The United Church of God (UCG) featured an article on their website titled The Feast of Unleavened Bread: Replacing Sin With the Bread of Life. According to the UCG, "The Days of Unleavened Bread remind us that with God's help we must remove and avoid all sin—symbolized by leaven—and live genuinely by God's commandments in all areas of our life." The article continues: "Today removing leaven from our homes for seven days reminds us that we, too, through prayer and God's help and understanding, must recognize, expel and avoid sin. The Feast of Unleavened Bread is thus a time of personal reflection. We should meditate on our attitudes and conduct and ask God to help us recognize and overcome our shortcomings." They went on to justify this logic: "We learn by doing. We learn spiritual lessons by doing physical things. Performing the task of deleavening our homes and avoiding leavening for a week reminds us to vigilantly watch for sinful thoughts and actions so we can avoid them."
Unfortunately, the above excerpts from the article are NOT scriptural! Reading through those quotations again one passage of Scripture came immediately to mind. In the book of James, we read: "Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you." (James 1:19-27, NLT)
The Bible (Old and New Testaments) teaches us that Jesus Christ has removed our sins (think Atonement). In the book of Psalms, we read "He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west." (Psalm 103:12, NLT) In the Gospel of John, we read: "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!'" (John 1:29, NLT) In the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read that it was impossible "for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." (Verse 4) Only Jesus Christ can truly take away our sins! Continuing the thought, we read: "First, Christ said, 'You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings or burnt offerings or other offerings for sin, nor were you pleased with them' (though they are required by the law of Moses). Then he said, 'Look, I have come to do your will.' He cancels the first covenant in order to put the second into effect. For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time. Under the old covenant, the priest stands and ministers before the altar day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins. But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand." (Hebrews 10:8-12, NLT)
In that same passage, we are given yet another witness to the same truth (that only Christ can remove our leaven). We read: "And the Holy Spirit also testifies that this is so. For he says, 'This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day,' says the Lord: 'I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.' Then he says, 'I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.' And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices." (Hebrews 10:15-18, NLT) In other words, we DON'T need to be reminded of sins every year! Christ has removed our leavening - PERIOD!
God does NOT expect Christians to scrupulously remove all of the leaven from their homes - Christ has removed the leavening from our tabernacles, and HE did it one time for ALL sins (past, present, and future)! As Paul wrote to the saints at Philippi, "I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us." (Philippians 3:13-14, NLT)
A TRUE Christian, one who has accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, will have internalized the Two Commandments which motivate every iteration of God's Law: To LOVE God and each other! A real Christian does NOT need to return to the Torah and scrupulously try to follow all of the dos and don'ts listed there! The real Christian needs to be living the Law of LOVE and continuously repenting when he/she becomes aware of sin. A real Christian knows that he/she is a sinner saved by what Christ has done for him/her. A real Christian knows that Jesus Christ FULFILLED everything in the Law, Prophets, and Writings of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of the Christian reality in the UCG article we have been discussing. They flirt with the reality of the symbolism of the true unleavened bread, Jesus Christ. They quote Christ's own commentary on this statement in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John:
"Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you . . . Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world . . .I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst . . . I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world . . . This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever" (John 6:27-58).
In other words, Jesus Christ is the TRUE unleavened bread - without sin - meant for us to partake of both in our daily lives and in the Eucharist. If we have truly accepted Jesus as our Savior, we will be celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread for the rest of our lives! In short, Christians do NOT need to observe the festival outlined in Torah for the children of Israel. Christ is the epitome of what that festival portrayed. This should be burned into our consciousness. We should NOT need the same physical reminders given to a people who did NOT have access to the Holy Spirit or the Father!
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