AS A MAN THINKETH

AS A MAN THINKETH Around the Year with Emmet Fox April 22 “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" Matthew 5:17-18 A "jot" or yod was the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, like the Greek "iota." A "tittle" (really "little horn") is one of those tiny spurs or projections that distinguish certain Hebrew letters. The scribes and the Pharisees were for the most part worthy men living strictly moral lives according to appearances. Their faults were the weaknesses of the religious formalist everywhere— spiritual pride and self-righteousness. Of these faults they were unconscious— that is the deadly malice of these diseases of the soul— but they did strive to fulfill the law as they understood it Jesus knew this, and he gave them credit for it. Here he warns his followers that unless their practical conduct is better than that of these people, they need not suppose that they are engaged on the spiritual path.