Consider what Paul does to the reasonable expectations of Jewish believers who thought that politics, culture, and family mattered:
Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written,
“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;
break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than those of the one who has a husband.”28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. (Galatians 4)
Seems like a fair warning to the transformers who look for continuity between this world and the one to come.
Old Life 
no more cats in the next age???
No more jewish sabbaths in this age, nor other sacrifices besides the one offering done by Christ, nor barren fig tree. The Lord’s nonviolent removal of the money changers was not to “Reform” but to end of the temple sacrifices. Christ brings the old age to an conclusion—the discontinuity is important.
Matthew 21: 18 In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” 21 And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will do… what has been done to the fig tree,”
Since there is an age yet to come which has not yet come, we live by faith.
But Peter Leithart (Against Christianity, p 75) scolds sola folks for resisting ritual gestures.
“First, a spiritualizing reading of redemptive history. ‘When Jesus removed the special status of Jerusalem as the place where God was to be worshiped, he abolished all the material forms that constituted the typological OT system.’ (Terry Johnson, p 157, in With Reverence and Awe, ed Hart and Muether).”
“Second, Israel’s prophets inveighed against empty formalism, and some conclude that from this that the prophets condemned ritual as such.”
“Third, the Reformers taught that the Word has priority over the Sacraments. Salvation comes by hearing the Word with faith, not by believing adherence to the sacramental system of the church. Sacraments are an appendix to the faith.”
“Finally, privatization. Religion is a matter of ideology, ideas and belief. Public rituals can be faked, and so those who tie religion to public rituals tempt us to be hypocrites.”
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Click to access abraham_and_sinai_contraste.pdf
David Gordon helps us to think through the discontinuity between Abraham and Moses. Given that history, what is the discontinuity which has come with Christ’s incarnation and death and resurrection, and which we shall expect to come with Christ’s return to earth?
David Gordon—“law” is simply not a universal category for Paul the way it is for our confessional tradition. Paul not only does not use “law” universally. He uses the term to create two different ways of categorizing humans. He does just the opposite with the term what our confessional tradition does with it; and after studying him for thirty years, I grow in my confidence that he will not be understood until we recognize that he uses “law” differently than we; not only in his first use (Ro. 2:12), but throughout his writings.
Gordon: In Romans 5, for instance, “sin was in the world before the law,” indicating that law came along after sin (even as Gal. 3:17 locates it 430 years after the Abrahamic promise). Or at 1 Cor. 9:20, he also uses it deliberately to distinguish Jew and Gentile: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the Law I became as one under the Law (though not being myself under the Law) that I might win those under the law.”
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They sluff it all off on the allegory mention…
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George said (and I happen to like):
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Happened to be reading Robert Louis Wilken’s “The First Thousand Years – A Global History of Christianity” tonight and came across the following:
“Although the city of Jerusalem has always kindled the Christian imagination, in the early years Christian affection was fastened on the heavenly city. Saint Paul drew a contrast between the ‘Jerusalem above’ and the ‘present Jerusalem’ (Galatians 4:25-26), … . In the mid second century, Melito, a bishop in Asia Minor, wrote: ‘The Jerusalem below was precious, but it is worthless now because of the Jerusalem above.'”
How did Melito ever hope to reclaim Asia Minor for Christ with that kind of attitude…
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Lance, and when did Rome, the eternal city, ever become “hot”?
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