Matthew Presents the Messiah

MEMORY SELECTION: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” —Matthew 5:17

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Matthew 1:1,17; 5:17-20; 9:9; 13:51, 52

WHEN examining our memory selection the fact becomes clear that our Lord Jesus was a highly-placed spiritual being in his pre-human existence but came to earth as a perfect human being. As a perfect man he was able to keep the divine Law given to Moses at Mount Sinai. Because of his ability to keep God’s Law perfectly, Jesus could have claimed all the rights and privileges that were promised under that Law Covenant. One of those promised benefits was life, everlasting life, which he willingly agreed to offer up sacrificially to provide the ransom price for Adam. By doing this he became the central figure in the divine plan for the redemption and salvation of the entire human race.

When God through Moses made the Law Covenant with the nation of Israel, the Jewish people agreed to keep all the terms of that covenant. If they so kept the agreement, God promised abundant material blessings and everlasting life. They would, additionally, have the glorious privilege, as the people of God, of being used as the divine instruments in the blessing of all the families of the earth in Messiah’s kingdom.

Neither the Jews nor any other imperfect beings could keep the divine law perfectly as demanded. The difficulty was not in God’s law which was perfect, but because of the imperfection of the people. The nation of Israel, like the rest of the world, was incapable of keeping the perfect laws of God. They were unable to do so because of the mental, moral, and physical weaknesses inherited from fallen Adam.

Our Lord Jesus was the long promised Messiah of Israel, but when he came unto his own they failed to recognize and thus to receive him. Nevertheless he fulfilled his mission and gave his perfect life as an atonement for sin. This made justification by faith possible, and the children of Israel were the first to be granted the privilege of seeking the heavenly blessing of joint-heirship with Jesus in the kingdom. This required the imputation of the merit of Christ’s sacrificial death, and complete consecration on the part of the individual to do the will of the Heavenly Father—the laying down of the present life sacrificially even as Jesus did. The consecrated individual, covered by the merit of Christ’s sacrificial blood, if faithful, is promised a share in Christ’s inheritance as part of the spiritual seed of Abraham through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed.

After having gathered all the willing and obedient out of Israel—for the offer was first made to them—the call to joint-heirship with our Lord in the spiritual phase of his kingdom was extended also to Gentile believers. Nationalistic favors would no longer have precedence over those who wished to take up their cross and follow the Lord in baptism into his death.

The Apostle Paul explains that this was not a setting aside of the Law for the Jewish converts, but as new creatures in Christ Jesus they were no longer bound by the terms of the Law. He says: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”—Rom. 8:1-4

Justified believers are not under the Law Covenant but under the Sarah feature of the Abrahamic Covenant, which is a covenant of sacrificial death with the Lord. They thus share with Jesus in their sacrifice of earthly interests and in their desires to gain the reward of the kingdom—glory, honor, and immortality.

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