Jesus is the Fulfillment of the Law

I am reading a chapter from E. Stanley Jones book, Christ of the Mount (1931), this morning. He says some earth-shattering, mind-bending things!  I am still reeling as I seek to process truth.

Jesus said, "I am not come to destroy the law, or prophets, but to fulfill."

Jones writes: "God intends to save a race" (p. 101). By this, Jones is referring to the human race. He embraces the Biblical perspective that "race" is a social construct. The Biblical perspective is that all humanity is part of one race. Within the human human race, the Bible speaks of tribes, tongues, and nations. Jones' worldview is that the law is being fulfilled through the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made flesh, who has come to be the Savior of the world. As such, all social truths within world cultures are collapsed into the Person of Jesus Christ, all the while remaining subservient to His Person.

Jones presents Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the quest of each kingdom, nation, and civilization.

• The Egyptian desire for immortality is fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, declaring, "I am the resurrection and the life."
• The Greek naturalism is fulfilled in Jesus' becoming the wellspring of life.
• The Roman authority is fulfilled in Jesus' authority of life.
• The Buddhist longing for the end of suffering is fulfilled in Jesus' declaration of the Christian joy in the midst of suffering and pain.
• The Islamists' demand to submit to truth is fulfilled in Jesus' pronouncement that all thoughts are to be brought under captivity to His Lordship.
• The Chinese reverence for ancestry is fulfilled in the Christian understanding of the self-giving love of the Trinity within the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the extension of that love to humanity, where we, in turn, extend that self-giving transforming love to God and man.
• The Japanese honor of loyalty is fulfilled in the Church, the Body of Christ, and her call to live in unity in community.
• The Hindu emphasis upon unity is fulfilled in Jesus Christ's High Priestly prayer (John 17) and the call for Holy Spirit filled unity through the sanctifying Presence of the Holy One.

Jones emphasizes Jesus' words, that salvation comes from and through the Jews.  He then shows how fine qualities of various national spiritual pursuits are collapsed in the Person of Jesus Christ, not as a syncretistic patchwork or an eclectic smorgasbord of contradictory spirituality, but as a new and complete whole.

"The Hebrew word was Righteousness--salt; the Greek word was Illumination--light. Jesus said that his disciples were to be both Righteousness and Illumination--they were to sum up the finest in each national just and genius.  If the Hebrew word was Righteousness and the Greek word was Illumination, the Buddhist word is Desirelessness, the Hindu word is Unity, the Confucianist word is Superior, the Japanese word is Loyalty, the Christian word is Life.  Because the Christian's word is life, he sums up all the lesser qualities of life found in each national bent and genius" (pp. 108-109). 

"Add up all the fine qualities that inhere in a each nationality... when you add all these together in the sum total you have something akin to Christian character" (p. 109).

Wow! Pondering all of this richness.