Can You Keep God's Law?

Rick introduced himself with a detail worth keeping. He is a ruling elder in this denomination, he serves alongside Pastor Kent on ministerial credentialing — and as a fun fact, he has been a deputy sheriff for the last thirty years.

He mentioned it because it amused him that Pastor James and Pastor Kent handed the *law* portion of the Sermon on the Mount to the man who has spent his whole career enforcing law.

Those new to the Reformed tradition, he said, might think that was a coincidence. Those informed by the Westminster Confession know that God's eternal decree leaves nothing to chance.

And the text he was given contains the sentence that reframes everything: "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."

Not abolish. Fulfill. Jesus is not the end of God's law — he is its point, the thing it was always driving toward.

Rick said this passage crowns Scripture with four things: preeminence, permanence, pertinence, and purpose.

Today, permanence. "Until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished."

The iota was the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. The dot was the little stroke that distinguished one Hebrew letter from another — the equivalent of the tail that makes a Q out of an O.

Jesus is saying that the least significant pen-mark in Scripture will outlast the universe.

God's law is immutable, Rick said, because he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It is not a document that ages out. It is not subject to revision by a later, more enlightened generation — including ours, which is quite sure it is the more enlightened one.

That is either oppressive or it is the most stable ground available, depending entirely on whether the God behind it is good.

And he is.

"Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great."

Two verbs, in that order: does, and teaches.

There is a particular temptation for anyone who talks about the faith — and that is more of us than we think, since every parent, friend and neighbour teaches somebody something. The temptation is to make the teaching the substitute for the doing. To have a good position on a command instead of obeying it.

Jesus puts *does* first. You cannot teach past where you live, not honestly.

And notice how small the stakes appear: the *least* of these commandments. It is not the great crises of conscience that erode us, usually. It is deciding on our own authority that some small thing does not really apply, and then explaining that to someone else with a shrug.

Small relaxations, taught onward, become the next generation's assumptions.

Here is the sentence that should stop the room.

"Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Understand who those men were. Not hypocrites in their own estimation — the most rigorous, disciplined, scrupulous keepers of the law in that entire society. They tithed their spice racks. They built fences around commandments so they would not accidentally get near breaking one.

And Jesus says you need *more* righteousness than that.

If that is a challenge to try harder, it is hopeless. Nobody out-Pharisees a Pharisee.

Which means it is not a challenge to try harder. It is a door closing, deliberately, so that you will look for another one. Rick said the law is *purposed* — designed to lead sinners to Christ. This is that design working exactly as intended.

The righteousness that exceeds theirs is not one you generate. It is one you are given.

Paul had the résumé. Circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to righteousness under the law blameless.

By the standard of Matthew 5:20, if anyone was going to clear the bar by effort, it was him.

And he counted the whole thing as loss — so that he might be found in Christ, "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith."

That is the answer to the week. Rick told the congregation why we need the divine law in the first place: because we are sinners, wired for folly, even the best of us. The law is preeminent, permanent, pertinent — and purposed to drive us to Christ.

So can you keep God's law? No. Not one day of it, not to the standard Jesus just described.

But Jesus did. Perfectly. And what he earned he hands over to people who stop trying to earn it.

He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him.