MATTHEW 5:17-19
June 9, 2019
Matthew 5: 17-18 says, "Do not think that I came to abolish the Torah or the Prophets! I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Amen, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or serif shall ever pass away from the Torah until all things come to pass. "
For the modern-day Christian, the previous above means that the Torah and the others books of the "Old Testament" have been fulfilled, or done away with. They say that, "all was fulfilled" when Yeshua said, "it is finished" and the Law is no longer relevant. Such a belief about the Torah could not be farther from the truth. Just consider the Messiah's own words from verse 18, "Amen, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or serif shall ever pass away from the Torah until all things come to pass." Has heaven and earth passed away? Of course not! Then, the Torah and the prophets remain necessary and essential to living the Almighty’s will.
Yeshua quoted a Hebrew idiom when He said He came not to destroy the Law or the prophets. He was using a familiar phrase easily understood during Biblical times. If someone heard a Torah teaching and didn’t agree, they would say that the Teacher was "destroying the law." If they heard a teaching they thought was the right interpretation they would then say the Teacher was "fulfilling the law." Yeshua had been accused of misinterpreting the Torah, yet He said that He was actually rightly and correctly teaching it. Traditional Yahudi writings support this idiom, "Should all the nations of the world unite to uproot one word of the Law, they would be unable to do it," Leviticus 19:2. To understand the meaning of this verse, everything hinges on the meaning of the words "destroy" and "fulfill" in verse 17. What does Yeshua mean by "destroy the Law" and "fulfill the Law"? "Destroy" and "fulfill" are technical terms used in rabbinic argumentation. When a sage felt that a colleague had misinterpreted a passage of Scripture, he would say, "You are destroying the Law!" Needless to say, in most cases, his colleagues strongly disagreed. What was "destroying the Law" for one sage was "fulfilling the Law" (correctly interpreting Scripture) for another."
In plain English, Yeshua is saying, "Never imagine for a moment that I intend to abrogate the Law by misinterpreting it. My intent is not to weaken or negate the Law, but by properly interpreting YHWH’s written Word, I aim to establish it, that is, make it even more lasting. I would never invalidate the Law by effectively removing something from it through misinterpretation. Heaven and earth would sooner disappear than something from the Law. Not the smallest letter in the alphabet, the jot or yod, nor even its decorative spur, the tittle, will ever disappear from the Law."