Just as you would have only certain obligations as it applies to your life... What is this "obligation to the entire law" ? Yeshua could not even be obligated to the entire law as He was not levite, female, etc... Yet as we all are, the "obligation" to acknowledge its role in our society [congregation] whether Jew or Gentile holds us all together as a community of believers.
You have to wonder - if Yeshua was fully observant - how far he'd go. Did Yeshua choose to make offerings of atonement for himself as all were required to as Jewish males in Israel? He was God - and yet for a long time, no one thought he was anything other than a Law-abiding Jewish citizen. And I think it'd be interesting to see him in the temple when sacrifices for sin were made and he particpated - for he would've obviously had a radically different mindset behind why he did so than other Jewish citizens.
As said before
here and
here/
here, I do believe that Yeshua was perfect. For He was truly without sin and perfect...and whenever he spoke out against the temple (as was the case when he overturned the money-changers/tables in John 2 and elsewhere), I believe the Lord voiced His opinions toward the religious rank of the temple rather than the sacrifice itself. Nonetheless He came to fulfill and replace the sacrifice which is explained in Hebrews 9. His institution of Hoy communion confirms His body & blood replacing the animal sacrifice In John 6:44-71 (read all of John 6 though). Also St. Paul testifies to holy communion in 1 Corinthians 11 (mainly verses 20-30). However, while Jesus was alive He lived under the Mosaic Law which
demanded animal sacrifice. It wasn't till after His Death (When His blood substituted for the blood of all animals) that animal sacrifice was no longer necessary. But, again that did not happen till after he died and was resurrected.
And with sacrifices, we already see where the Lord was actively involved in the sacrifical sytem itself...
including partaking in lambs that were made for the purposes of sin (Exodus 12, Leviticus 23:4-6 , Leviticus 23:4-6 , Deuteronomy 16, etc):
[ The Lord's Supper ] On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, "Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?" 13 So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. 14 Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”
Luke 22:14-16Luke 22
10 He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, 11 and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there.”
13 They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them,“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”
The people who heard what Yeshuas' disciples asked about Passover preparations would have naturally understood them to be saying Christ was preparing to eat a traditional Passover meal as other Jewish families did....and they would not have thought that Yeshua was meaning He was not for the eating of a sacrificial lamb when He said "I have eagerly been wishing to eat this Passover Meal with you." I've often been of the mindset that there are certain laws that could not have been kept by the Lord since they never applied to Him....just like those who were not farmers had differing regulations/ordinances they had to obey that farmers were exempt from in Torah. As I've said to another before, some of this I have brought up before when others note how there's no mention of whether Christ in keeping all of the Torah chose to go up into Jerusalem/temple and make offerings of sacrifice for sins like all in the land did (and were required to do...Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16, Lev. 17:11 and Leviticus 7, Leviticus 5, Leviticus 4, etc ) since He himself was sinless.
One can only imagine how other Jews may've reacted to one claiming to be without sin refusing to make sacrifices of atonement as all others......for it'd be odd to see a Jewish boy (When Yeshua was young) refuse to make any type of sacrifices of sin for himself or attend Yom Kippur due to claiming that He was WITHOUT any sin
If Christ kept the Law/Torah that demanded sacrifices and went to temple to do so yearly when he was alive, to me, the only way to reconcile that is to consider how Christ may've done so in the same way others ( i.e. Daniel 9 or Ezra in Ezra 9-10 or Nehemiah 8-9 and Moses in Exodus 32-33 & Numbers 14, etc) did when it came to identifying with the sins of their nations even though they themselves never sinned...much in the same way Christ identified with humanity via baptism by John even though he was not in need of forgiveness since He was perfect, as Christ noted he had to be baptized for the sake of identification/fulfilling all righteousness.
For more, one may consider the following:
II Corinthians 5:21 comes to mind as it concerns Christ being made sin for us...identifiying with us fully (Hebrews 4:14-16, Hebrews 2:5-18, etc).
Galatians 2:4 speaks very clearly on the issue of law and how Jesus was born under the Law and of a woman. He was born as a Jew, subject to GOD'S Law and fulfilling it perfectly/FLAWLESSLY. Thus, Jesus was the PERFECT Sacrifice because although he was fully Human, he never sinned..and His death brought freedom for us who were enslaved to sin so that we could be adopted as sons of God.
Some may say that the requirements of the Law (regarding sacrifices/offerings) were made only for "Sinful" man---and though I agree in part with that, I think it's over-reaching to say that was all of the purpose behind the Laws that God gave. For even with the laws being made for sinful man, saying its wrong for Jesus to keep it/walk by due to his being perfect and without sin is like saying it was somehow wrong for Christ to be BAPTIZED in Luke 3:21-22 and Matthew 3:13-17. For Baptism could be said to have been only for sinful man...and yet Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit had no issue with it. Baptism is a sign of repentance from sin, yet Jesus did not need to be to be baptized for sin since he NEVER sinned.....and in asking to be baptized, Jesus seemed to be taking one more step in fulfilling his earthly mission of identifying with our humanity/sin. As Jesus said, his baptism was to fulfill all righteousness....and by endorsing the rite of baptism, Jesus was giving us an example to follow...and he was being baptized for the sins of the nation.
In baptism Jesus was confessing sin on behalf of the nation. If that could happen with Baptism, other parts of the Law would be no different when it came to Jesus walking by it---and identifying with it when it came to sin. That does not make Christ out to be somehow less than SINLESS, IMHO--but rather, it shows just how far he was willing to go for the sake of identification with the people he came to save.
Identification is such a big theme in the life of Yeshua, as He was the Boss/The one who aided in instituting the Law of Moses...but in order to redeem His people, He chose to come under it in identifying with the people, much in the same way that an Employer comes down to the level of an employee/works in their position even though they, as the boss, has freedom to do as they please. The Law is subject to the Law-GIVER rather than the other way around. __________________
He came to fulfill and replace the sacrifice which is explained in Hebrews 9. His institution of Hoy communion confirms His body & blood replacing the animal sacrifice In John 6:44-71 (read all of John 6 though). Also St. Paul testifies to holy communion in 1 Corinthians 11 (mainly verses 20-30). However, while Jesus was alive He lived under the Mosaic Law which
demanded animal sacrifice. It wasn't till after His Death (When His blood substituted for the blood of all animals) that animal sacrifice was no longer necessary. But, again that did not happen till after he died and was resurrected.
.As the Lord asking for something to be done on their part as a means of being right with Him--with the Lord setting the rules for how he wanted the people to approach Him if they wanted to be clean--demand is more than accurate, IMHO. The Lord did not need to have sacrifices...but as it concerns relationships, it was not an option for the people not to bring them if they wanted to connect with Him. Of course, that can also be an issue of semantics since sacrifices in/of themselves were never able to cleanse people of their sins.....and there was always the dynamic of what sacrifices symbolized when it came to what they poitned to.
As a Jew, Jesus must have kept the Law of Moses perfectly. Yet that same law required all Jews to keep the Passover celebration ( (Exodus 12:47 ). The Gospels specifically mention Jesus keeping three Passover feasts in Jerusalem....even as a boy (Luke 2:41-51). In order to keep the feast, the participants were given roasted lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread to eat (Exodus 12:3-4). The entire lamb had to be eaten during the feast. If there were any leftovers, they had to be burned (Exodus 12:10). If Jesus did not eat the lamb, he would have been violating the Law and could have been accused of sin ( Numbers 9:10-13 ). The New Testament records that Jesus did eat the Passover feast, which would include the eating of the roasted lamb (Luke 22:14-15).