The Fulfillment of Scripture

The Story Fulfilling Itself:

How Jesus Completes the Old Testament

Today, we are talking about Jesus and the Old Testament.

Have you ever started reading a story right in the middle? Back when I was living in Colorado, I was teaching the Book of Mark to two high school students. I knew one of them had not grown up in church and didn't know much about the Bible. At one point, I brought up Adam and Eve. She stopped me mid-sentence and asked, "Who is Adam and Eve?"

She had literally never heard the story. At that exact moment, I realized something critical: I was trying to explain our need for Jesus, but she had never heard why we needed Jesus in the first place.

From that moment on, I knew that whenever I teach the Bible, I need to make the overarching narrative clear. In Christianity, it is easy to get lost in the weeds. We get so focused on individual pieces of the story that we forget the grand narrative itself. We get bogged down in fringe debates and forget the one unified story the Bible is telling.

The Bible isn't a random collection of disconnected stories about people who lived thousands of years ago—it is one single story about God redeeming His creation through Jesus Christ.

This was the exact problem Jesus confronted in Matthew 5. The Pharisees knew the Law and the Prophets. They studied them, memorized them, and built their entire lives around them. Yet, they missed the very point of what they were studying. They saw the commands, but they missed Christ.

Before we can understand how Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets, we have to understand the story the Old Testament was telling all along.

Did Jesus Abolish the Law and the Prophets?

Why was this even a question in Jesus' day?

For starters, Jesus' teaching sounded radically different from the scribes. The religious teachers of the day spent most of their time quoting other famous rabbis and traditional authorities. Jesus, however, taught as "one having authority" (Matthew 7:29). He didn't rely on human footnotes—He taught by directly unpacking and explaining the Word of God.

Furthermore, Jesus constantly challenged man-made traditions:

He healed people on the Sabbath.

He reached out and touched lepers.

He sat down and ate with tax collectors and sinners.

He openly exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

Because of this, people wondered if He was throwing out the Old Testament altogether. But Jesus wasn't rejecting the Old Testament—He was restoring its true meaning. He never called the Scriptures useless or outdated. Instead, He stripped away the layers of human tradition and self-righteous misinterpretations that had accumulated over centuries.

As humans, our natural tendency is to make religion about external behavior and rules rather than true worship of God. The Pharisees had turned God’s Law into a bloated system of extra rules. Jesus cut through the noise to show the real heart of the Old Testament: that humanity is trapped in sin and desperately in need of a Savior.

"Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished." — Matthew 5:17–18

Jesus didn't come to abolish the Scriptures; He came to accomplish them! Every faithful Jew knew the phrase "the Law and the Prophets," but the issue wasn't whether they knew the text—it was whether they understood what it had been pointing to all along.

What Is the Story of the Old Testament?

When Jesus speaks of "the Law and the Prophets," He is referring to the entire Old Testament. To grasp what He means by "fulfilling" it, we have to trace the storyline from the beginning.

Creation and Purpose

In the beginning, God created everything. But of all His creation, God made humans unique—breathing His own breath into us and shaping us in His image. He gave humanity a distinct role: to worship Him, live in close relationship with Him, and exercise dominion over the earth alongside Him.

The Intrusion of Sin

Sin entered when humanity rebelled. Sin is not merely breaking a list of arbitrary rules; it is relational rebellion. It occurs when we refuse to live in dependent trust with God and instead decide to define good and evil for ourselves.

"All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned, each of us, to his own way..." — Isaiah 53:6

When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden, He gave them freedom with one boundary: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had a choice: trust God as King, or reject Him and try to sit on the throne of their own lives. The temptation in the Garden—"to be like God" (Genesis 3:5)—is the exact same temptation we face today. It isn't a desire for His holiness, but a desire to usurp His authority.

The Penalty: Death

Because God is holy and just, sin cannot be ignored. It carries a price: death. Why?

Sin demands judgment: A holy God must eliminate evil.

God is the source of life: Separating yourself from the source of life naturally results in spiritual and eternal death.

"For my people have committed a double evil: They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water..." — Jeremiah 2:13

Yet, God delayed immediate physical destruction to set a rescue plan into motion.

The Promise of Grace and a Nation

Even as judgment was pronounced in Eden, God offered hope. He promised that an offspring of the woman would one day crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15).

Later, God called Abraham and made a covenant with him, promising to build a nation through him, give them a land, and bless all nations through his offspring. God didn't choose Israel because they were superior, but by His pure grace to carry His promise to the world. Israel was set apart to display God's holiness and carry the lineage of the coming Savior.

The Law, Sacrifices, and Prophets

God gave Israel the Law to reveal His standard of holiness and expose their inability to achieve it on their own. The Law acted as a mirror, stopping self-righteousness in its tracks.

Because the people failed to keep the Law, God instituted the sacrificial system. Every time an animal was slain, it reminded Israel of two truths: the wages of sin is death, and God provides a substitute. But those sacrifices were temporary placeholders; they could never permanently erase sin.

Then came the Prophets. They confronted Israel’s covenant-breaking and warned of coming judgment, but they also pointed forward to a future hope—a New Covenant, a New Heart, a New Spirit, and a coming King from the line of David who would restore all things.

When the Old Testament closes, the story is left unfinished. The problem of sin remains unresolved, and then... 400 years of silence follow. The whole Old Testament was waiting for God to send the promised Messiah.

What Is the Core Purpose of the Old Testament?

The Old Testament serves three major purposes that prepare the human heart for Christ:

To Reveal Who God Is: Human sin darkens our understanding of God (Romans 1:21-23, Ephesians 4:18). Before we can understand our need for salvation, we must understand the holiness, justice, and character of God.

To Expose Who We Are: The Law was never meant to be a ladder for self-salvation; it was designed to show us that we cannot save ourselves. James 1:23–24 compares the Word to a mirror—it forces us to look at our true spiritual state so we run to grace.

To Act as a Tutor Leading to Christ: The Scriptures press us toward a Redeemer. As Galatians 3:24 states, "The law then was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith."

How Did Jesus Fulfill the Law and the Prophets?

Jesus fulfills the entire Old Testament in three distinct ways:

He Lived the Perfect Life

Where Adam failed and brought condemnation, and where Israel stumbled in unfaithfulness, Jesus remained perfectly obedient.

When Jesus came to John to be baptized, He said it was necessary to "fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). He lived the sinless life humanity was created to live. Because He obeyed perfectly under the Law, His righteousness can now be credited to our account through faith.

"For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous." — Romans 5:19

He Became the Perfect Sacrifice

The Old Testament sacrifices required the sinner to place their hands on the animal's head, transferring symbolic guilt to the innocent substitute before it was killed. But those sacrifices had to be offered continuously.

Jesus came as the ultimate, final substitute.

John the Baptist declared: "Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." (John 1:29)

Peter wrote that we were redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb." (1 Peter 1:19)

Isaiah foretold: "He was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities..." (Isaiah 53:5)

He Is the Promised King and Redeemer

God’s promised King did not come the first time to conquer earthly empires by force, but to conquer sin and death through the cross. Through His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus fulfills every prophetic promise and opens the way for restored relationship with God.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." — John 3:16

Main Application: Jesus Fulfills Everything

The application for us today is to stop trying to make yourself righteous by standing beside the Law, and instead run to the One who fulfilled it for you.

The danger exposed in Jesus' sermon is the exact trap the Pharisees fell into: they had the Scriptures, the commands, the traditions, and the knowledge—but they missed Christ.

It is entirely possible to know the Bible and still miss Jesus. You can:

Argue about the Bible without ever worshipping the God revealed in it.

Defend Christianity without ever depending on Christ.

Obey external commands without ever having your heart transformed.

The Old Testament does not exist to show us how good we can become on our own. It exists to show us how desperately we need Jesus.

Challenge

Every time you open the Bible this week, ask this foundational question: "How does this point me to Jesus?"

It is easy to read the Scriptures merely asking, "What rule do I need to follow?" or "How can I make myself better?" Instead, train yourself to ask:

What does this teach me about God?

What does this reveal about my sin?

How does this point me to Christ?

Then, in light of who Jesus is and what He has done, how am I called to respond?

When we approach the Bible this way, our self-righteousness melts away, our need for Christ becomes clear, and our hearts are transformed.