Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
On the Pharisaic law: which of its precepts are particular, and which universal. Since, then, both in the Law and in the Gospel the foremost and weightiest precept is loving the Lord God with one's entire heart, and the precept ranking next after it is loving one's neighbor as oneself, a single author is thereby shown to stand behind both the Law and the Gospel. For since the precepts of a perfected life are the same in both Testaments, they show forth the same God -- who ordained particular precepts suited to each, but who, in both, urged the same higher and supreme precepts, without which there is no salvation. And how could the Lord fail to confound them, when he shows that the Law is not from a different God, saying to those he was teaching, the crowds and the disciples: 'The scribes and Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses. So carry out and keep whatever they tell you, but do not model your conduct on their deeds; for they talk yet fail to act. They tie up crushing loads and pile them onto people's shoulders, while refusing themselves to budge those loads even by a single finger.' He was not, then, finding fault with the Law given through Moses, which he was even then urging should be kept while Jerusalem still stood; rather, he was reproving them because, while they proclaimed the words of the Law, they were without love, and for this reason had become unjust toward God and toward their neighbors. As Isaiah likewise states: 'This people pays me honor with their mouth, while their heart keeps far away from me. Their worship of me is empty, since what they teach are the rules and commands invented by men.' By 'the rules invented by men' he means not the Law delivered through Moses but the traditions devised by their own elders; and by clinging to these they nullified God's Law, and on that account failed likewise to submit to his Word. This, indeed, is precisely what Paul says concerning them as well: 'For not knowing God's righteousness, and striving to set up a righteousness of their own, they did not submit themselves to God's righteousness. For Christ is the culmination of the Law, unto righteousness for every believer.' And how could Christ be the Law's culmination without having also been its origin? For the one who brought it to its close is the very one who set it in motion; and it is he who says to Moses: 'I have indeed witnessed the misery of my people dwelling in Egypt, and I have descended to rescue them' -- ever accustomed, from the very outset, as the Word of God, to go down and go up again for the deliverance of those in hardship.
Now the Law had already taught beforehand that man must follow Christ, and the Lord himself makes this plain to the man who asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life, answering him thus: "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." And when the man asked further, "Which?", the Lord said again: "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself" — proposing, as it were, the precepts of the Law as steps by which those willing to follow him might enter into life; and what he said to that one man he was saying to all. But when the man had said, "All these I have done" — and perhaps he had not, for otherwise he would not have been told, "Keep the commandments" — the Lord, exposing his covetousness, said to him: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell everything you possess, give the proceeds to the poor, then come and follow me," pledging him a share with the apostles if he should do this; and he was not announcing to those who followed him some other God the Father besides the one who had been announced from the beginning through the Law, nor another Son; but he was teaching them to do the precepts which God had commanded from the beginning, and by good works to dissolve their old covetousness, and to follow Christ. And that the distribution of one's possessions to the poor dissolves former covetousness, Zacchaeus made plain, saying: "See, Lord, I now give half my possessions to the poor, and whatever I have taken from anyone by fraud, I pay back fourfold."