birth

If you've followed the blogs to now, there is a steady theme focusing on the crucifixion of Jesus from the legal perspective of the sacrifice. Sacrifice provided a way to please God. Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel knew the ritual's requirements and followed them. Sacrifice was codified in the Law, practiced in the Temple, and despaired over during the dispersion. The sacrifices were endorsed by Rome because of their pacifying influence on the population (and because they were done by Rome for Romish gods).

The event of the crucifixion provides a screeching halt to the practice. The Temple is eventually destroyed and never rebuilt. There will be a Temple, and there will be a sacrifice, but the New Testament place those events into the end times scenarios. Jews may mourn the loss of sacrifice but it does not seem that God has empowered the ritual anymore.

It is safe to say that the crucifixion solved the legal condition brought on by the original sin committed by Eve, then Adam. A new relationship with people is available with God, who before could not personally abide with any form of sin in His Holiness. Now, through the blood of Christ splattered on the doorposts and lintels of a person's life (by faith), God can pass over the judgement on mankind to abide with us in the desert of this world. This is a drastic new relationship and is rightly termed a birth.

No one denies that a child is alive immediately prior to the birth event. One has to accept that the child is not free, is not capable, and is not independent until birth, however. So also is the person who has not applied the blood of Christ's sacrifice to their life. Original sin is like the walnut's shell to the nutmeat - an almost impenetrable covering to the outside world. The nut is not free to grow, cannot be fed by the world around it, and is not capable of an independent life. The shell must be cracked, the baby must be born, and we must be spiritually birthed at some point in life.

The sacrificial system is over because the final sacrifice is complete. Prophecy and practice collided on Calvary with God's foreseen solution. "It is finished" was much larger than a death breath, it was God's exclamation point on his covenants.

The result? The birth of the church, the gathering, without the restrain of the physical altar or sacrificial system. Free, capable and independent people gathered to enjoy the blessings of God and proclaim to the captive world the way out. The walnut shell can be cracked, the womb opened up, the life to live is available!