Our Former Schoolmaster

 

Mrs Patrick was my grade three teacher and what a teacher she was. She made me feel like I was worth teaching. She doubtless gave the other children the same feeling. As far as I remember, nobody was kicked out of class for being bad. Better still, she made learning fun.

But it would be wrong for anybody to want to stay in the same grade. The same holds true in spiritual matters. As Paul mentioned in Galatians 3:24-26 (BBE) about the Law given to Israel by Moses, "So the law has been a servant to take us to Christ, so that we might have righteousness by faith. But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a servant. Because you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus."

The Galatian church, as some Christian denominations today, wanted to go back to the types and shadows of the spirituality fulfilled in Christ. That's why Hebrews 10:1 and 2 (BBE) explains, "For the law, being only a poor copy of the future good things, and not the true image of those things, is never able to make the people who come to the altar every year with the same offerings completely clean. For if this had been possible, would there not have been an end of those offerings, because the worshippers would have been made completely clean and would have been no longer conscious of sins?"

Thanks to Christ being our sacrifice for sins, we no longer need to worry about the customs of ancient Israel, God-given though they were. As Paul wrote in Colossians 2:16 and 17 (BBE), "For this reason let no man be your judge in any question of food or drink or feast days or new moons or Sabbaths: For these are an image of the things which are to come; but the body is Christ's."

And as Paul also noted in Colossians 2:23 (BBE), religious people think neglecting their bodies somehow makes them holy. "These things seem to have a sort of wisdom in self-ordered worship and making little of oneself, and being cruel to the body, not honouring it by giving it its natural use."

It's a shame for those naming the name of Christ to want to discard his awe-inspiring grace for the misery of the Law. We ought to rejoice in the freedom from sin bought by our Lord rather than delighting in the past.

Provided Christ doesn't return on Saturday, I plan to post about school days and the good memories from them.