Lots of Christians think of Judaism as a worn-out, rigid old religion that needs to be replaced. Apparently Jesus didn't think that way. When Jesus gave the teachings that are parts of the Sermon on the Mount, he was speaking as a Jew to Jews. He apparently thought of himself as part of a vital religious tradition through which God had been at work for centuries and through which God was just about to do something new and even greater. When Jesus spoke of fulfilling the law and the prophets, he was calling all who would take him seriously to commit themselves to something really big, something that many of us have not yet taken into our lives.

Matthew also thought that Jesus came to bring the faith of the Jewish people to fulfillment. As he told the story of Jesus, he did several things t…