Note 45 — Chapter IV · JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.1

The Mosaic institutions were actually extinguished in the church of which Jesus was the founder; hence it is natural to suppose that their abolition formed a part of his design:—a reach of vision, beyond the horizon of the ceremonial worship of his age and country, of which apologists have been ever anxious to prove that he was possessed.45 Neither are there wanting speeches and actions of Jesus which seem to favour their effort. Whenever he details the conditions of participation in the kingdom of heaven, as in the Sermon on the Mount, he insists, not on the observance of the Mosaic ritual, but on the spirit of religion and morality; he attaches no value to fasting, praying, and almsgiving, unless accompanied by a corresponding bent of mind (Matt. vi. 1–18); the two main elements of the Mosaic worship, sacrifice and the keeping of sabbaths and feasts, he not only nowhere enjoins, but puts a marked slight on the former, by commending the scribe who declared that the love of God and one’s neighbour was more than whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as one not far from the kingdom of God (Mark xii. 23 f.),46 and he ran counter in action as well as in speech to the customary mode of celebrating the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 1–13; Mark ii. 23–28, iii. 1–5; Luke vi. 1–10, xiii. 10 ff., xiv. 1 ff.; John v. 5 ff., vii. 22, ix. 1 ff.), of which in his character of Son of Man he claimed to be Lord. The Jews, too, appear to have expected a revision of the Mosaic law by their Messiah.47 A somewhat analogous sense is couched in the declarations attributed by the fourth Evangelist to Jesus (ii. 19); Matthew (xxvi. 61) and Mark (xiv. 58) represent him as being accused by false witnesses of saying, I am able to destroy (John, destroy) the temple of God (Mark, that is made with hands), and to build it in three days (Mark, I will build another made without hands). The author of the Acts has something similar as an article of accusation against Stephen, but instead of the latter half of the sentence it is thus added, and (he, i.e. Jesus) shall change the customs which Moses delivered us; and perhaps this may be regarded as an authentic comment on the less explicit text. In general it may be said that to one who, like Jesus, is so far alive to the absolute value of the internal compared with the external, of the bent of the entire disposition compared with isolated acts, that he pronounces the love of God and our neighbour to be the essence of the law (Matt. xxii. 36 ff.),—to him it cannot be a secret, that all precepts of the law which do not bear on these two points are unessential. But the argument apparently most decisive of a design on the part of Jesus to abolish the Mosaic worship, is furnished by his prediction that the temple, the centre of Jewish worship (Matt. xxiv. 2 parall.), would be destroyed, and that the adoration of God would be freed from local fetters, and become purely spiritual (John iv. 21 ff.).