MOST of modern Christianity teaches that there is nothing more for us to do but believe in Christ's sacrifice for our sins.
No wonder He is portrayed as a dead Savior hanging on a cross!
Christ's death, pictured by the Passover, was necessary to pay the penalty of our past sins – to reconcile us to the Father. But His death alone will not save us! Think, for a moment, if Jesus Christ had died but not been resurrected. Would His death alone make eternal life possible?
Of course not!
Accepting Christ's sacrifice is only the first step in God's plan for bringing humans into His divine Family.
What should we do once our past sins have been covered by the shed blood of Christ? “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” asked the Apostle Paul. “Certainly not!” was his emphatic answer (Rom. 6:1-2, RAV). “Shall we sin because we are not under [the penalty of the] law but under grace? Certainly not!” (verse 15).
We are saved by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8). “Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law” (Rom. 3:31, RAV).
Someone once asked Jesus: “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” Jesus answered: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt. 19:1647).
As we learned in previous lessons, God is now in the process of creating holy, righteous, perfect spiritual character in those whom He has called into His Church. Man, now only a clay model, is to be created in the character-image of God Almighty.
Since the Ten Commandments describe God's nature and character, keeping His Law is absolutely necessary for spiritual character growth. We must therefore obey the Master Potter, allowing Him to mold His character in us while we are still flesh and blood.
Our acceptance of Christ's sacrifice in payment for the penalty of our sins is only the first step toward salvation. Once we have repented of our sins and been forgiven by God, He wants us to forsake sin!
God commands us to come out of this world's ways of sin (Rev. 18:4) – just as ancient Israel left Egypt, a symbol for sin (Heb. 11:25-26). We must be striving to come out of all sin. That is OUR PART, with Christ's help, in God's plan of salvation.
To keep us in the knowledge of the second step in God's plan, Christ, the LORD of the Old Testament, instituted the second annual festival – the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The observance of this Feast impresses upon us that we must do our part to keep the sins Jesus covered with His shed blood out of our lives henceforth.
Leaven is also a symbol for sin (I Cor. 5:8). God commanded the ancient Israelites to put all leaven out of their homes and off their property and eat un leavened bread during this seven-day Festival. And so the Feast of Unleavened Bread is to remind God's people today that they are to strive to put SIN completely out of their lives!
After repentance and baptism, God expects us to strive to keep His Law – to spiritually “unleaven” our lives, just as we are to physically unleaven our homes before the Feast. The act of eating unleavened bread during the Feast teaches us the opposite of sin – OBEDIENCE to God!
The Feast of Unleavened Bread pictures the keeping of God's commandments, which is another way of saying the putting away of sin.
To observe only the Passover, and then fail to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is comparable to accepting Christ's sacrifice and then saying the Law of God is done away – that because we are “under grace” we have permission to continue to sin. Your Bible shows Christ is not a “minister of sin”! (Gal. 2:17).
In the simplest and clearest New Testament command to observe God's annual festivals and Holy Days, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Gentile Christians at Corinth: “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast" (I Cor. 5:7-8). The context, as we shall see in this lesson, makes it very clear that Paul was referring to the Feast of Unleavened Bread!
Christians today are not only to commemorate Christ's sacrifice by observing the Passover, they are also to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These two annual festivals are inseparable, both historically and in spiritual meaning for us today.
Let's begin to understand the full meaning of this second annual festival picturing the next step in God's plan. Let's learn what the Bible tells us about our part in God's Master Plan.
