Jesus is our reconciliation

272 Jesus our reconciliationFor many years I fasted on Yom Kippur (German: Day of Atonement), the highest Jewish festival day. I did this in the wrong belief that I was reconciled to God by strictly foregoing food and fluids on that day. Many of us may still remember this mistaken way of thinking. However it was explained to us, the intention to fast on Yom Kippur consisted in our reconciliation (son-ung [adoption as sons]) with God through our own works. We practiced a religious system of grace plus works - overlooking the reality in which Jesus is our reconciliation. Perhaps you still remember my last letter. It was about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year's Day, which is also known as the Day of Trumpets. I ended by saying that Jesus had blown the trumpet once and for all and was Lord of the year - indeed, Lord of all times. As the finisher of God's covenant with Israel (the old covenant), Jesus, the Creator of time, changed all times forever. This gives us the New Covenant perspective on Rosh Hashanah. If we also look at Yom Kippur with eyes on the New Covenant, we understand that Jesus is our reconciliation. As is the case with all Israelite feast days, the Day of Atonement indicates the person and work of Jesus for our salvation and reconciliation. In the New Covenant he embodies the old Israelite system of the liturgy in a new way.

Now we understand that the feasts of the Hebrew calendar pointed to the coming of Jesus and are therefore out of date. Jesus has already come and instituted the new covenant. So we know that God used the calendar as a tool to help us know who Jesus really is. Today our focus is on the four main events in Christ's life - Jesus' birth, death, resurrection, and ascension. Yom Kippur indicated reconciliation with God. If we want to understand what the New Testament teaches us about Jesus' death, then we should keep in mind the Old Testament models of understanding and worship contained in God's covenant with Israel (the Old Covenant). Jesus said they all bear testimony of him (John 5,39-40).
 
In other words, Jesus is the lens through which we can properly interpret the whole Bible. We now understand the Old Testament (which includes the Old Covenant) through the lens of the New Testament (with the New Covenant which Jesus Christ fully fulfilled). If we proceed in reverse order, incorrect conclusions will lead us to believe that the New Covenant will not begin until the Second Coming of Jesus. This assumption is a fundamental mistake. Some mistakenly believe that we are in a period of transition between the old and new covenants and that we are therefore obliged to keep the Hebrew feast days.

During his ministry on earth, Jesus explained the tentative nature of the Israelite worship liturgy. Although God had ordered a special form of worship, Jesus pointed out that it would change through him. He emphasized this in a conversation with the woman at the well in Samaria (John 4,1-25). I quote Jesus who explained to her that the worship of God's people will no longer be centrally restricted to Jerusalem or other places. Elsewhere, he promised that wherever two or three would gather, he would be among them8,20). Jesus told the Samaritan woman that with the end of his ministry on earth, there would no longer be such a thing as a holy place.

Please note what he told her:

  • The time is coming that you will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem.
  • The time is coming and is now when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father also wants such worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4,21-24).

With this declaration, Jesus eliminated the importance of the Israelite worship ceremony - a system prescribed in the law of Moses (the old covenant). Jesus did this because in person he would fulfill almost all aspects of this system - with the temple in Jerusalem as the center - in the most varied of ways. Jesus' declaration to the Samaritan woman shows that a large number of worship practices according to the previous literal way are no longer necessary. Since Jesus' true worshipers no longer have to travel to Jerusalem, they can no longer adhere to the prescriptions written in the law of Moses, in which the ancient system of worship depended on the existence and use of the temple.

We are now abandoning the language of the Old Testament and turning to all of Jesus; we change from the shade to the light. For us, this means that we allow Jesus personally to determine our understanding of reconciliation in his capacity as the only mediator between God and humanity. As the Son of God, Jesus came into a situation whose circumstances had been prepared for him in Israel long before and acted lawfully and creatively to fulfill the whole Old Covenant, including the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement.

In his book Incarnation, The Person and Life of Christ, TF Torrance explains how Jesus accomplished our reconciliation with God: Jesus did not reject the sermons of John the Baptist about the announcement of judgment: In the life of Jesus as man and before Especially through the death of Jesus, God executes his judgment on evil not by simply forcing it to sweep away with one stroke of force, but by plunging fully into the deepest depths of evil, to remove all pain, guilt and suffering to take on. Since God Himself comes in to take all of human evils upon Himself, His intervention in meekness has tremendous and explosive power. That is the real power of God. That is why the cross (dying on the cross) with all its indomitable gentleness, patience and compassion is not simply an act of endured and visually powerful heroism, but the most powerful and aggressive act, as heaven and earth have never experienced before: the attack the holy love of God against the inhumanity of man and against the tyranny of evil, against all the towering resistances of sin (p. 150).

Considering reconciliation merely as a legal settlement in the sense of re-understanding with God, this leads to a completely inadequate view, as unfortunately many Christians have today. Such a view lacks depth in relation to what Jesus did in our favor. As sinners, we need more than freedom from the penalty of our sins. It is necessary to us that even the death blow be transferred to sin in order to be exterminated out of our nature.

That is exactly what Jesus did. Instead of just treating the symptoms, he turned to the cause. This cause can be very aptly described as The Undoing of Adam, based on a book by Baxter Kruger. This title expresses what Jesus finally achieved through the reconciliation of people with God. Yes, Jesus paid the penalty for our sinfulness. But he did far more - he performed cosmic surgery. He put a heart transplant into fallen, sin-sick humanity! This new heart is a heart of reconciliation. It is the heart of Jesus - the one who, as God and man, is a mediator and high priest, our Savior and elder brother. Through the Holy Spirit, just as God promised through the prophets Ezekiel and Joel, Jesus brings new life into our dry limbs and gives us new hearts. In him we are a new creation!

Connected with you in the new creation,

Joseph Tkach

President
GRACE COMMUNION INTERNATIONAL


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