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| "sacrifices can't be offered today," remember that line |
When you see beginner level mistakes in the interpretation of scripture happen repeatedly in published materials from an author or organization, it makes you wonder how such a thing could happen. Then again, in this case, the oddball interpretation serves a larger purpose because it needs to connect to a theory that the author really wants to be true: The Law of Moses is still 100% in effect and one day the entire Temple sacrificial system will be reinstated exactly as written in the Torah.
If you as an individual or an organization need the Law of Moses to be eternal, and you want to make it look like scripture supports this thesis, there are going to be a lot of passages that get twisted into shapes the Church won't recognize. In Lesson 24 of the Beginning of Wisdom, Romans 12:1-2 gets that treatment.
In Romans 12:1-2, the Apostle Paul explains the proper Christian response to God's merciful and glorious will as laid forth in the doxology that ended chapter 11. In 12:1-2 Paul utilizes the metaphorical imagery of the Mosaic sacrificial system to point to something better: the living sacrifice of service and worship that we can make to God.
To serve his purposes, Lancaster declares that the Greek word latreia, which is typically translated into English in this context as "worship", "refers specifically to the sacrificial services." This isn't true, and it is easy to see why. Yes, the Apostle Paul is using the imagery of the sacrificial system to make his point, a common rhetorical technique of building on the familiar (as the non-Jews among his readers would also be familiar with sacrifices made in the Greco-Roman religious rites as virtually all Ancient Near Eastern civilizations utilized such sacrifices) to point to what the New Covenant has replaced that familiar thing with. Rather than animal sacrifices carried out by priests, the familiar pattern, the New Covenant requires our very lives. Not in human blood-spilling sacrifices, but as a living rejection of our own self-centeredness in favor of being servants of God. The emphasis on the living sacrifice is a point of discontinuity with the Mosaic system, not continuity, Lancaster is proclaiming the opposite of what Paul's metaphor is intended to convey.
Contrary to Lancaster, Paul isn't using this imagery because the Roman followers of Jesus lived too far away from Jerusalem to offer up animal sacrifices there. He states a whole litany of various sacrifices that these followers of Jesus are supposedly obligated to keep. That's eisegesis, Lancaster is reading into the text what he wants to find there. The evidence is lacking in the NT or in Early Church writings that Jesus' followers in the Church had any interest in participating in the Mosaic system that continued to function in Jerusalem until its destruction in 70 AD. Nowhere does Paul, or any other NT author, write about how Gentile Christians need to travel to Jerusalem, how they ought to celebrate the Festivals, keep the Sabbath, or keep Kosher. The Jerusalem Council specifically rejects any such mandate {Yes, FFOZ also flips that text around to proclaim that it means the opposite of Luke's intention}. As my exhaustive study of every relevant passage in the book of Acts demonstrates so clearly, the Early Church was not under the tutelage of the synagogues, they were not learning how to live like Jews, it just wasn't happening. {The evidence from Luke's history of that first generation is one of hostility not cooperation, new beginnings and new solutions, not continuation of old forms. Read the analysis for yourself and see.}
In the end, Jesus has provided his followers with something far better than the Law of Moses. The Law had provisions that kept the people away from God's presence: foreigners, women, lepers, eunuchs, and more were kept at a distance from God's presence within the Holy of Holies. Even Jewish men could not directly approach God, only the priests could enter the inner areas of the Temple, and only the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, bringing with him blood for the Ark, could see God's visible glory in that place... But the curtain tore in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51) when Jesus breathed his last. What had kept humanity away from God, our unpaid-for sins, was gone; gone forever. Instead of fear and trembling, instead of extremely limited access and layers of separation between God and his people, because of Jesus we can approach the Father directly, we can cry out, "Abba!" The only priest we will ever need to stand between us and God is our Great High Priest, Jesus Christ.
Until the Incarnation brought about Jesus' death and resurrection, an entire system was needed to allow God's presence to be among a stubborn and sinful people. That system never took away sins (at least Lancaster stresses this point several times), it only held God's wrath at bay lest his people be destroyed before he could show them his coming mercy.
But that age has ended, thanks be to God. It served its purpose in God's will, but that purpose has been surpassed by one that is far greater. Now all the world's people can approach God, all equal before the throne of grace because all have come to it by grace through faith in Jesus.
Dear followers of Jesus, your "worship" offered to God is not a substitution for a sacrifice in the Temple that would otherwise be required of you, it is not an obligation laid upon your shoulders, it is a heartfelt act of gratitude because Jesus has set you free, free to serve the Living God.
For the sake of comparison, here is my sermon from July of 2023 on Romans 12:1-2
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