Well, Jesus said in Luke 24, “These are the
words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you,
that all things must be fulfilled.” It was fulfilled for His
word is true. See Luke 24:27, 44-49
So now we are under grace. Grace is not a sin permit or
a license to sin. “For the grace of God that bringeth
salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that,
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should
live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present
world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious
appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous
of good works.” Titus 2:11-14
So grace says “no” to sin and “yes” to godliness. The
Spirit was given by obedience to the truth of the Gospel,
not by the works of the Law. Galatians 3:1-2 makes that
very clear.
So, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of
the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have
believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the
faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the
works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if, while
we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also
are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of
sin? God forbid. For if I build again the things which I
destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. I do not
frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come
by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Galatians
2:16-18, 21
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of
bondage.” Galatians 5:1
“Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you
are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.”
Galatians 5:4
In short, we are not saved by the Grace of Christ AND
the Law of Moses. We want to be found in Him not
having our own righteousness, which is of the Law, but
the righteousness which is through the faith of Christ; the
righteousness which is of God by faith. Philippians 3:9
We are not saved by the works of the Law but by the
obedience of faith. Christ and His apostles have given us
new principles to live by. Some are like the ones in the
first covenant. Some He has removed in His New
Covenant. They are not like those in the old. Hebrews 8
Some of the laws in the USA are like those in England,
but the authority is not the same. We do not murder. Not
because what was said to Moses at Mt. Sinai, but
because it is revealed in the Scriptures to those under the
New Covenant.
If I made a will in 1980 and repeat some of the things in a
new will in 1990, the authority is because of what I wrote
in 1990, not what I wrote in 1980. A new will, or
testament, does away with the old will. The
conference in Acts 15 showed the apostles understood
that the whole Law was not binding on the Gentiles.
The Sabbath, for example, is not bound on us. It was a
sign between God and Israel, not the world. Exodus
31:17 It was not repeated in Acts 15 because it is not for
the Gentiles