The following consists of three chapters from Grace in the Law, a work-in-progress by Pauline Holmes. The chapters consist of the Introduction, Chapter Two on the reality of hell, and Chapter Four debunking the perfectionist view of the Old Testament. To find out about cassette tapes you can buy that contain the entire book, click on Tapes.

GRACE IN THE LAW

Pauline Holmes

Introduction: who needs grace if we're not under the law?

"We're under Grace now, we're not under the Law." This oxymoronic statement is spewed out with horrible frequency in the Christian church, often accompanied by a recitation of misapplied New Testament verses. One thing is sure. Anyone who makes this statement is not familiar with Scripture. An unbiased reading of Scripture will determine that "Law versus Grace" is a contradiction in terms. Grace is not missing from the Law. In fact, the only place where Grace is found is in the Law.

Scripture

It is no trivial matter that for present purposes, "Scripture" refers primarily to what Jesus and Paul mean by the term, which is different from what most contemporary Christians imply. When Jesus refers to "Scripture," it is the "law and the prophets" of the Old Testament (Matthew 7:12), i.e., the Pentateuch or Torah, the first five books of the Bible containing the Law God gave to Moses, and the prophecies found in the Old Testament. The same is true when Paul uses the word "Scripture." He based his teachings on what we now call the Old Testament and, when speaking to Christian converts, commended the Bereans who checked his claims against God's promises (Acts 17:13).

On the other hand, to most Christians "Scripture" is the New Testament.⁽¹⁾ This is a major tragedy. The church has been knocked off its true foundation. The result has been the prevalence of certain heresies that are discussed in this book.

Two heresies of antinomianism and perfectionism are still alive and kicking

Can it really be true that the Christian church is still hobbled by two pervasive heresies: antinomianism, or grace with no law; and perfectionism, or law with no grace? The first epistle of John was written to repudiate antinomianism and perfectionism. These two warped interpretations of Scripture have plagued Christianity from the beginning, but few realize the extent to which they dominate the church today.

Related heresies: 1. Dispensationalism

Notice that the person who claims being under grace now and not under law implies that two different systems have been in place: a time of law and a time of grace. This means that they accept both antinomianism and perfectionism, but see them as having been in force at different times...which means yet another heresy is deployed. This is the abomination of Dispensationalism, which says that God made fundamentally different salvation contracts over time, moving from perfectionism to antinomianism. This is utterly untrue. In fact, there is one fundamentally consistent covenant that has not changed from the beginning. It is expressed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in Christ.

Related heresies: 2. The disappearance of hell

Going along with antinomianism and perfectionism is yet another heretical belief: that there is no place of torment awaiting on the other side of death. The contemporary Christian church has managed to do away with the very idea of hell. In fact, the church increasingly denies that God performs any sort of punishment in either this world or the next.

If there is no hell, particularly one that lasts forever, who needs a savior, a rescuer, a redeemer? Nobody. Too many have bought the idea that Christ came merely to transform us into better people; his role was only to save us from some sin or other in our present life rather than to save us from the eternal penalty of our sin. To be sure, we humans have some nasty habits from which we need to be rescued, but that is not why Christ came in the flesh to die for us. This concerns eternity, no less. The human race would be damned eternally if it were not for the shed blood of Christ.

Two parts to the Law

For present purposes, the Law is the one God gave to Moses, i.e., the Pentateuch or Torah. What most so-called Christians do not realize is that the Law has always had two very distinct parts, or functions. For present purposes, let us call these Part One and Part Two. These do not correspond to the Old and New Testaments, but run side-by-side all the way through the Bible.

Part One shows us what sin is. It is an all-encompassing focus on man's relations with God and man, a code of behavior and emotion that at best can only be partially executed by humans. The law's exacting regulation pervades every nook and cranny of human functioning so thoroughly that humans cannot be other than sinners. Indeed, sin is what comes naturally to us.. God made it very clear throughout His Word that the works of this part of the Law are impossible for humans to fulfill.

The Bible also shows that eternal separation from God is the punishment for departing from total adherence to "Part One" at any time in our lives. In the Garden of Eden there was only one rule, an ordinance from God that one would think easy enough to keep. It was to refrain from eating the fruit of just one particular tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). However, the first humans ate the fruit, causing humanity to be evicted from the Garden and cut off from access to the Tree of Life. There was no way back through human means. Humans now knew what constituted good and evil but were unable to do good and avoid evil. They were doomed.

The fact that sin leads to eternal separation from God is explicit in only a few places in Scripture after the account in Genesis. We find it in the following passage: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4,20). The New Testament writer, Paul, made some pointed statements about it: "For the wage of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23); "by the offense of one judgment came upon all mean to condemnation" (Romans 5:18); and ''sin hath reigned unto death." (Romans 5:21).

This death is separation from God, not just physical death. Adam and Eve did not die in body the day they ate the forbidden fruit. They died spiritually, meaning their connection with God was broken. This inherited state of separation has a terrible consequence for the human race. It means all humans are barred from the Tree of Life, dooming us to spend eternity in the lake of fire along with Satan and the fallen angels who joined in his rebellion towards God. Only total purity would keep us out of hell, but a clean record is utterly impossible for us. One wicked thought in utero or in a dream is all it takes to damn us. Here or there we hit the mark, but those drops in the bucket are not enough to save us.

Christians who think that total fulfillment of Part One was demanded in Old Testament times are simply ignorant.

Part Two is the easy part. It defends us against all the prosecution on Part One, providing a way to get out of separation from God. Right in the Law, God commits Himself to forgive sin when humans approach Him offering the blood of a slain substitute for the sinner (e.g. Leviticus 4:20; 17:11). He provides numerous references throughout Scripture--some more veiled than others--to a human sacrifice He himself would provide (Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 53). This enables us to recognize Christ as the One who would be the final and total payment for all human sin in the form of a blood sacrifice. The gospel, meaning "good news," is the announcement of the physical arrival of God's gift of that total payment.

God put in this provision because He knows it is impossible for humans to avoid sin, i.e. law-breaking. Reconciliation with God through the blood sacrifice gives humans the prospect of eternal life in heaven instead of eternal torment in hell. This will be life in a new body that will never die. God made it easy for humans to appropriate His forgiveness and thus be rescued from eternal torment. Being sprinkled by the priest with the shed blood of a sacrificed substitute for the sinner is pretty straightforward. It gets even easier when that substitute is Christ and humans can claim a payment already made on their behalf instead of having to make continual physical payments with lambs from their own flock. Humans can do it. There is no way we can keep Part One of the law but we can claim the blood of Christ as our atonement for law-breaking.

God highlights the fact that humans constantly break the law by the fact that everybody was commanded to observe the annual Day of Atonement on which God would forgive all sins for the past year. Nobody was/is exempt. All of us are under indictment for sin and face the hell penalty if we reject the God-given means of atonement. The same rule that God gave to Moses applies now. The difference is that now it is the blood of Christ instead of the constant sacrifice of animals.

The Law has, then, two parts: what we call Part One defines sin; Part Two defines how to pay for sin without going to hell.

Perfectionism: law without grace is everywhere but the Bible

There is nothing unusual about law without grace, condemnation with no mercy. All religions⁽²⁾ have a law that says sin, or falling short of perfection, separates humans from the deity forever, destining them for some form of eternal darkness. This is a universal, immutable law. Its very universality says it is inborn, inherent in the human psyche.

However, whereas all religions prescribe some form of eternal punishment for sin, only one offers grace, or mercy, attached to this universal law. In other words, all other religions except the true one shown to us in the Bible have a perfectionist law that only damns. Even though the goal of all religions is to bridge the gap, to reconcile humans to God and get them out of that state of separation which has a dire eternal consequence, the others offer no mercy. The others keep humans eternally separated from God. Some religions try to hang on to the hope of reincarnation because they are aware that such cleansing is unobtainable in one lifetime. This is a theory that lacks any basis in fact. Where are those perfect souls in their final incarnation? Not to be found in this world. Nothing outside of God's Word makes a simple offer of mercy.

Antonimianism: grace without law is irrelevant: So... you can have a law with no grace, but it is a silly idea that you can have grace without a law unless, that is, you ignore the most profound aspect of grace. ⁽³⁾ The term "antinomianism" requires some explanation. It comes from the Greek word "antinomia" derived from "anti" which means "against," and "nomos" which means "law." So it literally means "against law." ⁽⁴⁾

An unbiased reading of the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, reveals a Law that on the one hand indicts all humans as sinners destined for the lake of fire, and on the other, offers freedom from indictment in the form of a God-given reprieve from eternal punishment for law-breaking. Bad news can be canceled out by good news. Who needs a pardon if there is no sentence? If you abolish the law, you also abolish any need for grace. The truth is that the antinomian position denies the essentialness of Christ.

The bad news

The bad news is that the Law specifies that all sin, no matter how minor, is punished by death, i.e., spiritual death, total separation from God leading to the lake of fire after physical death. Due to our flawed nature, separation from God is the state in which humans are born ever since the Fall. As fallen beings, all humans qualify for the death and hell sentence. The result of the Fall is a law (Part One) that is impossible to keep. The law went from one statute to about six hundred, from one do-able prohibition to an encompassing code applying to thoughts and emotions, not just behavior. Even if humans could wipe themselves perfectly clean at any point in life-which is a million miles from being a practical possibility--any previous minor infringement at any time in life would still indict them. The record would have to be clean from start to finish.

The good news

The good news is that the Law also gives humans a way out of eternal damnation. It states that God will not only accept as payment of the price for human sin the death of a substitute in place of the sinner, but God also made the essential blood payment Himself. The Law says: The price (penalty) for sin, any sin, is death-not just physical death but also spiritual death ending in the lake of fire. However, to paraphrase the message, God also tells us in the Law: Since you can't do everything perfectly I will give you a way out. I will accept the shed blood of a substitute in your place. Not only that, I will provide the shed blood of the substitute so you are free to claim it. Since only death pays the penalty, there is nothing you can do to pay if you want to avoid eternal darkness. This substitute shed blood is your only hope and it is a gift. It is yours; all you need do to avail yourself of it is to claim it. Moreover, I command you to claim this gift.

What better proof is there of God's love for humans than that He commands us to be saved?⁽⁵⁾ As rotten as we humans are, God wants us to be saved. The pinnacle of His love is provision of the ransom that buys humans back from death into life. When humans claim the shed blood of Christ, the substitute God provided to pay the penalty in our place, we come under a blanket pardon, an unearned pardon, a total undeserved gift freeing us from eternal darkness into eternal life. The pardon is in the Law. If I reject the Law, I lose the pardon. The pardon is in the Mosaic Law and the Law stands.

This grace-filled Law is reiterated throughout the Bible; all the pictures in the Old Testament represent Christ in one way or another. The shed blood of Christ is the God-given payment for human sin, freeing humans from eternal damnation. Mercy is the most important and essential aspect of the Law. So we ought to get rid of this law/grace dichotomy. There was never a time when there was a law with no grace, nor a time when there was grace with no law. No part of the Bible presents a different covenant between God and humans regarding salvation. Moreover, the Bible alone has a law with grace. All the "other" religions, creeds not based on God's Word, have a law with no grace.

Toxic religion: merciless legalism versus grace-filled legalism

If you are just skimming down these first few pages you might get the wrong idea. Many Christians think that any mention of Law means condemnation with no mercy. The case is just the opposite. Law can defend as well as prosecute.

There is no lack of toxic religion in the world, but the Bible is not the place to find it. All religions promote an existential law that governs not only actions but also emotions. Perfection is essential to avoid eternal punishment. All except one-the Bible--have no mercy. Therefore all except the Bible drive humans deeper into guilt, anxiety, and rage.

At a deep subconscious level, humans are aware that they are in a terrible predicament regarding the essentialness of perfection and their inability to attain it. Massive amounts of psychological defense must be employed to give the illusion that humans attain or come anywhere near the goal of perfection through their own very limited means. This is why merciless legalism is bad for our mental health. Toxic religion forces us into ever-deeper denial and worsening guilt, yet it is the underlying theme of all false religions.

Inborn guilt

The guilt is there before toxic religion comes along. Harmful religion only fans flames on coals already burning. Humans already have existential guilt, the knowledge of deserving eternal damnation, before any effects of toxic religion enter the picture. The indictment stings us inside whether or not we know the law. The truth is, we are under a summons worse than a death sentence. We are sentenced to spend eternity in the lake of fire. Indeed, prosecution is a given for the human race. Hell is the universal default option, the one facing all who do not step forward to claim the God-given provision for forgiveness. It has been our lot since the Fall and it is written in the human psyche. We are prosecuted by our own inborn conscience that has the "sin=death" equation burned into it.

The mental health profession would have us see this guilt coming from our parents, giving us reason to blame them and try to alienate ourselves from our family of origin. But parents are not the source. This guilt is not the result of our early childhood programming. It comes instead from inborn programming in the human psyche present since the Fall. Our ungodly nature constantly departs from what our inborn conscience defines as right and good. Furthermore, deep inside there is an inborn code that says the penalty for even the slightest departure from righteousness is eternal separation from God. There is a wall that we keep hitting and there is no human way past it. God is holy and we are not, nor ever can be aside, that is, from the imputed holiness of Christ.

Without Christ humans are stuck in condemnation. The inborn law in the human heart has condemnation and no mercy. God has put humans in the position of having to go to Him for mercy. Only the One who wrote the Law can offer mercy. The good news is that God makes it very easy for us to obtain that mercy. He spells it out in the Law. The Law offers mercy, and mercy is in the law. The Law is ultimately not about prosecution but about defense.

The irony: another law

The irony is that the very same Christians who claim that they are not under the law--meaning the law of Moses-but under grace go on to do a very strange thing. First, they reject the law God gave to Moses and the freedom it gives, thinking it offers only condemnation. Second, they claim to be under the system known as antinomianism, or grace with no law. Third, they put themselves in the bondage of another law and lack a sense of the mercy going along with it. This is another set of do's and don'ts that reiterates parts of the law God gave to Moses plus some rulings mostly intended to be localized in application. This is the " law of Paul." This so-called new set of maxims comes devoid, on the part of the adherent, of a clear understanding of the pardon for law-breaking. With fractured minds, Christians say out of one side of their mouths that they are not under the law. However, out of the other side of their mouths they become merciless legalists. They obsess, rather selectively,⁽⁶⁾ about certain things Paul tells us to do, as if accomplishment of those things might save them or make them more holy in the eyes of God. Yet they are blind to those teachings by Paul that point out justification by faith in the blood of Christ. Apparently they do not realize they have placed themselves under another law that has no mercy.

The "law of Paul," as found in the sin-defining part of his epistle to the Ephesians, is a subset of Part One of the Law God gave to Moses. It forbids stealing, lying, bearing false witness and drunkenness; it commands wives to submit to husbands, and husbands to love wives. Since humans do not keep even one single law perfectly, this subset is no more possible to keep than the entire sin-defining part of the Law God gave to Moses (Part One). Nevertheless, today's Christians delude themselves that they can keep this law. So the very same people who say they are under grace and no longer under the law, meaning Part One of the Law of Moses, state out of the other side of their mouths that they are under another law in which there is no mercy. They reject the Old Testament as merciless when it very clearly offers mercy. They pick and choose among verses in the New Testament so they fail to perceive the God-given payment for sin, going deeper and deeper into merciless legalism, suffocated by their own unexpiated guilt. This trap of perfectionism is accompanied by massive psychological defense. When that defense structure collapses one day under its own weight, the person will suffer some debilitating form of psychiatric and/or physical illness.

Many so-called Christians suffer from a dissociative disorder that splits knowledge of the law from their behavior. A dissociative disorder is a defensive malfunction of the mind that strives to disconnect related aspects of reality. Christians in a dissociative state are plagued by existential guilt, the sense of being eternally damned as sinners. But on the surface of consciousness, they delude themselves that they are either under no law whatsoever, or that they are keeping the law perfectly.

Plan of the book

Let us separate truth from heresy. This assertion that "we are not under the law but under grace" is a nonsense statement and must be seen as such. The truth is, bread of assurance in Christ lies in the Old Testament. The purpose of this book is to show that grace is right smack dab in the center of the Law. In fact, the Law is the only place we find mercy.⁽⁷⁾ This truth is impossible to emphasize too much. The Bible has one message from start to end; the God of the Bible is nothing if not consistent. He wants His children to have full assurance of His gift: the saving blood of Christ that pays the penalty for all human sin.

The ensuing chapters throw out several heresies that impede our view of this truth. The task is as follows. First, dispense with Dispensationalism (Chapter 1). Next, stress the reality of the lake of fire because mercy is irrelevant without punishment (Chapter 2). Then, explore the psychological ramifications of antinomianism and perfectionism in terms of how these heresies keep humans headed for the lake of fire (Chapter 3). The debunking of the perfectionist interpretations of the Old Testament (Chapter 4) and New Testament (Chapter 5) are followed by the debunking of antinomianism in the New Testament (Chapter 6). Now that these are out of the way we are free to enjoy looking at the continuing utility of God's commandments given in the Law (Chapter 7). Then Chapter 8 will summarize the main points about the wonderful truth.

Chapter Two

Hell is real

We're not under the law, we're under grace, and there ain't no hell

Aiding and abetting the silly "we're not under the law, we're under grace" heresy is the notion that there is no place of eternal punishment. Or that if there ever were such a place as hell,⁽⁸⁾ it somehow disappeared or expired with the validity of the Old Testament.

Hell is the real issue

How does the rejection of hell serve the heresy? Well, the Law is irrelevant if there is no punishment for law-breaking. If there is no retribution, particularly of the eternal kind, who cares about whether there is mercy, or indeed, whether there is a law or not? This hell-rejecting logic helps us stay in denial and fuzzy thinking.

An analogous situation would be retirement planning. What makes people start planning for their retirement? It is when they realize that they will actually reach that point, and that they could have a hard time if they do not do something to prepare for it. Heaven is far less powerful a motivator than hell. People don't buy insurance against having a wonderful time. They buy it against disaster.

Myopia: throwing away the birthright

Very few people can look hell in the face. Most are in total denial about it. Sadly and also strangely, this is just as true of Christians as it is of anyone else. I hear evidence of this constantly in the counseling room. People generally come to a counselor because of some dysfunctional emotional state they cannot ignore, or because they have problems in their human relationships. One way or another, this world is all they want to look at. They have myopia, an inability to look into the distance. The matter of their eternal destiny is off the map for them.

How often have I heard so-called Christians in the counseling office become derisive when I take up the subject of eternity. This attitude is only too common among people who come for Christian counseling. When I start talking about eternity people actually become angry and impatient. They'll say: "Oh eternity, that little thing! Who cares about eternity, what about now?"

Those who deny the reality of hell have their priorities all mixed up. Now is all-important for them. "I want my needs met today. Eternity is an abstraction. Eternity is not real. Eternity just an idea. Don't bother me with fire and brimstone. Don't offer me pie in the sky, ma'am, I want it right now."

Who cares about little old eternity? Well, it matters a whole lot if hell is real. The very fact that a person asks that question identifies the source of their psychological problems. They have paid no attention to the dire existential situation faced by all humans. We all sense somewhere in our guts that hell is real and that we deserve to go there-there is a universal nasty feeling in the pit of the stomach. Of course, we do what we can to drown out that feeling. But we cannot get rid of it. We can only torpedo it so it sinks down below the surface, temporarily.

Insipid religion

Every artist knows that shading is what makes a form stand out in a painting. An object starts to disappear if you get rid of the dark shadows. The form fades, especially when you get rid of the perspective too. It leaves you with a picture that is very superficial, one without taste and color. Does not that sound like much of today's Christianity? Get rid of eternity! Get rid of hell! Only deal with what happens here and now. Only listen to ideas that are "positive." Give us pastors who are emotionally castrated and will not push our buttons. They serve us only tasteless, insipid baby food...nice platitudes that will not offend but only run off us like water from a duck's back.

Jacob and Esau

There is nothing new about myopia. Remember Esau, the one who cared only for the moment? He was the first-born son of Isaac who threw away his birthright for a mess of pottage. All he cared about was the next meal. He had no vision for the future. His lack of faith led him to strike a bad bargain with his brother Jacob, swapping the birthright for the pottage. Esau did not care beyond his belly. He threw away his future for the price of a meal. How like us that is! We can only laugh at the absurdity of this until we realize how blind we are ourselves.

Jacob was the one who had faith. He knew what that birthright meant. God had made a wonderful promise to his forefathers regarding that birthright and Jacob wanted to be a part of it.

The promises to Abraham

A special blessing had been promised to the descendants of Abraham, his grandfather. Three times God promised Abraham great fruitfulness in human descendants: "As the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore" (Gen 22:16). Similar language is found in Genesis 17:6, where God promises that Abraham would be "exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee." In Genesis 17:8 God repeated an earlier promise He had made to Abraham, that his seed would possess the land of Canaan. All males who wished to partake of this promise were told to undergo circumcision as a way of signing the contract.⁽⁹⁾

A third promise to Abraham is of inestimable, eternal importance: "...and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 22:18). The same vow is given again to Jacob by God in Bethel (Genesis 27:13-15). This promise was to be fulfilled way in the future...it speaks of the gift of salvation fulfilled in Christ, whose human parents descended from Abraham via Jacob. It was an obscure reference to God's provision of a rescue from hell.

Jacob wanted to be a part of the promise. He had enough faith in God to believe in it, yet he did not have faith that God would give it to him. So he lied and cheated to get it. But despite the crooked means he used, posing as his brother and cheating his father, God did not withhold it from him. However, Jacob did not escape punishment for the cheating. He reaped exactly what he sowed when God allowed Jacob to get cheated in the same fashion by his crafty uncle Laban later on. Laban tricked Jacob into marrying his elder daughter, Leah, by dressing her up on her wedding day as the younger Rachel, the object of Jacob's desire.

God gave Jacob the birthright because Jacob knew what it meant and believed in its importance. He knew it came from God. God said: "Thou shalt be a father of many nations;" and: "Thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies;"and: "In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed." The promise was not just about inheriting material wealth from a human father or about establishing a good family. It went way beyond that. Whatever Jacob got in terms of material gain, and it was considerable by the time Jacob was an old man, it was not Jacob's priority. His priority was a promise that extended way beyond his physical life and into eternity.

Eternity must be the priority

The blessings in this world only come to us when the next world is our priority and we grab the life belt God has provided for us. Hell is the problem. Even if I accrue huge wealth, wisdom or fame, I cannot enjoy it when I know I face eternal damnation. There is no peace of mind with which to enjoy anything here for more than a fleeting moment without salvation from hell.

Jesus said: "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it into life eternal" (John 12:25). He was not asking humans to become ego-less martyrs laying down their lives for others. There is no need for that. He has already done it. No, what he was saying is that it is futile to make this lifetime our priority. Eternal life has to be our priority because it is going to last forever. Forever...! Eternity versus this lifetime? How do you compare an ocean with a rain drop. Or how do you compare an endless movie and a brief preview to the movie.

Staking our claim on eternal life will sometimes put us in the position of having to risk what we hold dear in this world--including life itself. God uses His refiner's fire on us but if we hang on to Him tooth and nail, we can emerge stronger. The fire will not consume us, any more than the fire that burned the bush before Moses in the desert. Or the fire that could not touch Meshach, Shadrack and Abednego when they were persecuted for refusing to bow down before the image of Nebuchadnezzzar in Daniel 3.

Examination of hells in other belief systems

Karl Marx said that religion is the opium of the masses, a tool of the capitalist system that makes people manipulable. They accept a bleak, deprived life so as to escape hell and gain the good life in heaven. In one sense Marx was right. False religions are opiates. The Bible, alone, is not. What do those false religions say? There are many different versions of the lie...but all fit within the penumbra of perfectionism. Let us take a quick tour of other belief systems so we see the merciless perfectionism that offers only endless suffering.

Hinduism

In Hinduism, you have many lifetimes in which to work your way up to godhood. Whatever your place in this lifetime, you deserve it and that is where you are fated to be. You are here to learn and to work off as much as you can of the karmic debt accrued from sins in previous lives. If you work hard and do enough good, next incarnation will be better. But if you add more negatives to your karmic debt, you will move down the ladder. However, you need not fear. The worst thing that could happen would be to find yourself in a temporary hell. But in a lifetime or two you could catch up to where you were on the ladder before that fall. Your destiny is in your hands and there is nothing to really worry about. Thou shall not surely die. Hell is only temporary and you can work your way out.

So Hindus are promised serial reincarnation, a gradual cleansing of the self through their own efforts: pleasing to the ego but giving no comfort to the soul. That is the appeal of the doctrine of perfectionism. It appeals to the part of me that wants to be my own boss, beholden to nobody, in nobody else's power. Yet at a deeper level the sense of being damned does not remit.

Hinduism is riddled with incongruity. For example, there is a glaring inconsistency between the Hindu's passive acceptance of their fate and the belief that they hold the reins to their future. If I am here to learn, where do I stop passively accepting and become pro-active? What do I allow and what do I fight? When the river swells over its banks and the floods come rolling into my house, do I sit in my living room and wait to drown or do I remove myself and my family to the hill tops? Such philosophical quagmires have led to bizarre practices devoid of common sense.

The irony is that because there is so much false doctrine in the Christian church, Hindus are able to embrace the concept of eternity whereas so-called Christians often do not want to hear about it. Yet Christians alone have the basis to face eternity unafraid, to actually embrace it without the need to exercise enormous self-deception.

Buddhism

Buddhism has no concept of hell; it conceptualizes living in this world as a state of suffering that can only be escaped by extinguishment of desire. Unity with the godhead is obtained through annihilation of the personal ego that causes desir. Eventually even the desire to exist will supposedly disappear. But one has to desire to get rid of desire, which puts one right back at square one. This is clearly a perfectionist doctrine, absolutely lacking in a concept of the person of God, or of mercy. Only perfect adherence to the eight-fold path of righteousness (i.e., a moral code or law), which leads one to eliminate all desire, enables one to reach the imagined state of nirvana, or perfect bliss. In practical terms buddhism sends the person, through meditation, into ever deeper states of denial and repression of human characteristics that will never go away. This paves the pathway towards insanity, and offers no peace of mind at the soul level.

Islam

Adherents of Islam do not have to make themselves perfect to be able to make it in one piece over the razor sharp bridge over hell leading from earth to paradise, a lovely place filled with doe-eyed maidens for males to feast upon (but not much fun for any female who does not want to be an eternal sexual toy). Under Islam a person does not have to be perfect; just very, very good. All I have to do is make my good deeds come out ahead of my bad deeds. On the surface this may seem reasonable. But that is only because humans delude themselves about how corrupt they are. Besides, how good, or altruistic, are my intentions when my mind is seething with the necessity of escaping the fires of hell? Until humans know they are saved, good deeds have a selfish motive which is not good. So this is another form of perfectionism, setting humans up for the impossible.

The Bible: Gehenna

Gehenna: the place of eternal darkness. The name comes from the Valley of Hinnom, a place outside Jerusalem constantly burning with refuse. This word, rather than Hades, is used in the Bible to refer to the lake of fire, the final place of unbelievers. Hades is used in the Bible to describe a temporary place for the unsaved awaiting final judgment, a site that will be replaced by the lake of fire on that decisive occasion when the sheep are separated from the goats (Revelations 6:8, 20:13-14).

Gehenna defines a permanent and eternal state of separation from God. Will it be eternal consciousness and therefore eternal pain, or will it reach of point of extinguishment where a person is no longer conscious and therefore no longer in pain? Is it possible to know which picture awaits from God's Word?

Clearly eternal torment awaits Satan: "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." (Revelation 20:10). Does eternal torment also await unsaved humans? The following passages quoted several times by Jesus suggest eternal consciousness for the unsaved: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2). Isaiah talks of the time of the "new heavens and the new earth" when "all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD. And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." (Isaiah 66: 22-24).

Indeed, the parable of Christ on the rich man and Lazarus speaks of consciousness for both the saved and the unsaved after death, and definitely a state of torment for the unsaved (Luke 16:19-31). However, the "hell" referred to in the passage is translated from the Greek word Hades.

On the other hand, other passages suggest extinction for unbelievers. The words "destroy" and "destruction" are used by both the prophets and Christ to foretell what happens to those who reject God. Jesus said: "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both the soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28)⁽¹⁰⁾ The prophet Malachi said: "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." (Malachi 4:1) In the case of this passage from Malachi, it is not clear that this refers to what happens in eternity or in this world. It may simply refer to the day when entire families are destroyed on the earth.

So the overall picture is unclear, and certainly does not suggest that a period of punishment in hell would not take place first. This must be so if the "books" are opened on judgment day and each person who has not claimed the coverage of Christ's blood must pay for his own sin: "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." (Revelation 20:12-15). One would be hard put to see the fairness of God if the cruel, unrepentant dictator who murders millions and dies unpunished suffers the same eternal fate as the garden variety of human who simply refuses to look at Christ.

Whether people burn in the lake of fire unendingly or for a limited time, it is unaffordable for us to go there. The way God has set things up, only when we do focus on eternity and perceive the reality of a place of horrible punishment, do we grab hold on to the means He has given us to enjoy everlasting life instead of everlasting shame and contempt.

Silly ideas people have about hell:

"It's morbid"

People think it is morbid to dwell on hell. But dwell we must if we want to be sane, if we want to have peace of mind. We need to face the reality of hell squarely. It is not psychologically harmful to do so...that is, as long as we have the assurance that God has given us a way to stay out that is easy for us to reach. All we have to do is believe God has done it. God will help us believe that this is true. His picture book, the Old Testament, is part of that help. His forgiveness contract is spelled out in the law. The prophets tell us that Christ is the final ratification of that contract. But if I don't familiarize myself with the contract, how can I appreciate Christ? To see who He really is? How can I have peace of mind?

Try to tell yourself there is no hell. Do all the members of your internal committee agree? What do the different parts of you say? Is there not at least one who is not so sure? How can you be sure? If hell does exist, we injure ourselves by spurning the very concept of it, of a place of eternal darkness, eternal torment, of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. If you reject the concept of hell, you also reject the one way to stay out.

Delusions of entitlement

I used to say that if there were a God, then "my kind of a god" would not allow such a place or state as hell. But then, did I think very much about anything existential at that time? No. On the run from the Anglican version of Christianity, I did want to think about the deeper issues of life. Yet I did not know of a valid framework for thinking about things spiritual. So I just avoided them. Death, free will versus election, heaven, hell, God...these were topics I skirted. I thought I deserved happiness, that it was a right that was irrespective of my anti-godliness. I was mad that life was hard. Mad at God, although I did not know it. I did not think in terms of salvation from hell, and if I had, I would have thought I had a right to such preservation, too. If I ever thought about God, it would be in terms of entitlement: "God, you made me, now you jolly well have to take good care of me."

Before they appreciate their predicament and how God has remedied it for them, humans have a seething anger bubbling away at God, only they don't realize they are angry with Him. They think they are angry about society, and get all caught up with social injustice and their powerlessness to effect meaningful change on any level. The anger just simmers. This is really anger towards God, part of the delusion of entitlement. This is the delusion that humans deserve to have it good, to have it easy, to not have problems, to not have illnesses...and, most importantly, to not go to hell. Plenty of Christians feel this way.

This attests to the lack of an existential overview. What we fail to see is that this is not the main movie, this is just a brief preview, or pre-test. Even Christians often fail to see that eternal life lies ahead when this brief lifetime evaporates away. But if there is no eternity, who cares about the promises God has made to humans? Besides, nobody sees God made any promises until they know the Law and the prophets. As Christians we pay very little attention to anything other than the Gospels and Paul...and it is very easy to misunderstand Paul when a person does not have a thorough grounding in Scripture.

The delusions of entitlement that lead us to be so angry are very common even among Christians. Delusions are false ideas about the nature of reality that people adhere to in spite of evidence to the contrary, lies that people tell themselves without being consciously aware that these things are not true. Psychotic people often have pronounced delusions that are so clearly off the wall that we laugh at them. Consider the fairly common psychotic delusion of thought-broadcasting: "Someone put an electrode in my brain and they are listening in on all my thoughts." We know this is ridiculous, yet do not realize the extent of our own delusionality. The worst part of our self-deception is that it denies the deeper knowledge that we have about the existence of a place of endless pain, and about the fact that we feel ourselves moving in that direction, like a raft about to go over the edge of a waterfall, continually pulled forward.

When I became aware of that deeper sense of being doomed, I became all the angrier. I blamed my childhood for that feeling. I blamed my dad. I blamed society. I blamed the rigid class structure of England and emigrated to the United States as soon as I could. But the sense of that horrible destiny does not go away no matter how far you remove yourself physically or how much you avoid social comparison. Until our eyes focus on the issue of sin and our undeserved God-given reprieve from its deadly consequence, we merely exchange one form of social comparison for another. We focus on the fact that some people seem to get a better deal in this short life instead of looking at the fact that we, ourselves, do not deserve to be saved from eternal torment.

Hell is here

People often say: "If there is a hell, it is here." They even have a little grin on their face as they say this, as if they have said something clever when in fact it is stupid thing to say. It displays an enormous deficit of the imagination for anyone to believe hell is here...as if this is as bad as it could get. This life can be very painful, but we have many available escapes. Dark as the night gets here, we can look forward to a new morning. In the dead of winter, there is spring to look forward to. Sorrows can be drowned, temporarily, in drink, in food, in a new romance, in entertainment on the telly. Distractions are available here that will not be present in hell. Here we can turn off the pain. Here there is at least the hope of a way out. In hell there will be no respite, no way to turn, nobody to turn to, no end, no exit. And there will be the awareness of having been given a chance to escape this, and of having thrown it away. We are "without excuse" (Romans 1:20 ).

As for Christians who say they reject the concept of hell, this is only on the surface of consciousness. We humans are so cunningly and wonderfully designed by God. So complex are our minds and yet we have no idea of it. It is hard to accept that a person can be thinking and feeling one thing on the surface and something completely different underneath. Yet that is the case to some degree in all of us.

Sigmund Freud did a brilliant job of pointing out the role of subconscious (or "unconscious") thought processes. The conscious mind is the part of the mind we are aware of. It has been compared in size to the amount of an iceberg above the surface of the water. This conscious part of the mind can be very ignorant of what the unconscious mind knows. Humans function with a great deal of blindness to what they know at a deeper level.

One part of us can know about being indicted for missing the mark, or being sinners. Another part of us can function as if ignorant of this--for the most part. But not all the time. Telltale signs appear every so often. The truth keeps on trying to come bubbling up. The truth about the universal human dread destiny comes out in dreams, in mythology, in the preoccupations of people in a psychotic state, in the less severe forms of psychopathology of people in a neurotic state. Neurotic people have intact reality testing but experience symptoms that tell them something has gone awry inside....panic attacks, obsessive/compulsive symptoms, conversion symptoms like seizures and fainting spells, or depression, and on and on.

Evidence for the reality of hell

Certain aspects of human functioning point to innate knowledge of the existence of hell. This does not prove hell exists but certainly supports it from a "no smoke without fire" point of view.

1. Evidence from psychosis

Regardless of their religious background, people in a state of psychosis talk of God, heaven, hell, the devil, and demons. Where does this come from? The most reasonable explanation is that this is inborn, archetypical knowledge that stays hidden below the surface in "normal" people who have well-developed psychological barriers to such threatening information.

2. Evidence from depression

Depression is a realistic response to the human condition outside of the saving blood of Christ. Hopeless, dark thoughts are appropriate in the face of eternal damnation. Depression acknowledges the truth. Without God's reprieve from the hell sentence, a reprieve spelled out in the law, there is no reason to hope.

And in a state of depression a person might be receptive to the Gospel, the truth that God has made the blood of Christ a gift to humans that completely pays the penalty for sin. In a depression, I become painfully aware of my sense of unworthiness. And I am indeed unworthy. Unworthy of what I need the most: salvation. In such a state I might come to realize that I need the worthiness found only in Christ. Worthy is the lamb. Unworthy is humanity but worthy is the lamb who God gave to cover us.

The best I can expect if I am an unbeliever is a superficially non-depressed state. That is as much as an unbeliever can be, superficially non-depressed. Deep down the depression will be there. I will avoid thinking about existential issues, particularly about death, and especially about hell. I'm in denial. I've got my defenses temporarily intact against the existential truth. I block my ears from hearing anything "negative," as we often term any type of exploration of our darker thoughts about ourselves.

How is it that Christians can still be depressed? Because who has assimilated the glorious message in every fibre of his or her being? No human. And we are embedded in a world filled with Satan's lies, Satan wanting to get our attention away from the good news, sowing doubts, sowing despair. This, aside from genetic predisposition and early trauma, explains why truth-hearers can still succumb to psychopathology of all kinds. On the other hand, the more people fill with the wonderful assurance of a God-given rescue, the less they are subject to psychopathology. Even for people with the most severe mental illness, schizophrenia, become more and more free from symptoms of the disorder. They may not break completely free, but I have known them to be relieved of the most pathological and debilitating ones.

So we humans sense there is a place of darkness and torment looming up ahead, and sense that we cannot prevent ourselves falling in. The law printed in us tells us that. The sense of eternal condemnation seems to be innate.

3. Near death experiences:

i. Evidence from a cardiac surgeon

Those accounts of a so-called universal near-death experience of loving angels and white light are by no means universal. Maurice Rawlings, a Christian cardiac surgeon who had a chance to listen to the near-death experiences of many people whose hearts had stopped on the operating table, has written a very interesting book⁽¹¹⁾ describing the accounts of many non-believers whose hearts temporarily stopped beating on the operating table. When they woke up after surgery, they stated that they had visions of entering a dark evil place filled with threatening, evil demonic presences.

Two people I have known personally, both unbelievers, reported similar near-death visions. Such accounts certainly lend credence to the idea that humans have an innate sense of the reality of hell, a place or state in which humans are separated from God and yet aware.

ii. Fighting against death

We want life, not just now but forever. In those peak moments when humans feel happy and fulfilled, they know that life is very good and want to hang on to it. In fact, they cannot let go even when life is not going so well.

However, those who work around dying people and are in close attendance to them up until their last breath say there is a big difference between the way Bible-believers die and the way everybody else dies. Believers die peacefully, even joyfully. But non-believers, even those who are terribly ill with cancer and in great pain, fight death. They fight leaving this world because they have no hope of living again in a good state. They dual with death because they cannot expect any more than the little taste of life they have had, and they sense something frightful lies beyond it.

Do unbelievers really sense the reality of everlasting shame and contempt? Do they have a hunch about the existence of that place of darkness, isolation, and pain? I believe so. But in an unconscious way. That is why they fight death so hard. It is not just a fight against leaving this life. They fight against going into that horrible darkness. People often show a fighting spirit they never displayed before. They never fought for anything as much as they fight against death.

4.Evidence from mythology

A dark and terrifying underworld is a persistent theme in the myths and legends of peoples all over the world although the context surrounding it may not be the same in every culture. Among the Greek pantheon is Hades, known as Pluto by the Romans. He is the unmerciful god who ruled over the underworld and the dead. His name has been used by scholars to translate the Hebrew word sheol referring to the subterranean world of the dead.

In the Persian myth there is a very optimistic rendering of hell. The creator god of truth and light, Ahura Mazda, is opposed by the evil Angra Mainyu, who infused the creation with evil. Humans are to choose sides, either with Ahura to restore the universe to perfection or with Angra, to do evil and eventually be sent to a hell appropriate to his life. After an eventual season of catastrophes and tumult, the ultimate savior Saoshyant will arrive. The dead will be resurrected in bodies of immaculate light; hell will vanish and its souls, purified, will be released.⁽¹²⁾

The Norse mythology, on the other hand, offers no hope whatsoever. The gods fight heroic battles against evil even though they know they will eventually be destroyed and exist only in some shadowed form in a dark underworld.

One can travel the world finding depictions of hell in the myths and legends, many of them also depicting a savior. Where does this come from if not from a universal awareness of that dark realm? Would there be so much smoke if there were no lake of fire?

Conclusion

To grasp the dire importance of Christ, all our thoughts must focus on the two-sided vision of eternity. One side is the ugly place "where I would have gone if Christ had not paid the penalty for me." The other side is the beautiful place "where I will go because Christ died in my stead."

Generally we have no problem with the idea of heaven but it is hard for us humans to accept there is a hell, a dark precipice lurking beyond the edge of a cliff towards which we are drawn inexorably and over which we cannot stop ourselves from falling. Without the assurance of safety, that the payment has been made for us, our natural reaction is to want to believe there is no dark precipice ahead. Yet the importance of the way out does not become apparent until we are hit by the reality of hell. It is a "Catch 22" situation. It is too scary to perceive eternal torment unless I perceive the rescue, but the rescue will be irrelevant until I perceive the lake of fire. If I reject hell, then I have no need for the blood of Christ to pay for my sin. I deny the horrible reality of everlasting torment, and the wonderful gift of the provision in the Law enabling me to be forgiven.

God alone can cut into our denial and unbelief. The Bible is the tool He uses, yet it seems highly likely that He put seeds of knowledge in our psyche that are present in us from conception. This would explain why imagery of the dark and evil underworld are found in so much human expression.

However, as the two-sided vision of eternity and the atoning blood of Christ get seared deeper and deeper into our psyche, so will the gravitational pull on us that keeps us clinging to God and His provision of Christ, the substitutionary blood atonement that will save us.

Chapter Four

Debunking the perfectionist interpretation of the Old Testament

In Luke 16:19-31 Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus had been a helpless beggar laying by the rich man's, covered in sores that were licked by dogs, waiting to feed on the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Jesus relates that there is a great gulf in Hades separating the two men in a role-reversal after death. The rich man is now in a place of torment and Lazarus, presumably one who availed himself of the atoning blood of the Lamb, in the bosom of Abraham. In his misery, the rich man sees Lazarus and cries out to him to come and cool his tongue. Abraham tells him this is not possible, the gulf is fixed. The rich man then asks Abraham to send Lazarus to testify to his five family members, giving them warning so they can avoid this place of torment. Abraham replies: "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them." The rich man argues: "Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent." But Abraham replies: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

Not "if" but "when" you break the law

The point of this chapter is to show that the God of the Old Testament is no different from the God of the New Testament. They are one and the same God who offers forgiveness for sin. Many people do not realize this, but salvation by grace alone is spelled out in the Old Testament. Mercy is right there in the Torah. Contained among the 633 commandments of the Law are directions for atonement (i.e., grace, forgiveness from God) in the event that a person "messed up" and broke any of the rules.

There is no "if" about breaking the rules; it is "when" you break the rules. There is no limitation on the types of sin that would be forgiven: all sin comes under the provision for mercy.

God has clearly expected humans to break the rules from the very beginning. The punishment for all sin, no matter how big or small, is separation from God, or spiritual death ending in eternal darkness. All humans are born in a state of separation because we sin from the moment of conception. Our human nature is inherently corrupt. From the moment of conception we fail to meet the standard of perfect love for God and our neighbor. Atonement for sin has always been through the death of a substitute for the sinner, a proxy who is unblemished and in the prime of life. In Revelation 13:8, Jesus is referred to as the "lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

In no way does the Law God gave Moses, require humans to keep all points of the law if they are to escape eternal damnation, which would be an absolutely impossible task. The law defines a system of substitute blood atonement that, when enacted by humans, entitles them to be forgiven by God. It was "on credit" in the Old Testament days awaiting the final payment made by Christ Himself but definitely acceptable to God as payment for human sin.

Despite this, there is widespread insistence among so-called Christians that the law God gave Moses is a perfectionist law, a law with no mercy. The opposite is true. Some Christian theorists state that there is forgiveness in the Mosaic law, but it is only limited. If forgiveness is perceived at all it is said to be limited to certain types of sin, or incomplete even when it is achieved. This comes merely from not looking at the Law, not doing our homework. We think of the Law as the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20); since no atonement is mentioned among them, we dismiss the entire Law and miss many clauses offering mercy for all types of sin through the blood sacrifice.

Total forgiveness for all sin in the Law

The Law, spelled out in the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and. Deuteronomy) contains not only a code of behavior and thought but also God's provision of the blood atonement statutes which, when enacted, gain forgiveness for all types of sin. Again and again we find the following words from God: "It shall be forgiven them." This promise of mercy is contingent on human obedience to the statutes offering atonement through the blood sacrifice. Examples of God making this promise is found in: Leviticus 4:13, 4:20, 4:26, 4:31, 4:35, 5:10, 5:13, 5:16, and 6:7; Numbers 14:19, 15:25, 15:26, 15:28; and Deuteronomy 21:18. Moses repeatedly speaks of the forgiveness and mercy of God, e.g. Exodus 34:6-7.

The Old Testament is the foundation of faith in salvation as a gift of mercy from God

The passage from Luke containing the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) says that we will not "get it" without the foundation of the Old Testament law and prophecies. One can argue that this also says that the resurrection of Christ alone is not enough to convince us. This is true in the sense that if we do not appreciate what the Old Testament has to say, we will not believe in the Resurrection. And if we do not believe Christ rose from the dead, we will not accept that Christ is the son of God whose blood pays for our sins. So...we stay on the road to hell.

The problem is that we humans are ignorant of the Old Testament. It is full of pictures. It uses poetic language in the form of similes, metaphors, true stories and tangible events that have deeper meaning. The pictures, though rendered in words, evoke visual images reaching down into the human subconscious realm. That is why a picture is worth a thousand words.

The Old Testament is the basis for our belief in salvation as a gift of mercy from God. It lays out the law of the substitute atonement for sin, i.e., that God will accept the physical death of a substitute in place of the spiritual death of the human sinner. Leviticus 17:11 is one verse that spells out that law: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." This is one verse alone totally refutes perfectionism, which specifies perfect human performance for salvation.

As the prophet Habbakuk points out in 626 B.C.: "The just shall live by his faith" (Habbakuk 2:4). Saving faith rests on the God of Israel, in the promises He makes.⁽¹³⁾ God does not demand perfect faith in the atoning blood of Christ in order for us to be saved, either. Jesus said that humans could move mountains if their faith were as big as a mustard seed. Since no human has ever moved a mountain, God clearly does not expect our faith to be more than minuscule.

God has given simple but exact instructions to follow if humans want to avoid eternal torment. Our faith is what makes us follow the instructions. This is not some type of self-defined faith that has no basis in fact. No precarious resting on some vague, airy-fairy notion will convince us. This is faith in very specific promises from God leading us to follow some simple instructions to enter salvation through the blood sacrifice.

The blood sacrifice

Interestingly, before any written Law that we know of, God indicated that He would provide that blood payment. Genesis 3:15 makes an obscure reference to this. Says God to the Serpent: "...and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Christ was the seed of the woman who bruised the head of the Serpent, i.e., He destroyed the plan of Satan to send all humans to hell. Soon after this God seems to have acted in accordance with His being the provider of the blood payment. He produced animal skins to cover Adam and Eve ( Genesis 3:21). Although the Bible does not state that this literal cover has a spiritual meaning, it would fit that this was a blood payment to cover their sin.

Also before God gave the written Law to Moses comes Abraham's statement to Isaac regarding God's provision of the ram: "God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering" (Genesis 22:8). This is a prophetic statement both in the short-term and the long one. God provided Abraham with a ram to take the place of Isaac, just as He would later provide Christ to take the place of all humans.

Another pre-Law instance of blood sacrifice is found in Abel's offering of the "firstling" of his cattle. God's pleasure at this coupled with His rejection of Cain's vegetable offering led Cain to murder Abel. Upon touching dry land after the Flood, Noah built an altar and made a burnt sacrifice to God of one of each of the "clean" animals he had so carefully preserved on the ark.. (Genesis 8:20) If the fact that Noah took extra numbers of clean animals on the Ark is anything to go by, this was a regular practice of his, and may explain why he "found grace in the eyes of the Lord" in the first place (Genesis 6:8).

In Old Testament times, humans were saved by manifesting faith in one way only: physically participating in the blood atonement. The sacrificed blood of the unblemished individual substituted for the death of the sinner. In New Testament times, ditto. Now humans are saved by manifesting faith in one way only: believing that Christ's blood atones. The only physical aspect of that is celebration of the eucharist, which is a second-level substitute. It represents or signifies the death of Christ on the cross, which takes the place of the death of the sinner.

But even the eucharist is not peculiar to the New Testament. In Genesis 14:18 we find Melchizedek, both king of Salem (Jerusalem) and priest of the "most high God," believed by many theorists to be the pre-incarnate Christ, bringing bread and wine to a meeting with Abraham, and blessing him.

The most important part of the Law is the blood atonement, and this seems to have been given in some fashion right after the Fall. Other aspects of the Law that are not part of the blood atonement come later. Circumcision, an outward mark of belonging to the God of Israel, is not given as an order until the days of Abraham (Genesis 17:10). The numerous other edicts came from God to Moses.

God will forgive through an intercessor

God has always been willing to forgive humans through the pleas of an intercessor. In Exodus 34:6-7 God shows us Moses as a picture of Christ in both his intercessory and sacrificial roles. Moses is willing to be blotted out of the book of life if God will not forgive the idolatrous Children of Israel for making golden calves to worship. God changes his mind about killing the Children of Israel after Moses's intercession but declines his sacrificial offer. He listens to Moses' entreaty, promising not to kill those who repent, and replaces the two broken stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments with new ones. Now the Israelites will have a second chance. God descends in a cloud to Moses and proclaims: "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin."

Forgiveness is not limited to sins of ignorance

One way perfectionists try to have their wicked way with the Law is to say the following: If there is forgiveness in the Law, it is limited to sins of ignorance or sins which come to knowledge later; there is no forgiveness for deliberate sins.

This is absolutely not the case. However, it is possible to get this impression if we look at Leviticus 4 without also noticing Leviticus 6. Leviticus 4 addresses forgiveness for sins of ignorance and sins which come to knowledge later and omits mention of deliberate sins. But Leviticus 6 deals with forgiveness for deliberate "transgressions" such as lies and deception to one's neighbor.

Again, one can get the same impression that wilful sin is not forgiven in Numbers 15:1-31, which offers forgiveness for sins of ignorance and prescribes cutting off the soul of the man who "does aught presumptously" (Numbers 15:30). But that chapter is referring to deliberate refusal to make an offering to God when eating the first bread in the Promised Land. When humans wilfully rebel towards God by dishonoring Him, this is serious. Yet God is very merciful if we repent. He will even forgive idolatry, as we saw in the account of the golden calves and Moses' intercession on behalf of the Children of Israel. God promises to forgive humans when they are sprinkled with the shed blood of the ram, the bullock or other animal from a group defined by God., all of which are types of Christ He commits Himself to forgive all types of sin. Sins of ignorance, sins which later come to knowledge, and sins committed deliberately: all are covered. God highlights this by using three different words to which His forgiveness applies: "iniquity and transgression and sin" (Exodus 34: 5-7).

The impossibility of keeping the law God gave to Moses

The major reason for a perfectionist interpretation of the Mosaic law, and the Old Testament in general, has been ignorance of the law. This is at the basis of the false assumption that it is possible for humans to keep all 633 edicts in the law.

To be sure, many of the edicts can be kept. The easiest ones to adhere to are those that are spelled out in behavioral terms. Examples are the actions that display loving the neighbor, such as lending to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7) or not moving the neighbor's landmark to increase one's own territory (Deuteronomy 19:14). None of the behavioral laws is unreasonably onerous or impossible for a human being to keep. If the law consisted only of reasonable rules of outward conduct, then in theory it would be quite possible to keep the law and there would be no need for mercy.

Emotional aspects of the law that make it impossible for humans to keep

However, the fact that the law prescribes the presence or absence of certain emotions in a black and white manner means that the standard is impossible to reach. The Mosaic law prescribes perfect love for God (Deuteronomy 6:5); an absence of coveting (Exodus 20:17); and an absence of animosity: "thou must not hate thy brother in thy heart" (Leviticus 19:17). So it is impossible to keep because it governs the thinking process and emotions as well as actions. One wicked thought kills.

Many modern Christians take Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as a new law that is easier to keep than the 633 edicts in the law God gave to Moses, but it is actually a paraphrase of the Mosaic law that omits mention of the many simple behavioral directions. Far from being easier, in the sense that it applies solely to emotions, it presents an even higher standard. None of it can be attained by humans. But what does it matter how high the standard goes above a point where nobody can reach it? Jesus was showing what to aim for, not what God demands of humans. He was also conveying the impossibility of our ever being able to hit the mark all the time. He alone among humans could keep the law perfectly...which has to be the case for one who is our sin-bearer. God is holy and we are not. If Jesus had sinned in any minute way, He would have to die for His own sin and could not pay the penalty in our place.

Even if humans could become sinless once they were saved, which they cannot, they would still have the problem past sin. Any sin at any time in our life ruins our record for our whole lives. What counts is the entire record. All we like sheep have gone astray.

The priest was also expected to sin: evidence that God provides mercy for all humans

If it were possible for any human to not sin, who would that human most likely be? Would not a priest be less likely to sin than other humans? God clearly does hold priests to higher standards than others, which makes sense given their work. Yet God still expects them to sin...and provides atonement for them. This is very comforting to the rest of us. Highlighting the fact that God has always expected all humans to sin is the fact that rules for atonement for the sins of priests are given in the Law, just as they are for everyone else. Leviticus 4:3 states that "If the priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people, then let him bring for his sin, which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the LORD for a sin offering." So even for the priest who supposedly would be the closest to keeping the law, there was written provision for the payment for sin. God obviously expects everyone to sin.

How could David praise the forgiveness of God if there were no mercy in the law?

Consider this. If there were no forgiveness or only partial forgiveness in the Law and God were to demand perfect adherence in return for salvation, why would David, the adulterer and murderer, be inspired to write the following:

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1), later quoted by Paul in Romans 4:6-8.

"Thou has forgiven the iniquity of the people, thou has covered all their sin" (Psalm 85:2).

"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits...who forgiveth all thine iniquities" (Psalm 103:2-3).

"If thou LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O LORD, who shall stand?" (Psalm 130-3-4)?

In fact, the entire Psalm 119 is a song in praise of the law. How could David have honestly given such praise if the law had merely condemned him? He would have to be in enormous denial. No, David, who had performed some of the most wicked acts humans are capable of, knew his sins were paid for and forgiven on the eternal level. He says to God: "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." (Psalm 51).

Those crooked patriarchs

If you have the impression that the Old Testament patriarchs were models of perfect faith or moral purity who must have kept the law perfectly, take a closer look at them. The writer of Hebrews praises Abraham's faith; indeed when God tells Abraham to get up and go to a strange land that would be given to Abraham and his descendants, he goes. Yet in Genesis there are at least two instances in which Abraham acts in ways that show a complete lack of faith: his disbelief of God's promise of a child and his self-serving lies about Sarah's status as his wife. If the Old Testament God demanded perfection, these patriarchs would have been abandoned by God and their names erased form history.

Christ in the Old Testament

The fact is, Christ as the sin-bearer, the One whose death paid in full for the sins of humanity, is found all through the Old Testament. His utterances recorded in the four gospels refer back to prophecies that are throughout the Law and the writings of the major and minor prophets. He provided constant cross reference so as to prove He was the Lamb of God. He did not waste any words and He showed that He is the fulfillment of prophecy and the law. He is the embodiment, the point, the target of the law and the prophecies. But we humans will not appreciate this until we begin to pore over Scripture (i.e., the Old Testament). The gospel according to Matthew is full of references to Old Testament sources that back it up, but how many of us go and look them up?

The point of this chapter is to show mercy in the Mosaic Law and continuity of the gospel with that law. This means identifying Christ as the lamb of the sacrifice, the suffering servant who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey as prophesied by Zechariah (9:9), who was wounded, or pierced, in the hands and feet (Zechariah 13:6: Psalm 22:16), and "bruised for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53: 5); "cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken" (Isaiah 53:8); "after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself" (Daniel, 9:26).

Christ as the blood sacrifice

The Old Testament is filled with metaphors, symbols that point to Christ. These symbols build a composite picture of the blood sacrifice as the essential substitute atonement for human sin, and of Christ's blood being that atonement.

That does not mean there was no atonement before Christ physically provided the blood. Some have said that the forgiveness spoken of in the Law is incomplete or only partial. If that were the case, nobody would have been saved from hell before Christ died on the cross. Even the patriarchs would have gone into eternal damnation.

However, it is true that the forgiveness was limited to certain time periods and events. One sin offering did not pay for all sin for all humans for all time as it did in the case of Christ. This is the "on credit" aspect of the animal sacrifice atonement system. The sinner was covered until Christ paid the debt in full. Once Christ paid the sin debt of humanity, animal sacrifices became irrelevant and unnecessary. The Law itself, (the Torah, or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament) spells out the requirement for being forgiven for sin. It was always through the blood of a sacrificed animal, one that was "unblemished" and killed in its prime. The law itself stated that the individual would be forgiven by God when that blood was presented to God in a specified manner.

Christ himself said He fulfils the Law (Matthew 5:12). This statement of His seems to be forgotten by most of modern Christendom. He fulfils the Law in ways both general and specific so we should not miss seeing Him. He fulfils the law not just in the overall way of paying the price for our sin, but in all the details of the blood sacrifice that the Law spells out. He alone among those who live in a human body actually kept the Law without the slightest deviation: he was/is unblemished. He alone loves God without even one departure; He alone loves his neighbor without ever missing the mark.

Christ speaking through the Psalmist

In the Psalms we find Christ speaking in the first person singular, saying things that could not possibly apply to the human writer of most of the psalms, King David, who lived around a thousand years B.C. No human could no those very specific details of Christ's death on the cross that were not to physically happen for another thousand years.

Crucifixion Psalms

Some of the psalms contain clearly prophetic verses about actual events that occurred during the few hours before Christ died on the cross. They typically lead from a distress call from David to God and suddenly turn into Christ talking. It has a very startling "red letter" effect on the reader who is caught unawares: "What? How did that get there?" One is transported into another time, another place, forced to ask the question: where does David end and Christ begin? I can only liken the sense of shock this gives me to an encounter I had with a would-be mugger, a woman who threatened to shoot me if I did not give her money. She approached me on the street in broad daylight murmuring something in a low voice that did not register with me. I thought she was panhandling for drug money, so I said "Sorry,"and walked on quickly. After I had passed her my mind told me what I had just heard. She had said: "I have a gun in my pocket and if you don't give me money I'm going to shoot you." I got a jolt of shock from that and then relief that the woman had obviously been bluffing.

In the same delayed way but scaring me with good instead of evil, the following Bible passages wake me up from the slumber of skepticism and astonish me into belief.

Psalm 69

Psalm 69 is an entreaty to God from David in the midst of being persecuted unfairly by the followers of the paranoid and jealous King Saul. This is one of the Psalms in which the voice of Jesus can be heard making reference to events associated with His death on the cross: "They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." (Psalm 69:21). Also: "For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded." (Psalm 69:26).

Psalm 22

Psalm 22 is another that starts out seeming to be David crying out to God, but goes on to be an opening to Christ. It contains Christ talking in the first person about specific events during the crucifixion: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet." (14-16) These were not events in the life of David; these things were to occur approximately one thousand years later during the crucifixion of Christ.

Psalm 22 is the one that begins "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?...", quoted by Jesus on the cross. It forces one to wonder if the Psalm is all Christ and none of David, or both of them together. The following seems more true of the sin-bearing Christ than David: "But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him." (6-8). Incidentally, skeptics love to quote this saying of Jesus on the cross as proof that there is no God, and that Jesus made the great sacrifice of dying on the cross for nothing. They have no idea that Jesus is actually quoting Scripture to prove that He is the One spoken about in prophecy.

End times Psalms

There are several psalms in which Christ cuts into David to speak of his own future role after the crucifixion: of salvation to the gentiles and of end times. For example, Psalm 2:6-9: "Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."

Here we find Christ talking about his future role as one who administers judgment on the unrepentant, far from the suffering servant who pays the penalty for the sins of humanity by his death on the cross. This is one of the many times Christ talks through David in the Psalms.

Other prophets predict details of the coming, earthly life, death and resurrection of Christ

Other Old Testament prophets both major and minor provide compelling evidence for God's having known and planned events of the death and resurrection of Christ from the foundation of the earth.

Genesis 3:15 on "the seed of the woman" has been discussed in Chapter One. There is also the deathbed prophesy of Jacob regarding his son Judah: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." (Genesis 49:10) This is talking about the earthly kingship coming out of the tribe of Judah, out of whom came the human parents of Jesus Christ, who is "Shiloh," a Hebrew epithet for the Messiah meaning tranquil.

This prophesy was certainly borne out and is clearly seen in the years when Israel and Judah had a king. David was the first Judean king, the first real king in the land, replacing the ungodly Benjamite, king Saul. After the kingdom split, the Judean kings were on the throne in the Promised Land until Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, carried nearly all the twelve tribes away, a punishment from God due to the rebellion of Zedekiah, the last Judean king.

What happened to the Judean kingship during the next years until Christ, or "Shiloh" came is not clear. However, I Chronicles 9: 3-4 and Nehemiah 11:1-24 report that princes of the line of Judah remained in Jerusalem after the captivity. So they may have continued to act in some regulatory manner.⁽¹⁴⁾

At any rate, this verse from Genesis on the kinghip of Judah is evidence of God's building of one theme leading to the earthly appearance of Christ, or "Shiloh" as the one who brings tranquility. Isaiah 9:6-7 predicts the coming of Christ as a king of judgment and peace (i.e., condemnation and mercy): "For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father; the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment, and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this."

Numerous other Old Testament prophecies concern Christ not only in his role as the Lamb who dies to reconcile, or make peace, between humans and God, but also as the military Messiah. For example, the prophetic utterances of Balaam in Numbers 24:17 predict the end times violent role of Christ.

Christ as substitute atonement

The present focus is on pictures of Christ as the payment for sin, evidence of grace in the Mosaic Law. This brings us to the law of the substitute atonement. From the early days after the Fall onward, God's word shows us that He is only satisfied by a blood sacrifice, an offering of the death of an "unblemished" animal in its "prime" in place of the sinner. We are also shown that God would provide that blood sacrifice himself. The law of the substitute atonement seems to have been present in some form right from the Fall, when God provided animal skins to cover Adam and Eve. The blood sacrifice law is the most consistent part of God's dealings with humans, more dependable historically than any other part of the Law. It also happens to be the most important part of the Law, and it is the thing that sets Judaeo-Christianity apart from every other religion. All religions have some sort of moral code. Only one has a God Who offers to pay the penalty for human sin.

The Pentateuch spells out the law of substitute atonement or redemption, the buying back of the human rough blood or money. Money could not be used for a transaction involving sin: the substitute blood atonement was essential as payment for sin. God has stated He will accept the death of a substitute in place of the death of the sinner, i.e., the death of one precious individual could pay the death penalty and free another individual from death.

However, money could be used in other transactions. The substitute redemption law is found in the law of the firstborn, which states that the firstborn child in the human family, or the firstborn animal, or first fruit from a fruit tree belong to God and must be given back to God, i.e., killed, or brought back from Him. (Exodus 13:2) To redeem, or buy back, the first fruit, you either used money or made a blood sacrifice. For example, you could redeem an ass with a lamb (Exodus 34:19).

The importance of making offerings to God has been apparent since the Fall, also. Tithes are mentioned in the account of Abraham's meeting with Melchizedek. More than just the tithe, giving the first fruit of any kind pleases God. This includes the firstling, the first offspring of any living being. Abel is noted for giving the firstling to God (Genesis 4:4). In fact, whatever opens the "matrix" belongs to God automatically, and has to be bought back from God (Exodus 34:19). This firstling law is a picture of Christ, Who was the ultimate form of that sacrificed "firstling," the very first Son of God, One who was God and man. God establishes the utter preciousness of Christ as the firstborn of God so we see the enormity of His mercy. He spared no expense to rescue us.

The sacrificial sliding scale

Christ takes the place of the various types of sacrifice detailed in the Mosaic law. All the sacrifices were a picture of Him: unblemished (i.e., sinless), killed in their prime as he was at the age of thirty three, and (typically but not always) male. Exodus 12:5 refers to a lamb; 29:1 refers to two rams; Leviticus 1:3 refers to a bullock; 1:4 refers to turtle-doves and young pigeons for those who cannot afford larger animals. Evidently God is so merciful that he even provided a "sliding scale" for payment to make it possible for everyone, no matter how rich or poor, to be saved. Leviticus 5:11 shows the "sliding scale" aspect of payment for sin: turtle doves and pigeons were the least costly type of blood payment, but if the sinner could not even bring one of these, a handful of fine flour was acceptable as a "widow's mite. The flour was, or course, not a blood payment. It stood in lieu of the blood payment.

The priest offered up "blanket" blood payments at various times for the entire congregation; and the daily offerings were constantly burning in the temple. Nobody had to go uncovered (Leviticus 6:13).

There are several olfactory metaphors for Jesus. Humans are such a malodorous bunch, even when we bathe regularly the odor of sin does not go away. If we want to smell nice to God, we have to be covered with the wonderful aroma of Chris, Who is represented in the separate roasting of the fat, a part of the sacrifice not to be eaten but simply broiled to make "a sweet savor: all the fat is the LORD'S" (Leviticus 3:16].

"Types" of Christ in the Old Testament

God often uses events, situations, or personalities of Old Testament figures, especially patriarchs and prophets, to show us the role of Christ. In terms of being unfairly persecuted, David is a human "type," or picture, of Christ. David was innocent of any intention to harm Saul, yet Saul pursued him relentlessly. This is a picture of Christ's total innocence.

Human types of Christ

A limited human type is someone in whom God reveals an aspect of Christ-like behavior to help us appreciate the salvation message in the gospel. The typing is generally confined to one or two aspects of the person, who in other respects is just as corrupt a sinner as all humans are. We know that David was an adulterer and murderer who died with vengeance in his heart instead of forgiveness towards his enemies as Christ had done. Even if we had no account of these human sins, and were told only the good things about David, such as the fact that God chose him as "a man after his own heart" (I Samuel 13:14), an ordinary human and not God in human form, we know he was still a sinner. Limited types of Christ are found elsewhere among Old Testament figures: Joseph forgiving the brothers who believed they had killed him; Judah willing to remain captive in Egypt in place of his half-brother, Benjamin; Moses willing to die for the children of Israel so that God would forgive them; Boaz playing the role of the kinsman redeemer who buys back the estate of his family member, Ruth...these are just a few.

Christ in His many human roles

Christ is pictured in many different human roles in the Old Testament: the high priest (Genesis 14:18; Leviticus 21:10), prince (Isaiah 9:6), king (Isaiah 32:1; Psalm 2:6), judge (Exodus 2:14; Isaiah 2:4), suffering servant (Isaiah 53), man (Isaiah 59:16), kinsman redeemer (Ruth 4:8), redeemer (Isaiah 59:20), intercessor (Isaiah 59:16),and bridegroom (Isaiah 62:5).

Physical metaphors for Christ

God used many physical objects as metaphors for Christ along with human examples of Him in the Old Testament.

Christ in the tabernacle and temple

The tabernacle and temple represent Christ in His being the physical container of God on earth. Christ is also represented by the design and contents of the tabernacle and temple. He is the Holy of Holies, he is the Ark of the Testimony and the Mercy Seat above it. He is the contents of the Ark: the Ten Commandments (the only one whose every act embodies the law), the rod which budded (life coming out of death), and the manna (bread of life coming down from heaven). He is the Mercy seat: the platform on which God meets in forgiveness with humans.

On the outer side of the veil He is the candlestick ("the light unto men" (John 1:5)), the incense (a covering for human malodor), and the showbread (the unleavened (sinless) bread of life).

Naturalistic metaphors:

God paints us pictures of Christ in every part of the creation so we perceive Him with all our senses. As we saw in relation to the burning of fat, perfume metaphors for Christ abound in the Old Testament. He is the "rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley (Song of Solomon 2:1).

God gives us a picture of Christ as life in the midst of death as the "root out of a dry ground" (Isaiah 53:2). He is also a rock, a stone, a corner-stone (of a bridge, which is the stone carrying the weight, i.e., the burden of punishment for human sin).

Christ as protector

Christ is a physical protector, pictured in the City of Refuge, a safe place for the "man-slayer" who accidentally killed somebody (Numbers 35). He is also the cleft in a rock, the place where God hid Moses for protection from being burned up by His glory (Exodus 33:22).

Christ as blood

Leviticus 17 points out the holiness of blood. It was never to be consumed by humans, but poured out of meat to be consumed by humans, and drained from meat offerings. Blood was to be used only as the actual point of contact between God and humans, being sprinkled on the altar before the door of the tabernacle as an offering to God. So when the New Covenant commands humans to symbolically drink Christ's blood "shed for many for the remission of sins," it is clear that this action is continuous with the Law in that it connects and reconciles us with God (Matthew 26:28).

Christ as entrance to God

Christ is the entrance to God, so He is represented as a "door" (John 10:7), a door-keeper (Rev 3:8) and "the way," as in the following: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). Christ breaks down the barrier, or door, between sinful humans and God. In line with this idea is the statement by God to Cain in Genesis 4:7. God rejects Cain's offering because "sin lieth at the door." A blood sacrifice, i.e. Christ, alone atones for that sin and opens the door.

Christ as the holy days: the prophetic calender

Christ is represented by the various holy days mentioned in the Old Testament; these holy days are a prophetic calender of future comings of Christ in His various roles.

Sabbath

Christ is represented in a very general way by the day of rest, the Sabbath or seventh day of the week, and the various holy days including the Passover. Christ as a day of rest for humans signifies that human works are irrelevant for salvation; Christ's death alone pays the penalty for human sin.

Passover

The first holy day in the Law, also the first one in the year, is the Passover. Christ's death on the Passover could hardly be a clearer indication that He is the Passover lamb, whose death causes the Death Angel to pass over the homes of those who cover the lintel and door-posts with His blood. Humans are protected from Death and Hell when covered by the blood of "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).

The blood on the door-posts is the blood of Christ; the unleavened bread to be eaten on the Passover and for the seven days following it represents the sinless body of Christ, eaten now in the form of the bread of the Eucharist in remembrance of Christ. During the Passover Feast known as the Last Supper, Jesus instructed His disciples how to carry out the celebration of the New Covenant, the replacement of the system of animal sacrifices defined in the Law (Luke 22:19-20). Now the bread and wine, representing the body and blood of Christ, take the place of the previous system.

Firstfruits

The next holy Day in the Mosaic calender was the feast of Firstfruits, later called the Feast of Weeks, which consisted of two sabbaths separated by fifty days, the first celebrating the onset of harvest after seeds were sown (Exodus 23:16; Lev 23:9-14; Deut 6:9-12). This is a picture of the resurrection of Christ, the event that took place fifty days before Pentecost. States Paul: "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." (I Corinthians 15:20)

The second Feast Day coming fifty days after the first one is clearly fulfilled in the Day of Pentecost when God sent the Holy Spirit down to enable believers to bear fruit.

Trumpets

Leviticus 23:24 commands that on the first day of the seventh month "shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation." Silver trumpets, representing the voice of God (Exodus 20:18), were used to assemble the Israelites for their journeying in the wilderness (Numbers 10:1-10); later they were a reminder of the capture of Jericho. God commanded the trumpet-blowing prior to his destruction of the town and deliverance of it into the hands of the Children of Israel under Joshua, who is a type of Christ.

This feast appears to represent the awaited second coming of Christ: "For the LORD himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God" (I Thessalonians 4:16).

Day of Atonement

One thing that is striking is the number of times the word "atonement" is used in the Mosaic law. Atonement is compensation or making amends for sin, a way to get out of condemnation. God gives humans a way to escape paying for their own sins in the Law by stating that He would accept the blood of a substitute for the sinner. The very repetition of the word atonement in connection with the sacrificial offering drums into our brain the intrinsic connection between blood and mercy. Blood is necessary and sufficient to release the mercy of God.

Christ is represented in both of the two types of sin offerings on the annual Day of Atonement that comes ten days after the Feast of Trumpets (Exodus 30; Leviticus 16). The Day of Atonement was a day of rest, a Sabbath, when it was against the law to work, another picture of Christ whose blood alone pays for sin. No human work of atonement can do the job.

The first offering was the blood payment on the one day of the year when the priest entered the innermost part of the temple. On this day he made the offering for sin in the holy of holies, a part of the temple normally closed off. The holy of holies, a picture of the holiness (separateness) of God, contained the mercy seat where God had agreed to meet with the human representative of the Children of Israel. Under the mercy seat were two tablets of the law inside the Ark of the Testimony. God agreed to come to the mercy seat to accept the blood as payment for human sin.

What clearer indication is there of mercy in the Old Testament than the orders God gave for the placement of the mercy seat on top of the ark of the covenant containing the law (Exodus 40:20)? This is another picture of Christ: He is the mercy overriding the death sentence in the law.

The second offering on the Day of Atonement was the so-called scapegoat-the origin of the expression used today--the one who takes the blame for somebody else's sin. The priest confessed all the sins of the people over the head of the scapegoat, who was then led away alive and left so far in the wilderness that he would not return. This was a picture of God letting all the sins go out of his mind.

Christ the blanket pardon

The sacrifices on the Day of Atonement are a picture of Christ: one sacrifice pays for the sins of everyone who participates. One had to pay for many because it would be impossible to slay a lamb for every sin committed by humans. A person would be kept busy all day long, trotting back and forth to the tabernacle (later replaced by the temple). His whole herd would be killed off in no time, then he would have to go and purchase animals to sacrifice. To believe otherwise would be to refuse to acknowledge how depraved we humans are, how selfish are our motivations.

Since it was impossible to make a blood sacrifice for every single sin, God instituted certain forms of blanket payment in the law. Observation of the Day of Atonement, a Sabbath, or day of rest, was all that was required for a person's sins to be covered for a whole year. So here we get a blanket pardon, like Christ, one death paying for many sins of many people.

The Day of Atonement is described in Exodus 30 and Leviticus 16. What better proof is there that God has acknowledged the unending and thorough depravity of humans than His putting that annual blanket in the Law? And what better proof is there of God's love than the fact that He commands humans to observe the Day of Atonement? He actually wants us to be saved, not because we are essential to Him in any way, but simply because He loves us despite our corruption. God actually commands humans to be saved.

This certainly negates perfectionism. If God expected a single one, just one, of the Israelites to be able to avoid breaking any of the 633 statutes, why did He command them all to observe the annual Day of Atonement? The commandment to observe that day every year highlights the fact that God knows that humans will sin continually. The fact that it is a Sabbath acknowledges that human works or performance cannot cleanse humans. The only option available to us is to rest in God's provision of forgiveness.

This is one day in the Mosaic calender that has not yet been covered in the earthly appearance of Christ. Nor is there a clear indication of what importance this occasion will have in the future. One day the Jews will "look upon him whom they pierced" (Zechariah 12:10) and see Christ is the Messiah. Will this be on the final Day of Atonement?

Tabernacles

This is also known as the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the harvest. Tabernacles is a portentous occasion representing the awaited final harvesting of souls for judgment. To observe this holy festival, believers are commanded to spend a week camping outside the house in a tent or tabernacle covered with pitch. In a sense, this is a picture of a picture. It is a remembrance of God's deliverance of the Children of Israel in the wilderness when God kept them safe in their tents, an event which is itself a picture of Christ. The tabernacle itself is a covering for the believer just as Christ is a covering for the believer's sin (Lev 23:33-36, 39-43; Deuteronomy 16:13-15).

Where does the perfectionist interpretation of the Mosaic Law come from?

All heresies originate from Satan, the father of lies. Therefore, the perfectionist interpretation of the Old Testament is ultimately his work. The blinding of the Jews to grace in the Old Testament led to a slavish and superficial devotion to keeping the edicts of the Torah. It seems that all of the Jewish sects at the time of Jesus were off base, blind to the mercy in the law, unaware of the true role of the blood sacrifice as no mere ritual but an actual payment for sin.

Mistranslation of the Hebrew word for "perfect"

Mistranslation or misunderstanding of the Hebrew word used for "perfect" has played a part in the perfectionist interpretation of the Law. The Hebrew word most frequently translated into "perfect" in the Old Testament is "tamiym." This word means "complete, without blemish, full, perfect, sincerely, sincerity, sound, without spot, undefiled, upright, whole." It does not necessarily connote sinlessness. "Tamiym" comes from a primary root, "tamam" which means "to complete" in either a good or bad sense, i.e., accomplish, cease, be cleaned, consume, have done, come to an end, fail, come to the full, make perfect, be spent, be upright, be wasted, whole."

This use of the word "perfect" is found where Noah is described as "a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9). Does this mean Noah was without sin? No. How can we be sure? The first thing Noah did when he and his family stepped off the ark onto dry land was to make an offering to God of a blood sacrifice. In doing this, Noah was signifying that he knew he was a sinner. He knew that as a human he was unclean and could not come to God without this offering. There is no way for humans to approach a holy God without being cleansed, and Noah was--somehow--aware that God would only accept him if he used this method of cleansing, the blood sacrifice which is a "type" or picture of Christ.

So in what sense was Noah perfect? In his undivided attention to the God of the Bible. Whenever an Old Testament figure is described as "perfect" it is in terms of his focus on God and avoidance of idolatry.

Perfectionism in the Jewish sects at the time of Christ

The Pharisees were a sect criticized at length by Christ for their hypocrisy and outward show of piety (Matthew 23). They had moved in a perfectionist direction, refusing to see or blinded to the freedom they had in the Law.

By the time of Christ other writings were relied on more than the Law, or Torah. The book of the Law had been lost for a long time prior to this. It was briefly retrieved for a period before Judah went into captivity in Babylon. II Kings 22:11 gives an account of King Josiah wringing his hands after the discovery of the book of the Law in the Temple in Jerusalem way back around 600 B.C. For a while the Law was re-instituted, but it soon got lost again. Was anyone paying attention to the Law at the time of Christ? If so, the Pharisees were not "getting it." Even less so were the more off-base sects like the Sadducees, who did not even believe in the resurrection.

The term "pharisee" has come to be used for a merciless legalist in Christendom. However, as superficial, unmerciful and judgmental as the Pharisees were, they were closer to the truth in the Torah than many other sects present at the time of Christ. At least they did believe in the resurrection of the body and eternal life, which was not the case for the supposedly more conservative Sadducees who officiated in the Temple.

No blood sacrifice for the Jews

In fact, ever since the Jerusalem temple, the one place where God stated He would accept sin offerings, was destroyed in 70 A.D., Jews who do not accept Christ have had no sacrificial offering for sin. Payment must be in blood and they have no blood payment. By getting away from the written word of the Torah with its clear offer of mercy from God, and their reliance on other man-made texts like the Talmud that omits the blood covenant, they went seriously off track and have stayed there ever since. They missed out on the importance of Isaiah 53, with its picture of the suffering servant who is "bruised for our iniquities." Isaiah 53 offers a very clear picture of the coming Messiah as the servant upon whom God would lay "the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6), but who would be rejected by his own people: "...we hid as it were our faces from him" (Isaiah 53:3). Jews were looking for a Messiah that appealed to the flesh, a military Messiah who would liberate the nation of Israel politically...this is of course Christ of the Second Coming.. Notice that there is very much this phenomenon today only in the Christian church-a great deal of interest in the Second Coming of Christ and an outward, worldly type of religiosity.

The blinding of the Jews

At any rate, for His own reasons God chose to blind the Jews to the truth. Paul talked of it, pointing out the Old Testament references to this (Romans 11:7-10), particularly Psalm 69 in which David asks God to punish his enemies: "Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake" (Psalm 69:23).

The blinding (physical and spiritual) was one of the punishments for rebellion towards God defined in the Law: "The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart" (Deuteronomy 28:28). The fact that God allowed the Jews to be blind to Christ forced the apostles to preach the gospel outside of the Jewish population. This is an example of how God uses evil for good. The blindness of one nation is a blessing to all the others. Yet the early Christian church made the same mistake as the Jews. The eagerness of humans to establish headship of the Christian church made it separate itself from Judaism. What better reason to reject the Old Testament than to regard the Law as merely condemning?

Conclusion: the new covenant is the fulfilment of the law and the prophets

Christ spoke of a new testament after the Passover in the upper room in the night before his crucifixion. However, this was no new dispensation. This was no new time of grace following a time of a law with no mercy. It was rather the fulfillment of the Law: the complete, promised, final God-given atonement for all human sin for all humans for all time, backwards and forwards. If we separate ourselves from the Law, we lose out on the impact of this wonderful crowning glory. We chop the head off the body and cut ourselves off from the simplicity of God's mercy.

Leviticus 17:11 spells out the provision for transgression, the clause in God's law that allows law-breakers to be forgiven and not go to hell. The Old Testament law contains God's provision of a way out of condemnation for lawbreakers. It paves the way for Christ to take the place of the atoning lamb, the substitute acceptable to God as payment for human sin. At first, humans were to provide the substitute but when God gave us Christ to die on the cross that one event paid for all human sin. In the most basic way the Old and Testaments are united in their message for us. There is no reason to fear the Law. We need it.

When Paula and Silas went to preach the gospel in the synagogue of the Jews in Berea, Greece, the Bereans searched the Scriptures daily to see if Paul were telling the truth (Acts 17:11). They believed him because what he told them was consistent with the Old Testament. Our faith in Christ rests on Scripture, i.e., the law God gave to Moses and the prophecies. From here we learn that right from the start, God gave humans a legal and easy way out. He spelled it out in Scripture. Christ said: search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me" (John 5:39). The followers of Christ who preached to the Jews used the Scriptures. Acts 18 describes Apollos at Ephesus teaching the Jews in public using the Scriptures.

Prophetic pictures of Christ are throughout the Old Testament. Christ, in fact, is the law. Says Paul: "...so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets." It is a terrible thing that so many Christians cut themselves off from the abundant proof that God has made available.

1. If "Scripture" is the Word of God through the mouth of man, we are on safest ground when we define it as any segments of the Bible where the words are directly from God. This would have to include not only the Old Testament but also the four Gospels and the book of Revelation, which contain direct quotes from God and are therefore sacred writings that are authoritative and inviolable. Jesus Christ was careful to point to the authority of Old Testament Scripture, which must also have been His creation as the Word of God (John 1:1-5, 14).

A less water-tight case can be made for inclusion of other parts of the New Testament as sacred writings. The writers of the New Testament epistles clearly make prophetic statements. On the other hand, these writers do not claim to be rewriting the law. They mostly carry out interpretation and editorializing, frequently referring to Old Testament Scripture as their authority, apparently having some struggles over the conflict between certain aspects of the Mosaic law and the laws and customs of the Gentile societies they were evangelizing.

2. Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition, 1988, gives several definitions of "religion," only one of which clearly refers to a belief in God: "1. belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshiped as the creator(s) and ruler(s) of the universe; 2.a. any specific system of belief and worship, often involving a code of ethics and philosophy; b. any system of beliefs, ethical values, practices, etc. resembling, suggestive of, or likened to such a system ; 3. the state or way of life of a person in a monastery, convent, etc.; 4. any object of conscientious regard and pursuit."

However, all these definitions imply a moral code, for which it is impossible ultimately to make a case without also implying a higher being.

3. There are various definitions of grace in Webster's dictionary, some theological and some non-theological. The ones of interest at present are the theological ones. The most profound theological meaning of grace is the first definition given in Webster: "unmerited love and favor of God toward mankind." The other theological meanings of grace concern worldly gifts from God to man only affecting this lifetime. This would include the gift of virtue, or help, or some special gift. These things are not to be sniffed at for sure, but do not compare with the most important and eternal sense of grace. The most important sense of that unmerited favor operates on the eternal level. It is the gift of salvation from hell.

4. Webster's dictionary has a very misleading definition of antinomianism, calling it belief "in the Christian doctrine that faith alone, not obedience to the moral law, is necessary for salvation." At first pass that does not sound like heresy. However, if faith alone is necessary for salvation, faith in what? Just a vague sort of faith in a loving God? Or faith in something very specific? It has to be the latter: the action taken by that loving God to pay the penalty Himself for human sin? If one rejects the law, then faith is just a vague airy-fairy thing with no foundation. What role does the law play in antinomianism? Antinomians deny all parts of the law, including the clauses that tell lawbreakers how to get saved. It is true that salvation is not contingent on obedience to the moral law, which would put salvation in the hands of humans. Salvation is contingent on human obedience to the clause in the law spelling out the terms for being forgiven. Obedience to that blood covenant alone is what saves: "...for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev 17:11) That is where antinomianism misses. By rejecting the whole Law, it misses out on the mercy only to be had when humans approach God sprinkled with the blood of the sacrificed lamb.

Vergilius Ferm, in his Encyclopedia of Religion, defines antinomianism as a "term used to indicate types of ethical thought in which hostility to the law of Moses has led to a tendency to immoral teaching or practice. There are traces of this kind of thought in the NT, where it represented a phase of Paul's struggle to clarify the relation of the Gospel and the law....." It is hard to comprehend that humans are given forgiveness by God. Yet in spite of all the illegality of our thoughts and actions, we can stop being outlaws and become legal in-laws when we wash ourselves in the blood of Christ which pays the penalty for all our transgressions of the law. The law spells out the system of payment, meaning there is mercy in the very law itself

5. God commands the Israelites to observe the annual Day of Atonement and to keep the statutes regarding payment for sin. (Exodus 30) This is proof that He wants us to be justified, to have eternal life in heaven.

6. The word "selectively" is used here because in a council in Jerusalem, Paul was among those who supported the idea that Gentiles were only to be held to four things: avoidance of idols, blood, things strangled, and fornication (Acts 15). Christians pay no attention to the second and third of these.

7. When this book refers to the entire Mosaic code, including Parts One and Two, capitalization is used for the word "law." The Law is the only place to go for mercy.

8. This is translated from "gehenna" in the Hebrew

9. The same verse contains another promise, that "thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies," a promise which in modern times has been fulfilled not by ethnic descendants of Abraham via Jacob, but by spiritual descendants. These have been Great Britain, and the United States, nations that had empires with strategic "gates" acting as checkpoints or barriers adjacent to their enemies all over the world. It is noteworthy that these "gates" have fallen unto enemy hands and those empires waned as the nations went into rebellion towards God.

10. The word for hell in this passage is gehenna.

11. Rawlings, Maurice To Hell and Back

12. Campbell, Joseph Myths to Live By, p.188

13. Faith without works is dead, but works are in no way our salvation and never have been. Works are merely proof of faith. Moreover, God does not have to look at our record of works to determine our faith. He can see right inside our hearts.

14. However, however the later line of Maccabean kings in the land were apparently not of the line of Judah; the historian Josephus records them as having a priestly origin, which would make them Levites.

15. Josephus "Maccabean kings had a priestly origin"

16. Capt, Raymond Kings of Europe are descended from Judah