Law and Grace (3) Sinful People

Most Christians see the Old Testament law as a set of rules that the Israelites had observe to obtain the blessings of the Mosaic covenant. That is not true. The Mosaic covenant did not require the Israelites to be perfect. In fact, it does not even define perfection. The sins that displease God, like pride, anger, hatred, jealousy, selfishness, ambition and dissension, are not mentioned in the five books of the law. The sins that prevent people from being like Jesus are not forbidden by the law. Obeying the law could not make a person perfect, because that was not its purpose.

The Mosaic covenant expected the people to carry on sinning, so it provides a solution for sin. A system of sacrifices was put in place to deal with infringements. The premise of this system was that people could not be perfected by law, so they would continue to sin. There was even a guilt offering for sins that people were not aware of committing (Lev 5:14-19). Most of the sacrifices were offered by the priests, so ordinary people could get on with life without having to worry about their sinfulness. They knew that offerings were being made on their behalf. They only had to make a personal offering when they committed a significant sin.

Discerning Israelites would realise that an animal sacrifice could not fully deal with a serious sin. The sacrifices actually pointed forward to the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. Those who trusted in the sacrifice system were really relying on what Jesus would do much later, even though they did not know that he was going to do it.