In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus neither redefines the Law nor abolishes it, but condemns the religious leaders of His day for doing both. It was they who redefined it and, in so doing, wound up nullifying it (Mk 7:9). The fact is, Jesus "came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it" (Matt 5:17). He was and will always remain the only person to have kept it perfectly. And thanks be to God! For by His life, as well as His death and resurrection, did He secure for us access to God and the right to stand before Him justified.

There are some who read Jesus' Sermon at this point and argue that, while he did not do away with the Law, he gave it new meaning. But this is incorrect. The Ten Commandments are not part of the Old Testament ceremonial law, such as sacrifices, dietary laws, and all the other various and sundry laws that belonged to the Theocracy. The ceremonial law was done away with by Christ: He is our burnt offering, our fellowship offering, our peace offering. Rather, the Ten Commandments, also called the Decalogue, are part of God's moral law, which stands forever-it can never be abolished, or enhanced for that matter (Matt 5:18-19). Its original meaning was obscured by "the traditions of men" (Mk 7:8) and, by the time of Jesus' day, was believed to apply to behavior only. But, as Jesus points out, God's Ten Commandments went far beyond behavior to rule the very heart of the individual.

That Jesus preserves the original meaning of the Law in His Sermon finds support not only in the fact that He was talking about God's moral law, which stands forever unchanged, but also in His peculiar way of referencing: "You have heard that it was said . . . but I say to you . . ." The first part of this formula refers not to the Ten Commandments, but to the religious interpretation of them, which was undoubtedly corrupt. We know that because the Old Testament is not referred to by New Testament writers in this manner; namely, "you have heard that it was said". The customary way of referencing the Old Testament Scripture in the New Testament is either by naming the Old Testament writer ("Moses commands") or by saying, "it is written . . ." The fact that Jesus does not use these customary ways proves that He was referring to false interpretations passed down through the ages by the Rabbis (Matt 5:20).