Jesus and Law (6)

Jesus explained that the interpretations of the teachers of the law were an obstacle to the kingdom of God.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to (Matt 23:12).

Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering (Luke 11:52).

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees got the Law wrong and closed off its insights into the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom needs laws, so people who are interested in the kingdom will need need to understand the place of the Law that the teachers of the law did not understand. Jesus gave the keys to the Kingdom to his disciples. One of those keys must have been insight into the role of law in the Kingdom of God.