The Law Fulfilled

[The following is a manuscript of my message delivered on Sunday morning the 14th of June, 2020 at Pilgrim Reformed Church.  This was an abbreviated service, also streamed live, due to constraints put in place from the COVID-19 pandemic.  Our YouTube streaming channel is:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDIz4WuP8igQstkEOq1AMTg.  Look for the video of our recorded services on our Vimeo channel:  http://vimeo.com/pilgrimreformedchurch.]

God inscribed His law onto two stone tablets, what we call the Ten Commandments, and handed them to Moses on Mount Sinai.  Moses can down from the mountainside to find the people engaged in idol worship.  In a fit of anger, he smashed the tablets into bits.

I think this symbolic of the fact that mankind is incapable of keeping God’s law intact.  We are always breaking it.

In what we call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke to His disciples and to the people gathered there on the hillside, on a level place.  From this we received the wonderful message of hope and encouragement known as the Beatitudes.  Here we are told, “You are the salt of the earth”, and we’re compared to a shining city on a hill.  And we also get a little more information about God’s law, and the connection between it and Jesus.

Please listen and follow along to what the Apostle Matthew recorded in chapter 5, verses 17 through 20 of his Gospel account, and I’ll be reading this from the Modern English Version of our Holy Bible…

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill. 18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one dot or one mark will pass from the law until all be fulfilled. 19 Whoever, therefore, breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no way enter the kingdom of heaven."

--Matthew 5:17-20 (MEV)

Let us pray…  Father God, thank You for inspiring men and women to preserve for us the words that our Lord Jesus spoke.  Thank You for the reassurance they give.  And thank You for sending Your Son to fulfill Your law.  Please help us be more obedient.  Help us be more worthy of all Jesus did for us.  Help us be more righteous in Your eyes.  And please keep us strong in our faith and see us safely through these challenging days.

Speak to us now, Father, that we might hear Your voice through Your Spirit and better understand the message You have for us, a message not only for this morning but to see us through the dark days ahead.  Speak to us of Your love and assurances.  Help us take guidance and strength from the words of Your Son and from Your Holy Spirit within us. This we pray under the blood and in the name of Your Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.   Amen.


In his book, Who Will Deliver Us?, Reverend Doctor Paul Zahl tells of a duck hunter who was with a friend in the wide-open lands of southeastern Georgia.  Far away on the horizon he noticed a cloud of smoke.  Soon he could hear crackling as the wind shifted.  He realized the terrible truth: a brushfire was advancing, so fast they couldn't outrun it.  Rifling through his pockets, he soon found what he was looking for - a book of matches.  He lit a small fire around the two of them.  Soon they were standing in a circle of blackened earth, waiting for the fire to come.  They didn't have to wait long.  They covered their mouths with handkerchiefs and braced themselves.  The fire came near and then swept over them, but they were completely unhurt, untouched.  Fire would not pass where fire already had passed.

The law is like a brushfire.  I cannot escape it.  But if I stand in the burned-over place, not a hair on my head will be singed.  Christ's death has disarmed it.


Firefighters have long used the concept in that story when battling wildfires.  To stop the advance of an out-of-control forest fire or grasslands fire, they would actually start a fire on purpose ahead of the inferno rushing toward them.  This would be a very controlled burn, one that would only be allowed to cut a swath in the direct path of the wildfire.  When the blaze reaches that burned swath, the flames have nowhere to go, the fire has no more fuel, and it dies.

Jesus set a backfire in the wildfire of sin.  His death on the cross cleared a swath where sin can no longer burn, where it cannot flourish.  Like the duck hunters standing safely in the burned-over spot, if we stand in the path Jesus laid for us, we will be saved.


In our scripture reading, Jesus says he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  In other words, the law doesn’t change just because He came to us.  The Ten Commandments are still in force for us to obey and follow.  In fact, Jesus warns us not to break even the least of them, and especially not to teach others to break them, either by instruction or by example.  He cautions us to be more righteous than the Pharisees, the larger group of Jewish religious leaders, and their lawyers, the scribes.

So where did the scribes and Pharisees fall short in their obedience to the law, their righteousness?  They failed to love others.  They failed to love their neighbors.  And this is how Jesus fulfilled the law, by being love personified, love in the flesh.


The law…  A doctor by the name of Phil Williams once said that, “The law is the light that reveals how dirty the room is, not the broom that sweeps it clean.”  Without the law, we would have no way of knowing when we are being disobedient, when we are sinning.  We would not know when we are displeasing God.

The law is not a tool for cleaning, but a light that shines into the corners of our being to show us what we need to clean up.  And if we truly want to start cleaning the place where God’s Holy Spirit dwells, the easiest way to begin is to love God with all our heart, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Jesus fulfilled the law by loving us all.  In his letter to the Romans, chapter 13 verses 8 through 10, the Apostle Paul writes…

8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

--Romans 13:8-10 (NKJV)

He who loves one another has fulfilled the law.  That sounds almost too easy, doesn’t it.  Is that really all there is to it, to keeping the law, just loving others?  Well, yes, and no.  Yes, that’s all there is to it, but loving others isn’t always easy, not if we love as Jesus loves.

Love does no harm.  Is there any among us that at some time or another has not caused harm to someone else, whether unintentionally or on purpose?

No, loving others isn’t easy all the time.  So we need to be more aware of what we are doing, what we are saying.  We need to be more conscious of how our words and actions may affect others.


I wonder if sometimes we aren’t more worried about keeping man’s laws than God’s law.  Well, one benefit of keeping God’s law is that it helps us not break man’s laws.  How much trouble could we avoid if we simply strove to do no harm to others?

Of course, the punishment for breaking God’s law is much more severe than anything man can dole out.  Even we believers will have a price to pay for our disobedience.  But note that in our scripture reading Jesus didn’t say we would be condemned for our disobedience, just that our stature in heaven will be diminished.  We just need to make sure we don’t follow the path of the scribes and Pharisees, who refused to believe.

We won’t be condemned because Jesus washed us of our sin.  Having been cleaned, we need to stay clean.  Turning again to one of Paul’s letters, this one to the Galatians, in chapter 5 verses 13 and 14, where he writes…

13 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

--Galatians 5:13-14 (NLT)

The whole law of God can be summed up in the command to love your neighbor as yourself.  We know that this is important for us to understand because we can read it multiple times.  Jesus fulfilled the law of God by love, and by love we too can fulfill the law.  We must use the freedom given to us by the sacrifice Jesus made out of His love to serve others in love.

What does love look like, how does it act, in the midst of a pandemic?  The same way it did when Mother Teresa tended to the sick and dying.  The same way it does with all the doctors and nurses and first responders taking a chance of being infected while they strive to help others.  The same way it looked and acted when it healed the afflicted, made the lame to walk and the blind to see.  The same way it did on the cross.

Love does no harm.  Love is selfless, unconditional, uncaring of background or nationality, blind to race or physical appearance.  Love is Jesus, and Jesus is love.  If we want to be more righteous, be more like Jesus, then we need to love more like Jesus.  And in that way, the law of God is fulfilled.

In the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord, our Master, our Savior.  Amen.


Let us pray…  Father God, You gave us Your law so that we can know when we are displeasing You.  Sadly, we are not able to completely and fully keep Your law, so You made it simple for us.  You sent Your Son to fulfill the law for us.  Thank You, Father, for loving us this much.  Please help us show the same love to others.  Help us be more righteous in Your eyes.  And please help us be more faithful, more trusting, more loving, more kindhearted.

Please hear us now, Father, as we pause for just a moment to speak to You straight from our hearts, promising to repent of our sinful ways, seeking Your forgiveness and Your help to do so…

Lord Jesus, You came to fulfill God’s law for us.  You came as God’s love in the flesh.  Jesus, help us, please, to do as You command and to love others as we love ourselves, to love others as You love us.  Help us to be more loving, more understanding, more merciful and kind to one another.  Help us to look past our differences and see through Your eyes the true heart of others.  Help us to offer them our full love, encouragement, and support.  Help us to show fulfillment of God’s law.  And please, Lord, be with us and see us through these difficult times.  Help us remain faithful through it all.  This we pray in Your blessed name, Christ Jesus our Lord and our Savior.  Amen.