The Law is Holy but We're not

Have you ever wondered why the Old Testament laws were so strict? To modern ears, they sound barbaric. But God meant those laws to be a blessing and a lesson to the Israelites.

First of all, God is the one who made us so his word is law. In Ezekiel 18:4 (BBE), God spoke, "See, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so the soul of the son is mine: death will be the fate of the sinner's soul."

God shows his justness in Ezekiel 18:20 (BBE) when he instructed that only those who commit sin will die for it. "The soul which does sin will be put to death: the son will not be made responsible for the evil-doing of the father, or the father for the evil-doing of the son; the righteousness of the upright will be on himself, and the evil-doing of the evil-doer on himself."

But this lets nobody off the hook since we're all destined to perish. In Genesis 2:17 (BBE) God gave Adam and Eve one simple command. "But of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not take; for on the day when you take of it, death will certainly come to you." They didn't fall down dead, thanks to God's mercy, but all Adam's descendents owe God their forfeited lives.

How then can we say that we'll have eternal life when we have the sentence of death in our DNA? Jesus gave Martha the answer. John 11:25 (BBE) reads, "Jesus said to her, 'I am myself that day and that life; he who has faith in me will have life even if he is dead;'"

Many of the Old Testament commandments were prophetic illustrations of Christ's work on the cross. As I've pointed out before, the Passover is symbolic of Christ dying so that spiritual death won't come upon us. The blood of the Passover lamb was put on the doorposts to show the death angel that God's people were within the house.

Another seemingly trivial point was that none of the Passover lamb's bones were to be broken. Exodus 12:46 (BBE)  says, "It is to be taken in one house; not a bit of the flesh is to be taken out of the house, and no bone of it may be broken."

And as we read in John 19:36 (BBE),after roman soldiers broke the legs of the other two crucified men, "These things came about so that the Writings might be true, 'No bone of his body will be broken.'"

I'll be writing more about the crucifixion of Christ and it's eternal ramifications in my next book called You Think You're Going to Heaven? There are some people who see Christ's death on the cross as his ministry going wrong. But we who know our scriptures realize that it was planned long before the first atom was created.

On Thursday, I'll post about why Christ hasn't returned yet. He actually has a great reason for waiting so seemingly long to come back to us.