Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: boatbums; Syncro
Boatbums, "Amen"! Your answer is certainly a good one, a very good one as far as it goes. Offering God the service of the praise and thanks (Hebrews 13:15)and our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) is truly acceptable to God.

Yet the outward, sacred signs of the Old Covenant--- the sacrifice of the bread offering, the offering of the lamb --- were to be perpetual institutions. As it is written:

2 Chronicles 2:4 2
[And Solomon sent to Huram the king of Tyre, saying...] Behold, I build an house to the name of the LORD my God, to dedicate it to him, and to burn before him sweet incense, and for the continual shewbread, and for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts of the LORD our God. This is an ordinance forever to Israel.

Exodus 12:17
So you will keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very day I brought your regiments out from the land of Egypt, and so you must keep this day perpetually as a lasting ordinance.

God told Moses that the Passover Feast should be a perpetual institution. Malachi said the offering of incense and the pure offering would be practiced in the gentile nations "from the rising to the setting of the sun". But where is this perpetual institution still practiced? Among the gentiles? Where?

Surely all the prophecies and types of the Old Covenant must be fulfilled, and fulfilled in a perfect manner, by the Messiah. For only the Messiah could be the perfect High Priest as well as His Body and Blood being the perfect sacrifice.

By giving us his Body and Blood at his celebration of the Passover, Jesus perpetuated the Passover in a manner in which the "perpetual institution" could be celebrated from east to west among the gentile nations, and be fulfilled.

It's good and true and utterly necessary --- but it's not enough --- to say that we offer our thanks and praise, and ourselves, to God, since that was understood even in the OT: for God was always warning against an empty sacrifice which did not involve the inner self, the heart.

What is needed is a perfect Priest offering a perfect Sacrifice in a manner that can be perpetuated among the gentile nations from the rising to the setting of the sun. We offer our thanks and praise,our selves as a fitting sacrifice: but the ONE perfect sacrifice to offered as a perpetual institution among to gentile nations, even to this day, is the ONE Divine Liturgy, the ONE Sacrifice of the Mass, which offers the ONE perfect Sacrifice, once and for all, to God for the sake of our salvation.

"My" offering of "my" self to the Father is good and necessary, but not perfect. Jesus offering Himself to the Father, is perfect.

4,027 posted on 12/30/2014 9:57:15 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o (And again: “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples!” - Rom 5:11)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3785 | View Replies ]


To: Mrs. Don-o; boatbums; Syncro
>>This is an ordinance forever to Israel.<<
4,060 posted on 12/30/2014 11:27:44 AM PST by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4027 | View Replies ]

To: Mrs. Don-o; boatbums; Syncro; CynicalBear
What is needed is a perfect Priest offering a perfect Sacrifice in a manner that can be perpetuated among the gentile nations from the rising to the setting of the sun.

Well, we have our perfect Priest in Jesus, but the offering of His sacrifice was, according to Hebrews, a one time event that accomplished the intended purpose.  His ongoing function as our High Priest is to act as our advocate.  But the propitiatory (sin-cleansing) offering is a concluded activity.  I'm sure you know the passage well, but I recite it for completeness and for the benefit of others:
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
(Hebrews 1:1-3)
But what of the "perfect" sacrifice, you say?  Is this even mentioned in Malachi?  Not in the sense in which you are using "perfect."  Consider the words again:
For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.
(Malachi 1:11)
The Hebrew for "pure" here is "tahor," which means clean, in the sense of ceremonially acceptable.  As we note from Romans 12:1, the sacrifice of praise we as believers offer to God IS acceptable.  Therefore it is pure in the exact same sense as used in this passage, even though it is offered by us in our imperfections.  This is because God does not see our imperfections, judicially speaking.  Having been justified by faith, we come before Him with Jesus as our advocate, dressed in His righteousness.  Our praise and blessing as it reaches Him is as pure as if Jesus Himself had offered it. This also is why we have no need of lesser intermediaries.  Just Jesus.

Therefore, as nothing in the passage requires the sacrifice to be propitiary, and as it is well met by the non-propitiary but nevertheless acceptable sacrifices of Gentile believers all over the earth, there is simply no reason to read back into this passage a doctrine of Aristotelian substances that had no definite expression until the 9th Century monk Radbertus.

As to the "perpetual" nature of the OT sacrifice, the Hebrew word for "forever" in the passages you cite is "olam."  It does not carry the westernized sense of an absolute eternity of time.  It is more the sense of a period of time that will run, from a human perspective, into the unforeseeable future. See for example the entry in the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon:
עוֹלָם n.m. long duration, antiquity, futurity
Some Hebrew scholars also use the concept of "age" or "world," for certain context specific renderings. In any event, building on these "olam" passages to push past the boundary of the New Covenant simply doesn't work. These services of priestly sacrifice are specifically set aside by the coming of Messiah.  Hebrews is unambiguous on that point.  We are in the New Covenant, under the lawgiver of the New Covenant, and His law is to remember his death by the paschal meal till He comes back for us, which remembrance presumes a deed done and finished ("It is finished"), which deed can then be remembered with much love.

Peace,

SR
4,096 posted on 12/30/2014 12:21:33 PM PST by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4027 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson