By Daniel Downs
While Jews celebrate the freedom from oppression from tyrants like Pharaoh and Haman, they do not forget the holocaust. I have read that many Jews forsook God because of this horrific event. Yet, the senseless death of millions of Zion’s children proved to be more like birth pangs. It was a bloody birth but Israel was reborn in 1948.
Israel was birth through the bloody confrontation between God and Egypt. Even though enslaved Jews in ancient were as worthy of God’s justice for their own sins, God passed over their lives during that confrontation. Why? Because he saw the blood of sinless souls. The sacrificed life of those morally inculpable souls God deemed sufficient to satisfy justice’s demands.
Easter is the season during which Christians also celebrate God’s Passover. No, it is not the same as the Passover observed by Jews. Rather, it is a celebration of the blessings of God promised Abraham. Christians enter into covenant blessings of Zion through the Jew Jesus.
Many focus on death Jesus during this season and rightly so. The moral changes of life experienced as a result of a developing relationship with God through Christ testifies to the divine acceptance of the only sinless sacrifice capable of fully and eternally satisfying God’s justice.
From a philosophical perspective, the moral crimes of humanity cannot be fully satisfied by inculpable souls i.e. animals. For the death of an animal as punishment for human sin, this substitute must be without sin for the soul that sin dies. A soul dead in sin could hardly be acceptable. Yet, animals cannot commit moral crimes as far as we know; only human are capable and culpable of such crimes. That is why the death of animals could never cease flowing on behalf of humanity: the death of animals is not fully sufficient to atone for human sin.
As previously mentioned, only a sinless human being could fully satisfy the demands of divine justice for all time for all people. That is reason why the one apostle who saw Jesus after his resurrection and ascension to heaven, Paul, said all who accept Jesus death and Lordship as covenant with God are justified, which mean both acquitted of all charges of moral crime and regarded as righteous by God. Notice, justification is sealed by Jesus’ resurrection. Paul, a Pharisee who was confronted by the resurrected Jesus and not the intellectual myth claimed by liberalism, realized the law of redemption is completed by Christ. The moral law of God inherent the covenants of God never ceased, only the never-ending need for animals to bear the punishment for human crimes against that law of God.
Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus because he is their representative before God. His suffering, punishment and death is their suffering, rightful punishment and death. His resurrection represents their future. Hence, Christians enjoy the benefits of covenanted salvation because it is of the Jews. Jesus is the one sinless Jew who was the progeny on many Jews going back beyond King David and Jacob to Abraham. As Adam was federal head of sinful humanity, Jesus reigns as Lord over a new age of people renewed to the glory of God as those seeking to live holy lives this world now that is not yet fully His kingdom.