Shadows and Realities

I read Psalm 23 and got to thinking about verse 4. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...(KJV). It was not the valley of death but the valley of the shadow of death.

Shadows are not the reality of anything. A friend sent me an email of National Geographic magazine's best pictures. One was looking down from a plane on a group of what looked like black horses. Actually it was a picture of the shadows of a group of zebras. A shadow cannot give you a true picture of the reality of what you are looking at.

Colossians 2: 16-17 says, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ."

How much clearer could Paul have been? The shadow, the law, is not the reality - Christ is. The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming - not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship" (Hebrews 10:1). Again, the writer of Hebrews is saying that the repeated keeping of something that is only a shadow will not make you perfect.

The reality of the zebras in the National Geographic picture was completely different from the shadow they cast. The reality of Jesus Christ and all that he is and did, the reality of the life he brought and gives us, is entirely different from the shadow cast by the rules and sacrifices of the law.

There are legalistic churches that look at Colossians 2:16-17 as confirmation for their keeping the old covenant rules and regulations. They totally miss what Paul was saying because they are looking only at the shadow, not the reality. Legalistic rules, whether based on the Old Covenant law or on New Testament demands by some church or denomination, only obscure the freedom of grace that Christ brought us through His sacrifice. Sadly, I know many who are still living in the darkness of the shadow rather than in the light of the reality.

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