3. You ask if the Lord has fulfilled, that is, completed or finished the law in any sense whatsoever; and if He ever kept the law for Israel or the Gentile or the Church, or any one? And that He did come “to fulfill” the law, but it is not said that He “fulfilled it,” as all will not be fulfilled, (that is all contained in the law and prophets), much before the eternal state?
Now, the Lord Himself states, in the sermon on the mount (Matt. 5), “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” And here we must ascertain the meaning of the word “fulfill.” It does not mean to obey it — nor is the thought that He came to add something to it; but to make good the whole scope and gist of the law in His own proper person, to complete the circle, and answer to the whole thoughts of God as far as therein was contained. This word is so used elsewhere: “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers”; “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled”; “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us” that is, its whole import brought to fruition. And lastly I mention Colossians 1:2525Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; (Colossians 1:25), where Paul’s ministry of “the Church” —the mystery, having the result of fulfilling the Word of God.” That is, this truth was needed to complete the circle of revelation, all other subjects having been revealed before.
Thus Christ, in His own person, was the summing up and complement of all that God’s mind contemplated in the law and the prophets; though, of course, much more also.
I have no doubt that whatever our blessed Lord did in keeping the precepts of the law, He did for His people. Israel went into the land on the condition of their observing the law; and their non-observance of it was to result in being driven out of it. (See, passim, the whole book of Deuteronomy, and especially chapter 28) Having lost it on the condition of obedience, the Lord comes, and it is remarkable that when He enters His course as an obedient Jew, under the law, He cites Deuteronomy in every case when undergoing the temptations in the wilderness. (Compare Matt. 4 with Deut. 6 and 8.) Everything which He ever did was for His people and for His God; though it must not be supposed that His keeping of the law was a substitutionary thing for our not keeping it, so as to work out righteousness for us. The righteousness in which we stand, or rather which we are counted by God — God reckons us such intrinsically by virtue of the work of another, Christ; in token of which He has placed Him on His throne — the result of His meeting all God’s holy nature as to sin on the Cross, so that He could righteously act according to the dictates of that nature in love.
By His having kept the conditions of Deuteronomy, under which Israel failed, He has earned a personal title to the land Himself; (compare Psa. 18:20-2420The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me. 21For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. 22For all his judgments were before me, and I did not put away his statutes from me. 23I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity. 24Therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight. (Psalm 18:20‑24)), while, of course, also possessing such in the rights of His own person, as son of Abraham and David, while Son of God and Heir of all things.
As you say, much that is in the law and prophets will not be fulfilled, (in the sense I suppose of being accomplished), much before the eternal state. So it is. But the presenting in Himself as the complete scope of it morally, is a different thought from the accomplishment by Him of it in detail historically.
Words of Truth, New Series 2:137-139.