“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.  I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  Anyone who breaks 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 practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 5:17-20

Says Willard:

“Surely it is this radically revolutionary outlook that explains why Jesus finds it necessary to caution, ‘Don’t think I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets’ – that is, to abolish the entire established order as far as his hearers were concerned.

Obviously he had to say this because that is precisely what his hearers were thinking!  They could think nothing else!  They had not just heard another powerless list of legalisms, however pretty, and they knew it.  They had heard an upside down world being set right-side up.

The Law and the Prophets had been twisted around to authorize an oppressive, though religious, social order that put glittering humans – the rich, the educated, the ‘well-born,’ the popular, the powerful, and so on – in possession of God.  Jesus’ proclamation clearly dumped them out of their privileged position and raised ordinary people with no human qualifications into the divine fellowship by faith in Jesus.

That is a powerful message, enough to thoroughly confuse a simple people who lived with their noses to the grindstone and knew no order than the one imposed upon them by religious experts zealously defending their own privileges.  So Jesus cautions them to respect the law – to fulfill it, not abolish it – as he then moves on to where he will explain what the law really means for human life under God. 

Exactly how they are to respect the law and move beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees we shall see…”

Willard pgs. 126-127