Resurrection Within the Ruins

Matthew 5:17 — “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

I woke with this verse pressing gently against the edges of my thoughts. Not as a rebuke, but as a reminder: Christ did not come to erase what came before. He came to complete it. To inhabit it. To carry it forward in a way no one else could.

I’ve always felt the weight of the law—not just its demands, but its silence. The places where I’ve failed, the commandments I’ve broken not only in action but in thought, in absence, in anger withheld but still burning. And yet, Christ kept it all. Not as a distant ideal, but as a lived reality. He walked the old paths and did not stumble. His obedience wasn’t rigid—it was radiant. That kind of keeping makes Him the perfect One. Not perfect as in polished, but whole. Enough. Enough to stand in my place.

And He did. That’s the second layer. The cross wasn’t a workaround—it was a reckoning. He bore the law’s demand, not to shame me, but to release me. My transgressions didn’t disappear; they were carried. Named. Paid for. That kind of love still undoes me.

But the third movement is what I’m sitting with this morning. Resurrection life. Not just forgiveness, but transformation. A life that doesn’t just keep me from murder, but from contempt. From the slow corrosion of anger. From the quiet violence of indifference. This life within me—His life—is not natural. It’s divine. Eternal. It doesn’t just meet the law; it surpasses it. It fulfills the highest law by reshaping the heart.

I’m not there yet. But I feel the pulse of it. The invitation. The possibility that even in my unfinished places, this life is working—quietly, faithfully—to make me whole.

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