Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. Matthew 5:17
Imagine living in New Testament times, around the time of Christ, and imagine studying to learn something of the Scriptures. You wouldn’t be able to afford your own copy of the Law and the Prophets, so you would have to go to the temple, or to the home of one of the scribes, Pharisees, or other religious leaders of the day. These folks would have the great scrolls containing the Scriptures, but right next to them would be the scrolls containing the interpretations and the additions that were the contribution of one line or another of Jewish thought. And to the religious leaders, those extras were every bit as important as the actual Scriptures. For example, the Law called for the honouring of the sabbath day, to keep it holy. But the Jews went further, and imposed an extensive set of rules, such as the exact distance it was permitted to travel on the sabbath. They accused the Lord Jesus of breaking the Law every time He broke one of their little rules. They could not understand how He could say that he came to fulfil the law.
As much as they claimed to know the Old Testament, the scribes and Pharisees were much more knowledgeable in matters related to their rules and regulations. That is why they failed to identify the Lord Jesus as the fulfilment of the law. Even though He fit the pattern of the Law and the Prophets perfectly, they missed the connection because they were looking in the wrong place. They were looking into the books of religious rules and regulations, and He was not there. He is not there today, either, although the makers and maintainers of the rules and regulations keep looking. They keep missing Him because they have missed the whole point of the Law and the Prophets. The Old Testament was not written to impose rules and regulations, it was written to portray Christ.
If we look for Him there, the Lord Jesus is revealed in wonderful detail in the Law and the Prophets. We find great revelations when we seek a Person, not a religion. We see Him in the types and shadows of the patriarchs, in the pictures and illustrations of the offerings and the tabernacle ordinances, in the treasury of expression of the Psalms, and in the foretelling contained in the prophecies. He is there in much more revelation than we can grasp. And when we come to the Gospels, we find in His life and death the unfolding of all those great mysteries of the Law and the Prophets.
The Lord Jesus fulfilled the law, and continues to do so, and into eternity will reveal to us the fulness of that fulfillment. -Jim MacIntosh