Hebrews 10:25-31

26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[d] and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”[e] 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Dig Deeper

Have you ever lost something and then begin to search frantically for it because you’re short on time and need to find it quickly?  I know that I have certainly done that many times in my life.  It’s funny how when this happens the first thing we tend to do is to think about the places that our lost item cannot be.  Once we have safely ruled out those places either because we just know that it cannot be there or because we have already searched there in our haste and can now rule that area out, we decide that we don’t need to look in those places.  For instance, the other day my youngest son lost an item that was important to him and could not find it.  He immediately came to me for help.  After thinking about it for a moment I suggested that perhaps he had left this favorite jacket of his down at our church’s building.  Well he knew that simply could not be because he had never taken this item down there.  Of that he was certain.  So we began to look all over the house and in our vehicles and spent a great deal of time in so doing.  Eventually we gave up and had to resign ourselves to the fact that his beloved jacket might be gone for ever.  The next day I went down to the building to do a little work and as soon as I walked into the building, there it was draped over a back pew in the sanctuary.  The one place he had rejected as possible was the precise place that we found the jacket.  It can certainly be foolish to “know” that something cannot be found somewhere only to be proven wrong later.  But doesn’t it seem like we tend to find our lost items in the one place you knew that it couldn’t be an awful lot.

Life is like that in things much bigger than just a lost jacket or some misplaced keys.  Our world seems full of people that have already determined that “four” cannot be the answer and then scramble around in life trying to discover what the answer to “two plus two” is, all the while waxing eloquent and impressing one another with their vast intelligence.  The problem is that the answer is “four” and no matter how intelligent they convince themselves that they are, they will never find the actual answer.  Everywhere I look I see this phenomenon of people who have already determined, for a variety of reasons, that Jesus is not the answer to life that they seek and they arbitrarily reject him.  The devastating problem with that is that he is the only answer.  They then struggle through life looking for answers to the meaning and purpose of life having already rejected the answer.

The writer of Hebrews, though, has found an even sadder group than that.  He was writing to a group of people that had embraced Christ as truth and had begun to live the life to which he called his disciples.  They had been part of his people and embraced the resurrection life of the people of God.  But they had found it challenging to say the least.  They had watched many of their own number cave into the ongoing daily struggle and the persecutions and walk away from Christ and his people.  Some of them were still wavering with making the same short-sighted decision.  But, as the writer explains in this section, that would be a tragic mistake of monumental proportions.

“If we deliberately keep on sinning,” says Hebrews, “after we have received the knowledge of the truth,” then the only thing left is “fearful expectation of judgment” because there is no sacrifice for sin for left.  This is truly a frightening sentence and was no doubt intended as such, but it can have rather dangerous implications if we don’t read it carefully in context.  As a warning of that we only need to look to many in the 3rd and 4th centuries who developed a doctrine of delaying baptism to their death beds because of the very point of not reading this passage in its proper context.  They read this passage universally rather than applying it appropriately within its context and began to fear that any sin committed after one’s baptism would leave one locked outside of the forgiveness of Christ with nothing to look forward to except the frightening judgment of God.  So they began to wait until just before death to be baptized into Christ. 

But the author has carefully defined for us already the sin to which he is referring in the previous section.  He is talking of the one who has drawn near to God and become part of his people but has failed to hold unswervingly to that truth and abandoned God’s family due to the persecutions and struggles that had come as part and parcel of a life in Christ.  They were giving up meeting together and returning, in many cases, to their old religions (whether that was Judaism or even some of their old pagan beliefs). 

The writer then was warning those who were disciples who were thinking of giving up on Christ.  He had already made clear that Christ was the superior and ultimately the only true sacrifice for sin.  What would that mean then, if someone abandoned his life and his community of believers, which was the setting and context for that life to be lived out?  It would mean that there was no other path, no other sacrifice for sin that was available.  Jesus was it and if he was rejected they had better be clear that the way of Judaism or the pagan gods offered no sacrifice for sin that would bring them into forgiveness.  It is another way of saying precisely what Jesus declared in John 14:6 when he said that he was “the way, the truth, and the life” and that the only way to the Father was through him. 

The context was specifically aimed at those who were in danger of apostasy and abandoning their faith when things got tough, and it is important to not begin to think that this applies to any sin that believers might stumble into and become racked with fear of being cast out of God’s kingdom for the tiniest of infractions. The author does not refer generally to the sins that we will commit after entering into Christ but the deliberate choice to abandon that life for our own way or some other path.  Although very few Christians these days (at least in the Western world for right now) will find themselves abandoning the faith due to persecution, there is still a cogent warning in this passage for us because there are other reasons that we abandon our faith and begin to seek our own way or other ways of the wisdom of the world.  For those that are toying with that concept, the point is clear: There is no sacrifice for sin left other than Christ’s.  Two plus two will always equal four and the only way to find forgiveness of sin is to abide in the life of Christ no matter how uncomfortable we might find it from a worldly perspective.

This may not be a popular message in the world today.  The only way to salvation is Jesus Christ.  That is it.  If you reject that or embrace it and then abandon it, then the only thing left is the image of the raging fire that will consume those that set themselves up as God’s enemies.  At a certain point God will grant the wishes of those that choose to reject him or else human will does not matter all.  In other words, God respects human choice so much that he will honor the decision of those that reject him but they will face the consequences of those choices.  Or as scholar NT Wright so eloquently puts it “If there is no place in God’s world of justice and mercy for someone who has systematically ordered their life so as to become an embodiment of injustice and malice, then there must come a point where—unless God is going to declare that human choices were just a game and didn’t matter after all—God endorses the choices that his human creatures have made.”

The author then makes a logical connection to show that this is only right.  None of his readers would have argued that anyone who willingly rejected the Law of Moses would face the stern consequences of sin.  If that was true and deserved, then how much more just is it that those that walked away from the Son of God, trampling him underfoot, and treating his sacrificed blood as something to be treated with disdain, will face the consequences of those actions.  If violators of the inferior Covenant faced judgment, how much more fitting that the violators of the superior Covenant would as well.  To do so, after all says the author, is not some victimless crime.  It is a direct insult of the Spirit of grace.

In verse 30, the author demonstrates the serious nature of this situation by quoting from two different places in the Song of Moses of Deuteronomy 32, a passage in which Moses warned Israel by showing them what God’s judgment looked like upon a people who had turned from him and walked away from covenant with God.  God’s response to their abandonment of him would be to allow them to experience the searing judgment of trusting in themselves rather than God.  The principles that were true then were just as true of those who deserted the life of Christ for an easier or seemingly more comfortable path.

At the end of this longer section, in verse 39, the author summarizes two groups of people: Those who shrink back, and those who have faith.  In verse 32-38, he will address those who have faith.  But this passage is a severe warning for those who would shrink back.  It is a dreadful thing, he says, using a word that communicated the concept of sheer terror, to fall into the hands of a living God.  The choice is clear.  We can either face the unwavering judgment of God on our own merits based on our own wisdom of how to live our lives, or we can put our faith in the life of Christ and be judged according to the perfect life of the high priest who already sits in the presence of the Father.  The choice was theirs to make.  It remains the same choice that we have to make today.  Don’t make it lightly.

  

Devotional Thought

Are you ever tempted to think of following Christ and remaining loyal to his people as too difficult or something that you are just not sure you want to do anymore?  How does it help to be reminded of the stark reality that there is no other sacrifice for sin, no other way to salvation?

Hebrews 10:19-25

The next posting won’t be until a week from today due to an upcoming trip to Wichita, Kansas for a teaching weekend.

A Call to Persevere in Faith

19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another —and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Dig Deeper

I while back I had the somewhat amusing experience of talking to a wonderfully godly young man who was a little confused.  He had been dating a fantastic Christian young woman for awhile but he was starting to have doubts.  They were getting to a point in their relationship where he had to make a choice and he knew it.  He was firmly committed to wanting to follow God’s will in his life as best as he could understand it and this was challenging for him.  He was particularly torn as to whether he should ask the young lady to marry him or just make a change in their relationship.  It had nothing to do, really, with how he felt about her but he was concerned and didn’t feel that he was sure that their relationship was going to glorify God and bring him closer to God or whether it would distract him and keep him from doing the big things for God that he was hoping to be able to accomplish in his life.  Although I appreciated his concerns I felt that he was missing a few things in his thinking process.  He was looking at the potential problems that could arise and was forgetting to look at the wonderful things about this young lady and the relationship that they had and could continue to build with God together.  I didn’t tell him much other than to think about how he really felt about this young lady and whether she was worth giving the rest of his life to, creating a partnership where they would seek to bring glory to God with their life together.  Once he took some time to think through how incredible this young lady really is, his decision became pretty clear.  He wanted to draw near to her for the rest of his life.  He woke up and quickly asked this young lady to be his wife.

Of course the details are very different but the sentiment behind this section of Hebrews is much the same.  The author of Hebrews was addressing a group of people who had become unsure about their relationship with Jesus as members of his family.  Many had left, life was hard, and many more had started to wonder if they really wanted to be part of this family for the rest of their lives.  Should they remain faithful or would it be best to just break things off?  In wake of that, Hebrews has carefully called its readers to take a step back and think through just who Jesus is and what he has done for all of us.  It calls the reader to squarely look at the superiority of Jesus Christ from many different angles and realize that one would be foolish to walk away from that.  The author is confident that once we take some time to think it all through, the decision will become clear.  When we truly understand who Jesus is we will want to draw near to God without ceasing.  That is the clear purpose of this section as the author draws together many strands of his grand tapestry that he has been weaving together and finally takes a step back and allows us to see it in all its glory.  He doesn’t give us much time to stand there and admire what he has shown us though, as he quickly calls the reader to make the right decision and take the right action based on who Jesus is and what he has done.

The words “therefore” and “since” in verse 19 are incredibly important markers.  They tell us that the author is finally ready to draw together and sum up all of his arguments up to this point and is about to start drawing some firm and clear conclusions based on his findings about Jesus.  “Therefore” is a signal word that tells us that what he is about to say is the directly related conclusion and outcome of what has gone before, points that he will begin to lay out clearly in verse 22.  But the word “since” tells us that he is about to sum up in a very concise manner what the “therefore” points to.  In other words, verses 19-21 are a brief and powerful summary of what “therefore” is built upon. 

The God-became-human Jesus Christ has, through the sacrifice of his body, opened a new way that ran directly through a curtain.  That might sound a little puzzling to us but it would have been a stunning claim to a first-century reader.  The curtain to which this makes reference is the one that protected and kept people out of the holy of holies.  It was a massively thick and heavy curtain that had little in common with the curtain that might cover your window.  This no doubt alludes to the fact that this mighty curtain tore in two at the very moment that Christ died upon the Cross, which was a clear signal from God that the death of Cross had done something that was never possible before.  What was that?  It gave human beings the possibility of access into the Most Holy Place.  In fact, it gave us confidence to enter into the presence of God, not just a fearful hope that we wouldn’t be struck down for such a petulant act.  But how does one gain access into this Most Holy Place?  Through the body, or in other words, the life of Christ. 

But Jesus didn’t just blaze this incredible trail as a result of his superior life and sacrifice and then leave us to it on our own.  He continues to serve over the family of God, the house of God, as our high priest.  That is a significant point both because it means that Jesus continues to mediate on our behalf and lead us spiritually, but also because it stresses that Christ made the way for us into God’s family not a religion.  We must avoid the language of the “high priest” to put the idea of a classic religion in our minds and realize the point that is actually being made.  Christ acted as our priest for the purpose of bringing us into the household of God.

We then turn to the ramifications of what Christ did.  We don’t just want to look at Christ’s life and get a warm gooey feeling about how awesome it is.  It calls us to some specific realizations.  The author calls us to two specific actions and then gives us two practical ways that we can actually take those actions.

The first practical action is to draw near to God.  That should be the response of the wise person who has considered the ramifications of Jesus and the New Covenant.  But this is no vague, do-it-yourself-however-you-want sort of drawing near to God.  It involves doing so with a sincere heart to obey God and his word.  It involves doing so in assurance knowing that taking faith in the life of Christ will bring us into relationship with God.  It Involves having our hearts sprinkled, or in other words, cleansed, with the sacrificial blood of Christ in an act that cleanses us from a guilty conscience.  That internal cleansing and transformation is the very thing that the Old Covenant and no other religion can ever bring.  Only Christ alone can do that.  And finally, it involves having our bodies washed with pure water, a clear reference to the water baptism that allows us to enter into the life of Christ (Gal. 3:26-29; Rom. 6:1-4), have our sin forgiven (Acts 2:38), and be saved (1 Peter 3:20; Titus 3:4-7).

The second practical action flows from the first and is a bit of an exhortation as well as a warning.  If we are going to draw near to God then it only makes sense to hold to him unswervingly.  After all, God is faithful and so should we be as people who professed Jesus as Lord and embraced the hope of the resurrection life as both a reality to be lived now and something that will come fully in the future.  The encouragement and warning here are the same: Stay faithful because God is faithful.  God will hold up his end of things, but at our baptism we pledged to God to be loyal to him and obedient to his word.  It is nothing short of sad when people pledge fidelity to God and then abandon that pledge when things get difficult whether it be persecution for being a Christian, a rough marriage, or the temptation of being successful in the eyes of the world.  It never ceases to amaze me how many people profess the hope of being the people of God’s age to come who then flippantly throw that off and act selfishly just because the going grew rough.  Let us, says the author, hold unswervingly and draw near to God.  That is in our control.  But how do we do that practically?  That is where the next two admonishments come into play.

Virtually every Christian that bothers with actually being a Christian wouldn’t argue with the fact that they would like to draw near to God and hold unswervingly to our commitment in Christ, but how?  Is there a way that we can move forward with beginning to do that on a practical level?  The answer from Hebrews is “yes” in two different ways.  The first is to consider constantly how we might continue to spur one another toward love and good deeds.  In other words, let us strive to motivate one another towards living the reality of Christian life in action and not just in theory.  The mark of so many modern church groups is to consider their spiritual life a personal  things that is “none of my business” but the biblical call here is quite different from that.  The life of Christ is a team sport.  The writer of Hebrews envisions a community that looks out for one another and calls each other to the high standard of living in response to superiority of Christ and the incredible opportunity of living that he has offered to those who would trust in his life.

The second element flows from the first.  A community under pressure and persecution would find great temptation in drifting from one another and not gathering together.  It would have helped them stay under the radar and just been much easier.  But it would have belied their true devotion to God.  The Scriptures know nothing of a people that claim to be loyal to God but show none to one another.  Most Christians today don’t have to deal with this type of situation, rather we find excuse to give up meeting together due to personal issues, professional ambitions, anxiety about providing for the necessities in life, personal ease, comfort, and lack of discipline.  That is not to say that simply encouraging one another in the life of Christ and remaining loyal to one another above all else is the sum total of the Christian life or even that those things alone will keep us faithful, but they are indispensable elements of a faithful life in Christ.

The author has stated his case clearly to this point.  Jesus is superior to anything else that we can follow in life.  He has torn the veil that separates fallen humanity from our God.  We would do well to stop and understand all of that but to go beyond that as well and consider the ramifications of all of that.  Jesus really is our high priest and king of the world and that should provoke us to draw near to God and not let go.  But, like the original recipients of this letter, we must learn that the clearest measure of our devotion to God and Christ is our devotion to our fellow brother and sister in Christ.

Devotional Thought

1 John 4:19-21 gives us the clear principle that how we treat other Christians is the clearest indicator of how we truly feel about God.  If someone were to judge you love for God, your loyalty to God, your devotion to God, etc., by your love, loyalty, and devotion to God’s family how would that turn out?  What do those areas of your life with other believers say about your true devotion to God?

Hebrews 10:11-18

11 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. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:

16 “This is the covenant I will make with them

    after that time, says the Lord.

I will put my laws in their hearts,

    and I will write them on their minds.”[b]

17 Then he adds:

“Their sins and lawless acts

    I will remember no more.”[c]

18 And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

Dig Deeper

I never cared too much for the idea of wrestling while growing up.  Oh, I loved to wrestle with my dad when I was younger and that kind of roughhousing, but once I got into the older grades of school where they had wrestling teams and such, I never had the slightest inclination to actually be on a wrestling team.  So, I don’t know a whole lot about wrestling and I’ve never been to a live wrestling match in my life, but I do enjoy watching Olympic wrestling when it rolls around every four years.  In fact there are many sports that I don’t seem to care much for most of the time but for whatever reason I enjoy watching them during the Olympics.  A few years back I was watching a gold medal match between an American wrestler and a combatant from another country.  I had watched this American wrestler go through the many rounds of competition where he had wrestled against opponent after opponent and defeated them all.  This match was to be his toughest test, though, and it was for the gold medal of course.  I honestly cannot recall now whether he won or lost that match but what I do remember was what seemed like a very odd gesture to me at the time.  Following the match, the American wrestler sat down on the middle of the mat and he took off his shoes.  He then left his wrestling shoes standing upright in the middle of the ring.  It was a bit confusing and I wondered if he was protesting something or what was going on.  It was then that the television announcers explained that this was a common symbolic gesture in the world of wrestling.  It meant to signify that he was retiring as a wrestler.  He had gone through the many battles but he was now done as a combatant and leaving his shoes in the ring signified that it was over for him.  It was actually kind of a neat gesture and one that has obviously burned its way into my memory.

The author of Hebrews has gone to great lengths to bring to mind the practice, meaning, and efficacy of the Old Covenant sacrificial system.  He has brought to mind all of the pomp and circumstance of the ritual sacrifices that took place in the Temple day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.  Over the hundreds of years of the existence of the Temple and Tabernacle a seemingly endless parade of sacrificial animals had come forward to have their time on the altar as a sacrifice for the sins of God’s people.  The priest would do his work day after day after day.  It never stopped because as soon as one sacrifice was made, the next one was already needed.  So they would continue this work in the Temple without ever stopping.

The Temple was an interesting place.  It was full of symbolic pieces of furniture.  It had tables, and levers, and altars.  It had rooms, curtains, and precious relics.  But with all of the impressive items and pieces of furniture that appeared in the Temple, there was one piece of furniture that was never prescribed to be in the Temple; one piece of furniture that could never be found in the Temple.  Can you imagine what it was?  It was simply a chair.  There was no official priestly chair to be found anywhere in the Temple.  But the important thing is to understand why.  Do you have a guess?  Have you ever wondered about that?

In our world people sit down while working all the time, but it was not so much that way in the ancient world.  Most people were on their feet all day and so sitting became a symbol for completing your work.  The author’s point here in Hebrews is a stunning one that we should not soon forget.  The priests of the Temple came day after day and offered sacrifice after sacrifice in a never-ending cycle of sin and temporary atonement but Jesus, the ultimate high priest did something that no priest had ever done in the Temple before.  Something that when understood fully should put to rest any thoughts of returning to Judaism or turning to any other way in life other than Jesus.  Our high priest went into the true Temple in the presence of God after offering his own body and blood as a sacrifice and did something that no priest had ever done. . . he sat down. 

The implications of that are earth shattering.  He didn’t just sit down.  He sat down at the right hand of God.  The work of sacrificing and atoning for sin was over.  The final sacrifice had been made.  There will never be another sacrifice made for sin because there is no need.  We will never have to do anything to earn our forgiveness because that work has been completed and Jesus symbolically sits on his throne.  All we have to do is to trust his work and enter into his life where we can accept his sacrifice.

But for me at least, and presumably in the mind of our author that brings up a question.  If the work of forgiveness is done and Jesus is ruling and sitting at the right hand of God then why is life so tough for his people?  I’m sure the first century Christians might have wondered from time to time why they were subject to random persecution and hardship if Jesus had really done all all of this and his work was complete.  The simple answer, says Hebrews, is that the work was done, Jesus was sitting down, but now he patiently waits while the ramifications of that victory take hold.  Jesus’ work really is done.  He really is the rightful king of the world.  He really is making those in him holy.  But right now all of that is true in the heavenly realm.  Our job is to have faith and live in that reality despite living in a world that hasn’t seen the ramifications of all of that yet.  We are called, to borrow Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians 5:7, to live by faith in all of that and know it’s true rather than by sight.

In the meantime we can celebrate and bask in the incredible reality that God has done everything that he promised in his word.  He has delivered the New Covenant with his people.  He has sat down at the right hand of God, he is waiting for God to put his victory in effect in the earthly realm, making his enemies his footstool, an obvious allusion to Psalm 110 (which is the fourth time that the author makes mention of this, the most quoted Old Testament passage in the entire New Testament).  This has, of course, all been part of his ongoing exposition of Jeremiah 31, to which he explicitly returns in verses 16 and 17. 

The author began considering on Jeremiah 31 back in chapter 8 and brings it to a close here by highlighting two great benefits that have come as a result of the final sacrifice made by Jesus, the high priest.  His first section, in verse 16, zeroes in on the idea that God had promised to write his laws on the heart and mind of his people.  God’s ultimate plan for his people was not to have a geographic nation of people that were defined by physical boundaries.  God did not want his final covenant to consist of a people who were controlled and conformed by an external law and who were born into the status of the covenant people.  But with Christ that has all changed.  The New Covenant has come and the work has been completed.  God has created a kingdom of people that have chosen to be part of this kingdom by laying down their own lives and entering into his people.  No one is born into this Covenant and conformed to it by external means.  They are transformed from within.  That is so superior to the old way that it should be obvious to all.

The second benefit is, quite frankly, even more incredible than the first.  Under the New Covenant, the sins of God’s people have been wiped clean.  God will not “remember” them, meaning he will not take action against them and will act as though they never happened.  That could never be said of the Old Covenant sacrifices.  Think of it like this: after a sacrifice under the Old Covenant, the priest had to remain standing in the earthly Temple, so to speak, and begin to make preparations for the next sacrifice because the previous one had already fallen short.  But under the New Covenant the sacrifice had been made.  The work was done forever.  Under the old system there was a never ending cycle of sin, sacrifice, sin sacrifice, and so on.  But now that cycle was done.  One sacrifice was made and forgiveness was available forever that would never wear out and would never be rescinded.  Christ has done it.  No wonder while hanging on the Cross he mustered enough strength to triumphantly utter “it is finished.”  Glory be to God!

Yes Christ has made the ultimate sacrifice for sin that renders all other options unnecessary.  That is truly something to celebrate but it is also something to ponder deeply.  We need to go beyond just celebration and grasp the deeper meanings of working out that forgiveness in our own lives.  Part of being a disciple of Christ means to work through what it means to be truly forgiven and dwelling in God’s grace but it also means to be spurned on towards holiness as a result.  If we don’t match God’s forgiveness with his call to respond to it in gratitude and a desire to embrace the holiness of Christ then we become like petulant children who declare by our lives and disobedience that we still want our way but without the fear of being punished.  The significance of Jesus’ sacrifice should move us far beyond that immature response.  It should drive us to embrace the deeply stunning truth that Christ has made a way for us forever, and now it us up to us to walk in that way.  He has sat down in completion of his work and now we must enjoy the fruit of his labor.

Devotional Thought

What does pursuing holiness in your own life mean for you?  Have you responded to Christ’s incredible sacrifice with a pursuit of holiness in your own life?  How is the Holy Spirit convicting you today to pursue holiness fright now?

Hebrews 10:1-10

10 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. 4 It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,

    but a body you prepared for me;

6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings

    you were not pleased.

7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll —

    I have come to do your will, my God.’”[a]

8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” —though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Dig Deeper

If you know me well at all, you probably know that I don’t like bats.  Well, that’s not quite accurate.  It’s not that I don’t like bats. . . I absolutely abhor and despise them.  They are truly some of the creepiest creatures that I have ever laid eyes on and I’m fairly convinced that they were not part of God’s original creation but must be a result of the Fall.  While that might be debatable, the fact remains that I do not care to be anywhere near the vicinity of these little dark minions.  Why the vitriol against bats you might wonder?  While growing up we lived in a beautiful old house in an old neighborhood that was filled with massive trees.  The neighborhood was a bat haven and we occasionally would get bats in the house.  Let’s just say that this was enough cause me to hate bats.  Every year, however, there seemed to be a ritual of trying to plug up holes and take precautions to make sure that we would have no bats in the house that summer.  It was always a time of hope and joy for me that was quickly plunged back into reality with the appearance of the first bat in the house of each summer.  It was always evidence that despite his best efforts, the work of my father had failed to keep us bat free for another year.  Year after year he went through this ritual of climbing into the attic to plug up holes, making sure that all the windows were tight, that there were no holes in the screens, and so on, but it never worked.  They kept coming back.  That is, until the year after I left for college.  My parents phoned me to inform me that they had finally “bitten the bullet” and paid to have professionals come in and “bat-proof” the house.  That was a more costly option but it turned out to be the right one because it was effective.  The bats getting into the house stopped immediately.  We’ll leave aside legitimate questions about why my parents waited until after I moved out the house to make such a move, but the point is clear.  The bat experts had solved the problem once-and-for-all and their solution was shown to be superior because they haven’t had to come back and repeat the process again and again.

Although we might have forgotten by this point, the author of Hebrews is still unpacking his exposition of Jeremiah 31 that stretches all the way back to chapter 8.  God had always promised a new and better Covenant and now in Christ it had come.  His continuing point is that the New Covenant is superior, among many other reasons, because it was only needed once.  The bat solution that my parents paid for was superior because it didn’t need to happen every year but it’s not permanent in the sense that it will never be needed again.  But Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross was superior to the yearly Temple sacrifices because it will never have to be repeated for all of eternity.  To further his point in this section, the author, while still ultimately discussing Jeremiah 31, will turn to Psalm 40 within that discussion to make his point crystal clear.

Before that, however, he crystallizes the thought that the Law was never anything more than a shadow of what was to come.  He doesn’t mean that somehow the Law was part of quasi-reality in relation to the “reality” of heavenly things as some Platonists of the day might have claimed but that the Law was not the ultimate promise.  It was the menu that pointed to the meal, but not the meal itself.  It could provide descriptions and pictures of the meal but you don’t get full by looking at a menu.  For that you need the meal itself.

The author highlights two shortcomings of the Law in this regard.  The first limitation is that the Law can never make anyone perfect.  Of course that doesn’t refer to moral perfection but to “completeness.”  The Law could conform a person’s exterior life but it could never transform a person from within and truly cleanse their conscience.  It could not make one truly become more like God. 

The second limitation is that the Law could never take away sin.  That is why the sacrifices had to continue day after day, year after year.  It is impossible, says Hebrews, for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.  The sacrifices of the Temple might have seemed immediate and had the effect of making one feel better for a time but the harsh reality of their ineffectiveness were on display for everyone as soon as preparations for the next sacrifice had to be made.  The reason is that the sacrifices of the Old Covenant were never meant to take away sin.  They were always meant as a picture and shadow of Jesus Christ.  They were always meant to be the menu and not the meal.  This was a particularly important point for a community that had seen many of their own struggle with the idea of returning to Judaism.  That would be as silly as walking away from a meal and going back to looking at a menu. 

The writer places the sacrifices in their proper context by turning to Psalm 40, from which he quotes in verses 5-7.  The Psalm gets at a point that became increasingly clear in the Old Testament.  Namely that God did not ultimately desire animal sacrifices.  They were a temporary teaching tool but nothing more.  Although God had prescribed the sacrifices to teach his people of their need for the perfect sacrifice, he continued to remind them that he desired their hearts in obedience more than mere sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22; Ps. 50:8-10; Isa. 1:10-13; Jer. 7:21-24; Hos. 6:6). 

The sacrifice of Jesus stood in contrast to the ritual animal sacrifices in two profound ways that forever resulted in the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice.  The first was that in contrast to animal sacrifice, Jesus offered his own body.  In using Psalm 40, the author of Hebrews brings out an idea that becomes clear in the context of Jesus’ death on the Cross but that would have been virtually impossible to understand before that.  It was God’s will to give his Son a human body in the Incarnation, knowing full well that it was that life that would be laid down as the great sacrifice that all others merely pictured. 

The second contrast to animal sacrifice that was significant about the death of Jesus is that there was a will involved.  Sacrificial animals could, at best, stand compliantly and submit to being sacrificed because they didn’t know any better but no one could argue that they were willingly giving up their lives as a sacrifice for others.  The reality is that animals were sacrificed against their will.  But that is not true of Jesus.  He came in the flesh as a human being to do the will of God.  And that is precisely the point where human beings got into trouble.  God made humans in his image, meaning to reflect and represent his will into the world.  He gave human beings their own free will but that included the choice to reflect God’s perfect will into his creation.  That is the purpose for which humans were made, but sadly human beings chose to exalt our own will over God’s, an act which is called “sin.”  That all started, of course, in the Garden of Eden when human beings chose their own will over God’s, but each human has continued that sinful rebellion in our own right.  Thus, the act of doing our own will is what separated us from God in the first place and it continues to be the problem.  Jesus came to reverse that.  His primary purpose as a human was to come and do God’s will.  Just as humans had sinned by doing their own will in the Garden, Jesus came to reverse that by going into another Garden (Gethsemane) and willingly doing God’s will rather than his own human will. 

Jesus completed the will of God at the expense of his own life.  He willingly laid down his life as a sacrifice, showing his sacrifice to be far superior to anything that could be offered up under the Old Covenant.  That perfect sacrifice immediately rendered the previous inferior sacrifices unnecessary.  Once the meal comes you don’t need the menu anymore.  Once my parent’s house had been bat-proofed there was no need for the yearly “plug-the-holes” mission.  And once Jesus had willingly laid down his own life as the sacrifice for sin, the entire system of the Old Covenant could be put down.  It was no longer needed and no longer effective.  It might have an external appeal, but the true internal work of cleansing from sin had come.

Through Jesus’ submission to the will of the Father, something had been accomplished that could never ever happen under the Old Covenant.  Those who accept and abide in the sacrifice and life of Christ can be made holy once-and-for-all.  In other words, we can be “sanctified” or “set apart” for our intended purpose.  In Christ, we are enabled to begin the transformational process of being restored to the image of God and to reflect his will into the world.  The Law could point out sin and set someone apart as a law breaker but it could never set someone apart to be holy.  Only Christ could do that.  Truly Christ is not just the only high priest worth having but is also the only sacrifice for sin that we will ever need.  Glory be to God. 

 

Devotional Thought

One of the major elements of Jesus’ life was to do the will of God and enable us to do the same.  Have you truly embraced the mission of laying down your own life and taking up the life of Christ so that your life really is about God’s will and not your own?  What are the biggest areas of struggle for you when it comes to surrendering your own will and embracing God’s?

Hebrews 9:23-28

23 It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Dig Deeper

Back when I was a teenager my parents decided one year that we were going to take a vacation to Denver to visit my Aunt and her family.  But we weren’t going to fly out there.  No, that would have been too easy.  They decided that we were going to drive.  At first I did not want to drive for that long, but once we got going it was a lot of fun.  We drove at a relaxed pace and stopped often on the way to see many cool places along the route that you would completely miss if you were flying; places like Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home in Illinois, the Corn Palace in Nebraska, and the Badlands in South Dakota.  As we started to head out West, though, I noticed that every so often we would pass a sign or billboard urging us to come visit a place called Wall Drugs and pointing the way.  This seemed a bit odd because we started seeing these signs many hundreds of miles before we got anywhere near this place.  This was all quite curious to me because I had no clue as to what Wall Drugs might be or why it merited so many signs pointing the way, but I assumed that it must be something pretty good.  My parents would not lessen the mystery at all and only said that we were eventually going to get there and that I would really like it.  So, we continued on our journey and I noticed that as we left more miles in our wake and got closer, the frequency of the sings began to increase.  I have no idea how many signs we saw on that trip but there were a lot.  But do you want to take a guess as to when I stopped seeing the signs?  It was when we arrived at Wall Drug.  Once we were there, it was a pretty cool place. . . odd. . . but cool.  But there were no more signs pointing the way to Wall Drug or enticing us to go visit because we were already there.

Of course the primary theme of the entire book of Hebrews has to do with the superiority of Christ, and one major aspect of that is on display here in this passage.  The sacrifices of the Old Testament were inferior to the sacrifice of Christ in that they needed to be repeated over and over again.  It wasn’t that they were entirely symbolic (although that was certainly an aspect), nor were they completely ineffective.  The reality is that they were signs that were pointing to the need for the true and eternal sacrifice of God himself through Christ.  There were many signs pointing to Wall Drug but only one Wall Drug itself.  Similarly, there were many signs pointing to the destination of Christ but only one destination and it would be silly to keep driving around looking at the signs rather than staying at your final destination.

In the previous section, the point was made quite clearly that Old Covenant required the use of blood for purification.  The earthly elements of the Tabernacle needed purification by external means.  But as we follow along with the author’s train of thought we understand that hearts of those who believe in the life of Christ demand a different kind of purification before God that external and earthly means simply could never atone for.  The Old Covenant consisted of many sacrifices because they pointed to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ and that required a whole host of copies and shadows to serve as copies of the complete sacrifice of the Messiah.  This host of earthly sacrifices could never accomplish what the heavenly one did because that was not their role and it would be a tragic mistake to ever think that anything other than Christ’s blood could accomplish what it did.

The priestly work of Christ was not limited to the earthly realm.  He entered into heaven itself, meaning not so much “a place” put the presence of God (Jews and early Christians thought of heaven as the presence of God more than a specific place or some type of celestial city).  The Aaronic priests could but enter the earthly Temple and even then only once a year.  And this is what some of the body of Christ was thinking of returning to?  Christ did far more than that.  He was able to enter into the very presence of the Father on the behalf of his people and to do so permanently.  Verse 24 speaks literally of the fact that Jesus appears before God’s face.  This was such a monumental thing in the Jewish thought that Isaiah even says that the angels in God’s presence covered their faces (Isaiah 6:2).  To appear directly before God’s face was something no human being could withstand and yet, there was Jesus, dwelling forever in that very presence, directly before his face, and doing so in order to mediate on our behalf.

This sacrifice was superior, among other reasons, says verse 25 because it was final and voluntary.  The Levitical priests had to return each year, carrying blood that was not their own from an animal who hardly volunteered for the job.  Christ had to enter but one time and the sacrifice was intentional.  His life was not taken, it was surrendered for the sin of the world (Luke 22:42).  The sacrifice was so complete, in fact, that it brought the previous age to a point of culmination.  His sacrifice, in other words, was like a wedding.  You might commemorate or remember a wedding in some way, but there is only one wedding.  That is the whole point of a wedding.  It is such a final act that it would be silly and even offensive to to get married again each year.  The whole point of a wedding is that it is final and brings all previous elements (such as engagement) that pointed to the marriage to a close.  That was the power of Jesus’ death on the Cross.  It wasn’t just superior to the Old Covenant age, it fulfilled that age and brought it to an end.  The Old Covenant, complete with it’s repetitive sacrifices was no longer needed. 

If Christ’s sacrifice was on an equal level with the priestly sacrifices that Jews had grown so accustomed to then he would had to have suffered repeatedly since the beginning of the world to make atonement over and over again.  But Christ appeared at a specific point in history to be a sacrifice.  It was a once-for-all, non-repeatable event as Christ voluntarily offered himself as a sacrifice.  The effect of that sacrifice was that sin was finally dealt with permanently. 

It does certainly seem, at times, that the writer of Hebrews was being very thorough to the point of being repetitive but that is intentional.  He wanted his audience to see every little detail of the superiority of Christ and his sacrifice so that they could truly understand the overwhelming significance of it.  When one truly grasps the superior nature of Christ and the New Covenant, the temptation to wilt under the pressure of persecution of any type, and drift away from the Messiah quickly fades away.  In fact, when the two covenants are stacked up against one another, the thought of leaving the New for the Old seems downright ridiculous. 

Chapter nine comes to a close with a contrast between the death of human beings and the death of Jesus Christ.  Human beings, says our author, die once and then they face judgment.  That is a reality that cannot be escaped.  Death cannot be avoided but will come to every human being (unless God specifically chooses otherwise).  In the same token, standing before God, so to speak, to face judgment is something that cannot be avoided.  It is also implied in that statement in verse 27 that once people die, they cannot come back as ghosts, or reincarnate or any such thing.  They face only the judgment of eternal separation from God or eternal life of the resurrection (this is one reason that the Bible consistently forbids talking to the “dead,” as the apparitions that people often think are their departed loved ones are actually demons presenting themselves as such--which is why the Old Testament often refers to demons as “familiar spirits,” because they pretend to be those familiar to us).  This stands in stark opposition to the Epicurean philosophers of the day that would hold to the idea of “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.”  Our world holds to similar philosophies as we hear mottos like “You only live once, enjoy life while you can.”  The biblical mindset, however, stands against that reminding believers that we need to take action bearing in mind constantly that we will face judgment.  That was surely a poignant reminder for those struggling with remaining faithful.

Just as humans die once (which, as previously alluded to, rules out any doctrines of re-incarnation) and then face judgment, Christ was sacrificed once, the result of which took away the sins of all those who would trust in his life and enter into it.  When Christ appears again, though, it will not be to bear sin or face judgment, but to bring the salvation of the resurrection age to those who wait for him. 

The final imagery in this passage comes from an inspiration which Jewish readers would have been very familiar.  The high priest, on the Day of Atonement, would go into the holy of holies with the sacrificial blood to make atonement for the people.  He would then come out verifying for the people that the ritual of forgiveness had been performed and now was ready to be lived out and worked out by the people.   His point is that now, the superior high priest has gone into the heavenly sanctuary and made the grand and final atonement for sin., opening up the resurrection life to those in Christ.  Currently (for both them and us), believers are still eagerly anticipating his re-appearance when the reality of the forgiveness will be worked out and take tangible shape in a renewed world.  When that time comes, no more work of atonement will be needed.  When Jesus does return it will be solely for the purpose of brining final salvation to his people as we are transformed  into the people of the new creation (Phil. 3:20-21; 1 John 3:2).

Devotional Thought

Spend some time today meditating on the realities of both the imminent return of Christ to his creation and our subsequent transformation into those who have attained the resurrection and the life of that age to come.  How does focusing on these truths inform and dictate your actions today?