We will take a two-week break from the devotionals
whilst my family and I are in San Antonio for some time together and the World
Discipleship Summit. Thanks for your
understanding.
15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new
covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal
inheritance —now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins
committed under the first covenant.
16 In the case of a will,[d] it is necessary to prove
the death of the one who made it, 17 because a will is in force only when
somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.
18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.
19 When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he
took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of
hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20 He said, “This is the
blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.”[e] 21 In the same
way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its
ceremonies. 22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed
with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Dig Deeper
The young man had come to visit a marriage counselor
because he was in desperate grief over the state of his marriage. He had married the woman of his dreams just
four years ago, less than a year after graduating from college. Things started out okay but they quickly
turned sour. He discovered that his wife
was just not the person that he thought she was, and of course had no idea that
in the mind of his new wife, he was not the same man that she thought she was
marrying. The first year had been a
constant struggle although they didn’t argue much. As time went on they simply began to drift
from one another in their hearts and eventually got to a point where they
barely talked and didn’t care that much about or for one another anymore. That is when things took a turn for the worse
and the young man noticed that they began to argue frequently and his wife
became rather spiteful and vindictive and often seemed to try to hurt or
humiliate him when she had the chance.
As a means of last resort, he had come to see a highly recommended
marriage specialist to see if anything could be done to save their fragile
marriage. After listening to all of the
problems that they were mired in, the counselor got up, slowly walked out of
the room and closed the door. After a
puzzling absence of several minutes, the counselor returned with a laminated
card that was about the size of a half-sheet of paper. Without a word the counselor handed the young
man the card, thanked him for coming in, and turned around and left. With the counselor gone, the man looked down
at the card and realized that it was a list of twenty rules for not getting
yourself into a bad marriage. On the
back side were the ten warning signs of a clunker marriage. Dismayed and feeling worse, the young man
left the office with little intention of ever returning.
Of course a bunch of rules of how to stay out of a bad
marriage and warning signs of such a marriage do very little good to someone
stuck in one. They offer no actual
solution or way out. It’s a little like
stumbling upon a man trapped in a narrow fifteen -foot hole in the ground and
dropping down a sheet of safety tips for how to avoid falling into holes. It only accuses and points out the problem
without offering any hope or actual salvation.
In some very real ways, that was the problem of the Old
Testament. It pointed out the problems
and even highlighted the condition that fallen humanity was in, but never
offered a permanent solution to a fallen humanity and could never do so. But imagine if the young man in the above
scenario, got home and noticed very small lettering on the back of the card at
the bottom that informed him that if he would come back in next week, steps
would be taken to immediately heal his marriage permanently. Do you think he would return the next
week? Or do you think he would cling to
that card and just keep reading the steps of the things that he didn’t do and
that had caused him to be mired in this mess in the first place? The Law and the Old Covenant were good and
right but they could only show the problem and could not provide a permanent
cure to one who was already fallen and sinful.
They could tell you how to avoid a ditch but incapable of throwing down
a rope to pull you out.
That is why there was a need for a new covenant. This was a vital point of understanding both
for Jews who had not yet believed and for Jewish Christians who were weakening
in their resolve to trust in Christ to understand. Jesus Christ came to do what no Old Covenant
priest could do. He was a mediator, to
be certain, but so were the Levitical priests.
The difference was that he was both mediator of a New Covenant and the
ransom that brought that Covenant about and set the captive free from their
sin. He was the prescription and not
just the description of the problem.
The idea of “covenant” is obviously central to this
passage but a slight difficulty arises in verses 16 and 17, where the same word
for “covenant” is used in those verses as is used in the rest of the section,
but it is translated “will.” It seems
likely that Hebrews is intentionally playing off of the double meaning of a
word that can mean both “covenant” and “will”.
There is much to attract us to this possibility because using the double
meanings of words to make a point was a favorite technique of Alexandrian
scholars in the first century (and if Apollos of Alexandria was the author of
Hebrews then that would make sense). If
this was the intent then, this would have been considered a rather clever
exposition of Scripture. In this
understanding, the author is telling us that the first Covenant is an
arrangement that is similar to a will in that it must be enacted with blood, as
a will is only enacted with death. The
point is that the death and bloodshed of Christ served as the necessary means
to enact the Covenant and the will between God and humanity. The simple conclusion was that Jesus had to
die in order for the Covenant to be enacted (This is a vital point for those
that would argue the lack of necessity of being baptized into the life of
Christ for the forgiveness of sin based on the instance of salvation coming to
the “thief on the cross,” who was never baptized. But, as Jesus had yet to die, the New
Covenant had yet to be enacted and so his salvation at the time was an Old
Covenant salvation.)
The substance behind the idea of life and blood being a
necessity for atonement comes from Leviticus 17:11, which states “ For the life
of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for
yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s
life.” What was true in the Old
Covenant, is equally true in the New.
Moses enacted the first Covenant with the blood of animals
which served as a substitute sacrifice.
But it pointed to the need for a very real sacrifice of blood to bring
about a covenant. As verse 22 states
clearly, “the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and
without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” This verse brings to mind not only Leviticus
17:11 but the confirmation of Christ himself of this truth: “This is my blood
of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”
(Matthew 26:28). This all reminds us of
two truths. The first is that sin is
truly a terrible offense that demands a high price. The second is that forgiveness is expensive
because of the high cost of sin. The
blood of Christ, the Son of God, is not cheap thing and without his blood there
is no forgiveness.
The point of all of this is that the sacrifice and blood
of animals was a tragic outpouring of blood and life that was brought about by
the sin of human beings in their rebellion against God. The blood of those animals signified that the
outpouring of life was necessary to deal with sin, though, was pointing to a
deeper truth: those sacrifices weren’t the end in themselves but signposts to
the shocking, self-sacrificing love of God.
A covenant, like a will, could only come into force through death and
sacrifice and it was the self-sacrifice of Christ that brought about this New
Covenant. The blood of all of those
animals under the Old Covenant symbolized and pointed ahead to the greatest
sacrifice of all, God’s own sacrifice.
It is not as though the blood of animals was pointing
ahead to a time when humans would actually have to pay the penalty of their own
sin. No, those sacrifices were teaching
about the severity of sin and the sacrifice needed to atone for those sins, but
that sacrifice would come from God himself.
As mind-blowing as it sounds, God would shed his own blood as a payment
for the rebellion enacted against himself, the innocent party. Before Jesus’ death on the Cross, of course,
no one would have or could have imagined that God would become human and give
his own life, shedding his own blood and in so doing, all of the symbols and
signs would find the reality in the only way that they ever really could. The redemption of God’s people came at the highest
price imaginable, that of the blood of Jesus Christ (Acts 20:28).
“Without the shedding of blood, there is no
forgiveness.” That is the reality. Sin is so severe an offense that is requires
a life to atone for it. There are no
loopholes, no other ways around it. Sin
cannot be overlooked by good behavior or good works. The only way that eternal redemption could be
brought about was through the self-sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. No amount of ceremony, religion, good
behavior, priestly activity, or animal sacrifice will do. There is no space here for
self-sufficiency. Jesus alone solved a
problem that we created and salvation is found in him alone. That should give us pause as we consider the
significance of the New Covenant and the meaning of the death of Christ and how
we should respond in our own own lives.
Devotional Thought
It is important to remind ourselves often of the fact
that our salvation rests on the sacrifice and blood of Jesus Christ. How often in our Christian lives, though, do
we forget that and start to become self-sufficient rather than completely
relying upon God? Take some time to
assess yourself today? Do you truly rely
upon God for everything in your life or do you tend to forget that without the
blood of Christ we have nothing?
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