My dear friend, we read in Matthew 5:17: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” So, what did our Lord Jesus mean? Well, in terms of the prophets, we know that our Lord Jesus fulfilled the OT prophesies regarding His birth, His miracles, and His death, burial, and resurrection (consider Daniel 9:26; Isaiah 35:5,6 and compare with the Gospel accounts of His mighty works such as in Matthew 11:2-6; Isaiah 7:14;9:6; Isaiah 61:1; Isaiah 53; Psalms 22; Micah 5:2, and many other OT Scriptures.

As to the law, we know that our Lord Jesus was the only One who kept the law perfectly, being the only One without sin. He, as the only (unique) Son of God was indeed true God and true man, Emmanuel, or God with us (Isaiah 7:14). The Lord Jesus was the only perfect man because He, being the Son of God, had no sin nature (2 Corinthians 5:21) and thus, He alone could meet the legal and moral demands of the law. This He did on behalf of those who would place their trust and faith in Him. The law could only show sinful mankind that we were guilty and deserving of death, and Christ, being perfect, was the only One who could pay the penalty of our sins, which He did in His blood at Calvary’s cross.

Perhaps the MacDonald Commentary on this verse states it most clearly: “Most revolutionary leaders sever all ties with the past and repudiate the traditional, existing order. Not so the Lord Jesus. He upheld the Law of Moses and insisted that it must be fulfilled. The law had attached to it the penalty of death (Gal. 3:10); and to break one command was to be guilty of all (Jas. 2:10). Since people had broken the law, they were under the curse of death. God’s righteousness and holiness demanded that the penalty be paid. It was for this reason that Jesus came into the world: to pay the penalty by His death. He died as a Substitute for guilty lawbreakers, even though He Himself was sinless. He did not wave the law aside; rather He met the full demands of the law by fulfilling its strict requirements in His life and in His death. Thus, the gospel does not overthrow the law; it upholds the law and shows how the law’s demands have been fully satisfied by Christ’s redemptive work.”  (SF)  (690.6)