Returning to Repentance: what Jesus truly meant on the Mount

And so it is that we return to what Jesus must have meant in Matthew 5:17-18; what he must have meant when he climbed that Galilean hillside in the very beginning of his ministry and told his listeners in no uncertain terms: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets, for I have come not to abolish but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single stroke of a single letter will pass from the Law until every part of it is accomplished” … And yet how could this be true? After all, the rest of that very sermon (indeed, the rest of Jesus’ entire ministerial career) was riddled with statements that said otherwise – statements that directly challenged, boldly altered, and even abjectly rejected the very same Law that Jesus claimed to support and affirm. Well, the answer (or at least an answer) to this apparent conflict rests in the deeper meaning of the word translated as “fulfilled” in this passage; the Greek word plerosai (Strong’s #4137) – a word that did not mean “to support”, “to affirm”, “to uphold”, or “to blindly follow”, but rather meant “to hone”, “to perfect”, “to bring to completion”, or “to make fully whole.” And this interpretation not only harmonizes with the deeper meaning of “accomplished” in Matthew 5:18 (the Greek word genetai – Strong’s #1096; a word that meant “to bring into being”), but it also reconciles the apparent contradiction between Jesus affirming the Jewish Law while simultaneously criticizing the same. For he clearly wasn’t trying to disable or denounce the Law; he was trying to cleanse it – to make it more meaningful and more potent by making it more consistent and more accessible. In essence, he wasn’t trying to destroy or replace the Law – he was trying to honor it by full-filling it.

   “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for You have hidden these things from the wise & the clever and have revealed them instead to the youngest of children … Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but rather only those who do the will of my Father in Heaven … Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. For the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. And yet it did not fall, because it had been founded on stone … Enter [such a house] through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, while the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life … He who has ears to listen, let him hear.” ~ Jesus Christ (Matthew 11:25, Matthew 7:21-25, Matthew 7:13-14 & Matthew 11:15)

Just like any great reformer, Jesus openly criticized what was less than ideal about the Judaism of his day, and yet he always did so against a backdrop of what he appreciated about the same. Much like Deutero-Isaiah (the author of Isaiah chapters 40-55, one of Jesus’ most beloved Old Testament prophets¹), Jesus sought to uphold and strengthen the Jewish culture by reminding his religious compatriots that God (or YHWH, who Jesus affectionately referred to as Abba – see Mark 14:36) was not a harsh external tyrant as much as He was a warm internal guide; that religion was not about going through ritual motions in order to please the priests and Pharisees, but was rather about enlivening the selfless Love of the heavenly Father in order to honor the same. For Jesus, Judaism had devolved into a dry & hollow practice that worshiped a god of the past, instead of being what it should be – an open appreciation for the overarching spiritual essence (God – or YHWH – or Adonai – or Abba) that was very much alive (although often only latently so) within the heart of every human being and within the shared core of every human interaction. As Deutero-Isaiah himself wrote: “Remember not the former things or consider the things of old. For I am about to enliven a new thing, and even now it is springing forth. Can you not perceive it? See, I am making a new way through the wilderness. I am forming rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:18-19) And this is precisely what Jesus did over & over & over again in the Gospels with regards to the Old Testament – making a new way through the wilderness of stagnant laws and unsound regulations; forming a river of “living water” (John 7:37-39) through the arid teachings of the pious priests and proud Pharisees.

And that is precisely what this tome promises to prove – namely, that Jesus was neither a spineless follower of Judaic tradition nor an arrogant denouncer of the same. Yes, he was indeed bold in his criticisms of the Law wherever it was capricious &/or unjust, and yet his intentions were ever to amend and reform Judaism thereby; to full-fill the Law – and thereby Judaism with it.

Jesus Christ: holiest of heretics – amender of the Mitzvot

While there have been many attempts to officially codify the divine commandments contained in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament, also known as the Torah) and while the debate continues to smolder as to how many laws actually existed in Jesus’ day (as well as how many of them are still viable today), the majority of those in the Jewish community accept Maimonides’ list of 613 legal edicts as the correct enumeration thereof – with 365 “negative commands” calling for the abstention of certain deeds and 248 “positive commands” calling for the fulfillment of others².

That having been said, as with any other fundamental issue of religious dogma, discord remains as to the actual content of these 613 laws. After all, the Bible does not specify how its texts are to be judged or weighted, and scholars are therefore still left to wonder: Are orders given by God to one particular individual in the texts to be cross-applied to the rest of humanity? Are divine requests permanently binding if it appears that they can only be fulfilled in one particular place &/or time? Are we to count commandments by the verses in which they fall or by the particular prohibitions they announce (prohibitions which are at times enunciated over several verses)? And what about the Mitzvot that still have religious significance and yet have not been observable since the fall of the 2^nd Temple, or the commands that only seem viable within the land of Israel, or those that only apply to Jewish priests (the Kohanim) – or only to men – or only to women? As Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra once astutely stated: “Sages number the 613 Mitzvot in many diverse ways … and yet in truth there is no end to their number.”

Of course, for the purpose of this treatise it really doesn’t matter how many Mitzvot there were in Jesus’ time (much less how many of those rules are still applicable today). No, it is only important for us to see how Jesus treated those laws and how he felt about them; only important to show without any shadow of any doubt that Jesus openly confronted & intentionally amended them all. And to prove this point, I will be examining the Gospels in light of everything Jesus did against or said about the Law throughout his ministry – first looking at the general statements he made about Old Testament regulations, and then breaking the Mitzvot into their primary categories to show how Jesus more specifically critiqued & thereby altered the same.

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Filed under: Jesus Christ, a most Holy Heretic by Scaughdt