Fulfillment Brings With It Futility

1 Peter 1: 18-19

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

There is a story in Acts where, in a vision, Peter is offered to eat all the animals previously declared as unclean according to the law of Moses.  When Peter refused to eat them, the Lord told him that it was the purview of God to declare what was clean and unclean to eat, and that a new commandment was given.

Those laws were inherited from their ancestors and a new way had been given.  The ransom through Jesus lays out even more futile ways the Jews practiced their faith.  It used to be that the system of animal sacrifice was the way that the people were made right with God once again.  This continued to be the practice in Jerusalem up to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. 

The precious blood and the lamb will be talked about, but the ransom of blood provided for in the law of Moses is here fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  His sacrifice is the perfect one, the final one, the forever one, adequate for the sins of the people.  The readers are called to practice their faith in a new way, laid upon the foundation that Jesus makes them right with God, not an animal sacrifice. 

Theirs is a new way.