Feb. 18, 2007

Feb. 19, 2007

Mat 5:17-18
(17) Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
(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.

While many who read these words will find the words I type today no great revelation, I can tell you they set me free a few months ago. When I was a young Christian I was hungry for any Bible study material I could find. I found some information from a group that basically teaches that if you do not worship on Saturday you can not be a Christian. As one of their proof texts they used today's verse. They taught that the law has never been changed and since Jesus had not come to change the law then the Sabbath rule was still in place. I got this teaching and though I knew that we did not live under the law still this teaching stuck in my craw and this verse continued to bother me for years. We do not live under the law, yet Jesus did not come to abolish the law. How could these two facts be true.

This is what happens when you take one part of a verse and run with the partial truth that it gives. Yes it is true that Jesus did not come to destroy the law. Yes it is true that every jot and tittle could not be changed. What is also true is that Jesus came to fulfill the law. If He came to fulfill the law we do not have to live under it any more. Is the law bad? No. Are there some parts of it that we can still use? Yes. In reading through the Bible tonight with my children, we read some laws that appear not to have made sense to us. My youngest asked me why there was a law that you could eat meat on the day it was offered and the 2ND day, but the third day it was unclean. I had to ask God as I had not thought about it. Answer I got; there was no refrigeration in those days. After 2 days the food would begin to spoil. It was basically a law so that the Israelites would not eat rotten food.

We do not have to live by these laws anymore as Jesus has fulfilled them all. In reading them we should try to understand why they were put in by God so we can see where following them may help us in our daily lives.