Abolition (2)

Things to be abolished in the kingdom of God

War and destruction

Hosea 2:18 ESV

And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety.

See also Ps 46:9–10; Is 9:5; Zec 9:10

Illness and suffering

Exodus 23:25–26 ESV

You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.

See also Ex 15:26; Dt 7:15; Is 53:4; Mt 8:16–17

Sin

Romans 6:6 ESV

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

See also Eze 36:25–26 God speaks here of his abolition of sinful, human hard-heartedness; Ro 8:3–4; Heb 9:26

Death and mourning

1 Co 15:24–26; Re 21:1–4

See also Is 25:7–8; Is 65:17–20; 1 Co 15:54–55; 2 Ti 1:10; Re 20:13–14

The abolition of idolatry in Israel

Israel was commanded to abolish Canaanite worship

Exodus 23:24 KJV 1900

Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.

See also Ex 34:13; Nu 33:50–52; Dt 12:2–3

The abolition of mediums and spiritists

Dt 18:9–12; 1 Sa 28:3–9; 2 Ki 23:24

In Asa’s reign

1 Kings 15:11–13 KJV 1900

And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father. And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. And also Maachah his mother, even her he removed from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove; and Asa destroyed her idol, and burnt it by the brook Kidron.

In Hezekiah’s reign

2 Kings 18:4 KJV 1900

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

In Josiah’s reign

2 Kings 23:4–20 KJV 1900

And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Beth-el. And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people. And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove. And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beer-sheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man’s left hand at the gate of the city. Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren. And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech. And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire. And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, did the king beat down, and brake them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron. And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile. And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men. Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove. And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Beth-el. And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria. And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Beth-el. And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men’s bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem.

The abolition of the temple

Sacrifice in the temple abolished

Da 11:31 Antiochus Epiphanes abolished the daily sacrifice in the temple in 168 b.c., thereby attacking the symbolic centre of Israel’s life.

See also Da 12:11

Jesus Christ was accused of seeking to abolish the temple

Matthew 26:61 KJV 1900

And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.

See also Mt 21:12–13 Jesus Christ’s action may have been understood as a symbolic abolition of a defiled sacrificial system; Mt 27:39–40; Ac 6:14

The final abolition of the temple in the new Jerusalem

Revelation 21:22 KJV 1900

And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.

Abolition and the law

The law has not been abolished

Matthew 5:17–19 KJV 1900

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

See also Ro 3:31

The law has been abolished as an instrument of condemnation

Colossians 2:13–14 KJV 1900

And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

See also 2 Co 3:6–17; Eph 2:14–16; Heb 10:1–10

The law does not abolish God’s promises

Ga 3:17–18 God did not abolish his promise of righteousness to Abraham when he gave the law, because the promise was not conditional upon keeping the law but is received by faith.

See also Ro 4:14

The offence of the cross is abolished by accepting circumcision

Ga 5:11 Jews found offensive the Christians’ claim that salvation did not come through keeping the law, but instead through faith in a crucified Messiah, whom the law had cursed. Paul regarded “the offence of the cross” as central to the gospel, and refused to make salvation conditional upon circumcision and obedience to the law.

See also 1 Co 1:22–24; 1 Co 2:2; Ga 3:13; Ga 5:2; Ga 6:14–15