“I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it,” Jesus says at one point during what is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). “The law,” to his Jewish hearers, meant all of the moral codes that were given to the people of Israel, from the Ten Commandments to all of the strictures in the book of Leviticus and elsewhere in the Old Testament.
Read out of context, it would be easy to conclude that Jesus was holding his followers accountable to every detail of those codes—from “thou shalt not kill” to not wearing clothes made from two different types of fabric (Leviticus 19:19).
But Jesus very quickly goes on to explain what he really means in a way that draws a clear line between a rote adherence to prescriptive rules and the challenge of living life based on the reality of loving God and our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Six times in Matthew 5, Jesus says some formulation of “you have heard it said” followed by a pillar of the Law. By pointing out, for example, that it is not enough to not commit adultery, but to address the selfish desires that drive us to disrupt another person’s relationship to satisfy our own needs—and even being willing to sever the part of our body that stimulates our desire to violate another person—Jesus calls us to not look at how our lives match up to a checklist, but to take a deep examination of our motivations.
By the end of chapter 5, Jesus is saying that while the law says to love your neighbor and hate your enemies, Jesus—the fulfillment of the law—says to love your enemies as well as your neighbors, “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
The chapter ends with Jesus saying, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Love is the fulfillment of the law. It’s not making sure your clothes are either 100% cotton or 100% wool, but never cotton and wool mixed together. (Or for that matter, how two consenting, loving adults share intimacy with each other.) It’s actually way, way more challenging—and yet, way more liberating.