The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion

In verses 22-48 Christ illustrates, in a number of special examples, the sense in which the law was, not "destroyed," but " fulfilled" through him; also the sense in which the members of his kingdom were to signalize themselves by zeal in fulfilling the law; and also (but here subordinately) the difference between their righteousness -- answering to their position in the new developement of the Divine kingdom -- and the seeming righteousness of the Pharisees.

In these illustrations he contrasts the eternal Theocratic law with the political Theocratic law; the absolute law with the particular law of Moses. Although the former lay at the foundation of the latter, it could not, in that limited and contracted system, unfold and display itself; and it could not be fully developed until the shell, the restraining form, which had cribbed and confined the spirit, was broken and destroyed. [400] The opposition is between the law as bearing only upon the overt act, and the law as bearing upon the heart, and fulfilled in it; between the juridical and the moral stand-point.

We infer, then, as a rule in interpreting the following separate precepts, that outward acts are to be taken as vivid exhibitions of a required inward disposition, and are to be understood literally only when they are the necessary expression of such a state of heart.