Matthew captures Jesus’ most poignant teaching in chapters 5-7, often called the Sermon on the Mount. He begins with his vision for human life in the Kingdom of the heavens (Matt. 5:1-12). It’s an upside-down kingdom where the humiliated and afflicted find honor, never to experience poor treatment again. It’s a world where the greatest power is love, not wealth or might. It’s a kingdom where the ways of God and the ways of humankind become united as one.
Life in God’s Kingdom, Jesus says, is about completing (or filling full) one’s love for others. By loving God and neighbor, average people join God in the work of establishing his Kingdom (e.g. Matt. 22:37-40; John 13:34-35, 17:20-26). Through their love, people living in Jesus’ way welcome all others to enter his world, where Heaven and Earth meet (see Matt. 5:14-16; cf. Isa. 2).
For example, the command “Do not murder” seems achievable on the surface—just don’t murder people. But Jesus suggests this is not the law’s ultimate goal. Yes, the point was to end human violence, but even more it was to guide people into the attitudes and ways of loving one another.
When we avoid murder, we partly fill the law. When we love, we fill it full.
New Testament scholar R.T. France says Jesus’ teachings deal “not so much with the negative goal of avoidance of the wrong but focuses more on the positive goal of discovering and following what is really the will of God for his people.”1The Apostle Paul understands Jesus’ teachings in the same way. “See that no one pays back evil for evil to anyone,” he writes, “but always pursue what is good for one another and for all” (1 Thess. 5:15).
Read on its own, apart from the whole biblical story, biblical law often gets misinterpreted, leading to religious-looking behaviors that still allow space for ongoing contempt and hatred in our hearts. But Jesus and the apostles say that these commandments, taken together with the rest of the Hebrew Bible, are instructions that restore human beings’ love for one another (e.g. Matt. 5:17-19, 7:12, 22:37-40; Gal. 5:14; Rom. 13:8-10; Jas. 2:8).
In this way, love fills full the Law and the Prophets.
