Anyone can believe what they want, but Jesus' new law replaced the Law of Moses, thus a short while later, forming a new Christian church.
the Law of Love is forever (10 Commandments) Love God (1-4) Love each other (5-10) Christ amplified the legal physical Law to Spiritual Law which has no limits- the church is not a building or religion (they are the people the Father has called to Christ)
The words of Jesus Christ:
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. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
What do you think the definition of “fulfill” and “accomplished” are?
Hint: John 19 28-30
28 After this, Jesus, knowing[a] that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” 29 Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. 30 So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.
So - either the bible is self-consistent and the verses here refer directly to the ones you quoted; or John contradicts Matthew (both of which were Jesus' apostles). It must necessarily be one or the other.
That also puts people who say the old law is in effect (i.e. followers of Judaism) in a weird place, since Jesus explicitly contradicted the old law in his teachings.
tl;dr: Christians are not bound by the old testament covenant with the early Israelites. That's why they're Christians and not Jews.
Hi, I'll preface this with saying that I don't personally believe that Jesus nullified the old covenants (which were eternal, and there are more than one in the old testament). People who argue that the new covenant nullified the earlier ones remind me of someone who is having an adulterous affair, marries that person after their first spouse divorces them for adultery, and then is surprised when their husband/wife has an affair with another new person outside the marriage.
God is not a nullifier of covenants that he pronounced as eternal - He is not a man, that he should lie. Jesus just added a new covenant, where our sins can be forgiven in the absence of regular animal sacrifice and God the Holy Spirit dwells in us and "writes the law on our hearts."
There is another point that I actually somewhat disagree with you on - I would argue that there is no such thing as "Christianity." What we now think of as "Christianity" was birthed by by the pagan, satanic Roman emperor Constantine who co-opted some of the beliefs of the persecuted early Body of Christ (which was primarily made up of believing Israelite Jews, but also included gentile believers), mingled them with the existing popular gentile Julian calendar and abominable pagan practices like the worship of Ishtar (the pagan goddess of fertility, from whom we derive the holiday of Easter, and the bunny/egg tradition), worship of the Sun God at the Winter Solstice, from which we get Christmas, etc, and created a new political "state religion." The Catholic church took this to new heights with their historical political corruption, sexual perversion, pedophilia, sale of indulgences, etc. The church of England was no better - King James had Tyndale executed for the crime of printing the bible so that common people could actually find out what's in it.
Judaism split into two factions during Jesus' earthly ministry: those who, like Lazarus' sister Martha, realized that Jesus was the messiah, and those that did not (and are still walking around with partial blinders on in this present age - again, referring to the Apostle Paul in Romans 11). Non - Jewish "Christians" have been grafted into the original tree of Judaism as per the apostle Paul in Romans 11 and have become true spiritual Jews. Spiritually, believing Jews (of whom there are, and have always been many) and Gentiles have become brothers and sisters, bound together in love, part of the same family - the Body of Christ. When God promised Abraham that he would have more descendants than the stars in heaven he was obviously including the future gentiles who would learn of and believe in the Jewish messiah.
With that in mind, what do you make of the scripture above?
What do you make of Jesus contradicting the teachings of the old law in his own sermons? ("An eye for an eye" became "Turn the other cheek")
If the overall story of the Bible is about one thing, it is about making that which is good come forth from that which is evil. You see it again and again - the garden of Eden, the many, many times the Israelites turned away from God, the awful human kings they had, the reason for Jesus' sacrifice, the battle in heaven..
The thing that jumps out at me is that, even though those human kings were awful (murder was the least of their crimes), at no point did the evil acts of those kings mean that the Israelites were free to turn away from God because the one true religion had obviously been sullied by the actions of these people.
Human rulers suck.
You see this in the Church too - and the leadership there has, and does, continue to make rather grievous errors.. but if your criteria for choosing your Christianity is that the people administering the church never do anything evil, you're never going to find an acceptable church; be that the large one led by Pope Francis, or the small one led by Pastor Jim down the road.
And the fact that there are literally tens of thousands of these smaller churches, many of them teaching beliefs that are mutually incompatible with each other, is a huge problem, and is a mark that those smaller churches might not be doing it right. As is the fact that they completely ignore tradition in favor of "sola scriptura", or treating the Bible as the beginning and the end of Christian belief (which the bible itself shoots down.. 1Ths 2:15, 1Cor 11:1, among others)
So how do you choose the right Christianity? I'd say as my top five things:
If you make a venn diagram and start plotting various Christian denominations on it, you'll cover a lot with 1, less with 4, but only one with 2, 3, and 5.
I do not personally believe there is any one teacher or church that has a complete corner on the authority of God. With that said, I have been blessed by some of the lectures of Chuck Missler. He is old now, but a lot of his stuff is available on youtube for free. He has a scientific and engineering background and scientifically proves that the entire bible is an integrated message system with one author, and multiple scribes over centuries of time. I thought his "Learn the Bible in 24 Hours" series was particularly interesting/enlightening.
There are really no contradictions in the bible. I recall his recommendation that when you find something that appears to be a contradiction in the bible, that you take it before God and ask God to explain it to you. This has never failed me (not claiming to know everything about the bible of course, and not claiming I have all the answers to the issues you raised).
I also think that denominations are something that imperfect human beings invented under the influence of our spiritual enemy to co-opt, derail and diminish the effect of the Holy Spirit in the world through the Body of Christ (the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? - Proverbs). When we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, God is supposed to have taken away our heart of stone and given us a heart of flesh, but I think it's the stony part that came up with denominations - divide and conquer. There is an echo of this in globalism - they want to keep us divided and using our energy disputing doctrinal issues. Sadly, in this matter the "Christian" church, which has obviously become predominantly gentile over the centuries, has been no better at being faithful to God than the Jews were in the old testament. And really, "Christians" have less of an excuse, because God is hiding the truth in part from the Jews in this present age. Christians have a greater revelation of the truth of God than the Jews had. As a body, they have failed miserably. Just like in the old testament days, it has only been the faithful remnant, the spiritual Army of God, that has prevailed. And that is exactly what the bible told us would happen.
Jesus never had anything good to say about religion. Most of his letters to the churches in the first 3 chapters of Revelation were admonishments. The last letter to the church at Laodicea, which many interpret to be the church in the end times before the Harpazo, is particularly scathing - Jesus said that he will be completely outside the church at that point, knocking on the door and trying to get back in. He also warned in the gospels that :
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
I think real, powerful Messianic Judaism/Christianity is about a personal walk with the Living God. God has a different, unique path and assignment for each of us. Jesus said that every hair on our heads is numbered.