Today's Journal

SACRIFICES II

In yesterday’s Journal entry I compared the Old and New Covenant forms of sacrifices. Under the Law
(primarily in Leviticus) we find the meticulous instructions of a particular priesthood, with particular clothing, starched collars and big hats in a highly defined temple (outer court, inner court and holy of holies), with a sacrificial altar where animals and birds were slaughtered by the priests in a very specific manner on behalf of the people to become ‘right with God.’ (See yesterday’s Journal entry) In the New Covenant we find that Jesus Christ was slaughtered as a ‘new sacrifice.’

“But now Jesus has obtained a superior ministry, since the covenant that he mediates is also better and is enacted on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6).

Now the temple is ‘within’ the people of God in the New Covenant. “For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said, “I will live in them and will walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people” (2 Corinthians 6:16) We are to offer ‘spiritual sacrifices.’ We are the priesthood to make these sacrifices: or we are the living temple of the living God, just as God said, “you yourselves, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).

By the power of the Holy Spirit through grace and gifts, “Therefore, through him let us continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name” (Hebrews 13:15). We are in a Living New Covenant. “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the fresh and living way that he inaugurated for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water” (Hebrews 10:19-22).

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” Jesus