Jesus and the Law – 4/14/24

Marcion of Sinope (born A.D. 85, died 160) has been described by Kevin De Young as

“one of the most successful heretics in the early church.”

Great on your resume. He was the son of a bishop and a wealthy shipowner from Pontus, which was in Asia minor (today Turkey). You’ll notice at the bottom of the Black Sea, Sinope.

Early on, Marcion was a man of great commitment. He was very bright, very rich, very ambitious. He gave away 200,000 sesterces. I bet none of you have given away 200,000 sesterces. Not sure exactly what that is. Roughly, it’s around $6 million in today’s cash, so he was sincere and devoted. Yet, over time, he wrestled with the problem of evil, became disillusioned, started to question anyone in authority, did what we would probably call today “deconstructed his faith,” and eventually was excommunicated from the church by his own father. It’s quite heartbreaking.

Sometime around 140 A.D. he moved to Rome and began a movement. His own church became known as Marcionism. It was a less sensational version of Gnosticism. What is Gnosticism? It comes in so many different forms. Generally, it is an early heresy that believed in secret knowledge, matter is evil, and Jesus was not really human. His version of Gnosticism held two, not all, but his version held to a strict discipline which usually used the word asceticism. To give you an idea of how strict it was, if you wanted to get baptized in his church and you were married, you had to vow never to be sexually intimate again. Serious discipline.

He also held to a radical antinomianism. It sounds like a big word but it’s just anti (against) nonmass law, anti-law. And he held to a historical antithesis. The reason I use the word “antithesis” is that actually is the title of his most famous book. Antithesis just means he held to a sharp distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between Israel and the Church, God and the Old Testament, and the Father of Jesus.

He believed the God of the Old Testament was merciless and cruel and the Father of Jesus was merciful and kind. In order to support this, he had to do some editing, so he cut out whole books of the Bible. As you can imagine, Matthew was one of them because there are way too many references to the Old Testament. He cut out references to the Old Testament. In Paul’s epistles, he cut out whole books like Hebrews. He cut out the birth narratives in the gospel because they communicated that Jesus was actually born as a human. He cut out a lot.

Kevin DeYoung says,

“Marcion’s theological errors (and there were many) came from one main root: he refused to believe that the God of the OT was the same as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Marcion simply could not believe in a God full of wrath and justice. So he threw away the Old Testament and took for his Bible a truncated version of Luke’s Gospel and selectively edited versions of Paul’s Epistles. When all the cutting and pasting was finished, Marcion had the Christianity he wanted: a God of goodness and nothing else; a message of inspiring moral uplift; a Bible that does away with the uncomfortable bits of God’s wrath and hell. Marcionism was antinomian, idealistic about human potential, and skittish about dogma and rules.”

Phillip Schaff, a great historian, summarizes Marcion’s problem:

“He was utterly destitute of historical sense, and put Christianity into a radical conflict with all previous revelations of God; as if God neglected the world for thousands of years until he suddenly appeared in Christ. He … nullifies all history, turns the Gospel into an abrupt, unnatural, phantom-like appearance.”

There is a sense in which I believe all of us can understand Marcion’s concerns. I read through the Bible every year, and there are still times when I wince or gasp or pray, “Lord, really?” Like, you’re really sending the leper out of the town? You’re really telling Aaron’s sons to put the blood from the ram of ordination on the right ear lobe and the right thumb and the right big toe specifically? Or else you’re really opening up the earth and swallowing the Sons of Korra and their families? I could go on.

Marcion struggled with this. Many of us struggle with this today. This is not a new struggle. I do think there’s a good way to struggle with this. For some of us who might have grown up in a context where passages like that, stories like that were used by preachers to elicit fear and coerce a certain response— there’s a distaste for the Scripture, not because of the Scripture itself, necessarily, but because of the way it’s been used. I get that. So, as we wrestle through, “Lord, how do we peel away the misuses and sit under your word in a healthy way?” We wrestle with that. Or there’s a good way: if we’re wrestling with, “Lord, I just don’t understand”— I don’t think God is intimidated by our questions. It’s good to have questions. I don’t see how you can read through the Bible and not have questions. If you do that, please sign my Bible because that’s amazing. Or you’re brain-dead. One or the other. There’s a good way to have questions. There’s a good way to ask in community and seek answers. There are many questions I’ve had for months, years, and then decades and decades later, it’s like, wow, I finally get that. Now I can move on to the next question. Patiently working through it. There is a good way to do it.

Then there’s a bad way to do it. Being daughters of Eve, sons of Adam, going up to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and nibbling again so that we can be as God, knowing good and evil. What does that mean? Having moral autonomy, moral self-government. God, I don’t need you to tell me what the difference is between good and evil. I define good and evil. I determine what is right. I determine if I’m going to create the universe, what God will be like and what God will not be like.

That expression, “knowing good and evil,” definitely means having a moral self-government and autonomy, but I think it might mean even more. The expression “good and evil” might be being used as beginning and end, alpha and omega. When you use expressions like that, you don’t just mean bookend, you mean everything in between. Knowing “good and evil” is a claim that I am the definition of what is so in the universe. I define everything. I hold the scissors with Marcion, and we decide what parts of the Bible stay or go. Well, today we don’t use scissors. We cut and paste what should be in the Bible or out of the Bible.

There are so many examples of this today. Paula Abdul posted,

“Today and every day … break the rules, stand apart, ignore your head, and follow your heart.”

You define what rules you keep and don’t keep.

Atheist Jeremy Rifkin, when he realized he no longer wanted to live—these are his words—in someone else’s home,

“It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world, and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces. We no longer have to justify our behavior, for we are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible for nothing outside of ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever.”

When people stop worshiping God as creator, they don’t stop worshiping. It turns. If something doesn’t make sense to me, doesn’t sit right with me, rather than taking a posture of humility and recognizing, I am sitting in a milieu (a culture with certain assumptions) and I have had certain experiences that gives me a limited vision, and I don’t understand it all yet, but I want to know— rather than taking that posture of humility (which is not being mindless but being connected to reality), we cut it, cancel it, choose what parts of the Bible sound Bible-ish to us.

There is a reason why Marcionism was declared a heresy in the early church. The main reason you could explain in one word. What’s the right answer to every question in Sunday School class? Jesus. There are many reasons. The main reason: Jesus, in his first sermon in Matthew (known as the Sermon on the Mount) begins, as we’ve seen for the last month or two— he tells us who we are (5:1-16). If we’re living in his kingdom, we are the unlikely blessed ones, favored ones. We begin to learn what it’s like to live in a “now and not yet” kingdom. We seek to understand, as we saw last week, what it means to be salt and light, that this favored status is actually good for our neighbors and brings glory to our Father. That’s verses one through 16, who are we?

Then we move into the main body of his sermon, chapter 5:17, which we start today, where we learn how we live. The way of living in his kingdom is not just appearing out of nowhere. We are being swept into a massive story. To help us see this, Jesus makes two statements with two implications. This is what we want to look at today.

Statement number one, Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament. Verse 17, Jesus said,

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Notice Jesus says it negatively and positively. You can see why Marcion had to get rid of this book: that word “fulfill” in verse 17, we’ve seen it already in 1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 3:15; 4:14, and it goes on. There is this inseparable connection between what has been revealed and what is being revealed. Jesus is the fulfillment of what the old covenant, the law, and the prophets have pointed to and promised.

All of this is highlighting the inseparable connection between what we call the Old and the New Testament. It also forms bookends around the main body of Jesus’ sermon. Remember, 1 to 16 is the introduction. Chapter 7:13-29 is the conclusion. But that expression, “the Law and the Prophets,” appears in 5:17 and 7:12, so the very beginning of the main body of the sermon and the very end of the main body of the sermon like bookends around all he teaches us, so this is a big deal. Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament.

Number two, Jesus promised that every detail of the Law would be accomplished. Verse 18, and let’s look carefully at this verse. “For—” That “for” is clarifying and intensifying what he just said. “…truly—” Anybody know what Hebrew word that is? I know that’s a Greek translation, but there’s a Hebrew transliterated word that you all know, and you say it: “amen.” That’s where we get our word “amen.” Jesus is saying “for amen,” often translated truly, verily, surely. It’s a kind of superlative, “may it be,” “most assuredly.” So, again, big emphasis here:

“For, [assuredly, truly, amen] I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away”

Just another way of saying until the end of the age.

“not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

What’s the iota and the dot all about? Look at the Hebrew alphabet if you would. Which direction do you read the Hebrew alphabet? Start on the right. That top right: Alef, Bet, Vet, Gimmel, Dalet, Hay, Vav, Zayin, Het. What’s the smallest letter up there? Iota. There it is. Right there. That’s what the Greek version of an iota is pointing toward.

The iota (yod) is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The tittle is the small mark that differentiates letters, often called the crown. You’ll see it at the very top of the yod, just a little bit of a curve thing. It’s on a lot of the letters just to distinguish letters.

What Jesus seems to be doing is what could be called a hendiadys. A hendiadys is when you use two words to make one point. Any Hamlet fans? Hamlet plays are loaded with hendiady. Hamlet’s words are described as “out of tune” and “harsh.” So, what is being said there? It’s the same thing, “out of tune” and “harsh,” trying to get one point across. That’s what’s happening here. Jesus is saying that the smallest part of the smallest letter will be accomplished. Does that make sense? The smallest part of the smallest letter will be accomplished.

Jesus is saying that the end of the age will not happen without the Bible being accomplished; not merely in some vague, general sense, but down to fulfilling every word. That word accomplished literally means “to become,” so it’s like Jesus saying it’s going to happen. Every word is going to happen.

Many today try to create a dichotomy between Jesus and His Word. Like, “I love Jesus, but I just don’t get into the Bible. I just think we’re making too big a deal of the Bible.” You can’t read this and make that statement. Jesus makes a big deal of the Bible.

If we mean by “you’re making too big a deal of the Bible” that you’re reading the Bible but you’re not going where the Bible points us (and that is to Jesus), then that’s a legit point. You can see Jesus making that same point in John 5:39. He says to the religious leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” You want my words, but you don’t want me. You want an eternal life plan, but you don’t want the eternal life person. Maybe the reason is you can control a plan, but you can’t control a person. And a plan can be used in a self-worshiping end.

This is exactly where Jesus goes next in John 5. Look at the next couple of verses, John 5:44,

“How can you believe, when you receive glory from another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

I know it’s not football season, but we have to use a football illustration.

You’re a wide receiver. You’re able to get some space between you and the quarterback who’s covering you. Your quarterback sees you, sends this gorgeous pass just ahead of you. You don’t even have to slow down. All you have to do is catch the ball. But at the last second, you notice out of the corner of your eye, a safety coming in hard. You turn to look at the safety, and you drop the ball. That’s what Jesus is saying here. You see it? Like, what?

Jesus is saying, you’re studying the scriptures, but just when you’re going to go where the Bible takes you to me, you’re looking. You’re looking for glory from man. You want to be well thought of, and so you’re using the Bible for an end it was not created, and therefore, you dropped the ball. You missed the point. You don’t know me (where the Bible is pointing). There is a way of missing Jesus in the Bible, but the answer is not to minimize the Bible. The Bible is not the problem. The problem is we’re trying to use the Bible for an end that it wasn’t designed to be used.

Jesus makes clear two statements: (1) I’ve come to fulfill the Old Testament, and (2) every detail of the law will be accomplished. Why does this matter? Two implications.

Number one, we must not relax the law. Verse 19,

“Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

What does Jesus mean by relaxing the commandments and teaching others to do the same? I think the best way to answer that is to look at the immediate context. Jesus is about to give us six case studies as to what that means, not to relax the commandments. We’re going to look at these over the next five weeks. As he does this, you’re going to notice he does two things simultaneously. One, he fills up the meaning of the command. Like, what does that command really mean? And number two, he empties man’s superficial interpretation of the command.

You’ll see each of these with the formula. Something like, “You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…” (21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43). He is communicating what it looks like not to relax the law. He isn’t echoing rabbinical instruction, nor is he evading the true meaning or minimizing the law. Not doing either of those. He is fulfilling the law.

Some teachers today miss this big time. There are so many examples of this we could go down, on both extremes. Let me just give you one. Andrew Farley, bestselling author, talking about this passage, says,

“Jesus buried people under the true spirit of the Jewish Law.”

Stop and think. He is saying. That what Jesus is doing in chapter five is burying people. He goes on,

“We need to recognize that sometimes Jesus was addressing the Jews of his day, confronting their pride in thinking they could actually keep the Law.”

He explains elsewhere, this passage has nothing to do with our Christian lives. It’s just Jesus addressing Jews burying them under the true spirit of the Law. That is heartbreaking. I know it’s not pure Marcionism, but it’s a modified version of it. As if to say, that has nothing to do with it. This isn’t for you people. Ignore that. It’s actually making the opposite point of what Jesus is making. Jesus is saying the opposite: we must not relax the law.

Number two, we must have a more abundant righteousness. Verse 20,

“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Notice Jesus is not calling us to less but the more. However, it is really important that we understand what he means by the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. When he said this in that day, people would have been stunned.

Saying, hey, your righteousness needs to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees in that day would be like you talking to a college basketball player and saying, hey buddy, you can’t play unless you’re better than UConn. To a woman basketball player in college, you can’t play unless you’re better than USC. You have to exceed that ability. You’d be like, well then, who can play? Like, they just want the best. That’s what people would have said. Like, what are you talking about? Jesus—Scribes and Pharisees—they’re killing it in the righteousness. Look at them. They got boxes, curls. They get hats. They got it all. Their washing. They got righteousness if anybody’s got righteousness.

Again, let’s let Jesus explain what he means: There is a true righteousness (that is, God’s righteousness) that he has for us. Then there’s what we could call a fake righteousness. That seems to be what Jesus is talking about. A few examples. There are many more than this. I’m just going to give four examples of fake righteousness.

Number one, optical righteousness. Optical, like just visible. Look at Matthew 6:1,

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen.”

You see what Jesus is saying? That’s righteousness, but it’s just all about the optics, it’s all about being seen. Like, I am way more concerned in my family thinking I’m righteous, my friends thinking I’m righteous, my church thinking I’m righteous, than actually being righteous.

External is the second one. Similar, but as Jesus said in Matthew 15:7,

“You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”

It’s just an external righteousness (comes out in the words, in the appearance). Matthew 23:25 is another example of this.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”

The kind of righteousness that is just pasting up the appearance, not changing the person.

Third, what we could call ancestral righteousness. Matthew 15:9,

“in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

They’re valuing human tradition over divine revelation. Like, God’s word has to fit the way I’ve been brought up to think, the way we passed down from generation to generation, rather than God’s Word, his revelation.

Fourth is asymmetrical righteousness. Notice it’s disproportionate righteousness. What do we mean by that? Look at Matthew 23:23,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done”

The small things matter, Jesus is saying, “without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” Your proportions are way off. Think of a caricature, a picture of a cartoon character who has disproportionate features. That’s what he’s saying here. Your righteousness is a caricature. He’s exposing fake external righteousness driven by appearance and custom. He’s calling us to the real thing.

Where do we get the real thing? We really need to keep reading through the book of Matthew because you’ll see the life and obedience, the righteousness of Jesus in his life. Then you will see him die, be buried, and rise again to communicate that the kind of righteousness I have for you, you can’t produce on your own. I have it for you.

This is what Paul lamented in Romans 10:1-4 when he longed for his Jewish brothers and sisters to respond to the gift of God.

“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them [my Jewish brothers and sisters] is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

Key word there: end. What does that mean? It has two major meanings. One is termination, like it’s the end, as in termination. The other is destination, as in the goal or the end we are aiming for. “The end of all things” could mean termination or destination. Depending on where you land regarding the law, it seems like, whoa.

I really believe Paul is using a dual meaning here. When we believe in Jesus, there is a termination of the law being a means of righteousness. Like, over. Not that God ever intended that, but what many assumed ended, terminated. But, as he says here, the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes is “the law is fulfilled.” The goal, the destination, is achieved for everyone who believes.

This is getting at what we could call a Christian’s relationship with the law is multifaceted. I want to run through a few examples. We were tutored by the law (Galatians 3:24-26). The law was a schoolmaster to point us to Christ. If you know grace, you know law. If you don’t know law, you can never know grace. Why? His grace makes no sense apart from law. If you don’t know what you deserve, how can you receive something you don’t deserve? Does that make sense? We’re tutored by the law, pointing us to Christ.

We learn about sin from the law (Romans 7:7). We learned that coveting, for example (Paul gives that example in there), is abhorrent to God.

We know the law is good

“if one uses it lawfully,”

Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:8. What does that mean? He says the law is for the lawless. So, tomorrow, if I woke up and just decided I am tired of being married, my wife’s not appreciating me for all my greatness, and I need to share my love with others, so I’m just going to sleep with whoever— what would the law do to me? The law would crush me. It doesn’t care about my feelings. Adultery is always wrong. Whether I’m hurt, angry, tired, depressed, the law will crush me and say it’s wrong. The law is for the lawless and the law is good because it’s doing what the law was made to do. It’s like when you go for a CT scan. If it shows you have cancer, it’s not the problem of the CT scan. The CT scan is doing what it was made to do: expose the problem. The law is showing us our need, and therefore, it’s good if it’s used lawfully. It’s not the remedy. It shows us our need.

Therefore, we no longer live under the law’s rule or dominion (Romans 6:14). If you’re a believer, we don’t serve God driven by a written code. Like, I don’t wake up every day and look over the list of 613 rules and say, okay, I’m gonna keep these today. No. We live by faith and thereby uphold the law. That’s Paul’s version of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:17. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law by faith. In what way?

Okay, I can tell—see smoke coming out of some of your brains—we need an illustration. So, I’m going to share an illustration that I’ve never heard anybody use besides me. It’s probably heresy, but hopefully not. You’ll let me know. It might help or not help. It helps me. It helps me.

Imagine if you lived on the edge of a city and every day you had to get to work on the other side of that city. You’re navigating every day through the traffic, through the alleys, and the one-ways, and the stoplights, and the frustration of construction closing a road. Then you try to get around. It’s one way, always the wrong way.

If you can imagine for a moment, living by the law is like that. Got to do it right. I’m stuck. I can’t move. Move out of my way. You’re trying to do the right thing to get where you need to go, but you’re navigating all the intricacies of 613 rules, trying to be righteous.

Then one day, you find out that they have built an overpass over the city. Not a bypass (that’s Marcionism), an overpass, so you’re actually covering the same terrain as all these regulations. Like, don’t wear mixed cloth. Don’t forget to wash your hands just right. Like, do it right. Sacrifices. Don’t do this. Give this. All these rules— you’re not evading them, you’re fulfilling them because in Jesus—who lived a righteous life, died a sacrificial death (because he knew we couldn’t do it)—provides this way in which we fill up the law in the way we love God and the way we love our neighbors.

This is what Jesus says in Matthew 22 when the lawyer asked,

“‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’”

Everyone in this room has a relationship with the law. I would suggest it comes down to three different relationships. One, there are some of us who might be focusing on the law as a means of being right with God. This has so many different forms. Like, I need to do it right. I experienced the good day/bad day syndrome. If I don’t, I feel like God’s mad. If I do, I felt like God’s happy. Constantly feeling like I’m not doing enough. I’m not doing well enough. Biblically, what is this relationship with the law? Legalism. Many of us might be related to the law in a legalistic way, which is bondage.

Some of us who grew up in this have jumped ship all the way over to a pit on the other side where it’s basically, “I just do whatever.” I’m tired of trying to please God, trying to please people, trying to keep my nose clean, trying to do it right, caring what people think— so I just do whatever. What’s that called? License. That’s on the other side of legalism. I’m basically fleeing the law. One is focusing on the law; the other is fleeing the law. Like, I don’t care about God. I’m relying on myself. Bondage. Bondage. Two different kinds of bondage.

Jesus says, I’ve got something way better. It’s not legalism. It’s not license. It is liberty. Paul uses that word liberty in Galatians 5 to show this contrast that, in Jesus, we have been declared right and are being made righteous by faith in the sacrifice, the life, and death of Jesus. He’s giving to us a righteousness we could never earn or produce. He is giving us a new heart so that we can truly love God and learn how to love our neighbor. By doing that, we are not evading or ignoring but filling up the law and the prophets because it all points in this direction.

I want to invite you—if you say, yeah, I’m making some really horrible choices, and I feel like I’m over here in license—come to Jesus. His arms are open. He’s not pointing a finger. If you’re in bondage, come, come to Jesus. That’s the answer. Jesus said, I did not come to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it. Let’s pray. Just take a moment to ask the Spirit to search your heart. What is my relationship with the law?

Spirit of God, please, if there are some here, many of us who might struggle with spiritual perfectionism and it’s suffocating— may we hear your voice inviting us to a kind of grace and love that doesn’t evade righteousness. It actually changes us from inside out. We begin to love what you love, to hate what you hate. Lord, please, turn our eyes to you. For those who are making some really bad choices and fueled, perhaps, by anger or discouragement— you’re pleading, Lord, you’re pleading with us to,

“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest.”

You’re not calling us to prove ourselves. You know us better than we know ourselves, and you have done for us what we could never do for ourselves. Your arms are open, Lord. May many right now put their trust in you. Show us, Lord, as a church, the gift of the law and that we would use it lawfully. We thank you in Jesus’ name, Amen.