Matthew 5.17-20, Luke 16.16-17.
Matthew 5.17-20 KWL - 17 “Don’t assume I came to dissolve the Law or the Prophets.
- I didn’t come to dissolve but complete:
- 18 Amen! I promise you, the heavens and earth may pass away,
- but one yodh, one penstroke of the Law, will never pass away; not till everything’s done.
- 19 So whoever relaxes one of these commands—the smallest—and thus teaches people,
- they’ll be called smallest in the heavenly kingdom.
- Whoever does and teaches them,
- they’ll be called great in the heavenly kingdom:
- 20 I tell you, unless morality abounds in you, more than in scribes and Pharisees,
- you may never enter the heavenly kingdom.”
This connects to Jesus’s similar teaching in Luke.
Luke 16.16-17 KWL - 16 “The Law, and the prophets up to John: From their time on,
- God’s kingdom is proclaimed as good news, and all struggle to get into it.
- 17 It’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away
- than for one penstroke of the Law to fall.”
Despite this very lesson, many Christians do in fact teach Jesus did come to dissolve “the Law and the Prophets”—the way people in his day referred to the bible, our Old Testament.
As in
Luke 16.16-17 , Jesus is not announcing the termination of the OT’s relevance and authority (elseLuke 16.17 would be incomprehensible), but that “the period during which men were related to God under its terms ceased with John”; and the nature of its valid continuity is established only with reference to Jesus and the kingdom.—
D.A. Carson, Expositor’s Bible Commentary at Mt 5.17
It’s still relevant, still authoritative; it’s why Christian bibles still include it. But it’s no longer valid. It no longer counts. Fun to read, useful for historical context, and we can even pull a few End Times prophecies out of it. But follow it? Nah.
Exactly how is that not dissolving it? See,
This idea exposes a huge, huge error in the way Christians think about God, his commands, the Law,
Gonna be a lot of “smallest” Christians
Dispensationalism.
- DISPENSATION
dɪs.pən'seɪ.ʃən noun. Organized system of government or order, over a nation or community, particularly during a length of time. - 2. [in theology] God’s plan of salvation for a particular people or era.
- [Dispensational
dɪs.pən'seɪ.ʃən.əl adjective, dispensationalistdɪs.pən'seɪ.ʃən.əl.ɪst adjective, dispensationalismdɪs.pən'seɪ.ʃən.əl.ɪz.əm noun.]
Properly, Christians teach there’s only one way to be saved: Through Christ Jesus.
But many Christians believe there are other ways to be saved. That God used to save people a different way,
Old rules:
John 1.17 KJV - For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
For most dispensationalists, there are only two dispensations. There’s the
For the followers of Anglican clergyman John Nelson Darby (1800–82), whom I call
See, Darby was
- INNOCENCE. Adam and Eve lived under this dispensation, where everyone was sinless and didn’t need saving. After they sinned, God implemented the dispensation of…
- CONSCIENCE or MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. Without the Law, people had to do whatever didn’t personally make ’em feel bad about themselves. When they violated their own consciences—as Cain did when he murdered his brother—they had to make up for it by sacrificing an animal. Problem is, things got so bad under this system, God decided to wipe out humanity and start over with Noah. The great flood is when this dispensation ended.
- HUMAN GOVERNMENT. By forbidding murder and making humans responsible for one another
Ge 9.5-6 (as if God hadn’t already done soGe 4 ), God expected humans to organize into governments, which would define the laws and defend human life. Of course,humans being selfish, we organize into governments for the protection of life, liberty, and property… and usually that of the wealthy and powerful. In any event, this dispensation ended with Abraham. - PROMISE. God promised to bless Abraham, and everyone else in the world through his descendants. (Which sounds more like a prophecy about a future dispensation, if you ask me.) Basically people were saved by supporting Abraham and his descendants.
- LAW. Now we get to the commands God gave Moses. People were saved by obeying them. Most dispensationalists figure it ended at
the death orresurrection of Jesus ; others figurePentecost. Darby believed it ended atthe death of Stephen. - CHURCH. Jesus taught us grace, and told his followers to start an organization which likewise teaches grace. This is the church. This is the dispensation we’re currently in. We get saved by believing in Jesus and
joining his church. (Darbyists would of course prefer you join one of their churches.) - KINGDOM. This is the future dispensation, the next one, the millennium—which takes place after Jesus returns. During this time, everyone gets saved, ’cause supposedly everyone who opposed Jesus was killed off in
the great tribulation.
Darbyists figure the Church Dispensation comes in two segments, or sub-dispensations: The New Testament era, in which Jesus’s followers did all the works in Acts and finished writing the bible; and the present era, where the bible’s complete so God needn’t do miracles any longer.
Certain early Pentecostals, who were Darbyist and wanted to reconcile the 1906 Pentecostal revival with the Darbyist system, tried to introduce a third sub-dispensation, the “Latter Rain.” Since miracles needed to happen during the End Times, God needed to turn them back on—and that, they claimed, is what Pentecostalism was all about. Well, it didn’t sell Darbyists. There are still Pentecostal Darbyists—and a lot of Pentecostals still believe the Darbyist view of the End Times, despite the cessationist views they’re based on.
Where dispensationalism goes wrong.
As you can see, dispensationalism claims there used to be a way, apart from Jesus, by which we could be saved. Through good works.
And you’ll find, from time to time, dispensationalists claim this is still an option. Seriously. They’ll even preach it in their sermons. “All you have to do to be saved is follow God’s Law. Follow it precisely. Make no mistakes. Except you can’t really do that, can you?—you’re inevitably gonna sin, ‘for all have sinned.’
Well yeah you’re gonna sin. But here’s the thing: The Law expected that, and made accommodations for that. If you sin, all you need do to make things right is ritually sacrifice an animal. Cow, goat, sheep, pigeon… so if you wanna do an end-run round Jesus, why can’t you just atone for your sins with one of these animals?
Yeah, I know why. But dispensationalists never say why. They just say, “If you could follow the Law perfectly, you wouldn’t need Jesus.” Problem is, thanks to ritual sacrifice, people can follow the Law perfectly. People did it for centuries. It’s why they were called “blameless.”
Here’s the loopy thing: Some dispensationalists claim Jews can still be saved by following the Law. They don’t claim the Law Dispensation passed away; they think it still applies to Jews, ’cause they’re God’s chosen people. So it exists concurrently with the Grace Dispensation: All Jews need do is keep the Law, and they’re saved. Don’t have to turn to Jesus. Don’t have to embrace their Messiah. However, gentiles still have to be saved through Christ. (I’m guessing God doesn’t count all the non-Jews who’ve converted, like Ruth.) True, these dispensationalists are a minority—but a big minority.
The rest insist the Law Dispensation is totally null and void. There’s only one current way to be saved, and it doesn’t matter how people used to be saved. (Or will alternately be saved in future.) One dispensation at a time, folks. So in practice, they’re not really committing the heresy of accepting multiple ways of getting saved.
But lemme bring up the big nagging problem underlying dispensationalism: Why would God need multiple systems of salvation? Why couldn’t he have created the correct system the first time?
Dispensationalists claim it’s to show us how perfect, in comparison, the Grace Dispensation is. Which sounds impressive. Still means, however, that for millennia—not just a few years, but from the fall of humanity to the year 33—God implemented defective, messy systems of salvation.
The Darbyist “dispensation of conscience,” fr’instance. That’s gotta be the stupidest of the dispensations: If it doesn’t bother your conscience any, it’s not sin. You do realize most of humanity, pagans and Christians alike, are still putting this idea into practice. Have you seen how people behave under this guideline? We rationalize away everything. The Darbyists say God ended it by flooding the planet. Well, he’d have to: It’d produce the most twisted, evil humans imaginable. It still does. What kind of boneheaded plan is that? Sounds like a human idea. Certainly not a godly one.
Darbyist speculation aside, the idea God had to keep fixing or scrapping his own plans, makes him look far from wise and omniscient. But let’s step away from the Darbyists.
Your typical dispensationalist believes in two systems: Law and grace. And Law, they believe, did actually work for its time. It was complicated and messy, but it did the job. So… why replace it with Jesus then? Why obligate him to die in a nasty, painful way? Why didn’t Jesus just come to earth, tell people, “You know that Law which the Father gave to Moses? Keep it up.” Then get resurrected without dying, like he’ll do with some of us when he returns;
Lastly, your typical dispensationalist splits the eras of
Yikes.
Only one way to be saved.
If the idea Jesus invalidated himself sounds insane, good: You’ve not lost your mind.
’Cause Jesus invalidated nothing. There aren’t seven systems of salvation. Nor even two—one of Law, one of grace. There’s one. Only one. Only ever been one. That’s through grace.
We, and all humanity, throughout all history, are saved through Christ Jesus’s death and resurrection. Through his defeating sin, death, and the devil. Through God making daughters and sons out of everybody who trusts him to save them.
Nobody was saved by the Law. Nobody was ever saved by the Law. Trusting the Law to save us, simply condemns us.
What about the people who lived before Jesus? Please: Only a weak, pathetic, phony god is limited by time and space.
As for all those ritual sacrifices: They never actually saved anyone.
So when Abraham believed God, and was counted righteous,
That’s why we preach the gospel. We let people know the good news: God, in his grace, granted us his kingdom, with Jesus as king. Salvation is for all who accept his grace. The Law defines sin,
Law and grace work together.
Nope, Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law. He came to complete it. To fill in the missing parts of it. To make sense of it. To explain how it really works, dig it out from under Pharisee tradition and loopholes, and use it to reveal God’s goodness and character.
See, the Law can only do so much. We can’t have a relationship with it, fr’instance. Not that Christians don’t try to have close personal relationships with their bibles. But it’s a book. It’s very limited in what it does. It tells us what God thinks about animal sacrifice, slavery, which foods to eat… but it says nothing about gun control, time management, how democracies oughta work, which musical style God likes best, and who specifically he wants me to pray for today. There are a lot of blanks in it. Meant to be filled by the Holy Spirit himself.
But like the Pharisees, we fill in those blanks with our deductions. Whenever the bible is moot, we cherry-pick scriptures so we can create a “biblical principle,” and claim that’s God’s will. Some of us try to enforce these deductions upon others. Trouble is, these added rules bind people, not free them. And they always reflect the person issuing the rules, not God.
In comparison, Jesus came to set us free.
Too many lawless Christians teach us to not try again. They even claim any attempt to obey the Law rejects grace. They take the scriptures where Paul rebuked the Galatians for thinking they could be saved by Law,
This is why Jesus pointed out anyone who ignores the Law, and teaches others to ignore it, will be least in his kingdom.
Conversely, anyone who knows God’s Law, obeys it, and teaches it, will be considered great.
So don’t assume Jesus came to dissolve the Law and Prophets. Learn from them. Learn how to apply them rightly. Follow Jesus. Don’t misinterpret him.
