Does the OT Law still Apply?

Have you ever driven past a construction site and watched a cathedral or a grand building slowly emerge from behind a web of scaffolding? For months, perhaps years, the scaffolding seems to be the building. You can hardly see the structure beneath it. Workers climb its rungs, materials rest on its platforms, and the whole project depends on its presence. But then, one day, the scaffolding comes down. And what you see is not a diminished building but the building as it was always meant to be seen, fully revealed in its glory. The scaffolding has not failed. It has not been discarded as a mistake. It has done exactly what it was designed to do.

This image may help us as we wrestle with what seems, at first glance, to be one of the most puzzling tensions in the New Testament. On one side, we hear Jesus declare quite definitively: ”Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever 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 does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-19, NRSV).

On the other side, we hear Paul writing to the Galatians: ”Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian” (Galatians 3:24-25). And again: ”For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

So which is it? Does the law remain, down to the smallest stroke, or has it been set aside? Are we bound by Moses, or freed from him? This is not merely an academic question. It touches the heart of how we live, how we pray, how we read Scripture, and how we understand who Jesus is.

 

The Greek Behind the Question

To begin, we have to notice something that English translations sometimes obscure. The word Jesus uses for “fulfill” in Matthew is plērōsai, from the verb plēroō, meaning “to fill up,” “to complete,” “to bring to its intended fullness.” It is the same root used when a sail fills with wind, when a net fills with fish, when a prophecy comes to its appointed realization. Jesus is not saying he has come merely to obey the law, nor is he saying he has come to extend it. He is saying he has come to bring it to the fullness toward which it was always pointing.

The word he sets in opposition to plēroō is katalysai, “to abolish,” “to tear down,” “to dissolve.” The same word is used of buildings being demolished. Jesus is rejecting the idea that he has come as a wrecking ball to Moses. He has come, rather, as the architect who finally reveals what the foundation was for.

Now hold that thought, and look at the phrase Jesus uses: “the law or the prophets.” This is a technical phrase. In the Judaism of Jesus’ day, “the Law and the Prophets” was a summary expression for the entire Hebrew Scriptures, what we would call the Old Testament. We see it elsewhere on Jesus’ lips: ”In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). When Jesus says he has come not to abolish “the law or the prophets,” he is making a sweeping claim about the whole sacred story of Israel. He is the one in whom every promise, every type, every shadow, every commandment finds its meaning.

 

What Paul Means by “the Law”

Paul, however, is doing something different. When Paul speaks of “the law” (ho nomos) in Galatians, he is most often referring to the Torah considered as a covenantal code, especially as it functioned in the life of Israel as a system of commandments that marked off the covenant people. He is concerned with circumcision, dietary regulations, Sabbath observance, and the whole mechanism by which one lived as a member of the Mosaic covenant.

His argument in Galatians is not that the moral truth revealed in the Old Testament has evaporated. Rather, he is arguing that the Mosaic covenant was always meant to be temporary. It was a paidagōgos, a “custodian” or “disciplinarian.” This Greek word does not mean a teacher in the modern sense. The paidagōgos in the Greco-Roman world was usually a household slave entrusted with escorting a free child to and from school, keeping him safe, making sure he behaved, even disciplining him. The paidagōgos was indispensable for the child’s minority. But when the child came of age, the relationship ended. Not because the paidagōgos had failed, but because his work was complete.

This is precisely the image of the scaffolding. The law, in its function as covenantal custodian, has done its work. The Son has come of age. The cathedral stands.

 

The Reconciliation

So how do we reconcile Jesus and Paul? They are not, in fact, contradicting one another. They are speaking from different angles of the same mystery.

Jesus, in Matthew, is asserting that everything in the Hebrew Scriptures, every commandment, every prophecy, every story, every sacrifice, finds its meaning and completion in him. Not one stroke of a letter passes away, because every stroke has been gathered up into him. The whole Old Testament was a great pointing finger, and Jesus is what it was pointing at. He is the new Moses on the new mountain in Matthew 5, but he is also the Temple, the Passover Lamb, the suffering servant, the son of David, the Son of Man. Nothing of the Hebrew Scriptures is lost. All of it is honored, by being fulfilled.

Paul, in Galatians, is asserting that the function of the Mosaic covenant as a regulatory system, especially as a marker of Jewish identity over against the Gentiles, has come to its appointed end.

The Gentiles entering the Church do not need to be circumcised, do not need to keep kosher, do not need to live under the Mosaic ceremonial code. Why? Because Christ has fulfilled it. The reality has come, and the shadows pass. As Paul writes elsewhere: ”These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:17).

Notice that Paul never says the moral law is abolished. In fact, Paul will turn around in the very same letter and say: ”For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). And he will list the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, drawing on moral categories deeply rooted in the Old Testament. The moral truth abides. What ends is the function of the Torah as a particular national-covenantal system.

So Jesus and Paul are saying, in their different ways, the same thing. The law is not abolished. It is fulfilled. And because it is fulfilled, the scaffolding can come down.

 

What This Means for Us

This is more than an exercise in harmonizing texts. It changes how we read the Bible, and how we live.

First, it means that the Old Testament is not a discarded book. It is the womb from which Christ emerges. When you read the psalms, you are reading the prayers Jesus prayed. When you read Isaiah, you are reading the prophecies that shaped his self-understanding. When you read Leviticus, you are reading about the sacrifices whose meaning he completed on Calvary. To dismiss the Old Testament as “the old, harsh God” while Jesus is “the new, kind God” is to fall into an ancient heresy and to miss the wholeness of revelation. The same God speaks in both Testaments, and in Christ the whole speech reaches its punctuation.

Second, it means that Christian freedom is not lawlessness. Paul’s freedom is not the freedom to do whatever we want. It is the freedom to love. The custodian has done his work, but the destination toward which he led us is the household of the Father, where children live by love rather than by external compulsion. Saint Augustine famously summed it up: “Love, and do what you will.” But notice the order. Love first. Then act.

Third, it means that the entire Christian life means having the law written on our hearts. The prophet Jeremiah promised: ”I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). The same commandments that were once chiseled into stone tablets are now to be inscribed on the living tissue of our souls by the Holy Spirit. We do not become less obedient than the saints of the Old Testament. We become more so, but obedient from the inside rather than from the outside.

 

A Practical Word

How do you live this in your daily life? Try this. The next time you find yourself reading an Old Testament passage that seems strange, severe, or far away, pause and ask one question: How does this find its fullness in Christ? The story of the Passover lamb finds its fullness in the cross, and especially so in the Eucharist or what your tradition might call the Lord's Supper or Communion. The longing of the psalms finds its fullness in the Sacred Heart of Jesus' love for us, demonstrated most profoundly in the offering of Himself. The thunder of the prophets against injustice finds its fullness also in the cross, where injustice is both exposed and absorbed.

And the next time you are tempted to live the Christian life as a checklist, as a series of rules to keep so that God will be pleased with you, remember Paul. The custodian is not your master. The Father is. You are not a slave climbing scaffolding, hoping to reach the heights. You are a child standing inside a finished cathedral, called to live as a son or daughter of the house.

The scaffolding has come down. The cathedral stands. And you are invited to walk inside, to kneel, and to pray.