-Good news! God Himself has removed the barrier between God and man as well as between Jews and Gentiles.
-The instrument of nullification, with which God abolished the Law? The cross. Both the ultimate representation of Roman (think Goy) imperial occupation and power, and a brutal, bloody, horrific symbol of torture and execution. Fast forward a couple millenia and it’s a long-standing symbol of reverence and worship for multitudes who trust in God’s Messiah. And again, it is Who was crucified that makes all the difference. This ancient means of punishing criminals beame the locus for punishing the collective crimes of humanity against God. God Himself laid our many many crimes on His own Son, and allowed the guilty to execute the Innocent One Who stood (and hung) in our place. But such perfect irony, that God would choose such a glaring figure of the age-old enemy-hatred that existed between Jews and Gentiles, a cruel Roman cross, one which during that time had been used to torture and execute many Jews and to ultimately help keep them in subjection - God chose this symbol of the enemy-hatred on which to kill the enemy-hatred. Perfect.
-And so God actually put to death the enemy-hatred. He killed it when He killed His Son. The crimes which separated man from God - and the Law which highlighted them - now no longer even separate humanity from itself. Note that the Law itself was not killed - the enemy-hatred was killed. The Law was not abrogated or repealed in any way - it has been fulfilled. Jesus both lived into and fulfilled it perfectly, and then perfectly filled up every divine legal requirement for justice in order to bring us all (back) to God. And thus we have reconciliation. To reconcile, to restore friendly relations between, to cause to coexist in harmony - in this case, a dual reconciling, where Jews and Gentiles now have been brought together to coexist harmoniously in one body, and altogether all the nations as one are restored to friendship and fellowship with the God Who made them. Shalom. Breathtakingly good, glorious (and potentially global) peace.
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