Muslims love to wrongly apply Matthew 5:17-20 as justification for living by and subject to the Law as if Jesus makes that the sole object and the Law the only thing that gets us saved. They could not be more wrong as this Post will demonstrate.

Firstly let’s set out the passage:

“Don’t assume that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For I assure you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches people to do so 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, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17‭-‬20 HCSB)

Jesus is speaking to the crowd in response to the Pharisees’ accusation that Jesus was trying to abolish the Law of God. Jesus refuted this accusation, saying that His purpose in appearing before men was not to abolish anything. Rather, Jesus came to fulfill the Law. The word fulfill in Greek is ‘pleroo’, (Strongs G4137) which is also translated “to complete.” In other words, Jesus came to complete or accomplish the entire Law.

He goes on to say that heaven and earth will not pass away until the entire Law of God has been accomplished. Jesus is the One Who accomplishes God’s Law by keeping the entire Law perfectly. Jesus never sinned during His earthly life, and so as He went to His death on the cross, He had accomplished or completed all the requirements of God’s Law. Jesus was referring to His completing of the Law when on the cross He said, “It is finished.”

The Pharisees were accusing Jesus of setting the Law aside, while they endeavored to keep it in their own strength. Jesus condemned the Pharisees and anyone else who tried to follow their example by saying that unless they could keep the Law even better than the Pharisees kept it, they could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This was a daunting challenge, because the Pharisees were scrupulous followers of the Law. They were the ultimate of human endeavour to reach God. If the Pharisees didn’t have enough righteousness on their own to enter Heaven, then who could?

Obviously, Jesus was alluding to that answer. No one can earn their way into Heaven, because no one is righteous enough to make it through works. This is precisely why Jesus came to fulfill the Law on our behalf, so that His perfect work could be credited to us on the basis of faith.

Now that the Law has been completed by Jesus on our behalf, we are no longer obligated to keep it ourselves. That is not to suggest that the Law itself has gone away, but only that our obligations to keep it is gone, because Jesus has already kept (i.e., fulfilled, completed, accomplished) it for us. Likewise, anyone who discounts the importance of God’s Word will suffer loss.

Jesus is the One Who kept and taught the Law, and as a result, Jesus will be the One Who is called great in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:19). We should not teach believers to follow the Law out of obligation, but neither should we teach that the Law is no longer in force. Rather, we teach that the Law has been fulfilled by Christ’s work, and we rest in His perfect accomplishment of the Law rather than in our own futile efforts to keep it.

Further on at the conclusion of chapter 5 we find this even more daunting challenge by Jesus to round off all He has just said:

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48 HCSB)

The word “teleios” (Strongs G5046) that is translated “perfect” literally means “be complete.” So often, the New Testament and the Old Testament will describe people as being upright and righteous—not in the sense that they have achieved total moral perfection, but rather that they have reached a singular level of maturity in their growth in terms of spiritual integrity. However, in this statement, it’s certainly legitimate to translate it using the English word perfect. For example, “Be ye complete as your heavenly Father is complete.” Now remember that your heavenly Father is perfectly complete! So if we are to mirror God in that way, we are to mirror him in his moral excellence as well as in other ways. In fact, the basic call to a person in this world is to be a reflection of the character of God. That’s what it means to be created in the image of God. Long before the Sermon on the Mount, God required the people of Israel to reflect his character when he said to them, “Be ye holy even as I am holy.” He set them apart to be holy ones. The New Testament word for that is saints.

Can you attain the moral perfection of a Holy God by good works Muslims?

No you cannot. For us to be sanctified we need the shed blood of Jesus to wash us clean.

And this is another reason why not the least stroke of a pen will vanish. The Law now serves only to condemn us. It can NEVER I repeat NEVER justify us.

Many in Israel died precisely because they did not know the reason why the law was given. You can’t make the most of it unless you know what it is there for. If you don’t know why the traffic light is red, you may get smashed in the intersection.

In many areas of life yours is to reason why lest you do and die. And that includes the law of God. If we don’t understand why it was given, we can kill ourselves with it. Paul said in Romans 9:32 that the reason Israel stumbled into destruction was not that they didn’t pursue the law, but that they pursued it in the wrong way: from works and not from faith; in the effort of the flesh instead of the power of the Spirit. In other words, moral effort can be a mortal sin.

Satan clothes himself as an angel of light and makes the very commandments of God his base of operations. Hey presto we have Islam. And the human heart is so inveterately proud and unsubmissive that it often uses religion and morality to express its rebellion. This is why Islam appeals to the pride of men who want to attain their own salvation.

As Romans 10:3 says, “In seeking to establish their own righteousness, they would not submit to the righteousness of God.” The pursuit of righteousness can lead to perdition. So Galatians admonishes us:

“Why then was the law given? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise was made would come. The law was put into effect through angels by means of a mediator. Now a mediator is not for just one person, but God is one. Is the law therefore contrary to God’s promises? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly be by the law. But the Scripture has imprisoned everything under sin’s power, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed. The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:19‭-‬26 HCSB)

Muslims now understand why the law was given and don’t be bewitched into pursuing it in a way that leads to death, but only in a way that leads to life.

■ The Law is Impotent to save us

A seminal text is Romans 8:1-4:

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. [2] For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. [3] For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, [4] so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)

“For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh” has four statements in it:

(i) God condemned sin in the flesh.

(i) He did this by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.

(iii) The law was not able to do this.

(iv) The reason the law could not do this was because of our flesh.

Let’s focus on the last two to answer two questions:

1. What was it that the law could not do? And,
2. Why couldn’t it do it?

The reason this is such a vital message is that the two things that the law could not do are things that are absolutely necessary for us to experience if we are to have eternal life, and, even though the law could not and cannot do them, people still turn to the law to get them done. In other words, it is tremendously relevant to your life Abrahim Abdulhamid to know what the law cannot do for you, lest you labour in vain there for the help you can only get from Jesus Christ.

The Law Could not Justify or Sanctify Us

First, then, what is it that the law could not do? The answer is given twice in Romans 8:1-4, once in verses 1-2 and once in verses 3-4. Verse 1 says, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This is what we call justification – if we are in Christ Jesus – that is, if we are united to Jesus by faith in him – our condemnation from God because of our sin is taken away. God acquits us. Counts us righteous. Justifies us. He does not look upon us any longer as guilty and condemned, but as forgiven and righteous because of what Jesus did for us.

Then comes verse 2: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” This is what we call ‘sanctification’. After we are justified, and because we are justified, the Spirit of God is poured out in our lives and begins to free us from the dominion of sin and death. This means that Christians are not only “counted” righteous in justification, but actually transformed by the Spirit of God into more and more actually righteous, loving, holy people. This is the practical evidence that we have trusted Christ and are united to him and are justified in him.

Now my answer to our question is that these two things are what the law could not do. The law could not justify us and the law could not sanctify us. It was powerless to do both of these things. The first sign of this is that verse 3 begins with “for.” You could read it like this: Justification is “in Christ” (verse 1), and sanctification is “in Christ” (verse 2), for the law could not do these things, only Christ could, and so God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.

That’s the first answer to the question from verses 1 and 2. Justification and sanctification come to us by union with Christ Jesus (“in Christ”) for the law could not make them happen.

Now the same answer comes in verses 3 and 4 as well. Verse 3 says that what the law could not do is condemn sin in the flesh, that is, it could not deal with sin, absorb its punishment, remove our condemnation. So God did this by sending Jesus into the world to die for us: “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.”

So here we have the same point as verse 1: There is no condemnation because God executed the condemnation for our sin on his Son. That is the basis of our justification. That is what the law could not do. It could not remove the condemnation for our sin. It could identify it and name it and point away from it and stir it up and rub it in. But it could not remove our punishment. God did that in Jesus’ death. So again we see that justification is something the law could not do.

Now verse 4, like verse 2, says that this justification leads to sanctification, which was also something the law could not do – since it could not justify us. Notice verse 4 begins with “so that.” This is a purpose of God’s condemning sin in the flesh. God put our condemnation on Jesus and provided the basis for our justification “so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Walking according to the Spirit is what we mean by sanctification. So what we see here again, as in verses 1 and 2, is that sanctification is the result or the effect of justification. And that means that both justification and sanctification are what the law could not do.

You can see it most easily if you just say verses 3 and 4 like this: What the law could not do God did, namely two things: he condemned sin by sending his Son to die for us, and because of thisbasis for justification he enables us to fulfill the essence of the law by giving us the Holy Spirit. That is what the law could not do: justify us and sanctify us. It could not remove our condemnation or bring about our transformation. And yet both of these are absolutely necessary if we are going to be saved in the last day and have eternal life.

■ The Law Could not Justify Us Because We Were of Flesh

So we need to ask now: Why could the law not do these two things? Because if we can see the reason for this weakness clearly, we will be protected from the deadly mistake of counting on the law for justification and sanctification. And, even better, we will know where to look for the declaration that we are right with God and for the transformation that follows.

And that is so crucial for us all. You may be wondering how these Christians think about salvation and about how to get right with God and have eternal life. Well we think about it the same way Biblical Christians have thought about it for centuries: this is historic Christianity. The law – the ten commandments and the other rules that Moses gave the people of Israel – cannot make you right with God and cannot transform you into the kind of righteous and loving persons you want to be.

Why not? Verse 3 answers: “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did.” The problem with the law is not that its commandments are evil (Romans 7:12), but that we are evil (Romans 7:14). The word “flesh” does not mean skin, in Paul’s vocabulary. It means our old fallen nature. We will see this next week in the following verses where he contrasts the mind of the flesh and the mind of the Spirit. The flesh is what we are and what life is without God and his gracious, saving work by the Spirit. That is what the law encounters when it comes to us.

So what is the weakness of the law? The weakness of the law is that it was not designed to redeem fallen, condemned, rebellious, selfish people like us.

Think about this first in relation to justification. The reason we need to be justified is that we stand under the condemnation of God because we are fallen. Remember Romans 5:18, “Through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.” Flesh is what we are by human nature, and what we are by human nature is under condemnation. What is the remedy for condemnation? If you are guilty of a capital offense and under the condemnation of a death sentence from God, what will save you?

I’ll tell you what will not save you. Commandments will not save you when your problem is guilt and condemnation. What happens when commandments come? Paul tells us in Romans 7:9, “When the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.” The commandments don’t bring about redemption, they bring about wrath. Romans 4:15, “The law brings wrath.” A man who is guilty and under legal condemnation will not be saved by commandments; he will be saved by acquittal. He needs a judge to pardon and forgive. He needs justification by faith and not by works of the law. That’s why Paul comes to the end of his long indictment of the human race in Romans 1-3 by saying, “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

So the law could not do what absolutely has to be done if we are to be rescued from our guilt and condemnation: it could not justify us. It could not set us right with God. It could not take away our guilt. It could not absorb our condemnation. What it did was show us our guilt (Romans 3:20; 7:7) and to make us even more sinful by stirring up the rebellion of our flesh (5:20; 7:5). “Through the commandment sin [becomes] utterly sinful” (Romans 7:13).

Trust Jesus, not Law-Keeping

So if you want to be set right with God, don’t look to the law. If you want to be acquitted and justified, don’t depend on law-keeping. No amount of law-keeping can turn the verdict of guilty to not-guilty. One thing can change that verdict that hangs over your head: the perfect Son of God living and dying in your place. For his sake alone God counts you to be righteous when you trust him.

Hence Romans 3:28, “We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” Trust Jesus, not law-keeping.
So the law cannot justify us because we are in the flesh, meaning we are fallen and condemned. And commandments of the law cannot remove guilt and condemnation. Only Christ can.

■ Why Is It that the Law Could not Sanctify Us?

Now we turn to sanctification. Why can’t the law sanctify us? Why can’t it make us holy and righteous and loving people?

It is a burning issue today how Christians can live in love and righteousness in the fragile world we have just moved into where fear and anger lie just beneath the surface of our lives. Fear of anthrax and bombs and the collapse of life-sustaining infrastructures we have always taken for granted. And anger at someone or some people and we are not even sure who.

Do you have the resources in you to be confident and fearless and courageous and patient and kind and fair and loving and sacrificial, not returning evil for evil, but blessing those who curse you and praying for those who persecute you (Romans 12:17; Matthew 5:44)? Where will you look for this? Will you look to the law?

It won’t work. Look to Christ. The living, divine, loving, omnipotent Lord who died for you and rose again and promises to be with you and help you and satisfy your longings in life and death. Look to him. The law cannot sanctify you, but Christ can.

If you need to get right with God as we enter 2019, look to Christ, not the law. And if you need help being a loving and righteous person as we enter a new year – and who doesn’t – look to Christ, not the law

■ The Law Cannot Conquer the Flesh

But there is a vital reason why the law cannot sanctify or transform: It cannot conquer the flesh. That is, it cannot change us at the root of our nature: our fallenness and rebellion against God. It cannot take away our reluctance to love God and our treasonous preference for God’s gifts above God (Romans 1:23). On the contrary, Paul teaches us that the law aggravates our sin and stirs up our rebellion.

Let’s review a few of those places where Paul says this, so that we arm ourselves from thinking that the law can get anywhere with our deep rebellion, which Paul calls our “flesh” in Romans 8:3 – “what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh.”

■ The Law Came to Increase Transgressions

Let’s look at Romans 5:19-21. Paul closes his contrast of Adam and Christ like this: “For as through the one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One [Christ] the many will be made righteous.” Now this raises the question: “Well, if righteousness comes to us through the obedience of Christ, and not through our own obedience, then why the law? Isn’t the law given to provide righteousness?” Paul answers in verse 20, “The Law came in so that the transgression would increase.”

In other words the law is not the remedy for our condemnation or our rebellion. In fact, it is given to turn our inner rebellion into more blatant and visible transgressions. We see this again in Romans 7:5:

“While we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.”

In other words, the law does not conquer the flesh, it rouses the flesh. The law plays into the hands of our own sinful passions and stirs them up.

We see the same thing in Romans 7:8:

“But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.”

The law does not conquer the flesh, on the contrary, it gives the flesh another base of operation. Another place to show its rebellion.

So Paul asks in Romans 7:13: “Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me?” He answers, “May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good [the law!], so that through the commandments sin would become utterly sinful.”

So the function of the law is to make sin more visible in transgressions, more blatant and prevalent in rousing the flesh, and more manifestly vicious in its use of what is good to do its ugly work.

This message is repeated again in Galatians 3. Paul contrasts the inheritance of life promised to Abraham by faith with the idea that it could be secured by law. He says in verse 18:

“For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. (19) Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.”

Transgressions Increased to Display More Grace and More Glory

So we ask, Why? Why would God design redemptive history like that? Why would he add the law to increase the trespass? Back to Romans 5:20. Verse 20 begins, “The Law came in so that the transgression would increase.” Then, to show where God is really going in his purpose, Paul immediately adds: “But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

God’s purpose to increase the transgression by introducing the law was not an end in itself. It was an occasion for displaying more grace.

And the ultimate purpose is seen in verse 21:

“So that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The ultimate aim is to make sure that Jesus Christ gets the glory for the triumph of righteousness in the world – both in justification and sanctification.

That leads us to the last reason the law can’t sanctify us. But before we turn there, make sure you see this second point: the law can’t remedy our rebellious reluctance to treasure God because it stirs it up. Our sinful love of independence and control and self-exaltation simply makes the law into a new theater for revolt. The law gets taken captive by the flesh and made a servant of sin. If we turn to the law to fix our rebellion and the our adulterous indifference to God, it will not work. We will only become worse.

■ The Law Couldn’t Give the Son the Glory for Justification & Sanctification

The last reason the law cannot sanctify we just saw at the end of Romans 5: God’s purpose is to sanctify us in a way that the credit and the glory for our liberation and transformation go to Jesus Christ, not to ourselves and not to the law. Therefore God calls us not to turn to the law for transformation – for love and holiness and Christ-likeness – but to turn to the living Christ, who worked for us in history and works in us now by his Spirit.

The law cannot magnify the Son of God as more glorious and more valuable and more desirable than the pleasures of sin. Only when Christ himself wins our affections over all contestants will he get the glory God means for him to have. Even if you did turn to the law and experience some measure of success in becoming a law-abiding person (as the Pharisees certainly did, including Saul of Tarsus) Christ would get no honor from that. But God’s whole purpose in the plan of redemption is that his Son get the glory not only for our justification, but also for our sanctification. And this the law could not do.

■ The Key to Sanctification: Walking by the Spirit

What then is the key to sanctification – holiness, love, Christlikeness? Verse 4 says the key is to walk by the Spirit. “God condemned sin in the flesh (4) so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” I’m going to argue in the weeks to come (from Romans 13:8 and Galatians 5:14) that the “fulfillment of the law” is a life of Christ-exalting love. But for now just focus on the means appointed by God to get there: “Walking by the Spirit.”

Whose Spirit? Romans 8:9-10 tells us:

“However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.”

The “Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Christ” and “Christ” appear to be inseparable and almost interchangeable ways of describing the life-changing presence of God in the life of the believer.

■ Conclusions

The concluding points to make are these:

□ it is not by turning to the law that we fulfill the law and lead lives of love, it is by turning to the living Christ.

□ The power of sanctification is not the law, but the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ.

□ And the instrument of our appropriation of this power is not to turn to the law but to fix our gaze and our faith on the glory of Christ crucified and risen, reigning and indwelling.

□ The key is Christ, seen and savoured above all things. That is the power that sanctifies. And this is the method of holiness that glorifies him, not the law and not us. Amen.

Primary Source: https://www.desiringgod.org