NCT & Matthew 5:17

My good friend sent this to me to post. Let us know what you think. It is the Clifnotes version so he's available for further explanation through email if you leave it in the comments.

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

John Wesley once remarked about this infamous passage, “There are few subjects within the whole compass of religion so little understood as this.” Through post-Reformation history, conflicts that have arisen over the interpretation of this passage rival any other in regards to barring ecumenical dialogue. However, with the rise of “Progressive Dispensationalism” (Bock, Blaising, Saucy, etc.) at Dallas Theological Seminary (the hub of Traditional Dispensational thought) and the concessions of discontinuity found in the “New Covenant Theology” (Piper, Grudem, Carson, Moo and others, while not subscribing to a wholly new, systematic way of approaching redemptive history, can be cited to have made such concessions) have brought positive dialogue between these two historically polarized positions.

So what does all of this have to do with Matthew 5:17? Pretty much everything. One’s view of the relationship between Law and Gospel almost absolutely determines where one stands—between reformed and its emphasis on continuity and dispensationalists and its emphasis on discontinuity—on this issue.

With that said, let us now turn to the passage in question. First and foremost, why is Jesus speaking here in the first place? Using mirror hermeneutics, we can safely assume that someone was questioning, whether explicitly or implicitly, that Jesus was, in some sense, abolishing, or quite possibly questioning, the authority of the Law. Therefore, the Lord states that he by no means is abolishing the Law with his teaching, but is, in some way, fulfilling it. There are many views on the meaning of this statement, but the two main ones are from the classical reformed position, which says that Jesus is somehow explaining the true intent of the Law of Moses, or the traditional dispensationalist position, which says that Jesus is teaching a final (at least for this dispensation) break from the Old Covenant.

In their book, New Covenant Theology, Tom Wells and Fred Zaspel lay out a convincing case for middle ground between these two traditional views. First, the context of Matthew’s Gospel must be noted. Most scholars agree that there is a clear contrast between Jesus and Moses in Matthew’s frame of reference. Matthew wants the reader to have Moses in mind in this passage. Pair this with the fact that Jesus is always presented as “greater” than Old Testament figures (12:3-4, 6, 8, 41,42) and it is obvious that Jesus has authority over the Old Covenant.

So how exactly does Jesus “fulfill” the Law with His divine authority? In NCT, Zaspel places forth a hypothesis called eschatological fulfillment. In Zaspel’s own words, “Jesus came to bring about what Moses’ law anticipated. The law pointed forward to him all along; he is its eschatological goal. Only in him does it find its full significance and continuing validity…. In Jesus Moses is fulfilled (emphasis mine).”

Here are some of the strengths of this hypothesis: 1) It preserves the contrast between “destroy” and “fulfill”. 2) It fits very well in the larger Christological context of Matthew (“Jesus is greater than…”). 3) It gives close attention to Matthew’s emphasis on inaugurated eschatology in Jesus’ relation to the Law of Moses. 4) It provides a single explanation for Jesus as “fulfillment” of the law which applies equally to every detail (“jot and tittle) of it. 5) It provides the simplest explanation of Jesus’ handling of Moses’ law in v. 21-48. He did not merely “intensify” the law nor did he extend it (“hate is murder”), add to it (“love your enemy as well as your neighbor”), or replace it (“divorce is adultery”). 6) It preserves the continuity with Moses that is directly implied in the contrasting phrase “not to destroy but to fulfill.” It is no mere replacement theology, yet it also allows for the dramatic shift that is sometimes evident in v. 21-48, and often in Paul, which is required by the “newness” of the age and the precedence of the law of Christ in this era.

Ultimately, this seems to me to preserve the strengths of both the Reformed and Dispensational traditions while removing the weaknesses. After all, Jesus said “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” The law of Christ must, therefore, exceed the Law of Moses in some way. Eschatological fulfillment certainly does the job.