| Therefore, just as Christ had to deliver His people in a true exodus from sin and death, so He had to fulfill the whole law, he had to be the One to fulfill our side of the covenant by being obedient to God in everything, even unto death. In doing so He became the pure and spotless sacrifice of love and obedience, and His spilled blood became the true seal of the fulfilled covenant. In fact, the covenant was fulfilled so perfectly that its promise and calling spilled over the borders of Israel and reached out to the Gentiles, and to all sinners. Before, we were " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, " says St. Paul. But now, those of us who repent through baptism and participate in His death and resurrection through the remembrance of His Passion enter into the life and blessings promised to those who have fulfilled the covenant. This occurs not because we personally have fulfilled the covenant, but because we are one with Him who has fulfilled it; we " have been brought near by the blood of Christ " (Ephesians 2:12-13). In the words of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, the Lord " s Resurrection made death an act of life. God fulfilled the terms of the covenant Himself on our behalf. Our relationship to the covenant before Christ was through the law, but our relationship after Christ is through grace. So magnificent and far-reaching is this covenant as it is realized in Christ that the writer to the Hebrews actually calls the first " obsolete " in comparison (Hebrews 8:13). With an understanding of our place within the New Covenant, we can have a greater appreciation of what is happening during Holy Week. By entering into the story of our redemption through the reading of Scripture, and by entering into the presence of God through the remembrance of Him (involving the offering of the sacrifice of His Son), we once again enter into covenant with God through the blood of His Son. Once again we are a holy nation, a royal priesthood, and citizens of the heavenly Kingdom. And really, the same thing happens in the Divine Liturgy. Every week, we come broken and divided, having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, having trampled His commandments, and every week the Lord acts (see Psalm 119:126) to redeem us through the Word and the Offering and to renew His covenant with us. This should cause us to tremble in the face of the awesome act of our worship, not only at Pascha but at every liturgy. |
| We say that God called Israel in order to be a light to the nations and to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ. However, usually when one gets into the details of how Israel functioned in this fashion, things become murky. Many accounts simply state that Israel, by and large, failed in her vocation so that Israel’s election devolves onto Jesus Christ who finally accomplishes it. There is a sense in which this is true, but it is not the whole truth. Israel’s election was in fact fundamental in preparing the world for the coming of Christ. The only way that one will see this, however, is by taking off the secular glasses given to us by conventional academia and seeing ancient history through new eyes. The two foundations for seeing history through Christian eyes are the following: 1. Religion. Monotheism , not polytheism, is the earliest religion of humankind, not merely Israel. God made a covenant with Noah in Genesis 9. That covenant is bifurcated into Noahic and Abrahamic forms in Genesis 15. Israel lives under the Abrahamic form of the old covenant, the nations live under the Noahic form of the old covenant. But they are both in covenant with God, and the Noahic covenant is not a covenant of “common grace” but rather a covenant which establishes terms of relationship with God. The nations will establish states with the duty to execute God’s justice. They will be headed by a king entrusted with the mandate of God, the first of which is Father Noah himself. As with Noah, the king simultaneously will function as the head of the cult devoted to the one true God.This is why, throughout the ancient world, virtually all Gentile nations have priest-kings. It is only in the Abrahamic form of the old covenant that priesthood and kingship are divided from one another by divine law. We are so used to thinking of “Gentile polytheism” and “Hebrew monotheism” that we fail to recognize the one true God in other ancient cultures. According to Daniel and Reveation, the Gentile name for God is the “God of Heaven.” It is no accident, therefore, that the high god in other cultures is very frequently associated with the sky or sun, as the Lord is in Scripture. Moses tells us that the Lord “shines” on us, the Psalmist asks who “in the skies is like the Lord?” The high god of the Roman state is Jupiter, meaning literally “Sky-Father.” We might call this the “Heavenly Father.” The high God of China was Shang-Ti, or “The Emperor of Heaven.” The high god of ancient Egypt is Amun, the “Hidden One.” He is associated with Re, the sun. The high god is a sky-god. |
Не удалось извлечь искомое из базы ((( |
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Не удалось извлечь искомое из базы ((( |
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| The religion of the Law, which for 15 centuries prepared the chosen people for the coming into the world of the its Savior, the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, preceded New Testament religion. According to the Holy Apostle Paul, " the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ " (Gal. 3:24). It was all in all only " a shadow of good things to come " (Heb. 10:1). When the Savior came into the world, Old Testament religion had fulfilled its purpose. Our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us the mystery of the Heavenly Kingdom and established the New Covenant, which was foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people " (Jer. 31:31-33). Man was redeemed from original sin and its consequences by the voluntary death on the Cross of Jesus Christ as Savior of the World. He entered into an entirely new period in terms of his relationship with God in comparison with the Old Testament: instead of the law, there was a free condition of sonship and grace. Man received new means for achieving the ideal set for him of moral perfection as a necessary condition for salvation. Islam, having arisen in Arabia in the seventh century, appeared as the religion of the law six centuries after the God of the chosen people of the religion of the Law fulfilled its purpose. The difference between the Old Testament religion of the Law and Islam is not only that the latter emerged more than two thousand years after God gave on Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments and other precepts that governed life for the chosen people. The most important difference is that the Law of Moses has a Divine source. The book of Exodus gives a narrative of the majestic Epiphany. " And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up " (Exod. 19:17-20). |
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| More accurately, we become present to Him, since He is always saving us on the Cross, He is always raised from the dead, He is always being God to us. In fact, every time we serve the Divine Liturgy we remember God in just the way Christ commands us to do, as we remember and recount the great and saving acts of God and enter into His presence. In the Anaphora, the prayers of offering, the bread and wine are consecrated precisely through this act of remembrance. In a sense, every liturgy is a microcosm of Holy Week and Pascha, or to put it in another way, Holy Week and Pascha are the expanded liturgy-remembering God in the fullest way possible, contemplating every angle of the saving work of Christ. Covenant There is one last important key which we must have, and this is an understanding of covenant. There is a covenant between God and His people. What does this mean? It means that there was an agreement between God and Israel that God would be their God, and they would be His people. Originally this agreement was sealed by the blood of a bull, sprinkled on the elders of the people (Exodus 24). This covenant of union meant that God would always care for, guide, and be present with His people, and for Israel " s part it meant that they would be obedient to the commandments of God, delivered through Moses His prophet. These commandments were meant to guide and keep Israel in holiness and to help His people fulfill the calling to be a light among the nations, a lamp in the darkness of this fallen world. Just like everything in the Scriptures before Christ, the original covenant was a type of the covenant that would be established between God and His people through His Christ. The first covenant and the laws that governed it were meant to train Israel in righteousness, to lead them to faith, to preserve them in holiness, and to govern their relationship with God. But Israel never truly lived up to the terms of that covenant. The Exodus from Egypt made Israel a nation under God and, eventually, led to the possession of the Promised Land, but new enemies would be faced, sin continued to enslave people, and death was still inevitable. |
| When speaking of the Messianic Kingdom, the prophets portrayed it as a society of spiritually renewed people. In addition, besides the Jews, other nations were to enter into this society as well. The main distinctive feature of this Kingdom was to be the abundance of the gifts of grace within it. Receiving its beginning from the time of the Messiah’s coming to earth, in the end of the world’s existence and after the universal judgment of God of the nations, it was to be transformed in its external appearance. Then, on the new, transfigured earth, all physical distresses will disappear, and there will reign among the citizens of this Kingdom bliss, immortality and the fullness of God’s blessings. This, in a few words, is the essence of these prophecies. Now we will dwell on several particulars. Speaking of the messianic times, the prophets pointed out, that they will be the times of a New Testament (Covenant) between God and people. As we know, the Old Testament between God and Israel was concluded in the presence of Moses at Mount Sinai. At that time, the Jews promised to fulfill the commandments written on the stone tablets, and they received the land, promised to Abraham (the Promised Land), as a reward from God. Here is what is written about the New Covenant by the Prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall by my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” ( Jer. 31:31–34 ). |
| Here we see that God has used both gender and the state of marriage in order to reveal to us the relationship between Him and His Church. We shall see this same imagery in the New Testament when Apostle Paul refers to the Church as Christ " s bride " without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. " It is clear that, though she was unfaithful and betrayed the spousal covenant with Hosea, Gomer was to be redeemed and restored for no other reason than because of love. This is a prophecy of the redemption of fallen mankind through the co-suffering love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We are redeemed to God and called into the covenant relationship of the New Testament with Him for no other reason than that He loves us. As the old Israel failed to grasp the meaning of the covenant as a spousal relationship, and so perished in dead legalism and the formalities of an external faith, so we are called upon to comprehend the covenant. Adultery is the only falling for which Christ permits a divorce precisely because spiritual adultery separates us from God and rejects redemption for us. It occurs to me that Apostle Paul places the final exclamation point at the end of the Book of the Prophet Hosea when He says, " Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her " ( Eph.5:25). The crown of thorns which was driven into the head of the suffering Saviour was nothing else but the wedding crown with which Christ was crowned to His bride, the Church, and for this very reason, we sing, on Holy Pascha, that Christ " comes forth from the tomb like a bridegroom in procession. " When God used the marriage of Hosea and Gomer as a revelation about the relationship between Himself and Israel in that day, He also revealed to us in a profound manner how marriage is a prophetic state which reveals the nature of the covenant and of the relationship between God and His Church. Apostle Paul reiterates that this is also the nature of the New Covenant, for: " I have espoused you to one Husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. " (2Cor.11:2). |
| Here we see that God has used both gender and the state of marriage in order to reveal to us the relationship between Him and His Church. We shall see this same imagery in the New Testament when Apostle Paul refers to the Church as Christ’s bride “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” It is clear that, though she was unfaithful and betrayed the spousal covenant with Hosea, Gomer was to be redeemed and restored for no other reason than because of love. This is a prophecy of the redemption of fallen mankind through the co-suffering love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We are redeemed to God and called into the covenant relationship of the New Testament with Him for no other reason than that He loves us. As the old Israel failed to grasp the meaning of the covenant as a spousal relationship, and so perished in dead legalism and the formalities of an external faith, so we are called upon to comprehend the covenant. Adultery is the only falling for which Christ permits a divorce precisely because spiritual adultery separates us from God and rejects redemption for us. It occurs to me that Apostle Paul places the final exclamation point at the end of the Book of the Prophet Hosea when He says, “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” ( Eph.5:25). The crown of thorns which was driven into the head of the suffering Saviour was nothing else but the wedding crown with which Christ was crowned to His bride, the Church, and for this very reason, we sing, on Holy Pascha, that Christ “comes forth from the tomb like a bridegroom in procession.” When God used the marriage of Hosea and Gomer as a revelation about the relationship between Himself and Israel in that day, He also revealed to us in a profound manner how marriage is a prophetic state which reveals the nature of the covenant and of the relationship between God and His Church. Apostle Paul reiterates that this is also the nature of the New Covenant, for: “I have espoused you to one Husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” (2Cor.11:2). |
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