Matthew 5.17-20, Luke 16.16-17.
Matthew 5.17-20 KWL - 17 “Don’t assume I came to dissolve the Law or the Prophets.
- I didn’t come to dissolve but complete:
- 18 Amen! I promise you, the heavens and earth may pass away,
- but one yodh, one penstroke of the Law, will never pass away; not till everything’s done.
- 19 So whoever relaxes one of these commands—the smallest—and thus teaches people,
- they’ll be called smallest in the heavenly kingdom.
- Whoever does and teaches them,
- they’ll be called great in the heavenly kingdom:
- 20 I tell you, unless morality abounds in you, more than in scribes and Pharisees,
- you may never enter the heavenly kingdom.”
This connects to Jesus’s similar teaching in Luke.
Luke 16.16-17 KWL - 16 “The Law, and the prophets up to John: From their time on,
- God’s kingdom is proclaimed as good news, and all struggle to get into it.
- 17 It’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away
- than for one penstroke of the Law to fall.”
Despite this very lesson, many Christians do in fact teach Jesus did come to dissolve “the Law and the Prophets”—the way people in his day referred to the bible, our Old Testament.
As in
Luke 16.16-17 , Jesus is not announcing the termination of the OT’s relevance and authority (elseLuke 16.17 would be incomprehensible), but that “the period during which men were related to God under its terms ceased with John”; and the nature of its valid continuity is established only with reference to Jesus and the kingdom.—
D.A. Carson, Expositor’s Bible Commentary at Mt 5.17
It’s still relevant, still authoritative; it’s why Christian bibles still include it. But it’s no longer valid. It no longer counts. Fun to read, useful for historical context, and we can even pull a few End Times prophecies out of it. But follow it? Nah.
Exactly how is that not dissolving it? See,
This idea exposes a huge, huge error in the way Christians think about God, his commands, the Law,
Gonna be a lot of “smallest” Christians