Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
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 leading 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 fulfil 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.
The most dangerous traps are the ones we can not see. This is especially true of spiritual pride more commonly referred to as the “holier than thou” syndrome. When we say in the Lord’s Prayer “lead us not into temptation” it is referring to this form of spiritual corruption. After we have been led to God, the unseen sin that traps many of us is self righteousness. When we are thinking “We are good, therefore we must be right or better than someone else” we are on truly dangerous ground. What we should be thinking is “God is good and it is only through his grace and mercy that we are redeemed from sin.” We are no better than the least among us. If we lose sight of that we are in more peril than the least among us.
Z Gardener
Good Morning Garden 
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