What is the relationship between the New Testament and the Old? What is the relationship between Jesus and Moses; between the Law and the gospel? These are questions of enormous significance for how we understand the Bible, Jesus and salvation.
I love the Bible Project’s phrasing “to fill them full.” Yes, Jesus is the new Moses who went up on a mountain and taught about God and how to have a covenant relationship with Him. But that did not abolish the Law of Moses or the rest of the Old Testament. No. Jesus came to “fill them full.”
He did that first in His own life by satisfying all requirements of God’s Law.
He did that ultimately through His death and resurrection — making full atonement for your sin and mine.
And Jesus offers that fully satisfied righteousness to all who come to Him in faith.
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:21-24
Our English word “justified” somewhat obscures the meaning for us. But the message jumps off the page if you render the meaning of the word “declared righteous.” All who believe in Jesus are “righteous-ified” in Him: not only declared judicially righteous but also filled full with His righteous Holy Spirit and increasingly becoming righteous through the process of sanctification.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 8:1-4
The same phrase “filled full” or “fulfilled” appears again in Romans 8:4. Jesus fulfilled the requirements of God’s perfect Law so He could transfer that complete perfection to you and me by faith alone.
“So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:17-19
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 shows us how to obey the command in Ephesians 5:18 to “be filled with the Holy Spirit.” As we experience the fullness of Jesus’ love for us — not just knowing it in our heads but reveling in that grace and mercy in our hearts and lives — we can be “filled with all the fullness of God.”
Jesus did not come to crush us under the demands of God’s Law for our holiness and righteousness. He came to fill us full with His own Holy Spirit. Come be encouraged by this wonderful Gospel truth (Jan. 11, 2026).