Matthew 5
I wonder if any of this doctrine in the Sermon on the Mount prior to the statement about coming to fulfill the law was really new to the people. Perhaps the way Christ delivered it made it more memorable or cut out some extraneous parts of what had been taught but it seems to me that these basic concepts would have been roughly believed and taught already.
The statement “think not that I an come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill,” suggests that people are already openly entertaining the possibility that Jesus was the Messiah and Jesus is openly embracing that characterization. It makes me wonder if this took place after his declaration in the synagogue at Nazareth.
I expect that preliminary doctrine was to establish the fact that he was not undercutting the law of Moses but superseding it as he says that the old teachings were too loose.
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