This is the fourth in a series of very short posts on aspects of human fatherhood in Matthew’s gospel.
Jesus came “[not] to abolish the Law or the Prophets… but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). This side of his death and resurrection, as people of the New Covenant, we are no longer under the law of Moses. But we are still called on by Jesus to live out the fulfilment of Moses’ commandments, written on our hearts by God’s Spirit. The God who gave the commandments to Moses for Israel is the same God who created the world. The commandments are an application of the wisdom of the creator to the nation Israel (cf. Matt. 19:1-12), and although we are not that nation, he is still the same God. So when Jesus talks to Jewish people in his own day about the commandments of Moses and the way they were to keep them, we need to listen and learn.
When Jesus wanted to give an example of how the people of his day used religious traditions to dodge the word of God, the particular word from God that he picked out to focus on (cf. Matt. 15:1-9) was Moses’ commandment to “honour your Father and your mother.” According to Jesus, God is not impressed by people who use religious commitments as an excuse for avoiding the more difficult and God-honouring task of honouring their parents—really, genuinely honouring them, in a way that costs time and money and continues all the way to the time when they are demented and dying.
We will have some translating to do in order to apply these words of Jesus to our own situation. We are not under the law of Moses, and we don’t have a “korban” tradition that we could use to hide from it even if we were. But we worship the same God who commanded the Israelites to honour their fathers and their mothers, and the way we honour Him is tied up with the way we honour them.
Image: Philippe de Champaigne – Moses with the Ten Commandments
