Christ Fulfills the Whole Law

He fulfils the washings, the dietary laws and the purification laws. These laws all spoke of the sanctification of the blood of Christ and taught men to discern between good and evil: not meats, which pass into the belly and out again.

And He said to them. Are you so without understanding also? Do you not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entering into a man, it cannot defile him; Because it enters not into his heart, but into his belly and goes out into the draught, purging all meats? And he said, That which comes out of the man, that defiles him. (Mk 7:18-20).

By this Jesus claimed that food does not defile before God. Jesus fulfilled and removed the whole ceremonial law of the Old Covenant. Food and blood laws depicted and prefigured the work of Christ. His blood cleanses us. These laws were teaching instruments. They had no value in themselves. Some of them had value in hygiene and health, but none of them commend us to God now we have the Spirit.

The Old Covenant ceremonial laws had the purpose of teaching mankind to discern and to discriminate between clean and unclean, meaning between moral and immoral, right and wrong. The law taught us that two different things do not go together:

You shall not sow your vineyard with different seeds…You shall not plough with an ox and an ass together. You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, as of woollen and linen together. (Deut 22:9-11).

This is a rudimentary principle, a beginning principle, a picture that carries a lesson, a pre-school object lesson. The lesson is that Christ has no fellowship with Belial: that we should come out of Babylon and be separate and that light has no fellowship with darkness (2 Cor 6:15).

Now that Christ has fulfilled the law we leave the rudimentary principles and go onto perfection, meaning we embrace Christ.

Wherefore if you are dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why as though living in the world are you subject to ordinances. (Col 2:20).

We embrace the mature intent of the law. We live in Christ separate from sin.