Luke 16:16 in Its Setting

Most of the verses examined so far are used to say that the Torah ended at the cross. This one places the ending a little earlier, at the river Jordan, with a man in camel’s hair.

The claim goes like this. “The law and the prophets were until John. Yeshua Himself said so in Luke 16:16. After John, the age of the law was over, and the age of the gospel began.”

It sounds tidy: two ages, with a clear line between them, drawn by Yeshua Himself. If the verse means that, the question of this book is settled in a single sentence. So we must read that sentence, and then the one after it, because Yeshua did not stop speaking at the end of verse 16.

One Breath

Luke 16:16-17 The nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the good news of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the nomos(law) to fail.

Read by itself, verse 16 might sound like an ending: “The nomos(law) and the Prophets were proclaimed until John.” Verse 17 follows at once: “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the nomos(law) to fail.”

These two sentences came from the same mouth, one right after the other. If verse 16 meant that the law was over, verse 17 would contradict it at once. Yeshua would be saying in one breath that the law had ended and that heaven and earth will pass away before one stroke of a letter of it fails. He did not say both, and so verse 16 cannot mean that the law ended.

The thing named in verse 17 is very small. It is not a commandment, or even a sentence, but “one stroke of a letter,” the smallest mark a pen can make. Yeshua says that this mark is harder to remove than the sky above you and the ground under your feet. No one speaks in that way about a law whose time has run out.

We read the same thought in Matthew 5:17-19 in Book 1, and again in Chapter 3. Here in Luke, Yeshua says it immediately after the words that are used to end the law.

What Was Until John

Then what does “until John” mean? Something did reach its end with John, and the question is what it was.

In the Greek, the first half of Luke’s sentence has no verb at all. Word for word it reads: the law and the prophets until John. The YLV supplies “were proclaimed.” The same saying appears in Matthew, and there the verb is written out.

Matthew 11:13 For all the prophets and the nomos(law) prophesied until John.

The verb is prophesied. What lasted until John was not the law itself but the law’s prophesying, its pointing forward to the One who was coming. For centuries the nomos (νόμος) and the prophets together had been saying, “He is coming.” Then John stood at the Jordan, saw Yeshua coming to him, and pointed.

John 1:29 The next day he saw Yeshua coming to him and said, "Behold, the amnos ἀμνός am-nos'(Lamb) of God who takes away the sin of the world!

The time of pointing forward was over, because the One being pointed to had arrived. So Luke 16:16 continues, “since that time the good news of the kingdom of God has been preached.” The age of “He is coming” gave way to the age of “The kingdom is here.”

Picture a railway platform. For an hour the loudspeaker repeats that the train is approaching. Then the train pulls in, and the announcement stops. No one standing on the platform concludes that the railway has been shut down. The timetable still holds, and so do the rules of the line. Only the announcing has ended, because what was announced has come.

What ended with John was the announcement, not the railway.

The Very Next Verse

There is a simple way to test this reading. If the law had ended with John, Yeshua would not go on applying it, so look at what He says next.

Luke 16:18 Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.

Right after verse 17, Yeshua takes up one commandment of the law and applies it as it stands. Divorcing and remarrying in this way, He says, “commits adultery.”

Adultery is a word that has meaning only if there is a law against it, and “You shall not commit adultery” is one of the Ten Commandments. Had the law and the prophets ended with John, the adultery of verse 18 would have no basis at all, for there would be nothing left to break.

The passage therefore runs in a straight line. In verse 16, the law and the prophets prophesied until John, and now the kingdom is preached. In verse 17, not one stroke of a letter of the law will fail. In verse 18, one of its commandments stands in force. The three verses carry a single meaning.

After the Resurrection

Someone may still object that all this came before the cross. Of course Yeshua applied the law then, the objection runs, but after the resurrection everything changed. Yet Yeshua spoke of the law after the resurrection as well.

Luke 24:44 Now He said to them, "These are My logos λόγος log'-os(words) which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the nomos(law) of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled."

The risen Messiah speaks of “the nomos(law) of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms,” using the same word nomos that He used in Luke 16. He does not treat the law of Moses as something that ended with John, or as something that ended at the cross. He speaks of it as Scripture written about Him, which “must be fulfilled.”

Luke records “until John” in chapter 16, and he closes his Gospel in chapter 24 with the risen Lord naming the law of Moses. It is the same writer, using the same word. If the law had passed away at John, Luke would have had no reason to show the risen Messiah opening it to His disciples.

Two Readings

The first reading needs verse 16 alone. The second needs no verse removed.

“Until John” is true, and it is good news. The long age of pointing forward ended because the One whom the law and the prophets pointed to had come. What did not end was the law itself. Heaven and earth will pass away first.

The next claim makes the same move with a different date. Paul, it is said, wrote that the law was added only “until the seed would come,” and since the seed has come, the law’s work is done. That leaves the question of what exactly lasted until the seed.