Since Jesus loves little children, and Jesus is the Great Shepherd, our little children must therefore be His lambs.

About whom was Jesus speaking  when He asked Peter to feed his “lambs”? John 21 is used in support of the practice of paedocommunion, but such an argument sees only what it is looking for. If we allow the passage to speak for itself, what is it saying?

Tim Gallant, a friend and scholar who is the author of Feed My Lambs: Why The Lord’s Table Should Be Restored to Covenant Children, writes:

Paedocommunion is the practice of giving the Lord’s Supper to baptized children. Such children participate apart from a coming-of-age ritual such as confirmation or profession of faith…

Rather surprisingly, many who hold to infant baptism reject paedocommunion. They suggest that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are radically different in kind. Biblically speaking, however the two are tied very closely together. Baptism incorporates one into Christ and His Church (1 Corinthians 12:13). Meanwhile, the Lord’s Supper is precisely the meal of the Church. The Church is the one body together precisely because it partakes of the one bread together (1 Corinthians 10:16–17).

Tim is correct in his statement that the sacraments, baptism and table, are not radically different in kind. Paedobaptists who do not allow their baptised infants access to the table have a lot of explaining to do. While I agree with their reasons for refusing access to young children, they are not being consistent since they give them access to baptism. Baptism and table do belong together. The problem with paedocommunionists is that they unite the sacraments at the wrong end of the process of conversion.¹More on this “process” in the next post.

Since there is no support for paedobaptism in the New Testament (despite some wishful claims to the contrary), its proponents make their arguments from the Old Testament. The problem is that they only see what they are looking for, and all the evidence to the contrary in the Old Testament Scriptures is overlooked or ignored. Rather than allowing the texts to speak to them, they do what the worst Bible teachers do and pick out support for what they already “know.”

Beginning with Jesus, baptism painted a big red target on the one baptised, placing the baptizand directly in the cross hairs of the world, the flesh and the devil.

What is a lamb?

Since Jesus loves little children, and Jesus is the Great Shepherd, our little children must therefore be His lambs. We can imagine nothing more comforting than our infants safe in the arms of Jesus. But nothing could be further from the truth. Beginning with Jesus, baptism did not put anyone in safe arms. Instead, it painted a big red target on the one baptised, placing the baptizand directly in the cross hairs of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Paedobaptists see Jesus’ blessing of children as proof for paedobaptism, but it is in fact the opposite. Jesus was the baptised one because He was not a ravenous wolf like Cain but a lamb like Abel. Jesus could bless the children because He would bear the curse coming upon them as their guardian. What does He say?

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 18:10)

This verse does not say that the children of Israel were “sons of God.” Paedobaptists will twist any text that involves children to fit their paradigm, and miss what the text is actually saying. He is threatening those who would harm even infants in their quest for power, noting that these were under the protection of angelic guardians like the Angel of Passover who took vengeance upon Egypt for the slaughter of the Hebrew children. It is not the infants who see the face of God, but the sons of God, those invested with authority to represent heaven on earth. The lost sheep on earth are not the sacrificial lambs which ascend to heaven. The sons of Abraham (or you) are not the sons of God. Circumcision of flesh only pictures circumcision of heart. Any claim otherwise is Judaistic and potentially demonic.

Jesus blessed the children because He was not a king like the Herods. He was a priest-king, and His baptism was a sacrificial washing, preparing Him to be offered. It was His baptism which set Him on a path to depose the Herods, and it would result in bloodshed that would touch every Israelite. True baptism is about an authority which comes only after humiliation, the only kind of authority which comes from God. All else is a demonic grasp for power like that committed in Eden.

The authority which comes through baptism is Covenantal, but the Old Covenant only gave us types of this kind of power. Baptism is about the authority to bind or loose, curse or bless, not only on earth but in heaven, since it comes from the heavenly Father and not our earthly fathers. Paedobaptism is all about being bound like Isaac under a Covenant made with earthly fathers. Seen in the light of the New Covenant, the practice is carnal, cultic, and exactly the sort of thing which had the apostles spitting fire to preserve the Church from elitist, Judaistic doctrines.

A lamb is not a little child. A lamb was a blameless mediator whose blood would be spilled. When Jesus said “Feed my lambs,” He was not talking about Christian parenting. Jesus was talking about martyrdom, the shedding of the blood of men and women who would testify for Him and die as He did. To take these words and twist them to support paedosacraments is to undermine the entire point of Pentecost and the apostolic witness, and indeed the ministry of all the prophets through the ages, beginning with Abel, the first priest murdered by a godless king.

A New Covenant lamb is a mediator between heaven and earth, that is, a human sacrifice. A paedobaptistic ecclesiology is exactly the kind of kingdom offered by Satan to the Jewish leaders, and by Satan to Adam. It was also offered by Satan to Christ shortly after His baptism, but Jesus knew who His real Father was, and His circumcised heart continued to please Him.

A blameless death

Much commentary on Jesus’ words in John 21 misses the meaning of the passage because it is not taken it in its entirety. Certainly, Jesus lived in a generation where literacy was not enjoyed by everyone, so the teaching of the apostles was crucial. But this teaching was not the end but the means. It is clear from what follows that Jesus is asking Peter to fatten the believers for the coming slaughter, the “tribulation of the saints” which would come before the end of the age, the conclusion of the Old Covenant era with its Temple and animal sacrifices.

Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:17-19)

Both baptism and table are sacrificial in nature, and the institution of these sacraments by Jesus as continued “memorials” of the death and resurrection of Christ was foundational to the end of the Old Covenant. Why is this? Because baptism and table replaced the ministry of the Temple.

The saints indeed did greater works than Jesus, by multiplying the ministry of the cross.

The sacrifice of “blameless” animals was no longer required because there was now a blameless man. Not only that, but those who believed in Him were also considered blameless, without spot or wrinkle, by God, and thus considered to be acceptable sacrifices. Baptism and the table, the water and the blood, were not only for the cleansing of the priests. The sacrificial animals also had “access” to the Laver. The animals stood in for the priests just as the slaughter of animals stood in for Adam. The Laver is only for mediators.

Jesus spoke these words to Peter after His resurrection. When He said “Follow me” He quite obviously required a voluntary response. Moreover, it is Jesus Himself, as the Angel of the Lord, who swings the sickle in Revelation 14, harvesting the saints — those who ate His flesh and drank His blood — as a great body of grain and grapes, flesh and blood. Through the ministry of the twelve, the Lord’s Table was measured out across the entire “four cornered” Land of Israel, and the blood flowed from the winepress like a river and became a sea, up to the bridles of the horses of the Herodian Pharaohs.

As the blood of Christ rent the Veil, so the blood of the prophets would rend not only the Temple, but also the city and the Land. The saints indeed did greater works than Jesus, by multiplying the ministry of the cross.

What is the Table?

The continued need of my Federal Vision friends to explain the meaning of “the table” feels more like a shell game than the Lord’s Supper. It is a nebulous cloud of “meaning” where it is impossible to put one’s finger on the actual meaning. Apparently these is so much going on that it defies a simple explanation. However, the more complex something is, the more likely it is to be contrived. And sacramentalism is entirely contrived.

What is the meaning of the table? We voluntarily, willingly, identify with the death and resurrection of Christ. We eat His flesh and drink His blood so that when we suffer as martyrs, it is His flesh being torn and His blood being spilled. The idea that this Table is for infants and children as “lambs” is an insult to Christians suffering around the world (regardless of whether their traditions commune children or not).

The more I think about it, the less I would be inclined to take communion at the table of a sacramental church – especially while the murder of Christians around the world keeps me in mind of what this table actually meant for Jesus and His disciples, and what it was intended to mean for us. The call to the Table is not the call to salvation, but a call to those already saved to come and die.

If someone actually finds the pea of “meaning” in this abhorrent shell game, I will be surprised. I think it has rolled under the baptismal font and will never be seen again until some iconoclast rightly tosses that Roman piece of furniture into the trash where it belongs. Baptismal fonts make me angry. What they stand for is against the fundamental tenets of the New Covenant.

But what does it mean to partake of Christ? It is more than the offerer identifying with the sacrifice by leaning his hand upon it. It is more than the priests eating of the sacrifices. It is not a call to come to Christ for salvation. It is to become a sacrifice through voluntary, public identification with Christ.

Now, one might argue that plenty of children of Christians have also been murdered. But is this the flesh and blood of the body of Christ?

What is a son?

The murder of infants is certainly tragic, but there is a reason Adam was created an adult and his willingness to obey God tested. There is a difference between the sons of men (which includes the offspring of Christians), and the sons of God, those who represent heaven on earth. Physical offspring is the “first birth” and spiritual offspring are the “second birth.” Circumcision of flesh concerned physical offspring. Circumcision of heart concerns spiritual offspring. (It amazes me that this must be explained over and over to such people of understanding. I guess that is the power of a corrupted paradigm. Whatever does not fit is rejected, even if Scriptural.) Only the second birth protects one from the second death. Members of my family and your family are not members of the family of God, not without repentance and obedient faith, anyway.²See Children of Heaven.

Thus, our children represent us in history, as God’s children (those who can hear and obey God) represent Him. As Adam represented God to his children, and also represented his children before God, He was a mediator. Thus it is not Christ’s flesh being torn in our children. It is our flesh. The circumcision of Isaac was also the cutting of the flesh of Abraham. This is why the Jews referred to themselves as the children of Abraham. It was a carnal membership, a community of sacrificial flesh protected through animal substitutes.

The baptism of Christ, however, was a step of obedience as a sacrificial washing. Like all baptisms which followed, it was an ordination for ministry, and brought a testimony of acceptance from the heavenly Father, ending the significance of both the Abrahamic lineage and the Aaronic priesthood. Christ was the “son of the herd,” an expression in the Law which is distorted in English translations.³See James B. Jordan, The Lamb of God, Part 1, Biblical Horizons No. 39.

What about Passover?

Paedocommunionists use Passover to support the access of infants and children to the Lord’s Table. The problem is that there was, and is, more than one Table in the book of Exodus.

Jesus ripped a “Levitical tithe” out of the Passover meal and lifted it to God.

The Passover separated the priestly nation of Israel from the kingdom of Egypt. The meaning of this can be traced right back to Noah’s curse upon Canaan the son of Ham.⁴See Cutting Off Canaan. Passover was the Table of Israel, a national feast which highlighted Israel’s identity as the shepherd nation. The Egyptians despised shepherds. Passover was about the separation of Priesthood and Kingdom, Abel and Cain. However, the Lord’s Table in Exodus 24 was about Prophecy. The architecture measured out in the children of Israel was a replica of the Tabernacle which would soon be built. All Israel was gathered at the base of the mountain and sprinkled with blood, but only Moses (as the Ark) and the elders of Israel (as the Incense Altar) ascended and dined with the Lord, whom they saw walking on a sapphire pavement, the Crystal Sea, which was the heavenly court of the angelic Sons of God.

We see the same two tables at the Last Supper. The Passover was celebrated, but after the meal, Jesus served a second one, and it was only served to these new elders who dined with Him. Just as the Firstfruits followed Passover but occurred during Unleavened Bread, so Jesus ripped a “Levitical tithe” out of the Passover meal and lifted it to God. The Passover animal could be a lamb or a kid, a priestly brother or a kingly brother, an Abel or a Cain, a Jacob or a hairy Esau, but the Firstfruits sacrifice was always a lamb, a priest who would inherit the kingdom by faith.

So what is the significance of the Lord’s supper? It is not about our offspring having Jesus as their sacrificial substitute. By dining with Jesus, the apostles partook of His ministry. Jesus turned the disciples into sacrificial lambs, men who would no longer need sacrificial substitutes, because they themselves would be blameless. For an entire generation, their blood would “fill up” the sufferings of Christ as a testimony to the Jews and then the Gentiles.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ”For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” (Romans 8:31-36)

This leads us to the irony of the final Herodian Passovers, celebrated it seems in spite of the well-known prophecies of Jesus. After the completion of the Temple, millions of lambs were slaughtered every year. Reading the Old Testament prophets concerning Israel’s abuse of the sacrificial system, we can understand the seriousness of the offence of these offerings to God after the murder of His Son.

Post-Pentecostal Judaism adored Passover because it despised Jesus. Passover itself became the leaven of the Herods, and this sentiment is subtly contained in paedocommunion, a rite which appeals to the flesh, a demarcation between “us” and “them.” The idea that we Christians can somehow minister the new birth to our own children in place of the hand of God is exactly what the Circumcision revelled in. It stands in stark contrast to repentance and faith, at least in the godly logic of the New Testament. The Table of paedocommunion is exactly the kind of Table which Jesus turned into a snare for those Jews who cursed Jesus because God had come in the flesh and ended the Circumcision.⁵See Their Table Made A Snare. The Seed of Abraham had now grown up and exposed their household as a nest of serpents.

Even Abraham understood what paedosacramentalists refuse to believe.

Ironically, this focus on physical, “Passover” offspring turned Jerusalem first into a new Egypt, through Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, and then into a new Jericho. Where Israel was circumcised “a second time” before the destruction of Jericho, it was the murder of Christian Jews in Jerusalem which left the city desolate at last.

Jesus ripped the Lord’s Supper out of the corpse of Passover in the way Yahweh brought Eve from the side of Adam, and the Spirit brought the Bride from the side of Christ. Passover died in Christ, along with the Covenant of earthly sons. The division between Priesthood and Kingdom, Jew and Gentile, Cain and Abel, was consumed in the coming of The Prophet.

When Christ died, the message was the same as that given to Abraham, “Not your son but mine.” The Jews who rejected Christ answered, “Not your Son but ours.” The ministry of the apostles was, “Not your sons but my Sons.” The judgment of AD70 was the final object lesson, the last dark saying. Even Abraham understood what paedosacramentalists refuse to believe.

Sheep Among Wolves

The identity of the New Covenant “lambs” is very apparent in Matthew 10, where Israelites according to the flesh are referred to as “lost sheep” not because they are children but because they have been led astray. As Jesus’ lambs, the disciples are also to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. The standard for “lambs” is entirely ethical. It concerns spiritual maturity, so Tim Gallant’s use of the word “lambs” to describe paedocommunion is carnal at best and unwittingly anti-Christian at worst.

Jesus describes the treatment of these “lambs” as he later described the manner of Peter’s death. He cannot possibly be speaking about infants or children, or even earthly households. Let the scales fall from your eyes and read the words of Matthew 10 afresh, words spoken to men who would not only die like their master, but rise again as He did. The speech is all about testimony, witness, the martyroi. To consider Jesus’ lambs as anything else is to reject the New Covenant. Is there an infant Jesus on the throne?⁶No doubt, some will get to the end of passage, and reject the obvious in favour of an errant interpretation of “little ones.” Jesus is actually working His way through a hierarchy based on the Ten Words, ending with the lowly servants of the New Covenant household, the least of His brothers. The New Testament follows the Old Covenant pattern consistently, however, where the Old most often refers to physical offspring and family at Succession, the New always speaks of spiritual offspring. An example would be the greetings to the saints at the end of many of the epistles.

The structure of Matthew 10 is itself sacrificial, and you will notice that it is the disciples who are now the angels ministering life or death to the households of Israel. They themselves are the lambs at the door. And their martyrdom served as the final warning, the last trumpets, to Old Covenant Israel.

TRANSCENDENCE

HIERARCHY

ETHICS

OATH/SANCTIONS

SUCCESSION

“The Lord’s Table is for dangerous people.”

If you are going to baptize infants, it makes sense that you would also allow them to take Communion. Baptism brings one into the priesthood (through the Laver) to the court of God, and Communion is fellowship in the priestly kingdom. To unite the two is consistent—as consistent as the two pillars flanking the threshold of Solomon’s Temple.

The inclusion of children in Israel’s religious meals is used to support the practice. Some of those against it have asserted that these meals, even perhaps the Passover, did not include the children. James Jordan has a fascinating chapter entitled “Children and the Religious Meals of the Old Creation” in The Case for Covenant Communion. Where many Reformed writers (including some other authors in this book) get tied up in knots by the Reformers and their own traditions, Jordan’s perspective is always fresh because he looks first to the Bible, not for proof texts but for principles.

Jordan makes a clear case for the inclusion of children in the religious meals of the “old creation.” He lists a number of age specifications for various Israelite offices, and notes that there is no age specified for participation in the Passover meal. He concludes that if God had wanted to, he certainly could have specified a minimum age for participation.

So, children were included in Israel’s religious meals, most notably in the Passover. Since Israel was the Covenant people, then the children in the Christian Church should participate in Communion. Or should they?

The Circumcision of Israel

This sounds logical, of course, but it is the same logic by which one would expect a bruised, bloodied Jesus to wake up in the tomb, crawl out and stagger around with His burial clothes hanging off Him. Paedocommunion doesn’t speak of resurrection so much as resuscitation. And despite the truth concerning the meals of the Old Creation, dragging them into the New Creation, as I have said before, is akin to heaving the bloody Bronze Altar with its flesh and ashes inside the tent. Paedobaptism and paedocommunion are a call for God to accept the flesh.

Appealing to the Old Testament to interpret New Testament events is extremely helpful, but what if the New Testament event is itself a deliberate reinterpretation? Jesus did this all the time, and one of the most important is what He did at His last Passover, or more correctly, what He did to the last Passover.

What was Passover about? Circumcision and Passover were about redeeming Israel’s males from the barrenness of the womb, and the barrenness of the Land, curses upon the Covenant Head which can be traced back to Genesis 3.

What did Jesus do to Passover? He ended it. He ate the Passover with His disciples, and then the meal which spoke of cutting off history (leaven speaks of historical continuity), was itself cut off. There would be no more Passovers because it was only a shadow, and the day was about to dawn. In Jesus, all Israel had been redeemed and grown up. It was time for something new.

During the Passover, Jesus instituted a new meal. A symbolic meal, a “taste,” of risen bread and shared wine was taken out of the old meal. A new Israel was being established out of the corpse of the old one, not spiritually, not socially, not physically, but all three together. The combination of the priestly and kingly pillars in Solomon’s Temple invite the third pillar, the prophetic Shekinah, to indwell. The table of God is a place reserved for prophets.

Now, I could argue that since there were no children present, children cannot participate in Communion. But there were no women present either, and we know that women have always been allowed to take Communion. So there must be something deeper going on here.

Feed My Lambs?

“Jesus’ commission to Peter after His resurrection was not to dole out bread and wine to infants. It was to fatten those who had taken up their crosses, to prepare them for the slaughter to come…”

Tim Gallant, who also contributed to the book mentioned above, authored another book entitled Feed My Lambs: Why the Lord’s Table Should Be Restored to Covenant Children. While I appreciate the pastoral heart behind the desires of these faithful men to see children raised in the knowledge of God, it seems to me they have missed the point of the Last Supper.

Firstly, the title of Tim’s book refers to Jesus’ threefold command to Peter after Peter’s threefold betrayal (John 21:15-17). But what was Jesus actually saying when He gave that commission to Peter? He was, as usual, taking Old Testament architecture and fulfilling it in the flesh as a human Tabernacle. From God’s Kitchen:

In Peter, Jesus takes the people of Israel from outside the tent of Moses to sit inside as priests and elders.

Peter warmed himself at a fire outside the house of the High Priest. Architecturally, he stood at the Bronze Altar. The Covenant Ethics are three tests, symbolized in the blood, the fire and the smoke—or flesh, eyes and life. When tested, Peter refused to identify himself with the Lamb.

Luke records that Jesus “looked” at Peter. Whenever Jesus “looks intently” in the Gospels, He is the Lampstand, the Law, the eyes of God, the watchman lifted up over Israel as sun, moon and stars. The lunar feasts were fast fading as the sun of righteousness arose. And the rooster heralded the dawn.

John records the dawning of a better day. This time the fire is not on the Land but by the Sea. The focus has shifted from the center of Israel to her borders with the wild nations. The resurrected Jesus invites Peter not to offer himself to death but to dine with One who has conquered death on his behalf. Architecturally, Peter has passed through the Laver—from death to life—to join Christ as an elder at the Altar of Incense.

Again, Peter is tested three times. Instead of Altar; Fire; Altar, it is Feed; Tend; Feed. In this way, Jesus deals compassionately with past failure and calls Peter to a better future (as He does with us every week at the Lord’s Table). But in Peter’s recommission, and in ours, there is a call to sacrificial life. There is a transfixing redness to the New Covenant dawn.

The “official” death-and-resurrection of Peter would be repeated in the Firstfruits Church. When Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep, they both knew those sheep, like Peter, were being fattened for the altar.

Animal sacrifices were no longer acceptable now that Jesus had died and risen again.

But in Jesus, human ones were.

For whoever would save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and the gospel’s will save it. 
(Mark 8:35)

The reason there were only men at the Last Supper is because a new lamb was being selected for sacrifice: not only a head, but also a body. Following the Ascension Offering in Leviticus 1, the head would be offered first, and then the body would be washed and offered. Sharing in this feast with Jesus made these men members of the sacrificial lamb, that is, parts of its body. Jesus was the first human sacrifice which was acceptable to God. Because the Father accepted Him, as firstfruits, the full harvest, the body, was made acceptable also.

What I am saying here is that the disciples, through transformation into apostles, were human sacrifices. Just as Jesus’ death dealt with the serpent (the counterfeit head), their deaths dealt with the brood of vipers, the fiery serpents ruling Jerusalem (the counterfeit body). This is why there were not women and children present. Corporately speaking, the disciples were the “bones” of the Passover lamb which were not to be broken. They would form the structure of a new house, a new Tabernacle which was made entirely out of lambs. This was about the end of circumcision, which was not about children but about males.

After the resurrection, women are in the picture again, and in a big way. They are the first “witnesses” because the role of the Woman is the sacrifice of praise. After the serpent is felled, she sings and calls down the Covenant curses upon it. But once again, where are the children? Are they absent? No. But it is clear that the New Covenant is not about Jew and Gentile but about a new priesthood for all people. It is not about the cutting of flesh but about witness, about testimony, about telling what you have seen now that you have tasted death under the Law and your eyes have been opened. Having tasted death, as Jesus did for all men, innoculates one against death. It loses its sting. Baptism is for those who confess with their mouths that they are willing to lose their lives for Jesus’ sake and the Gospel’s. Baptism is an act of courage.

So Jesus’ commission to Peter after His resurrection was not to dole out bread and wine to infants. It was to fatten those who had taken up their crosses, to prepare them for the slaughter to come, through which they would bring down Jerusalem and then Rome—”every high thing which exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”

In the Law, a lamb does not speak of a young child but of a blameless son, like Jesus at His baptism. He was vindicated before His earthly father at age twelve and vindicated before His heavenly Father at age 30, ready for holy war. Baptism is not for babies or infants but for holy warriors, and there were no baby Nazirites (but there were women!). To make it so is to miss the point of union with Christ altogether, and make the New Covenant into something social, something carnal, a community according to the flesh. Paedobaptism is poison to the heart of the New Covenant.

To open baptism and Communion to infants is to take the Church back to the Old Covenant, the time of dark sayings and shadows. It is to say that Christ has not come in the flesh, and Christ is not risen from the dead, and this was exactly the motive behind the Herods’ years of glorious Passovers leading up to the destruction of their serpentine rulers, their women, and their children—the entire congregation was “circumcised.”

So, what about our children? We are holy members of the Lamb, bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh, but also Spirit of His Spirit. The Lord’s table is not for “feeding” infants the Gospel. Look at the picture above. It is a group of subversives planning to change the world by laying down their lives. The Lord’s Table is for dangerous people, and partaking in the Table is itself a public testimony. It is for living sacrifices, and our physical children, as with all those who hear and have not yet repented, feed upon us. We are the cut up, washed “members” of the lamb on the Altar. We mediate Jesus to them. Only the Gospel transforms the sons of men into the sons of God, and all the sons of God are sacrificial lambs who have willingly taken up the cross. The New Covenant body is a human sacrifice.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27)

From Tim Gallant’s blog:

The Sabbath and the Day of Yahweh

It strikes me that people tend to read the conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels as a matter of incompatible casuistries. “The Pharisees are applying the fourth commandment wrongly because they don’t make the proper exceptions for works of necessity, works of mercy and works of piety.”
But when we consider the Gospels themselves, it is hard to take that approach all that seriously. The Gospels globally are not about Jesus needing to correct the moral vision of His opponents in connection with their reading of Torah (even if that may come up occasionally on the fringes).

The Gospels are about JESUS. The reason He comes into conflict repeatedly with the Pharisees on this is not merely that they have too many minutiae attached to the rulebook, nor that they forgot some categories of exceptions.

Rather, the reason is that Jesus presents HIMSELF as the embodiment of true Sabbath, doing what Torah could not do. We look at Jesus’ Sabbath healings and conclude: “Aha, works of mercy are exceptions to the general rule.” But although Jesus observes that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, that is hardly His fundamental point. We should not miss that Jesus is performing HEALINGS by a power that His opponents did not have, no matter how good they may have been at lawkeeping.

So long as we view the Gospel Sabbath episodes primarily as moral directives, we will misread them. They are primarily signs of an inbreaking kingdom that transcends the old creation and its Torah.

This of course is why the supposed problem of “only nine commandments” is beside the point. As Jordan says, the Ten Words were Israel’s charter. While the other Nine Words are transformed but retransmitted to the Church, it is not at all problematic to say that the Fourth Commandment does not simply switch days of the week and carry on. In the Gospels, the Fourth Commandment plays a key role, but not because it needs to stick around in any independent way. It plays a key role because Jesus is emerging from its heart with something new: His arrival is the arrival of the Day of Yahweh, promised throughout the prophets.

It is no accident that in Matthew 11-12, the narrative flows from John the Baptizer to Jesus the rest-giver, and on into Sabbath conflicts. In Malachi 3-4, the Day of the Yahweh would be marked by the messenger of the covenant purifying the sons of Levi as well as bringing justice and hope to the poor and oppressed. A time of new creation would arrive. This would be preceded by “Elijah the prophet.”

Jesus’ Sabbath healings are not merely intended as a generalized picture that doing generic good (“works of mercy”) is a suitable activity for the Sabbath. Rather, they demonstrate that in Him, not only is a “greater than the temple” present, but that the Day of Yahweh has arrived, transcending the Sabbath. The seventh day Sabbath is part of the first creation, but now, in Jesus, the new creation has come in the eschatological Day of Yahweh.

He is Yahweh; and His ministry is the Day of Yahweh.

And thus He says, “Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”—a rest that the law’s Sabbath could not give.

The “Day of Yahweh” is translated “the Day of the LORD” (Kuriou) in the LXX (Greek OT) and thus into the New Testament. It is therefore no surprise when we get to the Revelation of St John, and he uses another form for that genitive: “the LORD’s Day” (Rev 1:10). On the first day of the week, when the disciples around the Roman world were gathering into the presence of the God of Israel, John was alone, exiled on Patmos, but “in the Spirit” he enters into God’s throne room where that host of believers has also gathered for worship.

And there, John sees what? He sees the unfolding apocalypse (revelation) of “the Day of the LORD,” beginning with preliminary judgments and culminating in the final one.

It is fair to say that in the New Testament vision, Lord’s Day worship is a miniature, a preliminary anticipation of the final Day of Yahweh. The reason that Hebrews says not to forsake the assembling together “as you see the Day approaching” is that the assembly itself partakes of the character of that Day.

The Sabbatarian vision is too small. This is why Paul chides the Galatians for observing “days and months and seasons and years.” The Sabbath, along with the Torah administration as a whole, belonged to the stoicheia, the “elements of the world,” the things that constituted the first creation.

But for us, there is something more than that. We gather into the Day of Yahweh, and find not merely physical rest, but an eschatological event that is busy setting the kosmos to rights, even as Yahweh incarnate did throughout His earthly ministry.

Tim Gallant has a beautiful piece over at the BH blog:

One of the most beautiful promises of Scripture is Zephaniah 3.17: “Yahweh your God is in your midst; the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.”

This is the portrait of a loving Father, and it is something that we need to internalize – not only as Church leaders, but as congregational members.

If we ask the question: “How often is there something in my life that God could be correcting?” – the answer would have to be, “Always.” Even the strongest believers in this life are en route, are taking a journey in spiritual growth, and are immature in a host of areas.

The shepherds of the flock have a special calling to be aware of the needs of the sheep. And that awareness involves discerning where the flock needs correction and growth.

But while that is true, we must remember this: God does not correct everything at once. If He did, we would melt with fervent heat, and have no time to enjoy life with Him.

God is in our midst, and He delights in us; He makes quiet time for us; He even sings in celebration over us. That doesn’t mean that He ignores our sins and weaknesses, or that they do not matter. But it does mean that He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103.14).

If you are a loving and wise parent, you should be able to understand this. If you look at your child, you can see many things that need work. There are sins and immaturities that you have your eye on.

And yet, even though you give verbal correction and even the occasional spanking, you do not spend every waking hour on correcting those sins and immaturities. Because you know that life does not look like that, and love does not look like that.

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(King David in the Psalms, The Westminster Psalter, London, c. 1200 , British Library, Royal 2 A. xxii, f. 14v © British Library Board)