Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
Not to Destroy but to Fulfill
Matthew 5:17-20
17 “Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill. · WEB
The hinge of the sermon: not one stroke of the law falls, and the righteousness required is greater than that of the men who counted the strokes.
"Don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill" Matthew 5:17.
The denial tells us what people were already saying. A teacher who touched lepers, ate with tax collectors and argued about the Sabbath looked to his critics like a man dismantling the law, and this sentence is the answer — placed at the head of six paragraphs that will each raise the demand rather than lower it.
The verb is the key. To fulfill is neither to abolish nor merely to keep; it is to bring to its intended completion, as a promise is fulfilled or a shape is filled out. This Gospel has used the word a dozen times already of prophecies coming to their term Matthew 1:22 Matthew 4:14, and it is used here of the law's whole purpose arriving.
"Until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished" Matthew 5:18.
The smallest letter is the Hebrew yod, and the pen stroke is the tick that distinguishes one letter from another. The claim is about permanence at the level of the mark on the page, and it is the strongest statement about the law's durability anywhere in the Gospels — made by the man his opponents accused of loosening it.
"Whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven" Matthew 5:19.
The warning is aimed at teachers, and the penalty is standing rather than exclusion. Note that the categories of great and least are inside the kingdom, which makes this a word about how seriously a teacher handles what God has said rather than a threat of being shut out.
"Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, there is no way you will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven" Matthew 5:20.
And here is the sentence the whole sermon hangs on. The scribes and Pharisees were the most scrupulous keepers of the law in the country; nobody in the crowd would have thought of them as a low bar. So the demand cannot mean more of the same — more tithing, more washing, more counting. The six paragraphs that follow show what exceeding actually means: the law driven inward, to anger and the look and the motive, where no amount of external compliance reaches.
Read as a ladder, that is a sentence of despair. Read as the description of what the kingdom's king produces in his subjects, it is the sermon's promise — and the beatitudes have already said who receives the kingdom first: those with nothing to offer.
settled What this mark means