On the Feast of St Matthew

'Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil'   Matthew 5:17

Later this month we celebrate the feast of St Matthew, one of the apostles and the man who gives his name to the first of the Gospels. Whether he actually wrote all, or some, or even none of it (let the scholars argue, and the rest of us keep respectful silence), there can be little doubt that its author had a strong Jewish background. This is the most  'Jewish'  of the Gospels, almost obsessively concerned to demonstrate that every event in the life of Jesus, from his birth to his death, happened in fulfilment of the Hebrew Scriptures.

It's easy for us to forget that Jesus was a Jew, nurtured in the religion and traditions of his people. Certainly he teaches like a Jew, trading question for question, and offering stories rather than theories. In the verse at the head of this column, taken from the so-called 'Sermon on the Mount', he sets out his own vocation: not to abolish the law and the prophets of Israel, but to 'fulfil' them. In the rest of the sermon we can see the beginning of the process, as this and that aspect of the ancient law  is taken, introduced with the phrase 'You have heard it said', and then pushed further than any of the scribes or Pharisees had ever done. For Jesus, the law was not the end, but the beginning - a marker of the kind of life God required, the life that Jesus called 'righteous'. When one had kept the law to the letter, obedience had hardly begun. Now there was the spirit: don't kill, but don't hate, either. Don't hate, but go further, and love. Don't give because you are required to, but because giving is the reflection of grace.

This is 'kingdom' living. This is the life Jesus calls the children of the kingdom to aim for. Of course we shall often fail, but that is where forgiveness and redemption begin. The law points us to the goal. The grace  of God brought to us in Jesus helps us to 'press on towards the goal', as St Paul put it (Philippians 3:14). Jesus fulfilled - 'fully filled' - the righteousness of God. One day, by his grace, on earth or in heaven , so shall all the 'children of the kingdom'.

Canon David Winter is a former Diocesan Director of Evangelism, a broadcaster and author of many books.