Verse 18.  Next we have to notice the exuberant testimony to the permanence of the law.  Not the smallest of its letters, not even the little marks which distinguished some of them, or the flourishes at the top of some of them, should pass,—­as we might say, not even the stroke across a written ‘t,’ which shows that it is not ‘l.’  The law shall last as long as the world.  It shall last till it be accomplished.  And what then?  The righteousness which it requires can never be so realised that we shall not need to realise it any more, and in the new heavens righteousness dwelleth.  But in a very real sense law shall cease when fulfilled.  There is no law to him who can say, ’Thy law is within my heart.’  When law has become both ‘law and impulse,’ it has ceased to be law, in so far as it no longer stands over against the doer as an external constraint.

Verse 19.  On this permanence of the law Christ builds its imperative authority in His kingdom.  Obviously, the ‘kingdom of heaven’ in verse 19 means the earthly form of that kingdom.  The King republishes, as it were, the old code, and adopts it as the basis of His law.  He thus assumes the absolute right of determining precedence and dignity in that kingdom.  The sovereign is the ‘fountain of honour,’ whose word ennobles.  Observe the merciful accuracy of the language.  The breach of the commandments either in theory or in practice does not exclude from the kingdom, for it is, while realised on earth, a kingdom of sinful men aiming after holiness; but the smallest deflection from the law of right, in theory or in practice, does lower a man’s standing therein, inasmuch as it makes him less capable of that conformity to the King, and consequent nearness to Him, which determines greatness and smallness there.  Dignity in the kingdom depends on Christ-likeness, and Christ-likeness depends on fulfilling, as He did, all righteousness.  Small flaws are most dangerous because least noticeable.  More Christian men lose their chance of promotion in the kingdom by a multitude of little sins than by single great ones.

Verse 20.  As the King has Himself by His perfect obedience fulfilled the law, His subjects likewise must, in their obedience, transcend the righteousness of those who best knew and most punctiliously kept it.  The scribes and Pharisees are not here regarded as hypocrites, but taken as types of the highest conformity with the law which the old dispensation afforded.  The new kingdom demands a higher, namely a more spiritual and inward righteousness, one corresponding to the profounder meaning which the King gives to the old commandment.  And this loftier fulfilment is not merely the condition of dignity in, but of entrance at all into, the kingdom.  Inward holiness is the essence of the character of all its subjects.  How that holiness is to be ours is not here told, except in so far as it is hinted by the fact that it is regarded as the issue of the King’s fulfilling the law.  These last words would have been terrible and excluding if they had stood alone.  When they follow ’I am come to fulfil,’ they are a veiled gospel, implying that by His fulfilment the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us.