- Jesus reveals their intensity - e.g. not just condemning destroying marriage (adultery) but weakening marriage (lusting), and implying the positive command to strengthen marriage
- Jesus transforms them (making them 'Christian' by giving the fullest content to the name 'God' and the fullest example to imitate):
- he is our God, who created and saved us from a bondage greater than Egypt
- he is the image we worship of the invisible God, excluding any other representation of who God is
- he is the name of God which we are given to bear as Christians in a way which gives him the honour he is due,
- he is the Lord of the Sabbath who commands us to enter his rest,
- he is our brother who obeyed his father perfectly and by whom we are adopted into a new family to love and given a new Father to honour
- he is the life-giver who not only gave life to humanity, but bought it back by identifying himself with humans, so how can we kill those made in his image and redeemed by his blood?
- he is the husband of the ugliest and most adulterous woman, who shows that to love our wife is to lay down our life for her, and that wives should submit to their husband as the church does to Christ - recognising that even more important than our earthly marriage is our marriage to him
- he is the owner of all the cattle on the hills and every star in the sky, but he gave all that he had to those who had already stole from him,
- he is the perfect witness to (and embodiment of) the truth about God and about our sin even though it cost him his life
- he is the lover of neighbour who didn't begrudge all that we have, but loved us so much he wanted to give us more
- Jesus obeyed them fully even though he was the one to whom obedience was due
- Jesus was condemned by them as a sinner because he identified with us
Therefore
- the law ends (terminates) with the death of the people to whom it was given in the cross (Rom 7:4)
but then
- the law reaches its end (telos/purpose/fulfilment) in the resurrection new lives of the saints against which there is no law but which flawlessly reflect the same God who gave the law (Rom 10:4, 13:10; Gal 5:14)
For us the cross and resurrection are not just past events, but part of our lives now, and only fully realised in our lives when Christ returns. So for us the law is "becoming obsolete and growing old [and] ready to vanish away" (Heb 8:13), but not yet fully gone.
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