The Gospel Coalition

Do you like your shadow? The way it dresses. The way it moves. The way it sometimes exaggerates, stretching and compressing into shapes not quite the real thing.

Sometimes we get glimpses of ourselves in our shadows.  Our shadows reflect things about us, true things, though sometimes distorted things.

That’s why we shouldn’t live in the shadow world.  We shouldn’t hide out in the shadows.  The shadow lands include the realms of almost reality, of almost substance.  But the shadow world does not actually include us.  It can’t exist without us, but it doesn’t really include us.

Imagine standing on a street corner at noon day, when someone comes up and greets your shadow.  They avoid looking at you so they can get a better glimpse of your shadow.  They respect your shadow by not stepping on it, or blocking it from view.  They position themselves so their own shadow doesn’t blend together in a dark blob with your shadow.  But they never acknowledge you.  They never look at you, speak to you, touch you.  They joyfully and vigorously engage with the dark reflection, ignoring the body.

I’ve never had that happen to me.  But I know someone, somebody, who did.  In fact, it still happens to him to this day.  Even those who claim to know him personally often only speak with his shadow.  I remember getting a letter from him wherein he tried to explain these things.

He wrote: “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming–not the reality themselves.” And, “Sacrifice and offering [God] did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.  Then I said, ‘Here I am–it is written about me in the scroll–I have come to do your will, O God.” (Heb. 10:1a, 5-7)

The Old Covenant people of God lived in the shadows, trying to discern the shape of things to come.  Jesus appeared.  The Lord God prepared Him a body.  He came to do God’s will, a will enveloped in darkness and futility in the shadow, but made glorious and bright in the body.  “And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus once for all.” (v. 10)  “By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made perfect” (v. 14).

There stands Christ in broad daylight, the embodiment of the law, the substance and reality to which the shadowy law points.   And there streams men to His shadow!  Attempting to observe the law, to establish their own righteousness, to engage Him by speaking to His shadow.  But, “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (v. 11).

Can you see Jesus, pleading with arms outstretched: “I’m over here guys!  My shadow can’t answer with what you need!  Turn from the shadows and receive the truly good thing, the real thing, Me.  Hey–I promise you two things: I’ll write my law in your heart instead of in the shadows, and I’ll remember your sins and lawless acts no more.” But the priests of Judaism, of Islam, of Buddhism, of self-help, of psychology, of materialism and every other human wisdom and self-made religion continue offering their sacrifices to the shadow, missing the Good One who has come.

A real Savior is better than a shadow savior every time.  We may have the body of Christ instead of the shadow of Christ.  We may be the body of Christ instead of distorted shadows of Christ.  Shadows are not bodies.  Bodies are better–by far.