For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
The jot is the tiniest Hebrew letter; the tittle, those small points that distinguish one letter from another. Change a single point and you change the word's meaning. So solemn was this that scribes destroyed entire manuscripts if they made the smallest error. This proverbial phrase means the whole law stands firm: not its smallest part shall perish.
AI summary
Those Jews who loved the Old Testament feared Christ came to destroy it; the libertines hoped He came to free them from it. Both were wrong. Christ keeps the Law and Prophets on the throne as the rule of faith and practice. He cancels nothing that was forbidden by nature or the moral law, and forbids nothing that was permitted by either.
AI summary
Commenting on Matthew 5:17-20
I came not to sweep away the foundation of the Old Testament but to fulfill it, establish it, unfold it, embody it in living form. Fear not that I will subvert God's living oracles; rather, enshrine them in reverence, affection, and character.
AI summary
Commenting on Matthew 5:17-48