Matthew
Gospel Commands Keeping the Jewish Law
There are only four gospels giving us the story of Jesus Christ. One of them teaches that we must be Jews if we want to be followers of Christ more so than the other gospels. The gospel is the Gospel of Matthew, supposedly written by Matthew the apostle of Jesus. This gospel is the most Jewish of the New Testament gospels.
MATTHEW DIDN’T SAY LAW ABOLISHED
The first five books of the Bible contain the Law of Moses, the Law that God gave to Moses. Matthew’s Gospel seems to make it clear that the Law of Moses is over God’s people no more. But does it really?
"Jesus told the Jews that he did not come to abolish the Law of Moses and the Prophets but to fulfil them. He meant he would get rid of it but then it wasn't the time".
To get an excuse to disobey the Law, some Christians have maintained that Jesus was not making a law that the regulations of Moses were still in force but merely saying he didn’t get around to abolishing them yet. So they say he is merely reporting that he hasn’t abolished them yet and that is to say he might do so later. Then why all that mouthful? Why not simply say, “I will abolish the law later.” There is nothing in Jesus’ words that indicates an intention to change or abrogate the Law of Moses. Those Christians are making their speculations into the word of God. They are distorting.
·
“Jesus said that he came to perfect the Law (Matthew 5:17). It was faulty and needed replacing.”
Perfecting the Law is not replacing it but
is bringing it up to date or completing it or simply giving people the power to
obey it better for a change by clarifying it and giving grace to keep it.
It is absurd to suggest that the Lord would
give a bad Law. The only thing that is
wrong with the Law if a good God wrote it is that it is not complete. Jesus expanded and clarified (not
contradicted!) many of its rules (Matthew 5) so the Law was imperfect in the
sense that it needed to be more comprehensive but not in the sense that it was
evil or believed evil.
Page 5 of Not Under
Law admits that Jesus affirmed that the Law was relevant and true for his
day and future days. It rejects the view
that when he said that the Law was to be fulfilled not destroyed and that anybody
who breaks the least of these commandments will not be well off in the kingdom
of God that he meant the commands he was about to give. He had not hinted that he was going to give
any commandments of his own yet so he meant the commandments of the Law. And when it could mean the Law it must mean
it for it is what he was talking about.
The Law was the last thing with the Prophets that he mentioned.
·
“Jesus told us not to agree with the Law about hating enemies (Matthew
5:43). Thus he declared it wrong to
follow the Mosiac laws today. The New Testament is full of exhortations to
love all people and be and peace with them.
They also prove that the Law is dead.”
Jesus did not say that the Law said
this. He was quoting a Jewish tradition
of his own time for this text he recited commanding the hatred of enemies cannot
be found in the Law. He asked people to
renounce it.
Jesus commanded turning the other cheek. That was not a contradiction of the Law for
Jesus is discussing the abuse of the Law.
Even Moses had to turn the other cheek at times.
The Law commanded love of enemies
(Leviticus 19:17,18).
The Law commanded brutal executions for
those who committed certain sins such as adultery and failure to believe in the
religion of the Hebrews.
How can the two commandments agree? How can we be expected to love enemies and
then execute people cruelly? Some say
that we are to love our enemies except the capital criminals. Others say that the capital criminals are not
our enemies but God’s. Others say that
for anyone who hates God hates us by implication if we need him like he
says. Perhaps the Law didn’t realise
this. Others say that it is somehow love
to kill criminals in sadistic ways. We
don’t know. But if we believe that the
Bible is God’s word then we have to believe that the last could be right for
there is no logic in claiming that the savage killings were love unless there
is a God who has the power to make them for the best. The solution may be that God can hate people
but we are not to for we don’t know the enemy like he does for he sees the
heart. We kill them not because we hate
them but because he commanded it.
Anyone who says that Jesus abolished the
Law to allow the love of enemies is wrong.
It is blasphemous to suggest that God was hate before and is love now
for he is in a timeless state where there is no changing. He would not be a God if he were
untrustworthy.
·
“Matthew 5:31,32 has Jesus rejecting the rule of
the Law permitting a man to give a certificate of divorce so the Law is not for
us. Jesus taught that divorce was lawful
when adultery had occurred. He said soon
after that, that divorce for any other reason was against God’s will.”
But Jesus already said that the Law was
right so he can’t be deliberately contradicting it. And if he was banning divorce except for
adultery then he was not disputing the commandment he quoted for the Law
permitted divorce. He was simply
clarifying the commandment not distorting or changing it. In fact, Jesus may be saying that a woman is
not made to commit adultery by divorce when she has been unchaste for she is
guilty of adultery anyway. That would
mean that Jesus did permit divorce when adultery had happened but he says
nothing about remarriage being allowed.
More plausibly, Jesus is saying that divorce is sinful when it is done
with the possibility that the divorced one can marry again. The Law then may allow divorce without it
being thought it can allow the man or woman to marry again. In other words it is really separation. Jesus is forbidding divorce that is intended
to free the partners to marry again.
Matthew said that Jesus was opposed to a
man having more than one wife (19:5,6). Christians may claim that the Torah gave
polygamy it’s blessing. The Torah gives laws about polygamy but it
does not say that it is right. It does
permit it by implication for God could have forbidden it. But Jesus would have disagreed with
this. Or he could have covered up the
fact that its silence gives consent to polygamy. He said that the people were so stubborn that
there were some sins Moses and by implication God couldn’t condemn for they
wanted to do them. So God had to keep
silent to keep his people. That silence
was one reason why Jesus said that the Law needed to be completed meaning by
further teaching and clarification.
·
This is another argument based on Matthew’s teaching on divorce. “Jesus said that any man who divorces his
wife makes her commit adultery” and quotes the Law permitting a man to divorce
his wife, with disapproval.
There is no need to take that meaning of
it. Jesus said Moses permitted divorce for remarriage for the people were so
stubborn but God didn’t. The Law never
expressly permitted remarriage. The divorce
was really legal separation.
·
“Matthew’s Jesus condemns oaths which the Law allowed.”
Jesus said it was evil to swear and that
yes or no should do. All Jesus meant was
that oaths should not be necessary for people should tell the truth. He did not forbid oaths. It may be objected that he intended to forbid
oaths when he said that what went beyond yes or no was of the Devil. He meant evil in the sense of should not be
necessary. Jesus did not say that oaths
are wrong when they are necessary but that they should not be necessary for
they would not be if we were honest.
Oaths are necessary even if people only lie for grave reasons. See what Jesus is getting at? It is that lying is never ever justifiable.
·
“Matthew 5:40 says that if anybody wants to steal your tunic let him take
your cloak too. The cloak was a very
important garment and could mean life or death to the poor who were plentiful
among the people Jesus was speaking to.
They needed it to keep them warm at night. Thus Jesus was clearly abrogating the law of
the Old Testament on self-defence”.
Nobody has ever taken Jesus literally when
he said if anybody hits you on one cheek turn the other. Not even pacifist
Christians do that. They say we
should not hit back but try to get away which is not turning the other
cheek. There are circumstances in which
we should turn the other cheek just as there are circumstances as to when we
should let somebody steal our cloak. We
can survive without it if we try. And
Jesus never said you should give away your cloak if you need it to live. The argument assumes that Jesus was making an
iron law to cover all circumstances. He
left it up to us to decide if we should let the cloak go.
·
“The Law decreed that priests were to dress a certain way. It encourages public prayers. Jesus was against this in Matthew 6 because
he said that God prefers secrecy about such things.”
Jesus meant that it was wrong to do these
things to show off. He would not have
been preaching at all if he thought that it was wrong to be seen doing good. This is the
Christian reply and that is all that I will say.
·
“Jesus forbade military service and political involvement when he said
that a man cannot serve two masters for a clash would be inevitable so he should
be the slave of God (Matthew 6:24). The
Old Testament supported the military so the Law was done away”.
But the context was about God and
money. Jesus was saying we cannot be
committed to God and be equally committed to money. God must come first. These words do not prove that it is wrong to
have money. All they say is that God
must get all the commitment and if you are going to use money you must use it
to serve God. You could change it to
make it say that if you are going to be in the army then serve God through it
but do not be attached to the job but to God.
·
“Matthew 7:1 has Jesus forbidding judgment while the Law sanctions
it”.
He plainly said that he forbade it when
unjust hypocritical standards were used.
He was not against righteous judgment.
He did not want people who were worse than you condemning or punishing
you. The punishing is not bad in itself
but it is wrong when it is done for the wrong reason and the only reason a
hypocrite will punish you is because of spite.
·
“Jesus says that his law is a light burden (Matthew 11:30) which proves
he cancelled the Jewish Law for it was a heavy burden.”
Not true.
The heavy burden can become light when God helps you to carry it. Jesus was just saying that God has made the
heavy load of the Law a lighter one not by watering it down but by being more
cooperative.
·
“Jesus said according to Matthew that you must not call any man on earth
your father but only him who is your Father in Heaven contradicting Leviticus
20:9.”
Jesus said this in Matthew 23 and the context
was about leaders who would lead you away from God. If God is your Father in Heaven you will
treat him as a Father by honouring your own father but only in as far as your
father works for and commands the will of God.
·
“Jesus said that Christians are to ignore the decrees of the Torah
because you don’t put an old patch on new clothes (Matthew 9).”
The context is about people complaining
about Jesus’ disciples not doing any fasting while John the Baptist’s did. Jesus is not speaking about the Law at all
but about man-made religious traditions.
The Law is not even mentioned in the text.
The gospels say that Jesus died voluntarily
on the cross to save us from sin which leads some to argue that Jesus wants us
to practice suffering love and to take abuse from our enemies and implying an
extreme endorsement of non-violence (page 34, Christ and Violence) which
would be contrary to the attitude of the Law.
It is different for a man who can rise from the dead to do things like
that. Jesus had to die to atone but we
don’t have to suffer for that though we do have to suffer for doing right.
Christians admit that Jesus never once
broke the Law though some think the only time was when he told a man who wanted
to bury his father to let the dead bury their own dead (page 32, The
Metaphor of God Incarnate). But even
this exception is a matter of dispute.
Jesus believed he had an urgent mission.
He needed the man to be part of it.
The man doing this was more important than burying the dead. So it was not Jesus’ intention to break the
Law. So Jesus was just urging the
keeping of the bigger law because there was a conflict and both couldn’t be
kept. But perhaps there was no
conflict. The law that the dead must be
buried didn’t require the man to bury his father if he had other relations to
do it. Jesus believed that letting
others keep the law of burial was better than breaking the Law that God and the
It is thought that Jesus broke the Sabbath.
Jesus when he let his followers pick food during the Sabbath replied that they
were hungry and the Law wasn’t that strict for David was allowed to feed his
men with bread forbidden to anyone but the priests. This was a protest against the overly strict
application of the Sabbath not the Sabbath.
Matthew has not declared the Torah void. It deserves its reputation as a Gospel for Jewish Christians.
GOD A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED Keith Ward, OneWorld, Oxford, 2003 recognises that the Christian claim that the Jews were legalists caring only for the letter of the Law is false (page 79). It says the Jews rather than just worrying about a legalistic outward obedience required good motives for this obedience just like Jesus taught that not killing was not enough and one needed to have a loving heart as well. Jesus was not contradicting the Law at all in the Sermon on the Mount (page 78).
The
Gospel of Matthew contains most of the proofs that the Law of Moses was just as
obligatory for Christians as it was for the Hebrews that Moses gave it to.
In Matthew 5, Jesus says that he has come
to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, the two major sections in the Old
Testament, not to prohibit them. Then he
says that not an iota shall pass from them.
He is promising to preserve the perfectly. Then he asserts that it is a sin to break or
abolish even one of their commandments.
The word for fulfil in the original text is
the Greek word pleroo. Pleroo appears in
Matthew 13:48 where a net is pleroo or filled up with
fish. Pleroo
means that instead of changing or cancelling the Law he would fill it up until
it could hold no more which is the same as saying he will expand the Law and
make it complete (page 16, The World Ahead, November December 1998, Vol 6, Issue 6).
He is saying that he will not do away with
the rules in the Law. He said some stuff
after that many take to be in contradiction of the Law. But he said he would not do away. So what comes after must not be interpreted
so as to be supposed to be in contradiction to the Law.
Some have said that when Jesus said after
he came to fulfil the Law that anybody who breaks the smallest of the
commandments will be the lowest in the kingdom of Heaven he meant the
commandments he gave later on. But when
he was after speaking about the Law his listeners who were naïve and
irreligious would certainly have assumed that the commandments had to be those
of the Law. So, Jesus condemned people
who broke the Law of Moses.
He did not simply mean, “I have not come to
do away with the text of the Law but to fulfil it”. If he had he would have put the word text in in case his listeners who were ordinary people would
misunderstand. The Law is not the text
or it’s wording but is expressed in letters and words
and in sentences. Jesus would not have
talked as if he was expected to do away with the text and replace it
“He did not actually say that it would be a
sin for him to repeal the divine laws,” reply the theologians who want to use
this as an excuse for denying my natural interpretation of what Jesus
said. But he never said, “It is a sin
for anybody except me to alter the commandments of the Law”. He meant that even he himself was excluded
from the privilege of altering the Law.
Jesus said that our keeping the law or
righteousness must be better than that of the scribes and Pharisees to enter
the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:20). We
must obey the Jewish Law better than them.
He did not like the Jews preferring the letter of the Law to the spirit
of the Law. For example, the Jews read
in the Law to love their neighbours.
They interpreted this as meaning that they must love only those who live
around them. But they did not understand
that God meant that everybody is your neighbour. The misinterpretation is the letter of the
Law and the real meaning is the spirit of the Law. If you take it overly literally it becomes
the letter of the Law that you are obeying. Forget about the words and
concentrate on the meaning.
Jesus said later that since the Law and the
Prophets commanded that you do to others what you want them to do to you, you must obey (7:12).
He categorically stated that the Law was still in force and said that
this rule was a summary of the Law and the Prophets. A summary that drops out the parts is not a
summary at all so Jesus was saying the Law should still be obeyed. If the summary rules out the brutal laws of
the Law and the Prophets then it is not a summary.
The Church says that Jesus died for sinners
to make up for sins. But it believes he
didn’t need to die for all he had to do was obey God in our place and each act
is full payment for our disobedience.
The Church holds that since Jesus was God or supremely special to God
only one act of obedience was needed to remove sin so Jesus made up for all
sins simply by being conceived. To
become man knowing that you have to give your life for sinners on the cross
would be the same value as dying on the cross.
After the atonement, Jesus told his disciples to obey everything the
scribes and the Pharisees tell them but not to emulate their hypocrisy (Matthew
23:2,3). And
their teachers preached that Jesus must be ready and willing to kill and give
an eye for an eye for the Law says so.
Christ castigated the Jews for not obeying
God’s word when it demanded that anybody who did not respect parents had to be
put to death (Matthew 15). He told them
they were setting aside the wishes of God which would not have been the case if
this law had been cancelled for then it would not have been there to have been
set aside.
On the strength of God’s own authority,
Jesus commanded the love of God and of neighbour (Matthew 22). He said that to him these meant what the Law
commanded for all it demands depends on these two principles. In other words, he wanted the Law to be
observed in full for its nature was love.
The people were told by Jesus to obey the
scribes and Pharisees because they preached the Torah. He denounced them as evil men so he would not
have told them to do what they say when their ideas were only their own reasoning. “Observe and practice all they tell you; but
do not do what they do, for they preach, but do not practice” (Matthew
23:3).
Jesus told a young Jewish man to keep the
commandments if he wanted to enter Heaven (Matthew 19:17). Christians say that this is not a proof that
the Law is still in force for he went on to say he should keep the moral rules
forbidding stealing and adultery and so on or the ten commandments in other
words. But Jesus mentioned only a few
commandments and quoted them as some but not all examples so he would have
meant the other laws in and out of the Ten Commandments too. He certainly did not mean the man to think
that only a couple of rules were binding.
When he was speaking to a Jew he would have been understood to have referred
to the entire Law and he was preaching obedience to the Law during his
ministry. And because he said
commandments instead of Ten Commandments he must have meant the entire
law. Remember too that the Ten
Commandments were just a summary of the Law of Moses meaning that to approve
them is to approve of all the other laws too.
The first commandment, You shall have no God
but me – or you shall put nothing else before me and will obey me, enjoins
obedience to the Law of God, the whole Law.
It is a part of the Law after all.
Jesus said we should treat others as we
want them to treat us FOR this fulfils the Law of Moses and the Prophets
(Matthew 7:12). He tells us we should
like to be stoned to death if we deserve it.
This line says it all. The Law is
still to be obeyed.
Jesus meant that the young man had to be
saved by grace without good works and that the young man could do good works
and obey the Law only if he were really saved.
He is good because of salvation and not to earn salvation. In that sense, the man had to keep the Law to
enter Heaven.
Conclusion
The
Gospel of Matthew denies that the civil, religious and moral laws of the Old
Testament are done away. It says they
are in force. We are then to gather
stones and to get ready to kill the local adulterer and we are to burn down the
local Catholic Church for idolatry according to these laws.
WORKS CONSULTED
Alleged
Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated
Christ
and Violence, Ronald J Sider, Herald Press, Scottdale, Ontario, 1979
Christ’s
Literal Reign on Earth From David’s Throne at Jerusalem, John R Rice, Sword of
the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, undated
Early
Christian Writings, Editor Maxwell Staniforth,
Penguin, London, 1988
Essentials,
David L Edwards and John Stott, Hodder &
Stoughton, London, 1990
Eunuchs
for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Ranke-Heinmann,
Penguin Books, London, 1991
God’s
Festivals and Holy Days, Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide Church of God,
California, 1992
Hard
Sayings Derek Kidner InterVarsity
Press, London, 1972
Jesus
the Only Saviour, Tony and Patricia Higton, Monarch,
Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 1993
Kennedy’s
Murder, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1964
Martin
Luther, Richard Marius, Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1999
Moral
Philosophy, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst
Philosophy Series, Longmans, Green and Co, London, 1912
Not
Under Law, Brian Edwards, Day One Publications, Bromley, Ken, 1994
Radio
Replies Vol 2, Frs
Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press,
Sabbath
Keeping, Johnie Edwards, Guardian of Truth
Publications, Kentucky
Secrets
of Romanism, Joseph Zacchello, Loizeaux
Brothers, New Jersey, 1984
Set
My Exiles Free, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill & Son Ltd, Dublin, 1967
Storehouse
Tithing, Does the Bible Teach it? John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, 1954
Sunday or Sabbath? John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro,
1943
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Christian and War, JB Norris, The Christadelphian,
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Christian and War, Robert Moyer, Sword of the Lord Murfreesboro Tennessee
1946
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Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982
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Enigma of Evil, John Wenham, Eagle, Guildford, Surrey, 1994
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Gospel and Strife, A. D. Norris, The Christadelphian,
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Jesus Event, Martine Tripole SJ, Alba House, New
York, 1980
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Kingdom of God on Earth, Stanley Owen, Christadelphian
Publishing Office, Birmingham
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Metaphor of God Incarnate, John Hick, SCM Press, London, 1993
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Plain Truth about Easter, Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide Church of God,
California, 1957
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Sabbath, Peter Watkins, Christadelphian Bible
Mission, Birmingham
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Ten Commandments, Herbert W Armstrong, Worldwide Church of God, California,
1972
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Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of
Pennsylvania, Brooklyn, New York, 1968
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World Ahead, November December 1998, Vol 6, Issue
6
Theodore
Parker’s Discourses, Theodore Parker, Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer,
London, 1876
Those
Incredible Christians, Hugh Schonfield, Hutchinson,
London, 1968
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of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi Books, London, 1995
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and Pacifism, Margaret Cooling, Scripture Union, London, 1988
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and the Gospel, Jean Lasserre, Herald Press, Ontario,
1962
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Critics Ask, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor
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THE
WEB
The
Law of Moses: Is It Valid Today?
www.ark_of_salvation.orgJewish_law.htm
The
Law of Moses and the Law of Christ by Arnold Fruchtenbaum
Is
Old Testament Law for New Testament Christians
www.souldevice.org/writings_law_gospel.html
This
Christian site accepts that the New Testament did not run the Law of Moses out
of town but accepted it. It argues that
Matthew 5 has Jesus stating that he has no intention of doing away with the Law
of Moses and what he does with it is he gives out a stricter interpretation of
it. But strangely it argues then that
Jesus did discontinue some parts of the Law.
1 Samuel 15:22,23/Isaiah 1:11-17/Jeremiah
7:21-23/Proverbs 21:3/Matthew 9:13/23:23 are said to make no sense unless the
law can be given three distinctions which are Moral, Ceremonial and Civil. Not once however in these verses does God even
hint that the Moral laws and the Civil laws and the Ceremonial laws are to be
treated as three units. What they are is
three different kinds of law in one law based on love. The first two cannot be
changed because of the link with morality but the latter can if it is only
temporary and states that clearly. You
can’t change what love is. The law
plainly commands and practices hatred so God is assuming that we need to hate
in order to love properly so that is how a law of love can encourage and foster
hatred.
Christians,
assuming that they are to have any distinctions at all, are to have just Moral
and Ceremonial law. The Christians make
the distinctions for they hold that the moral law of God is unchangeable while
the civil and ceremonial law of God is changeable. But when there is no evidence that moral and
civil are not the same they can only hope for the abolition of the Ceremonial
law and they simply have to hold that it is right to slay homosexuals and other
sinners Moses wanted dead in the name of God.
A case for holding that Paul believed that the law that could not save
was a legalistic interpretation of the Law and not the law itself as it
actually was is dismissed though Paul’s word for the Law backs it up. Then the site suggests the correctness of the
shocking statement of the theologian Geisler that all
God’s laws must be in accord with God’s nature but need not be necessitated by
that nature and so they can be changed.
In other words, God can forbid you to pay taxes to the temple so that
the poor may be given the money and then he could change that law. But that does not explain how he could
command the stoning of certain sinners?
Any law he makes, changeable or unchangeable is designed to bring about
the best. So if the Israelites were
better rid of these sinners so were we.
If the temple can do without money it can at other times so the law
would have to be reinstated. There is a
sense then in which all his laws are permanent.
They are permanent but if other permanent laws become more important
than them they are just put to the background and not done away until they can
be put back to the foreground again. Not
one of the laws in the Torah are claimed to be changeable or even look like that
kind of law. They are all different from
the one about paying money to charity instead of the temple. God in the Law said you could murder a
burglar who breaks into your house at night with impunity. Now is that a law that isn’t necessitated by
God’s nature? it
does no good at all and clearly indicates that God does not accept the view
that he has any laws that his nature does not require him to make but which he
makes anyway.
16 March 2008