Leviticus 23:26 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 27 “On exactly the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement; it shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall humble yourselves and present an offering by fire to the Lord. 28 You shall not do any work on this very day, for it is a Day of Atonement, to make atonement on your behalf before the Lord your God. 29 If there is any person who does not humble himself on this very day, he shall be cut off from his people. 30 As for any person who does any work on this very day, that person I will eliminate from among his people. 31 You shall not do any work. It is to be a permanent statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places. 32 It is to be a Sabbath of complete rest for you, and you shall humble yourselves; on the ninth of the month at evening, from evening until evening, you shall keep your Sabbath.”
Too many people, on both sides of Messianicism, forget the significance of today, and many of them forget it all together.
Yes, often you either have a super liberal thankfest where people boast of their freedom in Christ on a day specifically set aside for us to remember the reason why Christ had to come at all; or you have a mournful almost funeral like atmosphere which almost forgets that Christ's forgiveness is real and frees us from the penalty of our sin.
Yes, that is a key word, frees us from the PENALTY of our sin, not our sin. That is why Yom Kippur is still so important to both the Messianic Movement and the broader body of Messiah.
You see, days like today are there to remind us of our imperfection. They are SPECIFICALLY about our failings, and how our sin, and our continued sin, are the reason why Christ had to give His life. We are that reason, and for that we should take a moment of reflection on how short we fall of the divine mandate.
So what is the sweet spot? For that, I will turn to Paul:
For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
1 Corinthians 15:9-11
You see, today we focus on our sin, that we might not forget the fact that it is our imperfection, not someone else's who brought Christ to die. When we remember our own imperfections, then helping others through theirs becomes an act of solidarity, two sinners struggling together against sin as opposed to a judgmental view of someone who, "just can't get it together."
That is really the heart of Yom Kippur. That we remember that we are sinners saved by grace, and not saints who were removed from their sin. We are imperfect, and in that imperfection Christ is shown to be sufficient.
So today, we mourn for our sins that required His death, but we rejoice that he did so in order to redeem us.
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