Yet another installment in my ongoing look at the Epistle to Diognetus (Notes on §2). If you'd like to read the text first, you can do so here: EpDiog 3.

In EpDiog 2, the author extolled the virtues of Christianity as compared to paganism. In EpDiog 3, the author does a similar comparison of Christianity with Judaism. I should note at the outset that chapters 3 and 4 get a bit anti-semitic (chapter 4 more so than chapter 3). This is unfortunate.

Chapter 3 starts with a comparison of what is similar between the two groups. Here's verse 2:

Now by abstaining from the kind of divine worship just mentioned, the Jews rightly claim to worship the one God who is over all and to consider him Master. But when they worship him like those already mentioned, they go astray. (EpDiog 3.2)

So, the author mentions agreement with monotheism, yet he mentions that the Jewish form of worship (the offering of sacrifices, much like the pagans offer sacrifices to their gods) is errant. The author indicates that since God is in need of nothing, it is futile to sacrifice to Him:

For the one who made heaven and earth and all that is in them, and who supplies all of us with what we need, is himself in need ofnone of the things that he himself provides to those who suppose that they are giving them. But those who suppose they are performing sacrifices of blood and fat and whole burnt offerings, and thereby to be bestowing honor on him by these displays of reverence, seem no different to me from those who show the same hononr to the gods who are deaf — one group giving to gods who cannot receive the honor, the other thinking that it can provide something to the one who needs nothing. (EpDiog 3.4-5)

This, to me, betrays some ignorance on the part of the author who is writing to Diognetus. The Jews don't offer sacrifices to God because they think God needs something. The Jews offered God sacrifice because they needed something: forgiveness. They were working within the scheme set up by God Himself during the days in the desert, at the giving of the law.

Christians need not worry about continual offering of sacrifices because the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was once for all, the just for the unjust. Christians have forgiveness through the sacrifice of Christ and no longer have need to offer sacrifices. This is the new covenant issued by Jesus; the old covenant no longer applies. This transaction is what the book of Hebrews attempts to explain to the Jews in an effort to bring them into faith.