This book endeavores to provide a faithful description of the vision provided by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as recorded by Matthew for His followers. Much of the change in perspective regarding God’s law has come from the biblical implications regarding the reality of Jesus’ fulfillment of the law that was necessary for the integrity of His self-sacrifice on the cross has come from Paul’s letters. Paul understood the implications well because he had spent a lifetime immersed in Old Testament theology as a Pharisee himself. And those implications are well-attested in Christian theology and history, and are not the subject of these pages.

It examines Jesus’ understanding of how the human manifestation of His Sonship, and His (at the point He gave the Sermon on the Mount) impending sacrifice and how its propitiation for sin effected God’s moral law. Jesus understood and accepted His role in the trinitarian Godhead. How could He not since it was His reality? This also means that He understood the complex character of human identity as having both individual and corporate poles, as well. Remember, He was both fully divine and fully human, both at the same time without mixing or confusing His divinity with His humanity. This is the orthodox, historic, inherited Christian and universally accepted teaching. Indeed, belief in the doctrine of the Trinity is essential for Christian identity.