Greg Matthews said
Great question!  I’ve thought about this a lot over the years and never have I found a satisfactory answer.  What does it literally mean when Christians say Jesus came in fulfillment of the Law?  What did he fulfill that made the Law null and void?  Why do Christians cherry pick the Law?  The 10 commandments are in, best rest of the other 100 or so major parts of the Law are out the door? Wellllll, not so fast….  Those other parts of the Law are out the door when it’s convenient.  Homophobes like to quote the anti-gay riot act from Leviticus, but isn’t this stuff from Leviticus supposed to have been fulfilled?  Why aren’t they worried about the Law against letting your cows mingle with your neighbors cows?  Why don’t we stone adulterers?  Why do we suffer witches and astrologers and fortune tellers to live?  Why can we now wear clothes made of more than one fabric?

One approach to this would be to view the Law as not the Mosaic Law but the principle of Law itself. The Mosaic Law is time conditioned. Conditioned by the values that people held at a certain time in human history. As such these specific Laws are not permanent fixtures in human behavior. However, ‘Law’, as in humane requirements for living is a vital part of human existence.  Our values might change but our need for values is eternal.

The Law is fulfilled not by doing xyz but by upholding the need for it’s presence in our lives; by living according to the spirit of the Law. Perhaps, today, the concept of Law is better expressed in the concept of human ‘rights’. Humans, by virtue of their existence, have a ‘right’ to sustain that life by means of work. Work that enables them to feed themselves, clothe themselves and find shelter. Basic human rights are, in essence, a Law of survival. 

But survival, existence itself, for humans, is not sufficient. Humans, as their history demonstrates, are a species that finds benefit, value, in flourishing. And that flourishing is brought about through intellectual flourishing  –  intellectual growth, intellectual evolution. For intellectual growth to function it needs to operate outside, as it were, of Law. Freedom from Law. And that, I would suggest, is what the gospel story is reflecting. Christianity survived, and survives, on intellectual Freedom. Yes, theologically/philosophically of course  –  but the trickle down effect is what has brought us the modern technological world   –  hence the economic world  – that we now live in.

Law and Freedom are part and parcel of human nature. The gospel story simply has placed it’s emphasis upon Freedom from Law   –  emphasis upon intellectual Freedom. Such emphasis does not negate, cancel out, the need for basic human rights  –  the need for Law.

Asking questions re cherry picking the Mosaic Law or how Jesus fulfilled the Law, to my thinking, miss the whole point of the gospel story. It’s not a case of Jesus filling the xyz of the Law  – that somehow or another he dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’. All that was required was that he lived according to the Law of human nature  –  that he functioned in accordance to that nature  –  basically living a humanitarian life by upholding values that sustain that life. (assuming here, for the sake of argument, a historical Jesus…).

Methinks, getting away from the particulars, the Mosaic Law, and grasping the principles involved would make for a more meaningful understanding of issues related to the gospel story. After all, the gospel writers were conditioned by the intellectual world of their day. Their new theological or philosophical ideas could only be expressed within the intellectual world they inhabited. Our intellectual world is different  –  hence we need to find modern ways of expressing their ancient ideas.