Of Dating, Engagements, and Fulfilling the Law ... Matthew 5.17

Of Dating, Engagements, and Fulfilling the Law …

In our continuing quest to understand “What value, really, is the ‘Old Testament’” particularly in the Churches of Christ we have looked at some historical and textual concerns. Not long ago we asked What was nailed to the cross in Col 2.14 and concluded the text did not teach that the Old Testament was regardless of the frequent rhetoric of some.

Another horrendously abused text in the restoration hermeneutical tradition is Matthew 5.17. The text reads “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them” (NIV). One recent interpreter understands this text to be such a violent rejection of the Torah that he compared it to Moses coming down from the mountain and smashing the tablets to bits. “Although the commandments were written again, the day came when Jesus would fulfill them and throw them down once and for all (Mt. 5:17). (Wade Webster, “Crucial Questions Concerning the Old Covenant,” Power {June 2008}). 

I confess that I find this a shocking reading of what Jesus claims he is doing. If Jesus is “throwing them down once and for all” sounds an awful lot like what Jesus explicitly claimed he was not doing.

In our convoluted way we take the word “fulfill” and then we interpret through a
misunderstanding of Colossians 2.14 and then twist it till it has the exact same meaning as “abolish” does which is what Jesus said “do not think” he came to do.

But what if “fulfill” really does not mean abolish? The English word “fulfill” has a range of meanings. According to the dictionary the term has the range of: to put into effect (execute), to meet requirements, to develop the potentialities off. But it is the Greek of Matthew that we need to be concerned with. Matthew uses the term pleroo frequently and needs to be understood with his larger fulfillment motif. For example Matthew says Jesus came to “fulfill all righteousness” (3.15) which clearly does not mean Jesus came to do away with righteousness. In 26. 54 and 56 Jesus’ suffering is seen as “fulfilling {anapleroo} the Scriptures” does not mean doing away with the Scriptures. Matthew’s ten explicit “formula quotations” all use the same term (pleroo) as 5.17 and when Matthew says this was to “fulfill that” he does not mean do away, nail to the cross or abolish or even "throw them down once and for all."

What if fulfilling the law is more like a man or a woman fulfilling his or her marriage vows? What if the coming of a “new” covenant is more akin to dating, getting engaged and then married than a repudiation or a destruction of the “old”? Does a marriage negate the value of the life shared previous to saying “I do?” Far from it. Instead that period we call “dating” and “engagement” are crucial in the development of a later healthy relationship called marriage. Can you imagine a man sitting down at a table and his wife says to him “do you remember the letter I wrote to when we were dating?” What if that man then said, “No I don’t. That was fulfilled and I smashed it like Moses did the tablets because we now have a ‘new’ relationship. I forgot all those things from before we had our new covenant” Do you think that man would be in the dog house? I do. And rightfully so.

As there are levels of intimacy to dating, engagement and marriage so there are deeper depths as we move into the “new” covenant. Yet just because one can enjoy intercourse in marriage does not mean they cannot retain and enjoy the level of intimacy available to them at engagement. Indeed holding hands and a kiss take on even deeper significance but we don’t reject them.

That period of dating and engagement will have continuing validity precisely because their promise is being “fulfilled” in a marriage covenant. And just as a marriage counselor will take a couple “back to the sources” to help them understand themselves and their circumstances (she does not say ‘oh that died when you said “I do”’) so Christians must return to the sources when they are out of sorts. Just as returning to the sources helps us as humans to refocus, evaluate and understand … indeed to help us live up to and understand the very promises we made so returning to the source will help us as God’s People know who we are and what our task is in this world.

Returning to the source helps us as Christians see when we have polluted our relationship with pagan (Platonic) views of creation and the world. Returning to those early years of engagement helps us weed out neo-gnostic views of spirituality. Remembering the walk with God then helps us reject deistic views of God’s involvement with his world and our lives. Embracing, rather than rejecting, our heritage in the Hebrew Bible calls the bluff of Modernism’s hyper-individualism and loss of communal wisdom. All these egregious “relationship” issues are refocused when we return to the sources. Then when our “wife” (or our God) asks us “do you remember the letter I gave you” … and we say “yes, what a precious gift it has been.” And then our wife (or God) says “what it said can really shed light on where we are right now” we see that in spite of it being shared prior to the “new” covenant of marriage it is rich and has continuing validity. Indeed, it gives the present meaning and validity!

Just perhaps when Jesus said he came to “fulfill” the law rather than “abolish” it he meant something like going from “dating” to being “engaged” and then to “marriage.” He fulfills it by bringing out the promise of relationship and the potential of intimacy showing how it continues to shape God’s People.

“Don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures—either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God’s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground under your feet.” (Mt 5.17f, The Message)

Blessings,

Bobby Valentine