Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
All Commentaries on Matthew 5:17 Go To Matthew 5
Chromatius of Aquileia
AD 407
The Son of God, who is the author of the law and the prophets, did not come to abolish the law or the prophets. He gave the people the law that was to be handed down through Moses, and he imbued the prophets with the Holy Spirit for the preaching of the things to come. Therefore he said, “I have come not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them.” He fulfilled the law and the prophets in this way: He brought to pass those things that had been written about him in the law and the prophets. Hence, when he drank the vinegar offered him on the cross, he said, “It is finished,” evidently to show that everything written about him in the law and the prophets had been completed, even including the drinking of vinegar. He fulfilled the law at any rate when he completed by the sacrament of his passion the once prefigured mystery of the paschal meal. Consequently the apostle says, “For Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed.” .
