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Easter is about faith and hope. Easter is also about love.
The Old Covenant was a covenant of separations. Yahweh separated Himself from His people, enclosed behind a series of veils in inapproachable splendor. Yahweh called Abraham and separated him from the other nations of the earth, and gave Israel the law to keep them separate from the Gentiles. While Israel rose to the heavenly places of the temple, the nations swam in the depths of the sea.
Through Jesus' death and resurrection, He broke through those barriers, reconciling all things in Himself. By His death, Jesus cancelled the "certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us" by nailing it to the cross. Jesus Himself was separated from His Father, but by His blood and resurrection He "broke down the barrier of the dividing wall" and made Jews and Gentiles into one new man.
Most of all, by His resurrection, Jesus reconciled us to the Father, and He went through the veil into a heavenly tabernacle to present Himself, and us, in the holy place beyond the veil, so that we might gaze upon the glory of the Lord and be transformed into an image of that glory. By His resurrection, He has become the one new man in whom all the nations are blessed.
All this means that a covenant of separation has given way to a covenant of reunion; a covenant of exile to a covenant of return. Those who have been reconciled in Jesus are called to live in peace and love. Because we are in the new covenant, "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, May 21, 2006 at 08:14 AM
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