“You are the light of the world.”

Hearing on that day such wonderful words, full of life and hope, spoken with great authority and love, the disciples and the gathered crowd must have begun to think that this teaching was so new, so different from all they had known, that the law and the prophets were to be swept aside. But this thought was quickly corrected.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

How highly the Lord Jesus regarded the Scriptures! Not even the smallest marking in the text was without purpose. It was all truth, and it was all to be fulfilled or accomplished.

Jesus’ teaching was so unlike what His disciples had learned of the law and the prophets, so how could it be the fulfilment of them? How could they reconcile this difference?

The answer was soon to become clear. Their understanding of God’s word was so superficial, so shaped by merely outward appearances, that they had missed the fuller meaning and purpose contained in it. They had learned from tradition and not from God.

There was in fact so much contained in the Scriptures that no one had fully grasped, and it was this that the Lord Jesus had come to fulfill. He alone knew that every sacrifice and every offering Israel had been commanded to make were prophetic pictures of the one perfect sacrifice that He would make when He offered up Himself as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

The Lord Jesus alone knew that through His death and His resurrection, the whole religious economy of Israel – the temple, the priesthood, the feast days – would be fulfilled as it became an eternal spiritual reality in a people redeemed from every race and united in Himself by the indwelling Spirit.

But all this was yet to be revealed. For now, the disciples had to understand one thing – that they did not understand the law.

“For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

What the people had learned from the teaching and example of the scribes and Pharisees would never give them a place in the work and purposes of God. That was not God’s way and was not the path His disciples were to take.

The Lord was not here speaking of that imputed righteousness by which, through faith, we are justified. No, He was speaking of the righteous walk, the righteous habits, the righteous manner and conversation of His disciples. Their righteousness had to far exceed the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees. His disciples must never to be like “whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27).

Their understanding of God’s law had to be totally reformed, and the Lord began to teach them that it was concerned with more than what they did – it was concerned with what they were.  Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.  (1 Samuel 16:7)

This is a lesson we all must learn.