Brand New
“But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” Romans 7:6
I just got a new car. But it isn’t really new of course. We always buy used cars in our family. Excuse me, ‘pre-owned’. It was something my parents did, and their parents did before them. They never bought on credit; they always saved and paid cash and taught me the value of a car drops like a rocket that first year or two and steadies out to a slower decline after that.
As I think about it, I realize we aren’t brand new sort of people anyway. Pretty much everything we have is used, recycled, handed down, or vintage found.
I found my ‘60’s sofa in a Salvation Army thrift store and had the wooden arms painted shabby white and the cushions reupholstered in ivory linen. My coffee table was in the basement of an estate sale; it is covered with an antique rug from a neighbor’s garage sale and laden with mercury candlesticks from various Goodwill stores across the city.
My favorite event is Friday night at Queenie’s, the neighborhood consignment store. Trying on dresses and getting the opinions of women I know only because they regularly show up to share gossip and shop for fashionable clothes at a fraction of the original price.
You get the idea: I am a ‘gently used’ kind of girl. Slightly worn. Signs of age starting to show around the edges.
I think it is a good way to go.
I have always thought my Christian faith was the same; pre-owned - handed-down by the previous owners the ancient Jews. So many of our Christian beliefs are so strange and oddly barbaric when you look at them closely through modern eyes. We follow a man who was tortured and died a bloody death on a Roman cross and tells us we should do the same, for goodness sakes. Try explaining that to your eight-year-old.
Or try reasoning through it with someone who finds peace in transcendental meditation. “Oh no, we have a better way; denying yourself, dying to yourself, picking up your cross…” It just doesn’t win a lot of converts. It’s a narrow door.
But what has helped me understand why we follow a crucified Messiah (other than the part where he didn’t stay dead and ended up cooking breakfast for his friends on the beach instead) has been to dive deep in the Jewish Holy Scriptures and discover, “Oh. God was setting up this whole righteousness through faith and blood sacrifice thing long before Jesus showed up on those dusty Judean roads.”
There it is right smack in the middle of Genesis; Abraham believing and offering Isaac until the ram caught in the thorn bush is brought to his attention. God offered a substitution. And then there is the story of Joseph’s coat covered in blood and him mourned as dead – only to have him show up again wearing the robes of royalty in authority as judge and savior. And I have thought, “I get it now!”
But the last few months I have had my eyes opened to something so obvious that it takes my breath away. Jesus didn’t show up and show us a better way to slaughter a lamb. Jesus wasn’t recycling the old. Jesus came to town offering something new. Something brand-spanking new. Something revolutionary. Shockingly blasphemous. Jesus said he was the lamb. And that was what got him killed.
Let that sink in.
I don't know quite how I have missed it all these years of wandering around in both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus said he came to fulfill the laws and to prepare the wrecking ball that would tear down the temple. And the sacrificial system. And therefore the need for priests.
His last words, with his dying breath, was, “It is finished.” (John 19:30) And this was only hours after he lifted a Passover cup of wine with the outrageously blasphemous new toast, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28 NIV)
Who did he think he was to make a new covenant?
And to make matters worse, he gave a new commandment; “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another." (John 13:34-35)
Who did he think he was to give a new commandment?
Well, he told them that, too. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
He gave them no choice. There was nothing to do but kill him.
Moses would have taken a step back and taken a hard look at all this newness. The stones with the law carved by God’s own finger had been broken before – out of frustration and anger. Jesus seemed to be breaking them again – with something new: love. “I give you a new command – love as I have loved you.” This was not old, borrowed theology. This was something new. Brand new.
It is certainly something to ponder, to let sink in. Something I thought was old and hand-me-down, just a better-updated version of an ancient covenant is not that at all. “I give you a new commandment – love one another as I have loved you.”
It was new. Brand new. It still is.
Questions: Have you grouped Jesus in with all the other Jewish prophets; thinking he came to clarify and renew what God had already said through Moses? Have you ever really heard what He said about who He was and why He came?
What do you think of the words in these passages?
“Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1-2 and 58:6) Luke 4:20-21
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Matthew 5:17
“But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” Romans 7:6