Hebrews 10.1
“For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.”
In Galatians we learn that the law was a schoolmaster that operated as a guardian and teacher until Christ came. Scripture tells us that the law illustrated truth about the coming Messiah and his kingdom via shadow and type. A “shadow or type” refers to something in the OT that symbolizes or prefigures something/someone that is yet to come. As the Hebrews passage above says, “the law was but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.”
Colossians 2.16-17 teaches the same message: “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”
What scripture is declaring is an incredibly important truth: Many elements of the law in the OT were symbols/types of Christ and his kingdom. This is the message that Paul is conveying in the book of Galatians: the law was a teacher/schoolmaster that instructed the people of Israel about the coming Messiah and his kingdom.
Unfortunately, the people of Israel were perpetually disobedient and self-centered and therefore failed to understand what the law was teaching about the coming Messiah. As a result, when Jesus arrived and announced that the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of God was at hand, most of the Jews rejected him because he did not align with their self-centered and nationalistic expectations of the Messiah and his kingdom.
Even the disciples that followed Jesus were expecting him to defeat the Romans and establish Israel as the premier nation on earth. They misunderstood the kingdom of God because they looked at it through the lens of national salvation. As we said in last week’s post, this was evident in Luke 24 when the disciples on the road to Emmaus said, “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
What they failed to understand was that Jesus the Messiah came not to deliver Israel from Rome, but to deliver all people from sin. Had the Jews read the OT scriptures more carefully, they would have seen the message of the Messiah in the structure and teaching of the law. For example, the law has 3 key pillars: the temple, the sacrifices, and the priesthood. Each of the 3 pillars of the law foreshadowed the Messiah and the kingdom community.
The 1st pillar of the law is the temple. The temple was the structure within which the Lord dwelt in the midst of the people of Israel, and it was a foreshadow of the reality that the church (the body of Christ) would be the temple of the Lord, and that God through his Spirit would dwell in the hearts of his people.
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? … For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:19-22)
The OT temple was built according to the specifications of the law and was a foreshadow of the true temple on earth which would be the church, the body of Christ. Stop and think deeply about this truth! If you are a Christian, you are a dwelling place for God on earth. You are the living, breathing temple of the Lord.
Wow!
“For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (2 Corinthians 6:16)
