Fulfillment of the Law: Christ's Righteousness Revealed

"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." [00:00:22]

"Fulfill in the sense of obey them. You can imagine that there were critics of Jesus and there were many, who because of the novelty of what He was saying, because of the newness of what He was saying, they were accusing Him of disabusing the Law and the Prophets, that He had come to establish something entirely new and thereby dismissing entirely the Old Testament." [00:08:21]

"The active obedience of Christ is a way of describing the fact that Jesus was obedient to the Law throughout the whole course of His life. From a child, from a teenager into His adult years, He obeyed the Law to the full." [00:09:41]

"He had come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. And this interpretation makes more use of the idea, it is not just that He had come to obey the Law, but He had come in some way to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. In other words, He had come to fulfill all of the predictive nature of the Old Testament." [00:12:18]

"Think of the Servant Songs in Isaiah 53. And as Jesus, we can imagine Jesus when He learned to read Hebrew as a little boy and as He would go to the synagogue and read the scrolls of the prophet Isaiah. And when He came to those passages in chapters 42 through 53, those four Servant Songs, He would say— I was saying yesterday Jesus' life verse— 'I have not come to be served but to serve and to give My life a ransom for many.'" [00:14:27]

"I have come to fulfill them in the sense that we cannot fulfill them, to obey all of its precepts to the jots and tittles, or the iota and dots. 'I have come to fulfill them' to provide a holiness, a righteousness, an obedience that we cannot offer, can never offer. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." [00:17:23]

"The authority of the Old Testament Scriptures in the face of those who might have been suggesting that He was sitting loose to the Old Testament. 'You have heard it said of old, but I say unto you,' and many interpreted that as Jesus abolishing the Old Testament. What He was doing of course was correcting the misinterpretation of the Old Testament by the scribes and Pharisees." [00:19:26]

"The authority of the whole of the Old Testament, that it is the Word of God, that this verse is the equivalent of 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17 that 'All Scripture is breathed out by God,' just as in creation God spoke and it came to pass. So in the inspiration and writing and production of Scripture, God breathes out by the power of His Holy Spirit, and what we have is Scripture." [00:20:08]

"What do we need to enter the kingdom of heaven? A perfect righteousness. That is what we need. But how can we get that righteousness? For we sin every day. We fall short of the glory of God every day. We fail to keep His commandments. We do not love Him with all of our hearts and souls and mind and strength." [00:23:42]

"There is a righteousness that is perfect. It is the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of his obedience, that He obeyed the Law perfectly down to the least iota and dot. 'God made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be reckoned the righteousness of God.' It is accounting language." [00:24:25]

"His obedience, His active obedience, to all the facets of the law, is reckoned to our account, so that in Christ by faith alone, in Christ alone we are reckoned to be law keepers and covenant keepers, so that God doesn't see our sin anymore. What He sees when He looks at us is the perfect obedience and righteousness of His Son." [00:25:36]

"Look up above your head. There is a crown of righteousness. It is the righteousness of Christ. 'I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.' Without that imputed righteousness of Christ, the scribes and Pharisees were trying to obey the Law and they were making up laws of their own, but it was their righteousness." [00:30:39]