March 3

Jesus says “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17). This means that Jesus must be a living example of scriptural fulfillment, which follows that unpacking Jesus’ life would lead to deeper understanding of the meaning of fulfillment. When trying to understand Scripture’s meaning of fulfillment, it is important to firstly acknowledge that “fulfillment does not seek after an almost photographic correspondence to the words of the past,” in other words, the thing being fulfilled does not necessarily need to occur quite so literally or chronologically as it might be described. In Jesus, the whole of God’s work in Israel is fulfilled. In Hosea, God references the past when he laments  “When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the farther they went from me” (Hos 11:1-2). The past is referenced here in accordance with the fulfillment of Jesus, who will repair this divide in the future.

Jesus embodies the promise of Emmanuel, “God is with us,” just as He was with the Israelites at the start of their long Exodus. The opening chapter of the Gospel of Matthew outlines the genealogy of Jesus, proving his descent from Abraham and David. This hints at Jesus’ kingship and how he is to renew the covenant of God with his people Israel, which we discussed last class. Jesus, as we see in the opening of the Gospel of Luke, will also bring on a new order of history. It is a unique situation because Jesus fulfills the prophecies as promised, but he does it in a completely revolutionary and unexpected way. To ultimately restore Israel’s brokenness, God must send his only beloved son, a form of the divine himself rather than an earthly servant, to instruct the people on how to properly enter into communion with God and make amends.