CT063 - I Have Not Come to Abolish

Today, Matthew Allen walks through Matthew 5:17–20 — one of the most misread paragraphs in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus opens by heading off a wrong conclusion: he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. He has come to fulfill them, in three layered senses — he is the One they pointed to, he embodies the righteousness they described, and he brings the whole story to its intended goal.

From there, Jesus affirms every detail of God's word down to the smallest letter, sounds a sober warning to teachers who soften what God has said, and lands the line that should stop every listener cold: unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom. The point is not that we need more rules. It is that we need a different kind of righteousness — heart-deep, grace-rooted, real. The kind the Beatitudes already described. The kind the Antitheses are about to demonstrate.

The episode closes with three honest questions about how we treat Scripture, where our righteousness actually lives, and whether we are tempted to teach a softer version of God's call than what he actually says.