Opening Prayer
God, renew our hearts according to Your holy Law. Amen.
Text: Matthew 5:17-19
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Devotion
God’s Law, the law of love, cannot be abolished or changed, because God is unchangeable. Love is the same forever. He was and is and will be love. What else should He then command us to do? Or could we be blessed without loving Him from our whole heart? No, there is no life for us mortals without the fellowship of love with God. – Did Christ then come to remove and abolish the Law? Impossible! Our Savior must fulfill and confirm it. Not the Law, but we should be changed, – not the demand of the Law be taken away, but everything in us that strives against love.
Christ “fulfills the Law,” confirms the Law first by living a life in perfect love and keeping all its commands exactly. And because God ordained that Christ should take our place, He counts it as our keeping of the Law. See how wonderfully the Law is confirmed by Christ: God’s Son becomes Man and dies, to fulfill the Law! This happened in Bethlehem, on Golgotha, and everywhere He walked in His humiliation. It happened. It is there as an accomplished fact, and I can stand free before all who would accuse me as a transgressor. Christ perfectly fulfilled the Law and I have done it through Him. – It is too great that God’s Son became my Servant to keep the Law perfectly, but God’s eternal love so ordained it, and it is done. Blessed be His name!
Secondly, Christ fulfills and confirms the Law by writing it anew in my heart through the Spirit of faith. The love with which He loves us, abides in us and He abides in us (John 17:26). But what is love other than fulfilling the Law? Now since we are so blessed by pure grace, are God’s children and heirs of life, free from the demand and curse of the Law, since all is fulfilled in Christ: shouldn’t we then love Him who first loved us [1Jo 4:19]? Shouldn’t our faith be active in love? Free from the Law, we now do what the Law requires: love God from the heart, – and whatever is still lacking in our love shall be attained after the flesh dies, until we once more bear God’s perfect image there in the state of glory. – So Christ came to fulfill the Law for us and in us.
Closing Prayer
Holy and righteous God, teach us to know the seriousness and severity of Your Law, so that we see our sin and truly repent. And teach us to believe in Christ’s fulfilling the Law for us, so that we receive the adoption of sons and have the Law written in our heart. Pour out Your love in our hearts by Your Holy Spirit for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Hymn
O God, to us a Savior giving,
To free us from all doubt and woe,
Awake our souls again to living,
As Thou and no one else can do,
That wisdom we again are finding,
And never walk again in blindness!
The sighs that I so deep am wasting,
O let them enter in Thy heart!
Thy love so sweet let me be tasting
Which only is my chosen part;
If from my heart I truly love Thee,
Then nothing more can harm or move me.
Richter: Vor Sjæl er dertil fød og baaren L 487:6-7 tr. DeGarmeaux;
Bryd frem, mit Hjertes Trang (LHy 171); alternate hymn: O Thou that hear’st when sinners cry ELH 500:2.4