Why did Yeshua tell his disciples to leave the
QORBAN (sacrifice, gift) at the altar in the Temple and walk away from the
presence of YAHWEH?
Therefore if you bring your QORBAN to
the altar, and there remember that your
brother has something against you, leave your QORBAN there, before the
altar, and first be reconciled to
your brother, and then come and offer your QORBAN. (Matthew 5:23-24)
Notice
that Yeshua gave a specific reason – your
brother has something against. What does “has something against you” mean? Keep
the context in mind -- Yeshua was
teaching about a person being angry with his brother. The person at the
altar has committed at least one of the three offenses indicated above by
Yeshua:
(1) unresolved
anger against his brother
(2) called
his brother useless, of no value and empty out of anger
(3) accusing his brother of denying that there
is a Creator and that no one does TOV out of anger
In
Yeshua’s example, there is no question about the guilt of the person standing
at the altar. He had done at least one of the above to his brother. It
should be noted that nothing is said about whether his brother knew what he had
done.
Now
pay very close attention to what Yeshua said – “and there remember.”
Why would the guilty person suddenly remember that he was guilty of the offense
at that specific moment and place? Yeshua’s Jewish culture provides an
important clue:
A QORBAN has no expiating effect unless the person making the offering
sincerely repents his or her actions before making the offering, and makes
restitution to any person who was harmed by the violation.[i]
Everyone
listening to Yeshua knew exactly why. It was at that point in presenting the
QORBAN that the person presenting it considered his state of ritual purity. The
question of whether YAHWEH would accept it was linked to his ritual purity. It
was at that moment that he remembered that he was guilty of an offense against
his brother and he had not taken the required action to reconcile it.
In
order to understand what Yeshua and his Jewish followers knew because they were
Jews, we have to learn some new vocabulary words. We must understand the Jewish
culture’s meanings for sin, forgiveness and repent. Dealing with words that we already have deeply entrenched definitions
for always creates difficult challenges. Not only did many of us learn
definitions for these words in school, we also were taught what they mean in
church. So, what I always do in this type
of situation is write the new definition. Below are the definitions for the
Hebrew words translated sin, forgiveness and repent. This is what they meant to Yeshua and his Jewish disciples.
(1) SIN: There are about 20 different
Hebrew words which denote sin in the
Jewish Scriptures. The three words that are used the most often are HET’, PESHA, and AVON.[ii]
● The root HT’ occurs 459 times and means “to miss something; to fail.” It
signifies a failure of mutual
relations and corresponds to the modern idea of “offense” rather than the theological concept of “sin.”
● The root PESH’ occurs 136 times and its basic meaning is to “breach a covenant.” Acts of
this type are said to dissolve the
community or break the peaceful relations between two parties, as in
cases involving international treaties.
● The root AVON is found in the Bible 17 times and
basically expresses the idea of “crookedness”
and thus means “to wrong.”
● One who
fulfills the claims of a relationship or an agreement is righteous; one who does not, offends (sins). The
one who fulfills the agreement is innocent,
while the one who does not is guilty.
(2) FORGIVENESS: When God “forgives” one’s
sin, He “covers” or “hides” it. He “does not
remember” it. He “bears” it
Himself. The sin is forgotten, covered, not imputed to the sinner -- God’s forgiveness of sins is identical with
the curing of the man and with the regeneration of his strength.
● The basic idea
is that sin is an evil force that
adheres to the sinner and
that forgiveness is the divine means
for removing it. This can be seen by the vocabulary of forgiveness,
which is rooted in the cultic terminology of cleansing. The most prominent
epithet of God in His role of forgiver is “He who lifts off sin.”
● TESHUVAH is a prerequisite for divine forgiveness.
● God’s forgiveness, however extensive,
only encompasses those sins which man commits directly against Him. Sins against one’s fellow man are not
forgiven until the injured party forgives the perpetrator. The sinner
must not only ask for forgiveness; he must also make the required restitution
to repair the damage he caused.
(3) TESHUVAH: It literally means to “turn” or “turn around.” God will
not pardon a person unconditionally, but waits for him or her to do TESHUVAH.[iii]
● A person must experience genuine remorse for
the wrong he or she has committed and then convert
his or her penitential energy into concrete acts.
● The first concrete act is to cease from doing the sin.
● The second is to do TOV (good).
● The motion of
turning implies that sin is not an
ineradicable stain but a straying from the right path, and that by the effort of turning, a power God has
given to all men, the sinner can redirect his destiny.
The
man at the altar had not been forgiven by the person he sinned against and he
knew that YAHWEH could not forgive him or accept his QORBAN. Yeshua wasn’t
revealing something new to his audience. He was simply reminding them of
something they all already knew, but may not have been doing.
This
sounds pretty strange to many of us because our religion puts a man’s
relationship with God first; but as we will hear multiple times in the
teachings of Yeshua -- God not only puts a
man’s relationship with his fellowman first, He bases His relationship with man
on it!
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