The Lord #8

By Emanuel Swedenborg

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8. To Say That the Lord Fulfilled All of the Law Is to Say That He Fulfilled All of the Word.

MANY people nowadays believe that when it says of the Lord that he fulfilled the law [Matthew 5:17] it means that he fulfilled all of the Ten Commandments and that by doing so he became justice and justified people in the world by this act of faith.

That is not what it means, though. It means rather that he fulfilled everything that was written about him in the Law and the Prophets-that is, in the whole Sacred Scripture - because those writings, as stated under the preceding heading, are about him alone. The reason so many people believe something else is that they have not studied the Scriptures and seen what “the law” means in them.

In a strict sense “the law” does mean the Ten Commandments. In a broader sense it means everything Moses wrote in his five books; and in the broadest sense it means the whole Word.

It is common knowledge that in a strict sense “the law” does mean the Ten Commandments.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.