Fulfilled

“Do not think that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets.

I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”

Matthew 5:17

There is at the present a rise in anti-Paul sentiment on the internet, specifically, against his teaching that the New Testament does not include keeping the law of Moses.  It is good that some people can see that Paul taught his Gentile converts not to submit to Moses’ law, but it is not good that they oppose that teaching.  To understand Paul, we must understand what it means to fulfill a thing, for Jesus fulfilled the law, as he said.  But what does it mean to fulfill something?  Considering how the Bible uses the word “fulfill” will help us understand what it means.

Let’s begin by looking at one of the first times the Hebrew word for “fulfill” is used.  This has to do with Isaac’s wife, Rebekah:

Genesis 25

24. And when her days to deliver were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.

Rebekah’s time of pregnancy ended when she gave birth to her twin sons, Jacob and Esau.  Their birth fulfilled the purpose of her pregnancy.  It did not mean that her pregnancy had been worthless; rather, that fulfillment meant that the purpose for her pregnancy was complete, that its usefulness was ended and the pregnancy was over.

Another example of what it means to fulfill something is from Solomon’s prayer of thanksgiving to God concerning His promise to give David a son who would build a temple in Jerusalem:

1Kings 8

14. The king turned his face about, and blessed all the Assembly of Israel, and the whole Assembly of Israel stood up.

15. And he said, “Blessed be Jehovah, God of Israel, who spoke by His mouth to David my father, and by His hand has fulfilled it.”

By “fulfilled it”, Solomon meant that since God’s promise to David had come to pass, there was no longer any need for God to keep promising David that it would happen.  What would be the point of God continuing to promise that He would give David a son who would build His temple, when it was already done?  As Solomon said,

1Kings 8

20. Jehovah caused His word to stand which He spoke, for I have risen up in the place of my father David, and I sit on the throne of Israel, as Jehovah said, and I have built the house for the name of Jehovah, God of Israel.

Jesus’ revelation to Paul was that his fulfilling the law meant there is no longer a reason to continue in it.  Jesus did not destroy the law or condemn it as worthless.  On the contrary, his fulfilling the law proved beyond all question that it was from God.  Paul honored the law of Moses by honoring Jesus and receiving his baptism of life, which was the law’s entire purpose.  “The love of God”, wrote Paul, “is poured out within our hearts by the holy Spirit which is given to us,” and “love is the fulfillment of the law, [for] love does not do wrong to a neighbor” (Rom. 5:5b; 13:10).

It is as impossible now for people to continue in the law as it would have been for Rebekah to continue to be pregnant after she gave birth to Jacob and Esau.  And what use would there have been for God to continue promising David a son who would build His temple after David was long dead and Solomon had done it?  Just so, it is useless for anyone now to try to keep Moses’ law after the law’s purpose has been fulfilled.  It cannot be done.

Dear friends, do not believe those who are saying Paul was wrong.  It is my sincere prayer that God will open the eyes of your understanding, as He opened Paul’s, to see the surpassing glory of what Jesus accomplished for us all!  The law of God is now written on our hearts by the Spirit, and because that is done, Paul rejoiced that 

Romans 8

2. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death!

3. For what the law could not do, in that it was powerless because it was of the flesh, God did, after He had sent His Son in the form of sinful flesh to deal with sin.  He condemned sin in the flesh

4. so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk after the flesh but after the Spirit. 

Let us rejoice with Paul that because of Jesus, “we are released from the law so that we now serve God in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of a document” (Rom. 7:6).

Testifying with an Unclean Spirit

Judah has been unfaithful, and an abomination is done

 in Israel and in Jerusalem,

for Judah has defiled the sanctuary of Jehovah which He loved,

and he has married the daughter of a foreign god.

Jehovah will cut off from the tents of Jacob the man who does this and then

gets up and testifies and makes an offering to Jehovah of Hosts.

Malachi 2:11–12

Through the cleansing of the blood of the Lamb of God, we overcome the world through our testimonies.  Your testimony is unique and precious to the Lord—and very valuable to the saints of God!  Guard it from the pollutions of the world.  The Israelites in Judah polluted their testimony by allowing the influence of foreign spirits into their lives.  They still worshipped God; they still stood up and testified of His greatness, but their testimony was tainted with the spirit of the world.  What struck me this morning when I read this verse is that God did not consider that error to be merely a mistake.  In His eyes, it was an abomination.

That being the case, how much more, in this holy New Covenant, must it be an abomination to Him if His people testify to the greatness of Jesus when their spirits have been polluted with worldliness?  James exhorted those among God’s people who dared do this, “If you have bitter envy and strife in your heart, do not glory in spite of it and, so, lie against the truth.  This wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (Jas. 3:14–15).  To join in worship with holy souls, to stand and testify before God’s holy people when your heart is not pure in His sight is a serious offense.  That is how Satan lived while he was in heaven, and his judgment was to be cast out of God’s presence forever.

The wise admonition of the author of Hebrews is for us today as much as it was for the saints of his time.  Please take it to heart:

Hebrews 10

28. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy, by two or three witnesses.

29. Of how much worse punishment, do you think, will he be worthy who has trampled under foot the Son of God, has regarded as a common thing the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has done outrage to the Spirit of grace?

30. For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.”  And again, “The Lord will judge His people.”

31. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Redefining the New Birth

To be born again is to receive Jesus’ baptism of the Spirit.  The greatest change in the gospel, after first-century believers rejected Paul’s gospel, was the redefinition of the new birth from being baptized with the Spirit to believing in Jesus.  Believing in Jesus was always essential to receiving the new birth, of course, but believing is not the experience of new birth; it only qualifies one to be born again.  This is what John had in mind when he wrote, 

John 1

12. As many as received him [Jesus], to them he granted the right to become children of God [be born again], to those who believe in his name,

13. who are born [again], not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

John was saying the same thing when he penned these famous words:

John 3

16. This is the way God loved the world: He gave His only Son so that every one who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The Spirit is life, Paul said (Rom. 8:10), and understanding that simple truth helps us to see that John 3:16 was teaching that whoever believes in Jesus should afterward receive the life of the Spirit.  According to John, Jesus taught the same to those who believed on him:

John 7

37. On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!

38. He who believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water!”

39. But he spoke this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were going to receive, for the holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The author of Hebrews wrote, “He who comes to God must believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Heb. 11:6b).  Just so, he who comes to Christ Jesus must first believe that he is Lord and that he is a baptizer of those who diligently seek him.  Demons believe (Jas. 2:19b), but it does them no good, for Jesus will not baptize them into his body.  But for us, believing may lead to the new birth if we diligently seek the will of God in Christ Jesus.

We are complete in Christ, just as Paul said, but there are but three verses in the Bible which tell us how we get into Christ, and all three say it is by baptism: Romans 6:3, Galatians 3:27, and 1Corinthians 12:13.  In 1Corinthians, Paul made it clear which baptism he was talking about: “By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body.”  That baptism, the baptism of Christ, is the baptism Peter was talking about when he said, “Baptism saves us” (1Pet. 3:21a).  Jesus described the new birth to the Jewish elder Nicodemus, a description of the new birth which he said applies to all times and all people:

John 3

7. “Do not marvel that I told you, ‘You must be born again.’

8. The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s going.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

That is a perfect description of what the followers of Jesus experienced in Acts 2:

Acts 2

1. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all in one accord, in one place.

2. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

3. And there appeared to them divided tongues like fire, and it sat upon each one of them,

4. and they were all filled with holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit moved them to speak.

That is the new birth.  Believing in Jesus always precedes receiving it.

The Christian redefinition of new birth as simply believing in Jesus is by far the gravest error believers made after rejecting Paul’s gospel, for when the new birth is redefined, everything is redefined.  Repentance is redefined because what one must do to receive Jesus’ baptism of the Spirit (believe the gospel and repent) is different from what one must do to believe.  In fact, I know of nothing the Bible says that one must do in order to believe.

Many a soul today has stopped at the point of believing that Jesus is Lord, for Christian ministers have taught them that they are at that point in Christ.  But they need someone to ask them, as Paul asked some men he met at Ephesus who believed in Jesus, “Did you receive the holy Spirit after you believed?” (Acts 19:2).  With that, Paul was asking them, “Have you been born again since you believed?”  He knew that it was possible to believe in Jesus and not have the Spirit.  Every person on earth who believes in Jesus should be asked that question.  It is an essential point because, as Paul said, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him” (Rom. 8:9b).  Everyone who believes in Jesus should be told that believing is not the experience of new birth; it is the path we must take to receive it!

Paul was not born again on the road to Damascus, as many Christians think; he was convicted on the road to Damascus.  He became a believer when Jesus revealed himself to Paul, that he was the Messiah.  Paul was converted three days later, after diligently seeking God and repenting (Acts 9:9).  It was then that he was baptized with the Spirit and his sins were washed away (Acts 9:17; 22:16).  Likewise, the disciples were converted on the day of Pentecost when they were baptized with the Spirit.  They had many miraculous experiences with Jesus while he was here among them, just as Paul had a miraculous experience on the road to Damascus, but they never had the experience of new birth until after Jesus ascended to heaven and offered himself to God as a sacrifice for their sins (Heb. 9:23–26).  This is why Jesus told Peter during the last supper, “When you are converted, strengthen your brothers” (Lk. 22:32).  Yes, even at the Last Supper, the disciples were not yet converted!

All true knowledge begins with understanding the new birth.  The foundations of the Faith are, in effect, destroyed when they are redefined, and in that case, there is little that the righteous can do.  If the Reader embraces the truth that the baptism of the Spirit, not believing in Jesus, is the experience of being born again, then the message of this book will be much easier to understand.