The Hebrew language has many layers and is spiritually rich. For example, the word for mercy and compassion in Hebrew is, rachamim. The root of rachamim is womb and connotes the kind of love that a mother feels for her unborn child. It is protective and nurturing.
It is often mentioned in the Gospels that Yeshua, better known as Jesus, had compassion on the masses of people who followed him. The word compassion was almost always followed by acts of healings.
Several times it is mentioned that Yeshua fed the multitudes in the wilderness out of compassion, so that they would not get faint on their journeys home. Yeshua was demonstrating rachamim for the people. He was sharing with them the true nature of God.
This was a stark contrast to the way that the religious leaders behaved. The laws of Moses taught them to be harsh, judgmental, and sadistic. The guilty were to be taken out of the city and stoned to death. The ones deemed as “sinners” were cast out and isolated from the congregation. Others were forbidden from having any contact with them.
Christ tried to reason with the religious leaders, and not only by words but by example. Christ’s mission was to show the true way, which was to demonstrate the rachamim of God.
Yeshua is often seen in the Gospels showing mercy to several of the groups that were cast out. He made himself available to the blind and lepers. These two groups were considered “sinners,” and were believed to have been stricken with their conditions by God according to the laws of Moses.
Yeshua demonstrated that this belief was not true by healing them. He was actually breaking the law to show mercy to these suffering souls.
Another group that Yeshua frequently had contact with were the publicans and others who had been deemed as sinners.
Just like the blind and the lepers, the publicans and sinners were supposed to be cut off from the congregation, and this is why the Pharisees questioned Yeshua’s actions in the ninth chapter of Matthew which reads:
And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.
And when the pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, why is your master eating with publicans and sinners?
But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, “they that are whole don’t need a physician, but they that are sick.”
“But go and learn what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice.”
“I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
This passage is loaded, because when Christ was saying that he came to call the sinners to repentance, the Pharisees assumed that he was referring to the “sinners” at the table. However, Yeshua was actually talking about them.
Christ was telling the Pharisees to go study the Hebrew scripture found in Hosea 6:6 which reads:
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Christ was telling them to study it and learn that God didn’t want their blood sacrifice and burnt offerings. Rather, God wanted them to know Him and to show mercy toward others.
The men at the table were not the sinners; the Pharisees were.
They had no rachamim for the people. Yet, they continually practiced their religion of offering up blood sacrifices and burnt offerings to God, thinking that they were doing the right thing. They were not.
The Pharisees were blind to the truth. Hosea was writing the exact same thing that the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had written.
Not only could the Pharisees read it from the prophets, but they had Christ demonstrating the rachamim of God right in front of their eyes. Yet, they still refused to accept it. Instead, they judged Yeshua for his actions and plotted his death.
Now my question to Christians is:
If God clearly does not want blood sacrifice or burnt offerings, why would he offer up Christ as a human sacrifice?
The answer is, He didn’t.
That was the religion that Paul started. Paul took the Jewish religion and transposed Christ in place of an unblemished sacrificial lamb, supposedly offered up for the sins of the world.
Yeshua did not start the religion of Christianity; Paul did. Christ came to teach us the true way, and show us the rachamim of God.
His message is the same today as it was two thousand years ago.
God doesn’t want blood. God only wants us to know Him and to be merciful to others. It is that simple.