The problem of being an ass

People often think that being a Christian means keeping lots of rules.

It is true, that through Moses, God gave the Jewish people lots of laws. Many were, however, to be temporary. These temporary laws taught the people about the purity of God by calling some things ‘clean’ and others ‘unclean’. It got the idea across that God was holy and that he required his people to be holy also.

In order that the people understood that everything they had, children, animals, fields of crops etc actually, in the final analysis, belonged to God, he got them to give up the first born and firstfruits of all that they had. Giving a portion of crops to the priests (tithe) was straightforward enough. When it came to your goat or sheep, well you just gave up the firstborn. When it was your firstborn baby, you were told to substitute a living creature(s) in its place; the value of the creature depended on your ability to pay - the parents of Jesus were poor and so they had to offer a pair of doves or young pigeons.

Some animals were, however, deemed ‘unclean’. You probably know that pigs fall into this category but so did the donkey. Jews didn’t keep pigs but they did have donkeys. When your donkey had a young foal for the first time, it couldn’t be sacrificed to God because it was unclean; God is not to be sullied. You were given a choice: you could either break the neck of the foal or you could substitute a lamb in its place and consequently the unclean foal lived.

It sounds like irrelevant paraphernalia to us but it was part of life for the Jews. When Jesus arrived on the scene, his relative John the Baptist said of him, ‘Look, take note, the Lamb of God that takes away the uncleanness of people from all over the world.’

Yes, like the lamb being sacrificed for the donkey, so Jesus was sacrificed on Good Friday. He did this for all who will acknowledge that they are not as holy or clean as God wants them to be and who will also trust Jesus to be their personal substitute.

As the foal would live to become a donkey because a lamb was sacrificed instead, so we can receive a new life with God now and for always, because Jesus was sacrificed for people like you and me.

‘But what’, you may ask, ‘about that good living Christians are supposed to do?’ Well, that flows out of the new life Jesus gives. Right living follows faith in Jesus and not the other way round.