The Message of the Sermon on the Mount

and indeed that the law itself bears witness to this good news.

So then he ‘fulfils it by declaring the radical demands of the righteousness of God’.12 This is what he stresses in the rest of Matthew 5 by giving examples, as we shall see.

The verb translated ‘to fulfil’ (plērōsai) means literally ‘to fill’ and indicates, as Chrysostom expressed it, that ‘his (sc. Christ’s) sayings were no repeal of the former, but a drawing out and filling up of them’.3

He rejects the superficial interpretation of the law given by the scribes; he himself supplies the true interpretation.

Jesus ‘fulfilled’ it all in the sense of bringing it to completion by his person, his teaching and his work.4

Jesus ‘fulfilled’ it all in the sense that what was predicted came to pass in him. The first statement of his public ministry was, ‘Fulfilled is the time …

Jesus ‘fulfilled’ them in the first instance by obeying them, for he was ‘born under law’ and was determined (as he had already told John the Baptist) ‘to fulfil all righteousness’.

For they will inevitably recognize that it is by the grace of God we are what we are, that our light is his light, and that our works are his works done in us and through us. So it is the light they will praise, not the lamp which bears it; it is our Father in heaven whom they will glorify, not the children he has begotten and who exhibit a certain family likeness.

‘Good works’ are works of love as well as of faith

It seems that ‘good works’ is a general expression to cover everything a Christian says and does because he is a Christian, every outward and visible manifestation of his Christian faith.