to 12/11/77 at Trimdon Station]7
“Think not”—then there was presumably the possibility that they might think just that very thing. And they might well have claimed that there was reason on the other side for thinking so. When Jesus ran roughshod over a whole string of commandments and berated the whole legal system with a regal freedom, they might well feel justified in assuming that he had come positively to destroy, to bring to ruins the whole legal system. But, no, says Jesus. Make no mistake. Entirely the opposite is the case. “I came not to destroy but to fulfill.”
For a moment I want that particular instance to serve as a reminder of something that is generally true. It was, and it remains, dangerously easy to misunderstand Jesus. It is certainly true that anyone, wise or foolish, learned or ignorant, is able to lay hold of the blessing of Christ. Salvation is by no means a privilege for scholars only. But that doesn’t mean it is all as easy to understand as it is to believe and receive. It is not. I was (I think) a Christian for years before I began to understand what Christianity is all about.
Therefore I propose that this morning we should all do some hard thinking together. If you ask me whether this is really necessary, I answer without hesitation— Yes. Not only because obviously it is a good thing to know what you believe, but for this even more important reason—it is the calling of every Christian to be a witness, and evangelist, to make other Christians. You may remember the story, it came I think from Madras, of the Indian bishop who was lamenting that only 90 percent of the Christians in his diocese were witnessing Christians. “90 percent,” said the London vicar to whom he said it, “hardly 5 percent of my parish are witnessing Christians.” What would the percentage here be? But my point at the moment is this—if we are called to be witnesses, to commend our faith to others, it seems to me no more than common sense to say that the better we understand our faith, the better we shall do our job. Hence the necessity for really instructed Christians.
Let us see then what we can dig out this morning. Let us really do some thinking. Jesus came to fulfill the Law. Can you define the word “fulfill” there? It is easy enough in connection with prophecy, but what about fulfilling the Law? I will not pretend to have exhausted the word, but I take it to mean at least this—to consummate the purpose for which the Law came into being. Let us then see what men believed about the Law. Firstly, the Law was that which related people to one another.
RELATED PEOPLE TO ONE ANOTHER
That I think is fairly obvious. Any law in the nature of the case does that. The law of this country relates us to one another. It establishes us in families, constituting the rights and obligations of husbands and wives, and it sends us to school and establishes the teacher over his pupils, and it regulates the mutual contract between employer and employee. It is perhaps not the Law that brings us together, nature does that. But the law determines our relationship to each other when we are in contact. If that is true of our English law, it was even more true of the Jewish Law in Jesus’ time, which because it was religious and ceremonial entered more radically and universally into the details of everyday life. The Pentateuch goes a long way in that respect, and the later developments of the Law go further. I think it is not possible for anyone not a Jew to conceive to what a degree life was regulated by the Law and its developments, but fairly detailed study of the documents leaves one staggered.
The laws of clean and unclean demanded a careful watch over one’s associations with other people. To give a modern analogy, I well remember when I had the privilege of watching operations in a hospital theater, my friend the surgeon said to me: “If by any chance, which is unlikely, a nurse should drop some instrument, do not be a gentleman and pick it up for her. You mustn’t touch it. You’re dirty.” I was an outsider to their closed corporation. Anyone can see the necessity for that in modern surgery. But suppose some such requirement were universally applied. Suppose I as a minister were bound to keep laws of ceremonial cleanness? Obviously, I should have to know that my grocer, butcher and so forth were keeping these laws; thus a group of people of different occupations would be bound together by the law. Thus the Jewish law made a compact Jewish nation, it related the people to one another.
Now, we say Jesus fulfilled the Law. He did what the Law set out to do and did it perfectly. He brought, and he brings people together. It is easy to see the defects of the Law. It brought some people together, but it kept others out. In the day of Jesus there was a class of people called “the people of the land.” They did not keep the Law, so that by those who did keep it, they were excluded. The Law did not bring them in, it shut them out. These were the people whom Jesus was most concerned to include. We considered this a fortnight ago in the saying ‘I came not to call the righteous but the sinners.’ Again, the Law cut out the Gentile. It bound the Jews together but it separated them from the rest of the world. Jesus brought Jew and Gentile together and that was a miracle at which the early Church never ceased to wonder.
I have no time to discuss the way that Christ unites us, not by laying down our rights over against one another in a legal manner, but by sowing love between us. ‘Forgive one another even as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven you.’ That is the key to the business of bringing together. When we meet around the manger in Bethlehem, we must be humble enough to get on with one another. I know of course that the story does not tell us that the shepherds and the wise men came to Bethlehem at the same time, but I like to think of them all there. Rich and poor, learned and ignorant, Gentile and Jew.
And let me in a word or two apply that quite personally. There is very much that might be said here. What can bring all the nations together in peace? What will make the English and Indians, Russians and Germans friends, even brothers and sisters? Fellowship in Christ will do it. No law will do it; no treaty will do it. But Christ and Christ alone can do it. Therefore, since there is but little indication that any or all of these nations as a whole will accept Christ, I am very skeptical about the possibility of a stable world peace; and certainly it is my duty as a minister of the Word of God, to warn against undue optimism about the Atlantic Charter or the Moscow Conference. There is the same ground for pessimism in social and industrial questions in our own country.
I wish however to speak more positively than that. What can weld individual people together into one Church? What can heal and prevent quarrels in the Church? What can make two circuits live peaceably together? What can even make us forget ex.W, ex. P, and ex. U?8 You know the answer. Will you apply it to yourselves Secondly, the Law was—
THAT WHICH RELATED PEOPLE TO GOD
Again you will find it hard to grasp the divine nature that was ascribed to the Law. Let a naïve and even comical story help to bring it home. It describes how God spends the twelve hours of the day. The first three God sits and busies himself with the Torah. The second three he sits and governs the whole world. The third three he sits and nourishes the whole world. The fourth three he sits and plays with Leviathan! (Abodah Zara 3G, 18). The first three hours God himself studies the Law; that is not only the higher occupation humans can have. It is God’s own primary occupation. Sometimes the Law was spoken of as if it was a real person who acted as a mediator between God and humankind. It brought knowledge of God’s will to human beings. And it was a guide by which people could come to God.
It could affect God’s presence on earth. There is an interesting parallel to Jesus’ promise that wherever two or three met in his name, he would be with them. ‘Where five men sit together to study the Law, God’s presence will be with them.’
But most of all, the Law governed people’s thoughts about their relationship with God. There was a set of rules, and if you could keep them you were alright. If you didn’t, you weren’t. By painstaking application and attention, a person built up, so he believed, a whole set of rights over against God. He made a ladder of his acts of obedience by which he thought painfully to clamber up into the divine presence. This was the way
