Firstly, animal sacrifice had a purpose, and that purpose was replaced by the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus Christ. With the pork topic, I’m not entirely educated, but I know it’s a debated topic.
To the actual meat of this, how could you take “Jesus didn’t abolish but fulfill the law”, then say that Jesus abolished the law by fulfilling it? I’ve been studying this across Romans 6, 7, 8; and also the entire book of Galatians both discuss the law in full. As I’m studying, I’ve also been writing an essay on the topic. I’ll share when I finish it. Until then, here’s a mini summary. Regardless, we can at least agree that Jesus didn’t contradict himself (assuming you’re coming from a Christian background).
The law (Mosaic laws, Moses’s laws) was created for a few purposes: firstly, to prevent us from sinning aka doing the things that distance us from God; Second, many of the laws were created for the cleanliness and safety of the people, although most of these things are considered common sense today. We’re gonna focus on the former, being closer to God.
Jesus commands that the greatest 2 commandments are to love God, and love others. In loving Jesus, you don’t want to sin, and avoid it as second nature. It’s 2 opposing forces, desires of the flesh vs your love of Christ, as the latter increases the latter will naturally decrease. In doing so, Jesus has fulfilled the purpose of the law, but still hasn’t abolished it. I could add verses if you’d like, but I’d have to double check where they are. The laws have still not been abolished though, since how are we to know what is sin unless the law shows us. Although, we still have the Spirit of discernment which allows us to differentiate the original purpose of the law, the intention of the heart, and allows us to widen our scope and know whether certain things are sin or not regardless of if they’re explicitly mentioned in the Bible. This same spirit allows us to determine whether something is just against the Mosaic law for health/cleanliness reasons (some people will claim pork is under this category, but as I said I’m not entirely sure), for avoiding Pagan traditions (like the mention of tattoos), or whether it’s truly distancing us from God.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
