The Shadow Whose Body Is Christ
The feasts, the food laws, the sabbaths and the temple service were a shadow, and the body that cast the shadow is Christ.
Four other clusters build on this: The Way Belongs to the LORD, The Law Cannot Justify, Not My People and The Light of the First Day.
Scripture shows this in four steps:
Underneath it all lies Hebrews 9:10.
Some people say: “God’s law never changed.” So, they say, Christians must keep the feasts, the food laws, the sabbath days and the old temple service. If you do not, you have left God’s law.
But Scripture has a word for these things. It calls them a shadow. A shadow is real. God made it, and it has exactly the shape of the thing that casts it. But a shadow is not the thing itself. When the body comes, you look at the body.
Colossians 2:16-17
“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”
Colossians 2:16-17
Paul names the whole list: food, drink, feast days, new moons, sabbaths. Then he says what they are. They are a shadow. The body is Christ.
Notice who is told to stop. Paul does not say, “Keep these days.” He says, “Let no man judge you” for not keeping them. No one may tie your conscience to them.
Hebrews 8:5
“Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.”
Hebrews 8:5
Hebrews uses the same word, shadow, for the whole service of the priests. The tent Moses built was a copy. He made it after a pattern God showed him on the mountain. The real thing was always in heaven. The earthly one only pointed to it. And Christ is “a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man” (Hebrews 8:2). When you stand before the real thing, you do not need the copy.
Hebrews 10:1, 9
“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things… He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.”
Hebrews 10:1, 9
A third time Scripture says shadow. The law was the shadow, not the thing itself. And here we are told what God did with it: He took away the first to set up the second.
That is not a loss. The shadow was taken away because the body was now standing there. Some see the shadow still being kept and call it faithfulness. Hebrews sees the shadow taken away and calls it the promise kept.
Galatians 4:9-10
“How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.”
Galatians 4:9-10
Now Paul speaks to people who were going back to the calendar: special days, months, seasons and years. He calls it turning back. Back to things that are weak, because they cannot make anyone righteous. Back to things that are beggarly, because they have nothing to give to someone who already has Christ.
And he says this to people who were not Jews and had never kept these days. For them, taking up the feasts was not going deeper. It was going backward, out of being a son and back into bondage.
Hebrews 9:10
“Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation.”
Hebrews 9:10
This verse closes the chain. These rules were given “until.” Until the time when things would be set straight. They were never meant to last forever. God put the end date into them from the start. That is why it is wrong to say the law never changed: Scripture itself says these rules were given until a set time. A few chapters on, Hebrews says it plainly: “that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13). When the temple fell, everyone could see it.
Someone may say: “Jesus said, I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it.” Yes. That is what a body does to its shadow. It fills it out. The law was not destroyed. It was fulfilled.
This is about the shadow laws: food, feasts, sabbaths, washings and the temple service. It is not about loving God and loving my neighbour. That is not a shadow of anything. It is what God Himself is like, and it does not change.
What this means
The feasts, the sabbaths and the temple were God’s own gift. They were true. But they were a shadow, and the body is Christ. He fulfilled them. They were not thrown away, and they were never given to last forever.
I know the pull to go back to the shadow. Something I can do, on a day I can mark, feels safer than simply resting in Christ. But Christ is here. The rest the sabbath pointed to is Him. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Connected chains
This cluster is built on Javan, the Elements, and the Dove Without Grace, Israel Is Spiritual, The One Work Is to Believe and Perfected Forever.