When Christ was crucified, they should have known.

I want to accompany each lesson in the life of Christ that Andrew posts with a similar post from a different angle. I hope this can give you something new to think about and maybe put some pieces together that you may not have put together before.

This first lesson is less about Christ’s life and more about the prophecies about Him. Christ said that he did not come to abolish the law and prophets, but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17). I think for most of us, his fulfilling the prophets is easy to wrap our minds around. “Like a lamb before its shearers is silent, he did not open his mouth (Is 53:7),” is easy to make the connection. Jesus makes this even easier for us when he quotes Isaiah 61 (Lk 4). It is simple to understand his fulfillment of the prophets, but what about his fulfillment of the law?

Let’s look at a few verses in the law that He fulfilled. There is no way to look at each passage in great depth, but we will look at a few bits in them. In Leviticus 1-7 we see much of the sacrificial system given to the people. I am going to group the text into the different sacrifices instead of the chapters because many of the sacrifices are mentioned multiple times.

The burnt offering and the grain offering: These sacrifices are very similar. Very little is said about the reasoning for giving these. It seems that their offerings were simply out of free will. They performed these sacrifices to God simply because He is good, they love Him, and choose Him to be their God . They gave up ALL of their firstborn/firstfruits in this offering. These offerings were a pleasing aroma to God. We could say God was well pleased.

God made his sacrifice, Jesus, out of freewill (Rev 22:17). He did not have to give the sacrifice. God gave Him because He loves us. He is Good to all people. Through Jesus, He chooses us to be His people and Him to be our God. Jesus, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1:15) became the offering in whom God is well pleased (Mat 3:17).

When Christ was crucified, they should have known.

The sin and guilt offering: These sacrifices, like the two we just discussed are very similar. These sacrifices are to forgive sin. When the people sinned intentionally or unintentionally, they were to take their offering to the priest and the priest would offer in before the Lord and their sin would be forgiven.

Wait a minute, I thought the forgiveness of sin was only through Christ. Why then does the text say that these sacrifices forgive sin (Lev 4:26,31,35 among others)? It is true that only through Christ we have the forgiveness of sin. Here is where we get into the fulfillment of the law. These sacrifices of course were a shadow of Christ’s (Heb 10:1-18). By participating in these sacrifices, the people were accepting God’s forgiveness ultimately found in Christ. Whether they knew it or not, they were in essence saying that when the fullness of time comes (Gal 4:4) we will accept what God and Christ brings. Through this act, they are participating in the greatest sacrifice of all, Christ.

When Christ was crucified, they should have known.

The fellowship offering: The fellowship offering is similar to the burnt and grain offerings. These are sacrifices made more from choice, not obligation like the sin and guilt offerings. The person offers this to show his/her appreciation for God’s involvement in his/her life. The text mentions two different ways to present this: either in thankfulness (Lev 7:12) or a vow/freewill (Lev 7:16) offering. This offering is saying to God that we are thankful for His involvement in our lives and the relationship we have together. It is also vowing to God that we will be His forever (Along the same lines, the word prayer in James 5:15 can also be translated vow). It is very much a personal renewal of our covenant with Him.

Christ’s sacrifice did just this. God says to us that He is glad He made us and chose us. He is vowing to be in a covenant relationship with us forever. He will be involved in deep and full fellowship with His people.

You may have also noticed in reading this text that there were times when the sacrifice was eaten. This has huge implications for us. There is no better way to get to know someone than sharing a meal together. Jesus does this all the time. He is constantly eating with people. He wants to build a deep relationship with everyone. Sometimes he ate in a house setting (Simon, Zacchaeus), and sometimes he ate with thousands of people at once (feeding of 5,000, 4,000). He is saying that He wants to have fellowship with all people. All through the OT scriptures, we see the sacrifices being eaten. Why? If I were to just go in, make my sacrifice and leave, it means very little to me. However, by eating it, I am forced to invest time, energy, and emotion into it. With every bite I think about the magnitude of this sacrifice. The Passover meal was just this. In eating the meal, they remember the sacrifice of that Passover lamb in a very special and real way. Jesus, when sharing a Passover meal with his disciples he said those familiar words, “Take, eat, this is my body (Mat 26:26).” Jesus was telling them that He is that sacrifice and as they eat this meal, they are eating the sacrifice. They probably didn’t understand it to be Christ at the time, but they soon would. Every time they broke bread together, they knew they were eating and sharing in that sacrifice and having direct fellowship with God. We still do this today. We eat the sacrifice when we break bread together. The exciting thing is that Jesus is eating the sacrifice with us (Mat 26:29). John Mark Hicks said it this way in his book, Come to the Table: Revisioning the Lord’s Supper, “We are eating the sacrifice with the sacrifice.” Jesus is in our midst, engaging in that fellowship offering he made on the cross.

When Christ was crucified, they should have known.