According to the apostle Paul, there is only "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:5). And, it only makes sense that if there is only one God, there can be only one faith or religion ordained by him. While many propose the idea that the countless religions of the world, including the various fractured segments of Christianity, are but many ways to the one God, we must accept the authority of the Word of God that there is only one religious system that finds perfect acceptance before God and that that system is the religion which he, himself, authored and perfected.
If God never changes–and he swore an oath that he does not (Hebrews 6:17)–then we must assume that whatever religious system pleased him in the past must in some form still please him. This is not to say that the one religion for mankind is a syncretism of all of the various religions that man has employed, for what divine order could possibly be extracted from the maze of confusion that a world of religions offers today. It is a declaration that if God is one, then his religion is also one. If the first and greatest commandment is "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one," then we must assert that his faith (religion) is one.
Where Did They All Come From?
Before the creation of the world, there was only one religious system in heaven by which the angelic host worshipped the Eternal Yahweh. When man was brought forth upon the earth, his function was to bring the praise and honor of the Creator to this planet; therefore, God began to reveal to man some of the order of worship which pleased him. The pure lineage of Adam through Seth was maintained as a patriarchal priesthood to offer up sacrifices and worship to God.
On the other hand, the descendants of Adam through Cain followed after deception, polluting the pure worship of God to offer service to idols and material gods, even honoring the devil himself. The lineage of Seth became more and more contaminated with the seed of Cain and its accompanying religious perversion. Finally, the situation became so bad that God determined to destroy the earth.
At that time, Noah alone had maintained a perfect pedigree, keeping himself and his children separate from the daughters of men; therefore, he only had right to the priesthood to offer acceptable sacrifices unto God. For this reason alone, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and was given a plan for the salvation of his household.
Following the great flood, Noah’s son, Ham, was influenced to perpetuate the evil principle of worshipping other gods. From Ham and his descendants came the various pagan religions which worshipped the heavenly creation and engaged in wanton practices, glorifying the works of the flesh and exalting men themselves above the knowledge of God.
All the religions of the earth except the one true religion of the Eternal God are but polluted copies of the original. They all have counterfeited the true, introducing their own gods, but maintaining the principles of the religion of Yahweh. All have an altar; all have sacrifices; all offer prayers, all believe in life after death; all have a priesthood. But, all are counterfeits of the true God, the true altar, the true sacrifice, the true resurrection, the true priesthood.
In the midst of this confusion of Babylon, however, God called a direct descendant of Adam through Seth and of Noah through Shem and directed him to leave his Syrian household in search of the land where the altar of God would be found, the city which had foundations whose builder and maker was God (Hebrews 11:10). This man was Abraham, the father of the faithful, the first human being who was chosen of God to enter into a covenant with his Maker (Genesis 12:1-4). He was selected by God because he had the faith to believe God’s promise, because he was faithful to keep all of God’s commandments, statutes, and laws (Genesis 26:5) and because God knew he would teach his children and grandchildren to be obedient to God also (Genesis 18:18, 19).
God’s Religion for God’s Nation
Through Abraham’s lineage, God perpetuated his chosen religious system until the time when over four hundred years after Abraham’s call, he brought those descendants of the man of faith before his mountain, Sinai. It was there that God revealed to Moses and the children of Israel his divine system for praise, worship, and service. Moses was permitted by Yahweh to look into the heavens to behold the order employed by the angelic host in the worship of the Eternal. Finally, the man of God was instructed to establish that same order among Israel by making all things "according to their pattern" (Exodus 25:40; Hebrews 8:5).
The one religion which the Eternal God, himself, revealed to mankind was biblical Judaism. Since that time, many copies have been made. Some, like Islam, have taken the one God, given him a different name and another prophet and modified the system of service to please a different culture of men. Others, including Jews and Christians, have altered God’s system by the introduction of human tradition. Many have used God’s religion as a pretext for spreading their own ideas and concepts. In effect, they have created God in their own image and have created their own faith to worship the God they have made.
Judaism Approved of God
Still, in it all, there is only one way–the old path wherein is the good way! The one religion which God authored and put his stamp of approval upon was biblical Judaism. The Holy Scriptures document the miraculous displays of divine glory that accompanied the proper observance of Judaism when the very Shekinah of God was localized in a material manifestation of fire on the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant in the most holy place in the tabernacle and when overpowering smoke of his presence interrupted the priests’ service in the temple that Solomon built and dedicated. The system which was employed in both of these settings was Judaism, the term that was used to describe the religion of the first covenant by Paul in Galatians 1:13 ( jIoudaismov"). It was the Judaism which Jesus defended and espoused (Matthew 5:17; John 4:23).
Judaism Reformed and Perfected
Since Jesus was the Son of God, we could rightly expect that he would perpetuate the system that God had developed through the centuries. And, so he did! In reality, Jesus was the divine Memra (the Hebrew word translated "Logos" in Greek and "Word" in English) who created everything "in the beginning" (Genesis 1:1). He was the theophany who wrestled with Jacob and commissioned him as Israel. He was the lawgiver at Sinai who defined God’s will to Moses and gave Israel a national constitution called the Torah (law). When he became incarnate in the womb of the virgin Mary, was born in Bethlehem, lived his life as a Jew among his Jewish brethren, died at the hand of the Romans, resurrected, and ascended into heaven, how could he have done otherwise than to perpetuate and perfect Judaism, the religion that he had authored (Hebrews 12:2)?
Jesus was the prophet like Moses (Acts 3:22). The law (Old Covenant Judaism) came by Moses; grace and truth (New Covenant Judaism) came by Jesus Christ (John 1: 17). Jesus brought a perfected order to Judaism through a new covenant, based on new and better sacrifices and offering a new and better method of observing the unchanging laws of God. Then, he extended that one faith to all mankind, including all the nations of the world in the covenant of God with Abraham (Galatians 3:8). He was the Son of Jacob through whom Israel’s light was taken to the Gentile nations of the entire world (Isaiah 42:6). He was the Son of David who was given the heathen for an inheritance (Psalm 2:8).
Earnestly Contending for God’s Faith
The one faith of God has always been the object of Satan’s ire. He first tried to pollute it by drawing worship to himself from a third of the angelic host in heaven. He would "be like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14; Ezekiel 28:12-15), he said. After he was cast out of heaven by Michael the archangel (Revelation 12:3-9), Satan sought to pollute every incidence of God’s giving pure religion to mankind. Since that time, his quest has been unrelenting even to this day. Satan has never had anything original: he has only copied and perverted the pure faith of God.
This is why Paul warned the church that after his departure, "grievous wolves" would enter in among them, "not sparing the flock" (Acts 20:29). This was why Paul was jealous over the church that he had established in Corinth. He feared that "as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so [their] minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (II Corinthians 11:2, 3). This knowledge also prompted Jude to plead with the church to "earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3), noting that certain men had crept in who had used "the grace of God as a pretext for lasciviousness."
Both evil men and men of good, but misguided intentions have prevailed upon the New Testament Judaism which Jesus and the apostles practiced and have changed it into something almost unrecognizable. Pagan and Greco-Roman tradition have so altered the face of Christianity that today it can hardly be seen as a "Jewish" faith. If the church is to be the bride of Christ, would the Jewish Jesus recognize her if he returned today? Or, for that matter, would she recognize him?
We believers who have accepted Messiah Jesus into our lives as Lord and Savior have entered into the beginning of Judaism in the New Testament. We have undertaken the journey to acceptance before God that is found in the narrow way, the ancient path. We must again hear the words of Jude and "contend for the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). We must seek to worship the Father in the same way as Jesus and the apostles did. We must return to the good way by restoring the Judaic system of praise, worship, and service in its new covenant order. As we continue to search God’s Word for his will, we will become more and more obedient to the one faith of the one God, Judaism through Jesus–God’s One Way.
Jewish Jesus
or
Cosmic Christ?
Very shortly after the death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, what came to be called the theological and Christological controversies arose among those who professed themselves to be the church. Just who and what was (is) Jesus? Was he God, or was he man, or was he both God and man, and if both, to what degrees? From these and similar questions came forth a host of teachings about the nature of Jesus. Some were truth, others, heresy, and they all in one way or another have continued to influence the church to this day.
Heresy Infiltrates the Church
The influence of the theological and Christological heresies on the church was considerable. It is a miracle that the truth prevailed in the midst of the pervasiveness of heresy. And, even though truth triumphed officially, heresy continued to shape far too much of the practical application of the church's orthodox teaching.
Among the first heresies which challenged the very existence of the church were Gnosticism and docetism, both of which presented a perverted view of the nature of Jesus the Messiah, in which his absolute humanity as a Jew among his Jewish brethren was denied in favor of a view that made him solely the cosmic Christ, the good God who stood in opposition to the malevolent Yahweh of the Old Testament.
The Gnostics believed that man was saved by esoteric knowledge, not by faith. Marcion developed his own version of Gnosticism by declaring that Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, was the Demiurge who created the evil material world in which the immortal souls of men were trapped. He believed that Jesus was the good God who came to end this contamination by destroying Yahweh and his religion, Judaism, and establishing a completely new, unforeseen religion–Christianity. Marcion purported that Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah, was not born of Mary, was never incarnate, and only appeared in spirit during the time of his ministry.
The docetists, including their most extreme sect, the monophysitists, believed that there was only one nature of Jesus–the divine. He was not human, did not suffer on the cross, and did not need a resurrection. His physical appearance was only a phantom, a disguise of his spirit so that men might perceive and worship him. This heresy totally denied the incarnation of Jesus as a Jew among his Jewish brethren.
Though both the Gnostics and the docetists were branded heretics by the church, their influence infiltrated the consciousness of the church so that it more and more tended to ignore the historical Jesus in favor of the cosmic Christ. As the church gradually denied its Judaic heritage in favor of the concepts of Greco-Roman philosophy and ideas from mystery religions, it became more and more easy to deny the Jewishness of Jesus and to look upon him as a mystic figure, the Christ (despite the fact that the word Christ is a Greek representation of the Hebrew word Messiah.)
Orthodox Theology and Christology
Out of the raging inferno of several centuries of conflict and polemics, orthodox Christian theology and Christology emerged. The Nicene Council in 325 C.E. concluded that Jesus was very God, of one substance with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. There was one God in three persons, one Being of substance yet three personalities. It was the person of the Word of God who had become incarnate, lived, suffered, died, resurrected, and ascended. This was the teaching of the deity of Christ, the foundation of theology. Later, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E. concluded that Jesus was both God and man, very God and very man, not part God and part man, but all God and all man at the same time. This was the teaching of the two natures of Christ, the foundation of orthodox Christology.
Both of these orthodox teachings recognized what is clear in the Apostolic Writings: Jesus is more than just a man; he is God (John 1:1-4, 14; Colossians 2:9; I Timothy 3:16). At the same time, in his incarnation, he was very much a man, less than God in the sense that he had limited his deity to his humanity (Philippians 2:6-8) and had become subject to death. He became man in order that he might complete the plan of salvation by overcoming sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3), providing an efficacious atonement for the sins of all mankind (Hebrews 9:26) through the offering of his perfected body on the cross (Hebrews 2:10, 14), and by resurrecting on the third day as proof of God’s approval upon his sacrifice (Acts 2:23-35).
With these clear and irrefutable teachings in place in the church for over fourteen hundred years, how is it that a large part of the church today has virtually denied the historical Jesus in favor of the cosmic Christ? How is it that Jesus is hardly thought of as a Jew who lived his entire life in the midst of his fellow Israelis? How is it that we have so many different conceptions of Jesus, including the Nordic, Aryan Jesus with blonde hair and blue eyes, the African Jesus with black skin and hair like wool, the oriental Jesus with oriental features? And, this is only among Christians. What of the Jesus who is portrayed as a first-rate medium by the consciousness philosophers, who is one of the many incarnations of God in Eastern Monism, who is another of the prophets leading up to the prophet Mohammed in Islam, who is the healer of Christian Scientism, who is a Rabbi among many Jews, who is the great moral example in nominal Christianity? Everyone of every religion wants to claim Jesus for himself and to create him in their own image. If we are to understand Jesus, however, we must accept the record of Holy Scripture that places him and his sayings in the historical and cultural milieu in which he was born, lived, died, resurrected, and ascended.
Jesus Was A Jew!
The record of scripture is clear: Jesus was born a Jew; he lived as a Jew; he died as a Jew; he is a Jew, the High Priest of the believer in heaven; and he will be a Jew when he returns to the earth.
When he became incarnate on earth, it was "evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda," the tribe whose name was contracted to form the word Jew (Hebrews 7:14). As "concerning the flesh" Christ came from the "Israelites" (Romans 9:4, 5). He was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, the "son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1). He was (as was supposed) "the son of Joseph . . . the son of David . . . the son of Jacob . . . the son of Isaac . . . the son of Abraham . . . the son of Adam . . . the son of God" (Luke 4:23, 31, 34, 38). When the wise men from Babylon came to Jerusalem, they asked, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2).
Jesus lived a normal life as a Jewish man among his Jewish brethren. There was no nimbus around his head, no fire coming from his fingers and toes, or any other distinguishing mark that would signal to others his divine origin. He was very man: he thirsted, he was hungry, he ate, he slept, he wept, and he died. As a child he was precocious in his knowledge of the Torah, the law of God, so much so that at the age of twelve he astounded the rabbis in the temple (Luke 2:42ff); however, there was nothing that would convince most of those around him that he was more than a rabbi (teacher) or perhaps even a prophet. In everything he was recognized as a proper, Torah-observant Jew. The woman at the well of Samaria recognized him as a Jew because of his manner of dress and demeanor (John 4:9). The woman with the issue of blood was healed when she touched the tzitzit (tassels) of his garment (Matthew 9:20), an important part of the dress of every Jewish man who observed God’s commandments. It was not until late in his ministry that Peter understood by divine revelation that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God (Matthew 16:16).
When Jesus died, he was still a Jew. This is the superscription that appeared above his head as he hung on the cross: "This is Jesus the King of the Jews" (Matthew 27:37). Pilate legally recognized his Jewishness and his kingship in what was probably a bit of sarcasm directed toward the Jewish nation in comparing Jesus’ fate with the status of Caesar.
When Jesus arose from the grave in the resurrection, he was still a Jew. This is the essence of Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:23-36. The resurrection of Jesus so that his flesh did not see "corruption" was required in order that Yahweh’s oath to David could be fulfilled: "that of the fruit of [David’s] loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ. . ." Jesus did not die a Jew and resurrect the cosmic Christ. He was the cosmic Christ from eternity past, but he became incarnate as a Jew, died as a Jew, and resurrected as a Jew so that God’s oath to David could be fulfilled "concerning the flesh."
Jesus ascended to heaven as a Jew. Hebrews 7:14, 15 tells us that in order for Jesus to become our High Priest at the right hand of the Father, the law of the priesthood had to be changed by reverting to the priesthood of the firstborn, the patriarchal priesthood of Melchizedek. The reason for this change was the fact that "it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood." Jesus, then, is still of the tribe of Judah, a Jew–in glorified flesh, to be sure, but in Jewish flesh, nevertheless.
When Jesus returns, he will still be a Jew. The angels who witnessed the ascension of our Lord assured the disciples who were present: ". . .this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). The same Jewish Jesus who resurrected in the flesh will return to the earth to sit on the throne of David in that same Jewish flesh, thereby fulfilling God’s oath to David. Interestingly enough, this same Jesus will return to the same place from which he departed–the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:12; Zechariah 14:4)–and in the same manner in which he ascended–with clouds (Acts 1:9; Revelation 1:7).
While he was, is, and ever will be the cosmic Christ, in his incarnation, Jesus was, is, and will be a Jew according to the flesh until that time when he will deliver everything up to the Father so that God may be supreme (I Corinthians 15:27, 28).
Jewish Jesus or Cosmic Christ? He was and is both–God and man, Creator and Redeemer, Author and Finisher of our faith.
A Perfect Sacrifice–The Foundation of Christian Faith
The inherent sinfulness of mankind and the consequent need for atonement form a concept that is uniquely Judaeo-Christian. From the animal that was slaughtered in order to provide a covering for the nakedness of Adam and Eve, to the sin offering that was available to Cain following his insufficient firstfruits offering, to the system of animal sacrifices under the law of Moses, to the eternally efficacious sin offering made once for all on the cross of Calvary through the body of Jesus Christ, the concept of the shedding of blood for the remission of sins has always been an identifying characteristic of Yahweh’s religion.
The sinful nature of humanity is summed up in David’s statement: "I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalms 51:5). From David’s words we understand that sin is inherent in human beings. Paul declared that no one has escaped this condition: "The scripture hath concluded all under sin" (Galatians 3:22); "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Even in rabbinical Judaism, the human situation and proclivity toward sin is described as the yetzer hara, the evil inclination that is believed to take residence in a person at the moment of birth. Though many have argued the difference between the Augustinian concept of original sin inherited at conception from one’s parents and the rabbinic idea of yetzer hara of rabbinic thought acquired at birth, there are many similarities, and both confirm the nature of sin that wars within every human being from the time of his birth.
Separation and Death
The root of sin is rebellion against God and his will (I John 3:4), and the penalty for sin is separation and alienation from God and his blessings (Genesis 2:17; I Corinthians 15:56; 6:9; Romans 6:23). Ultimately, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Since all men are concluded in sin, the need for a means of reconciliation is readily apparent. God’s plan for bringing about such a reconciliation was set in motion in the Garden of Eden with the sacrifice of an animal to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve Genesis 3:21.
God’s plan was given further substance at Sinai, where for the first time he made an agreement with a people that he would be their God, a covenant that was established in the law that provided a means of atonement. God’s constitution for the nation of Israel (the Torah) provided initial covenantal relationship with God and a means of maintaining their relationship with him by making the prescribed sacrifices for sin.
Blood Sacrifice For Sin A Judaic Concept
In order for a people to become God’s chosen, it was necessary that their sins be remitted so that they could have access to God. This could be accomplished in only one way: "It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Leviticus 17:11); "Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22). This is why at the initiation of God’s covenant with Israel, both the people and the law were sprinkled with blood: "For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood . . . and sprinkled both the book, and the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you" (Hebrews 9:19-20).
When God established the first covenant with his chosen people at Mount Sinai, then, he very carefully delineated the various blood sacrifices which were to be offered continually for the sins of the Jewish people. These animal sacrifices were necessary for a continuing atonement for sin and for the purification of the flesh and spirit. This was in keeping with Judaic holism that saw man as a whole, not as bifurcated parts, spirit and body, good and evil, as philosophies in the world around them espoused. The blood sacrifice was an absolute necessity: it was a requirement without which no individual could be justified before God. The covenant was the foundation of Judaism; however, the blood sacrificial system was its maintenance. The Jewish people were joined to God by the covenant; however, in order to maintain their relationship with God, they were required to offer sacrifices when they violated God’s commandments. This was God’s provision for covenant maintenance.
The concept of offering blood to atone for sin was unique to Judaism. While various Gentile religions involved sacrifices to appease their gods and court their favor (even the killing of human beings), Judaism stands out alone as a system of offering blood for the remission of sins and justification before God. The true and living God required something that was peculiarly his, something which came directly from him which could not be maintained without him: the life that is in the blood (Genesis 9:4). The shedding of blood was the taking or offering up of a life and was in keeping with the concept of a life for a life (Deuteronomy 19:21). Since the penalty of sin was death (Romans 6:23), a life had to be taken to forestall immediate death and achieve reconciliation or atonement with God.
Old Testament Sacrifices Incomplete
The blood sacrifices of the Old Testament were incomplete. They served only as a temporary means of atonement and prefigured the coming Atonement which would be complete and perfect. The sacrificial law’s weakness was the fact that its atonement was not perpetual: "For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshipers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins" (Hebrews 10:1, 2).
This inefficiency in the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant was the reason for the prophet’s prediction of the coming New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31). The sacrifices of the Old Covenant were, in fact, only shadowy symbols that prefigured the reality that was to come. The New Covenant was to bring a purification from sin by a better sacrifice than that of the Old Covenant (Hebrews 9:23).
The nature of the sacrificial change which brought about the New Covenant was this: "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast prepared me" (Hebrews 11:5). A human body was prepared as a vicarious sacrifice for the sins of mankind in fulfillment of the type established when Abraham prepared Isaac to be sacrificed. Just as a ram was substituted in Isaac’s place, so the Lamb of God was substituted in the place of the human race, all of which deserved death because of sin. The Jewish concept of vicarious atonement originated in Isaac and was completed in Jesus, with both sacrifices offered on Mount Moriah.
Messiah, The Perfected Atonement
Various Jewish prophets foretold the day when a man would shed his blood for the remission of sins. Most notable among these was Isaiah who predicted, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned away every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all . . . he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken . . . Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days . . . and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Isaiah 53).
King David was swept up in the spirit of this man’s suffering and described the experience: "They pierced my hands and my feet . . . . They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture" (Psalms 22:16, 18). Zechariah predicted that "they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son" (Zechariah 12:10). Daniel foretold the coming sacrifice and its timing: "After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself . . . in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease" (Daniel 9:26, 27).
But, how could the death of a mere human being have any more effect in atoning for sin than the death of an animal when we understand that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)? The prophets also provided the answer to this dilemma: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). The perfect means for a perfect sacrifice and perpetual atonement was achieved, then, when the Virgin Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit and brought forth Yeshua (Jesus of Nazareth), the first man since Adam who was not conceived in sin. Of Jesus and of him alone could it be said, "He knew no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth" (I Peter 2:22). The very nature of sin is transmitted from generation to generation by the seed of the man, not the woman, for Adam sinned willfully while Eve was deceived (I Timothy 2:14). Though Mary was sinful (as is every human being), her son was not conceived in sin because he was not produced through the natural process of human reproduction. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit; therefore, that "holy thing" was the Son of God (Luke 1:35). He was literally "made of woman . . . under the law" (Galatians 3:4), for he had no earthly father. This is not to say that a man was exalted to become God but that God, himself, became fully human in the person of his Son.
In order for Jesus to be offered as a perfect sacrifice, however, it was necessary that his humanity be perfected by being tempted in all points, that he suffer affliction, and that he endure the trial of Satan. "For it became him . . . to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering" (Hebrews 2:10). When the appointed time of his offering came, he could say in all truth, "The prince of this world cometh, but he hath nothing in me" (John 14:30). A sinless body that had been perfected through sufferings was a sacrifice that was sufficient to meet the demands of divine justice for the sins of mankind.
As Jesus hung on the cross outside Jerusalem, he fulfilled every type and shadow of the sacrificial law of the Old Testament. In particular, he was the Passover Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world, whose blood could be applied to the hearts of believers by the millions, causing eternal death to pass over them. He was the vicarious sacrifice and atonement prefigured for Judaism in Isaac. He was both the Yahweh goat and the scapegoat that atoned for and carried the sin of all mankind outside the camp (Leviticus 16:7-26; Hebrews 13:13).
Jesus’ sinless state resulted from his meticulous observance of the law. Because he was born under the law, he was responsible to keep it. Had he violated any of the commandments (mitzvot), he would have been a sinner, for "sin is the transgression of the law" (I John 3:4). Since he overcame every temptation, however, Jesus established his own righteousness by the righteousness of the law and provided for the substitutionary imputation of his righteousness to every believer for his faith.
The Cross–The Foundation of the New Covenant
The atonement of the cross was the foundation of the New Covenant which Jesus brought to Judaism, Yahweh’s religion. In the Old Covenant, the gifts and sacrifices "stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances," and they were imposed upon Israel only until the "time of reformation" (Hebrews 9:10). This was the work of the suffering Messiah: "But Christ being an high priest of good things to come, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us . . . How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament" (Hebrews 9:12, 14, 15).
The one Passover sacrifice of Jesus provided perpetual and eternal atonement: "Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with the blood of others . . . but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:25, 26). When he appears the second time, it will be without any sin offering unto salvation (Hebrews 9:28).
Is it any wonder then that there is now no continuing animal sacrifice? It is not mere coincidence that the blood sacrifice was suspended in Judaism with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The one eternal sacrifice had been offered for all men and for all time in the blood of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9:28). The temple sacrifices ceased in 70 C.E., exactly forty years after Jesus died on the cross. These forty years were a probationary period for the nation of Israel and its leadership, part of the prophetic type of Jonah which Jesus said was the only sign that he would give to Israel to validate his claim of Messiahship (Matthew 12:19-31). Jonah’s forty days of witness to Nineveh were prophetic of God’s withholding judgment on Jerusalem and its leaders for forty years, just as the fact that Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and nights was prophetic of the duration of Jesus’ entombment. The historical and prophetic cessation of temple sacrifices in 70 C.E., precisely forty years after the death of Jesus, confirmed the fact that Yahweh’s ultimate sacrifice for sin had been made once and for all in the person of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus, which paralleled Jonah’s release from the whale, validated both his Messiahship and the eternal efficacy of his sacrifice for sin.
A Perfect Sacrifice Perfects Judaism
This perfect sacrifice perfected Judaism and extended it to all men, providing eternal life to everyone who believes. This sacrifice became the foundation of a new order for Judaism that came to be called Christianity in subsequent generations. It was never God’s intention to abolish Judaism, a fact witnessed by Jesus and the apostles themselves. It was, however, his intention to complete the faith that was outlined for Israel at Sinai and to extend it to the nations for the obedience of faith. This truth is also in keeping with some rabbinic understanding that predated the time of Christ which said that when the Messiah would come he would change the law (Torah) in order to complete it. The fulfillment of the sacrificial law in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus offered a perfect system, one which the writer of Hebrews tells us is better than the original system. It was not that the first covenant was bad and the new covenant was good; it was that the first covenant was good and the new covenant was better. While everything in the old economy was good, it all paled in significance when compared with the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.
Once we have recognized God’s one sacrifice for sin, Jesus Christ, and have received his righteousness by imputation for our faith, we enter into relationship with Yahweh, the God of the Jews, and are then ready to practice the faith "once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3), the faith which Jesus and the apostles practiced throughout their lives: biblical Judaism. We are simply not called to a religion that is foreign from Judaism. We are called to worship the God of the Jews, to read the Hebrew Scriptures, to exalt the Jewish Messiah, and to share in the salvation that is from the Jews. The perfect sacrifice for sin that was offered once and for all at Calvary is for us the foundation of faith that produces a lifestyle of obedience to God, patterned after the Judaism of Jesus and his apostles.