Reflection
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
With these words, Jesus affirmed the last significance of the Torah. Jesus fulfilled, lived out, interpreted correctly, and brought to fullness the Torah in its truest intended sense.
In Jesus’ day, Jews were subject not just to the law of the Torah, but also to thousands of rules. Why such an almost obsessive observance of the Torah? Some context and history are important here.
With the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and their subsequent captivity in Babylon (586-538 BCE), the Jews reflected and realized God had punished them for forgetting God, and for failing miserably in keeping the commandments within the Torah. They vowed that henceforth they would carefully and faithfully follow the Word of God.
With the end of their captivity, the Jews understandably began a strict renewed observance of the Torah as a defining aspect of their faith. This was largely driven by the need to maintain their covenant identity without a Temple. Gradually over many centuries, however, observance of the Torah came to include the Talmud and the Mishnah, commentaries with thousands of rules defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior under the Torah.
Sadly, despite good intentions, the Jewish people focused on the law, but they often observed the rule without understanding or embodying its deepest meaning.
Jesus respected the Torah but had little tolerance for the numerous burdensome rules generated by the scribes. Therein lay the source of much of the conflict between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees.
Jesus said he had not come to destroy the law and prophets, that is, the Torah, but to fulfill them. What did he mean by that statement?
Jesus came to bring out the true and deeper meaning of the law, which is rooted in the law of love for God and neighbor.
In today’s gospel, Jesus urges us to study, meditate on, and observe the Word of God, the Scriptures, not slavishly, not out of fear, but lovingly. In this way, we can be sure that our lives will be guided by Jesus’ life and teachings, the one who is the Logos, the Word of God.
