Christ Cleanses the Temple

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.  He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”  (Mt 21:12-13)

And what reason had He for doing this and saying, and vindicating His house, if He did preach another God?  But that He might point out the transgressors of His Father’s law; for neither did He bring any accusation against the house, nor did He blame the law, which He had come to fulfill; but He reproved those who were putting His house to an improper use, and those who were transgressing the law.  And therefore the scribes and Pharisees, too, who from the times of the law had begun to despise God, did not receive His Word, that is, they did not believe on Christ.…

But as many as feared God, and were anxious about His law, these ran to Christ, and were all saved.  For He said to His disciples: “Go to the sheep of the house of Israel, which have perished.”  And many more Samaritans, it is said, when the Lord had tarried among them, two days, “believed because of His words, and said to the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we ourselves have heard [Him], and know that this man is truly the Savior of the world.”  And Paul likewise declares, “And so all Israel shall be saved;” but he has also said, that the law was our guardian to Christ Jesus.  Let them not therefore ascribe to the law the unbelief of certain [ones].  For the law never hindered them from believing in the Son of God; no, but it even exhorted them so to do, saying that men can be saved in no other way from the old wound of the serpent than by believing in Him who, in the likeness of sinful flesh, is lifted up from the earth upon the tree of martyrdom, and draws all things to Himself, and vivifies the dead.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV.2.7-8