Hebrews 11:7-12 – They Considered Him Faithful Who Made the Promise

By faith Noah . . . . One of my favorite sayings is, God never makes it easy. I usually add to that, God is never in a hurry. Noah is a quintessential example of this, as is everyone else in this list of those who lived trusting what they could not see. Everyone is familiar with the story we read about in Genesis 6-9. I imagine how idiotic what he was doing appeared to the people who would one day be swept away in the flood they knew would never come. But Noah chose to believe God, to trust him, when he was “warned about things not yet seen.” We’re told it was “holy fear” that caused him to build the ark. It is fascinating to see the contrast of God’s people to his word and promises of judgment, to those who reject him. It is much I imagine like the people of Noah’s day who must have mocked him.

We have no idea how much it rained prior to the flood, or how long it took to build the ark, but it would have been a daunting task, and an intimidating and frustrating experience. I’m sure God didn’t show up every day and tell him to keep it up, good work, don’t pay any attention to the naysayers. He may have even wondered at times if he’d actually heard God right, or heard God at all. But by trusting in God despite his doubts (we’re not privy to those in the text, but you know they were there) he “condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” We see a biblical principle here, that faith can never be divorced from works because those who trust God always act on that trust. Faith without works, as James says, is dead. Yet true righteousness can never be attained by works, but only by faith, by trust in what God has done for us.

We see this play out in the next hero of the faith, Abraham, another example of God not being in any hurry. First God calls him away from his home, which was not an every day experience in the ancient world, and he had no idea where he was going. You have to wonder how God revealed himself to Abraham to get him to believe and trust him, but it must have been something significant to get him to take up in leave everything he’d known all his life. God said leave, and Abram, as he was at the time, left. God being God, though, and the story being real, God didn’t just tell him to blindly go without any rationale or reason as to why he should go. He promised him a land and great blessing, so he had some self-interest to do what must have appeared crazy to all his friends and family who didn’t get the word from God. Maybe not as crazy as Noah, but all God’s people see and hear things others don’t and can’t, unless God calls them as well. Somehow, some way, he, as did Isaac and Jacob, knew there was more to this than land:

¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

I love the way this is put, the city with foundations, with something underneath it that holds it firm and steady, it can’t be shaken. That is because it is the city built by God! Every other city, no matter how solid and eternal it appears, is built on sand and will eventually disappear. It’s amazing how much time and energy and focus people put into all these other cities that are ephemeral, but they can “see” them, so they must be the “real” cities. By contrast, Abram went “by faith,” by trust, and he didn’t have 3,500 years of redemptive history recorded in a Bible to build that trust, like we do. So it should be easier for us to trust God, but we know that isn’t necessarily true. We live by sight! At least more often than we should.

Than we get to the heart of the story, Abraham and Sarah. There are variant readings of this verse, but both convey the same thing:

 ^{11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.} 

or

By faith Abraham, even though he was too old to have children—and Sarah herself was not able to conceive—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise.

Both Abraham and Sarah had to have a lot of faith to wait, and wait, and wait. It was more than 25(!) years after the promise that Isaac was finally born. And like Noah, I don’t think God dropped by every few months to tell them to keep doing it (except for Jesus, every other baby ever born had to be conceived the old fashioned way), and the procreative act post 80 or 90 is not what it is at 20 or 30. Can you imaging, month after month, and year after year, and nothing. No wonder Sarah finally thought, this isn’t working, how about plan B, and Hagar, sat in, so to speak, for Sarah. That didn’t work out so well. No wonder they laughed when the Lord finally showed up 24 years after the the promise and said a child would be born to them in a year. They named the boy he laughs, or Isaac. On the one hand they to some degree considered God faithful, but on the other it’s almost laughable what they had to endure to realize it in the birth of Isaac. The point, God says, is to show them, and us, that nothing is too difficult for God, that he does the seemingly impossible, and we can trust him for it. He is faithful, worthy of our trust, in life and death.

Hebrews 11:3-6 – Without Trust, It Is Impossible to Please God

Now that the author has defined faith as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” he starts telling us the implications it had for the saints of God throughout history. It’s very interesting to me that he prefaces the examples with a declaration of faith in God as Creator:

³ By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Some years ago I decided I would do something I hadn’t done in quite a while, read the Bible through from beginning to end. That exercise inspired what you’re reading now. One thing that stood out to me when I hadn’t really expected it, was the consistent theme of the declaration of God as Creator. It’s right there “In the beginning . . . ” obviously, but over and and over, this declaration is on the lips and tips of the pens of God’s people. It’s impossible for us today to understand how radical, and unique, a notion this was at the time. Of all the peoples of the earth, it was only the Jews who proclaimed an eternal Creator God who made all things out of nothing, creation ex nihilo. In fact, it was only an article of “faith” that the universe had a beginning until the 20th century. As the so called Enlightenment ground down this faith, by the beginning of the 20th century, enlightened educated elites mocked the idea of a Creator God. Then Einstein’s theories gave them some pause, and Big Bang cosmology real messed up their worldview. Initially the idea of a Big Bang (a pejorative term) was mocked, but very quickly it became clear that Genesis 1 was a far better explanation for the origin of the universe than Aristotle’s contention that the universe is eternal.

When you read through the Bible, notice how often you read declarations like we find here. From the very beginning God as all powerful Creator of all things has been the tip of the spear against all other worldviews and religions. In the modern context, Satan raised up a Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution so materialist atheists could, as Richard Dawkins put it, be “intellectually fulfilled atheists.” That’s hilarious. He may have been able to say that in 1900 when scientific knowledge about the makeup of the universe and biological life was in its infancy, but no longer. The fine tuning of the former, and the insane complexity of the latter make it impossible to believe that it’s all a cosmic accident, that everything came from nothing for no reason at all. So it is scientifically easier to believe than ever before that God created everything out of nothing by his mere command.

So it doesn’t surprise me to find that this declaration is the preface to the great hall of fame of faith, to those who through redemptive history trusted this God in life and in death, to accept or do the seemingly impossible. He starts at the very beginning after the fall, with Able offering a better sacrifice than Cain, and being “commended as righteous” for it. Why was his offering better? The text says that Cain brought “some of the fruits of the soil,” not the best, while Able brought “fat portions from the firstborn of his flock,” or the best of it. We’re told, “by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.” The only thing we’re told as to why Able’s offering was better was that it was by faith, by trust in God. Maybe the trust was exhibited by him bringing his best, and not holding it back for himself, and maybe Cain didn’t offer his best because he was holding it back for himself. The point is, whatever was done was done by faith, by trust, a phrase used over and over to commend the people of God.

Next is Cain’s son, Enoch. Isn’t it like God to take the murderer’s son as an exemplar of a life pleasing to him. The only thing we know about Enoch is that “he walked with God,” and then he was taken away. Again, whatever he did, he did by faith, by trust. Then we’re told why faith is a requirement:

⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

The Christian life is faith, is trust. Therefore it is primarily concerned with the character of the God we profess to believe in, which in Greek is just a variation of trusting that he is who he says he is, not just in his mere existence. God isn’t real impressed when one of his creatures acknowledges his existence. The question is always, who this God is who exists. If we go back to the beginning, Satan’s accusation against God is that he is a liar. Think about that coming from the father of lies, who when he lies he speaks his native language, but Eve bought the lie, that God really was a cosmic killjoy, and she ate, along with her husband. Ever since, human beings have been committing character assassination against God. This doesn’t have to be raging against the machine, shaking our fist in God’s face as we hurl curses at him. It’s most often that lack of trust, or faith, that says God really doesn’t have our back, that he’s not capable or providentially ordaining our lives for our good and his glory. It’s that nagging doubt that maybe, just maybe, chance really does have the last laugh.

We, however, who are called of God, chosen by him from before the foundation of the world, will choose to trust him because we know he is the great I Am, the self-existent one, the author of creation and our salvation. I’ve committed two passage to memory that I very often pray back to God whenever I’m tempted to live by sight and not by trust, Deut. 32:3,4, and I Chron. 29:10-13. This God, revealed to us in creation, in Scripture, and ultimately in Christ is worthy of our trust, and by faith we worship, honor, and obey him. That is the life that is truly life.

Hebrews 11:1 & 2 – Trust (faith) is The Christian Life

I’ve heard Hebrews 11 called the great hall of fame of faith. The author mentions 15 of the great saints of old, the exploits and sufferings of others to remain nameless. The chapter is not so much about them, though, but about what enabled them to stand firm for God in the face in seemingly impossible situations, faith. The concept is a common one in Scripture, which isn’t surprising. A word search shows faith or a variation is used 539 times, 288 of those in the New Testament, and 14 in this chapter. Let’s take a look at the word again in Greek, pistis-πίστις. It is important that we understand that while intellectual assent to Christian propositions and truth statements is a necessary part of faith, it is not sufficient to be called faith. The English synonym is what faith is, trust. It’s one of the reasons, and I have several, why I don’t like when Christians are referred to as “believers.” First, everyone believes something. There is no such thing as a non-believer. But believing that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead, does not a “believer” make. I can affirm those facts as true, but not entrust my soul and life and obedience to the one who is now the living Lord. I must have trust or faith in him. Let’s take a look at the full definition of πίστις:

4102 pístis (from 3982/peithô, “persuade, be persuaded”) – properly, persuasion (be persuaded, come to trust); faith.

Faith (4102/pistis) is always a gift from God, and never something that can be produced by people. In short, 4102/pistis (“faith”) for the believer is “God’s divine persuasion” – and therefore distinct from human belief (confidence), yet involving it. The Lord continuously births faith in the yielded believer so they can know what He prefers, i.e. the persuasion of His will (1 Jn 5:4).

The context of faith is the sinful human heart, which by nature without divine regeneration is dead, spiritually stone cold dead. I’ve heard people ask why a certain person doesn’t believe who seems to know so much of the truth, and I would say because their heart is dead to the things of God. Such belief as makes a Christian isn’t accepting certain things to be true, but trusting the God of whom those things true. So the first thing we notice about biblical faith is it’s supernatural nature. One of the most touching scenes in the gospels is in Mark 9 where Jesus heals a boy who has been possessed by an evil spirit. The father is desperate for Jesus to cure him, and he asks, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us,” and Jesus replies, ‘If you can’? Everything is possible for one who believes.” And the man exclaims, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” That is our life in Christ in faith, in trust, the ever present cry of the Christian heart (in the KJV), help thou mine unbelief! I’ve found as I’ve gotten older that the sin of not trusting God is the one I most often have to repent of.

The reason trust comes so hard to us is that we live in sinful bodies in a sinful fallen world where sin’s gravitational pull is constant and ubiquitous. Other than that, no problem! We don’t do what the author implores us to do later in the chapter, live by faith, not by sight. It’s so easy to live by sight because it’s, well, what we can see! When our circumstances become everything, God becomes nothing. When we define our circumstances based on what we see, we are toast. We have to ask ourselves at that moment, who is exactly The Definer? Do we define what our circumstances mean, or does God? When we define them, we interpret them as annoying, as a pain in the you know what, as something that should . . . not . . . be! God promised Adam and Eve after they disobeyed him, that their lives, and thus our lives, would be characterized by painful toil, the sweat of the brow, and thorns and thistles. What’s not to love! It always amazes me how our knee jerk reaction to thorns and thistles (my favorite designation for life’s constant obstacles and adversities and struggles; ask my kids) is always to moan and complain and wish they would just go away. We ought not to do that. In fact just recently my daughter was going through some thorns and thistles at work, and I sent her a text with these words of wisdom from Paul:

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Her text back was priceless: “Thanks for the reminder, pops. Thorns and thistles, man.”

I know, sometimes those circumstances can be very, very hard, and it is super-humanely difficult to give thanks, let alone feel thanks. How we feel isn’t the point, and frankly, who cares how we feel. The beautiful thing about Christianity, among the zillions of beautiful things, is that it is real, and God never insists that we be fakers. We don’t call things that are, as if they are not, or things that are not as if they are, but in Christ ALL things work together for our good, and God’s glory . . . . or they don’t. As I often point out, Paul didn’t say 99%. God then is the ultimate definer, and either all means all, or it doesn’t. Fortunately, for most of us all doesn’t mean horrific tragedies, but even in those, we learn from Paul that the context of “all things” is forever. We’ll see later in chapter 11 why forever is the anchor of our existences which allows all to be . . . all. So how does our author define faith?

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. This is what the ancients were commended for.

Then he goes through example after example of what regular human beings like you and me were able to do because they lived this life in light of the life they could not see, or hope. That’s kind of the bottom line. Either this life is it, and every impediment is meant to keep us from our “best life now,” from what we think we want, or every perceived impediment is God graciously in his sovereign power conforming us to the likeness of his Son (see Paul’s words of wisdom linked to above). That’s why trust is the Christian life.

Hebrews 10:32-39 – Do Not Throw Away Your Confidence; It Will Be Richly Rewarded

After the stick, the harsh warning against insulting the Spirit of Grace, the author now comes back to the carrot with words of encouragement. He tells them to remember “those earlier days” when they stood up to, and stood up with, those undergoing suffering, insult, and persecution. We don’t know what persecution he’s referring to. Because they are Jewish Christians, it could go back to the persecution that was set off when Stephen was stoned to death. Luke tells us, “On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.” Having been driven out of Jerusalem, he is in effect imploring them to not go back. They were willing to do that because they knew they “had better and lasting possessions.” Then he exhorts them:

 ³⁵ So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. ³⁶ You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 

Why would he tell them not to throw away their confidence? And confidence in what? In Christ! And what he provided in salvation from sin, once for all. To go back to the law and animal sacrifices makes no sense whatsoever. There is no reward there, only condemnation. The call to persevere is critical because it assumes the need to persevere, that obstacles and adversities are an inevitable part of the game. As for the will of God it is important to understand what that is not. He is not saying be more obedient and moral, more of a law keeper than a law breaker. That would contradict everything he’s argued up to this point. Jesus said, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” And earlier in the chapter the author tells us “to draw near to God in full assurance of faith.” He quotes the Old Testament yet again to affirm that faith is the will of God, trust in the promise of God, and the God of the promise, that he explained in chapter 6:

³⁷ For,

“In just a little while,
    he who is coming will come
    and will not delay.”

³⁸ And,

“But my righteous one will live by faith.
    And I take no pleasure
    in the one who shrinks back.”

He is quoting from Habakkuk 2. He wants them to feel a sense of urgency, to realize they need to move forward into the promise, and not back to the law and Moses, thus the contrast with living by faith, or trust. It’s that or the law, there is no in between. Again, we tend to see passages like this in moral terms because we tend to reduce Christianity to moralism. If anything might be reduced to moralism it is Judaism because it’s all about the law. The purpose of Christianity isn’t to be more moral, to be a better person, but to trust in Christ! Most Mormons are far more moral than I am because their bastardized version of Christianity is moralism from beginning to end. In moralistic religions, you can’t fall in love with God, so it is impossible to obey the greatest commandments, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and might, and to love your neighbor as yourself. A sinner can only have that kind of relationship to a holy God through a Savior whose relationship is established by God himself based on mercy and grace. We don’t get what we deserve, and we get what we don’t deserve. The only religion in the history of the planet that can be thus described is Christianity. The only one. That kinda tells me it’s true because the kind sinners make up are all the other kinds!

Since that is undoubtedly true, why would they, we, go from being saved by faith, by trust in the perfect work of our Savior that gives us perfect acceptance before our holy God, and shrink back to the law? And in their case to animal sacrifices. The reason God can take no pleasure in such a one is that that person can never measure up to the standard God requires, perfection. The only reason God takes pleasure in us is not because of us, but because of Christ! He takes pleasure in us in spite of us! That’s only possible because it’s by faith, by trust. So for these Hebrews, the writer includes himself in a bit of positive thinking for them:

³⁹ But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and are saved.

I prefer the Greek for those last words, to the preserving of the soul. In Greek, preserving is properly, make one’s own; completely obtain, i.e. as a full possession (to real advantage, LS) – literally, “for abundant (all-around) gain.” In other words, living by faith, by trust, means we have it all! Now, this very moment, in Pauline terms, “our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” Further, “And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” Rest, relax, enjoy. It’s done. No more striving to gain acceptance. You have it! Now, go live it.

Hebrews 10:26-31 – It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God

Now we come to another passage in Hebrews that some interpret as Christians being able to lose their salvation. The other is chapter 6, but the full context of the passage clearly indicates it is not about those who were saved, and those who are now not saved. You have to read that into the passage to get it out of the passage. Here is how the author starts the discussion:

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. 

The problem is the word deliberately, or willingly in the Greek. In a very real sense every time we sin (and every time we sin when we don’t think we’re sinning) it is done willingly, that is, we use our will, the decision making aspect of our being. As Christians we are born enemies of God, but then transformed into children of God by the decision of the Father, the saving work of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit in our soul. If Christianity is, as Charles Hodge says, the work of God in the soul of man, then God would have to change his mind and un-transform us from his children to his enemies if this passage is about Christians. As the author said previously, God does not lie, and he will never do that. Just because we struggle with sin, doesn’t mean we’ve become the person the author is talking about here, as we’ll see. The Apostle John says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Then he tells us we can confess our sins and be cleansed “from all unrighteousness.” That person is not this person.

He then compares these people to those who “rejected the law of Moses,” and that they got capital punishment, death because of it. There is more going on here than lingering sin in our lives. That is clear from how he describes such people:

²⁹ How much more severely do you think he 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 him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 

This is not your average struggling Christian sinner. This is a person who is actively engaged and determined to reject the gospel, and in the context of Hebrews it is implied going back to the old covenant that cannot sanctify us. What Christian would want to trample the Son of God underfoot? This speaks of a person deeply deluded in their pride who thinks they can save themselves. I think that’s why he refers to the Spirit of grace, of unmerited favor, not the Spirit of works or the law. How to read the meaning of “that sanctified him”? As I’ve said many times, we can’t interpret any text of Scripture in isolation. Context is everything, and the ultimate context is the entire Bible and the whole of redemptive history. In my reading, a man can’t be born of the Spirit of God, and then unborn, therefore he can’t be made truly holy by the blood of Christ, then made unholy by his actions or decisions. The person who decides to treat Jesus this way? He could never have been a child of the living God.

Remember too, in the context of Hebrews the author is contrasting old and new, and the superiority of the latter to the former. So he is warning his readers in the most stark terms imaginable, do not go back! The only thing that awaits them there is judgment. Then he gives them these terrifying words:

³¹ It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

This is the kind of approach to preaching (and many scholars believe Hebrews is a sermon more than a letter) that doesn’t play well to 21st century audiences. You don’t hear much in the way of threatening eternal damnation nowadays, or hear many Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermons, and most of us have never even heard one. The author, though, didn’t write this to us, but God had it written for us. First century Jewish Christians would have no problem with the truth of God judging them, and their sin, being a terrifying reality they would want to avoid at all costs. I think the author, in a modern phrase, is playing hard ball. This is serious business. Obviously, some Jewish Christians were going back to the law and the Old Covenant, and rejecting Christ, as if the old was better than the new! That’s the point, the new is the fulfillment of the old, and thus superior in every way. Why in the world would you want to go back to the judgment of God instead of embracing his mercy and grace in Christ? That is the message. Wake up! As we’ll see from the rest of the chapter, he’s not all stick, but uses the carrot to positively encourage and exhort because he expects better of them.

I have a couple brief thoughts on verse 31 in the modern context. It’s always amazed me how easily people delude themselves into thinking God is really a benign old grandfatherly type who wouldn’t harm a flea. Judgment is so unworthy of him, they think, and surely he accepts everyone regardless of their sexual orientation, or what religion they belong to, or whatever. This is the kind of human projection God Feuerbach could get behind. The living God of Christianity into whose hands it is a dreadful thing to fall? Not so much. That God, the true and living God who is actually there, could never be a product of human projection. Who longs to make up their own judge! Proverbs tells us that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Those who do not fear God are not wise.

Hebrews 10:19-25 – Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and in full assurance of faith

The author now transitions from the implications of Christ’s sacrifice for us as high priest, God’s law written on our hearts and minds and our sins forgiven, with the implications for how we live our lives. Since we can now enter the most holy place by the blood and body of Jesus, who is our great high priest over the house of God (he intercedes for us):

²² let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and in full assurance of faith, 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. 

The first inclination of the sinful human heart is to do exactly the opposite of this, as Adam and Eve illustrated when after their rebellion they hid from God. Jesus changed all that because even though we are guilty sinners (as Christians we never stop being sinners because as Paul says, sin inheres in our sarx—flesh), we are no longer guilty before God in Christ. Sometimes that’s hard to believe, let alone feel, but that’s why we draw near to God in trust (faith), and can have confidence and full assurance that we are no longer guilty before him. That is because of what someone else did, not because of what we do or don’t do. Remember, perfection is required, and only one human being attained that, and he did it for us!

The beauty of Christianity, and why it transformed the world against all odds, is that it is based on something objective and outside of us, not subjective and inside. We always tend to get that backward, but the latter only comes from the former, thus the phrases hearts sprinkled and bodies washed. Jews of the time would instantly associate these phrases with the tabernacle, and how worshipers were forgiven of their sins by the sprinkled blood, and their bodies ceremonially washed clean with water. In the New Covenant, these are symbolized by a reality that has happened within us by communion or the Lord’s supper and baptism. Regardless of how one conceives of these sacraments, they reflect the fulfillment of God’s redemptive promises to we his people, and drive us back to hold unswervingly to the hope we profess.

Notice also the participle having. It’s past and passive; it’s already done, and done to and for us. And we can hold to our hope and refuse to let go because it’s not up to us! Our hope is in the one who promised, and as we read earlier, he cannot lie. Then we come to the practical implications of our position in Christ because theology, our systematic understanding of God, is always practical, it always impacts the way we live. (I was born-again into a fundamentalist type of Christianity that taught mostly subtly but sometimes overtly, that doctrine and theology got in the way of our relationship with Jesus; nothing could be further from the truth.) Our vertical relationship to God is lived out horizontally with others:

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.

The word consider tells us how central the body, other Christians, are to the Christian life. Lone rangers who worship in nature we are not. The word, katanoeó-κατανοέω, means properly, to think from up to down, to a conclusion; to consider exactly, attentively (decisively); to concentrate by fixing one’s thinking, to perceive clearly (kata, intensive), to understand fully, consider closely. That is some serious considering! The spuring of our brothers and sisters to love and good deeds is not an afterthought, something we’ll get to when we feel like it. It is not a sometime thing, it is the thing! And notice love is first. The Christian ethic of love, the most transformational thing ever, is based on the cross and God’s mercy and grace towards us in Christ, and compels us to apply I Corinthians 13 as best we can. It’s impossible twenty centuries on to grasp how radical this was in the first century. You don’t read much, if anything, about love in the Greek and Roman philosophers, and the only love in pagan religion was spelled lust, even for the gods. Even Judaism from which love sprang could never provide the means of its ultimate fulfillment until Christ. His sacrifice is the ultimate rationale for love, and one we have no choice but to exercise in our lives.

It seems that even in the first century Lone Ranger Christians existed, which is why the author has to exhort these Christians to keep meeting together. That’s obviously a reference to worship, or what we call church, which we can infer from the religious rituals he referenced previously. It’s also an exhortation for us to hang out with our Christian brothers and sisters as much as we can. Life in a fallen world, weighed down by the gravitational pull of sin, amidst a spiritual war we can hardly conceive, is hard. We need the encouragement of our Christian brothers and sisters, and if it was “all the more as you see the Day approaching” in the first century, how much more so 2,000 years later!

Hebrews 10:15-18 – God’s Law in our Hearts, Written on our Minds

The author continues to explain why Christ’s sacrifice, once for all, is superior to the sacrifices of animals that could never take away the guilt of our sin. He stated in verse 14 that by “one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being sanctified.” To further explain what this means he again quotes the Old Testament, and this time it is the Holy Spirit who “testifies to us about this.” The author, as I’ve mentioned, seems to indiscriminately use the three persons of the Trinity to declare what God’s authoritative word says, here from the great New Covenant chapter, Jeremiah 31:

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.”

¹⁷ Then he adds:

“Their sins and lawless acts
    I will remember no more.”

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

The Lord specifically says through Jeremiah that this new covenant will not be like the old one he made with their ancestors. In the gospel there is a specific, concrete correlation between between the forgiveness of sin, and the transformation of our being. He leaves out what comes in between these two verses, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Which, I never get tired of pointing out, is the reason Jesus was given his name, as the angel of the Lord told Joseph in a dream about the unborn Jesus, “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Mind blowing as it is, Jesus is the very Lord who is speaking through Jeremiah, and the Lord himself came in the person of Jesus to accomplish what he is predicting through Jeremiah.

The key to understanding the nature of our salvation is perfectly encapsulated in these two verses. It is first and foremost an internal thing, which is a absolute contrast to what the Jewish religion had become. Given sinful human nature, and the inability we have to change ourselves, God’s revealed religion through Moses would always tend toward a fatal externalizing of the relationship with God. We want to use the law to basically put God in our debt. Look what I’ve done, God, or haven’t done, now you owe me. This externalizing, whether we call it legalism or moralism, will always end up in a religion devoid of love because it is self-focused, and knows nothing of mercy and grace. This can’t help but tend a person toward pride or arrogance on the one hand, or grief and self-condemnation on the other if we think we can’t measure up. Stuck in such a situation, which we would be without Christ, human beings are all over the map. Some people by nature are more disciplined and self-controlled than others. Some more happy go lucky and extroverted, others more introverted and self-critical.

The point is that religion based on law is a recipe for hierarchy, people always feeling and thinking they are better and worse than others. This new covenant brought by God in Christ is completely internal and transformational, based on mercy and grace, completely unmerited acceptance before God. The gospel makes the cliche, there but for the grace of God go I, true for every one of God’s people, and makes obedience to the greatest commandments possible. This may be a chicken and egg question, but when we are forgiven, God puts his law in our minds and hearts. This is not simply a desire to obey God and be more moral. We always tend to reduce our relationship to God to morality, which tends to that externalizing I mentioned. What God is saying here, rather, is that the entire orientation of our being will change, our affections, desires, aspirations, meaning, purpose, and hope go from self to God, an actual, metaphysical Copernican revolution. This can happen because our sins are forgiven, once for all in Christ, atoned for, our guilt removed before our maker. We are transformed because God, if you will, is transformed toward us in Christ, no longer our judge, but Our Father.

Forgiveness was always available to God’s people, but the nature of the sacrifice prior to Christ was not sufficient. David could say in Psalm 103:

¹¹ For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
¹² as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Psalm 51 is David’s great plea for forgiveness, after he sinned with Bathsheba. David knew something better was coming to which the sacrificial system Moses instituted was pointing. The end of this Psalm is an indication of just that. God doesn’t want his sacrifices or burnt offerings, but “a broken and contrite heart.” Once the heart is right, God will delight in their offerings. The point for this author to these Hebrews is that there is no longer a need of sacrifice for forgiven sin. Christ has made the temple and it’s entire system obsolete. He’ll use the rest of this chapter to encourage them to persevere in light of these wonderful truths.

Hebrews 10:1-14 – We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all-Wow!

This is an amazing passage of this amazing book. In the first four verses he continues to argue for the inferiority of the law and the old system, that they were a shadow of what was to come, not the reality itself. Those endless sacrifices could not “make perfect those who draw near to worship.” That’s the deal in a nutshell: perfection is required. How could it not be. God can’t change his nature to suit rebellious little sinners, and justice must be done. That is the nature of law and guilt, of reality. Go ahead and tell the judge, Sir, look at all the red lights I didn’t run? Sorry, he replies, you run one, and you’re guilty as charged; perfection is required. Guilt is the issue. If those sacrifices worked, the “worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.” We feel guilty because we are guilty, and we can’t have a relationship with a holy God if we are guilty. As I’ve said, those sacrifices and the whole bloody system was a 1,500 year object lesson, as he says, “an annual reminder of sins.” Blood of animals could not “take away sins.” This passage clearly indicates Hebrews was written before AD 70 and the destruction of the temple. Everything is in the present tense. He asks rhetorically about the sacrifices, “would they not have stopped being offered.” Clearly they have not.

Then he quotes yet another Old Testament passage to make his point, this time from the Septuagent version of three verses from Psalm 40. Introducing it he says, “when Christ came into the world, he said . . .” The author has made God, The Holy Spirit, and Christ the authors of the Old Testament text. Our Bible’s are Triune documents, and the Trinity was a well established doctrine very early in the church, not some accretion that got tacked on after hundreds of years as the critics insist. The authors of the New Testament, and therefore God, never see the need to explain how one God could be three and still one at the same time, but it is everywhere assumed that he is. These verses contrast sacrifices and offerings with a body God “prepared for me.” The writer tells us that body is Christ’s body, and Christ speaks through David, the “he said” that prefaces the quote, that he has come to do God’s will. The author’s exegesis (he’s basically doing Bible study) tells us that God set aside the sacrifices to establish the body:

¹⁰ And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The words, “have been made holy,” in the Greek sanctified, is what Christ accomplished on the cross. He didn’t make it possible for us to try really hard to be holy because we can’t. The author uses a perfect participle, which indicates completed action. You form the perfect participle by putting the present participle having in front of the past participle, and he uses the passive tense. He’s making it very clear that our being made holy by the once for all sacrifice of the body of Jesus is God’s work, not ours. Our obedience can no more make us holy than going to Italy can make us Italians. The former, obedience, flows out of the latter, being holy before God in Christ becoming an established fact. All it requires is trust in him to be that for us. No wonder it took God so long to pound into the head of his people (i.e., us), you can’t do this yourself! Jesus, as Paul says in one of my favorite verses, “became for us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” As the author says, “once for all.” All our sin, all his people, for all eternity. Wow!

He then again contrasts it with the inferiority of the previous sacrifices, “Which can never take away sins.” This one sacrifice is “for all time,” and then “he sat down at the right hand of God, the place of ultimate authority and power. We here get a glimpse into the spiritual nature of the conflict we feel in our souls and with others and with God:

¹³ 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.

His enemies are not us, people, but sin and death, and the entire spiritual realm that made those things possible. I love that this realm is only alluded to in the Bible, and never fully explained or explored. If the Bible was all fiction and fairy tales, as the (ignorant) skeptics insist that it is, you can bet the authors would have told much more fanciful and detailed tales of the cosmic spiritual drama. But they didn’t because the Bible is the word of God. It is in fact beyond our comprehension, even as the war of good and evil is easily described. Human art throughout recorded history is pretty much that description. The takeaway for us is that the conflict always points beyond itself, to something cosmic in scope that God ultimately dealt with in Christ, and the consummation of all things that the author calls “his footstool.” The Greek for that image, hupopodion-ὑποπόδιον, is wonderful, properly, a footstool; (figuratively) a footstool used by a conquering king, to place his foot on the neck of the conquered,” i.e., those under his total dominion.

This bigger picture is why even though I believe in and teach and emphasize our responsibility to, as Paul says, work out our salvation with fear and trembling, I much more so emphasize God’s work which made and makes our working possible. Paul follows up that exhortation with the glorious imperative of the gospel, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good pleasure.” Naval gazing is the natural order of our sinful tendencies and the gravitational pull of sin, down, and spiritually destructive. Our gaze ought always to be up, to him who bled and died for us, his body sacrificed once for all, for us.

Hebrews 9:15-28 – The Blood of Christ, Once for Many

The writer continues to explain the efficacy of Christ our high priest, and the way he describes him highlights the unilateral nature of our salvation I’ve been arguing for since Genesis 1:

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.

First, Christ as mediator, mesités-μεσίτης, properly, an arbitrator (“mediator”), guaranteeing the performance of all the terms stipulated in a covenant (agreement). We’ll remember that in Genesis 15 in a shocking ceremony with Abram, God shows us that he will be solely responsible for both parties of the covenant, a unilateral agreement in what is normally a binding bilateral one. It’s as if a mighty king tells the lowliest serf, don’t worry about it, I’ll keep your end of the bargain as well. This is the reason that I believe our salvation (which includes our justification, sanctification, and glorification) is guaranteed by God’s work not ours, and not by anything we bring to the table. Over my long Christian journey I’ve come across people who wonder if we can lose our salvation, but that is a silly question. We didn’t attain it by anything we could do in the first place.

Our salvation as we learn here is for those who are called, and they receive an “eternal inheritance,” which I think means forever. The calling of a king was not something that could be resisted. He called, you went. How much more a sovereign, almighty, eternal king who sent his son to die for you! And that’s the point, his death was an actual ransom, an exchange, a payment for our sin, not a potential payment. There is no such thing as a potential payment. That’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. A payment is either paid, or it isn’t. How much more the payment of the blood of the Son of God for our sin! And the sins of those who lived under the first covenant were not forgiven by the blood of animals, but by the blood of Christ as well. He is the mediator for his people under the old and new covenants because as we’ve learned there really is only one covenant.

Then the author gets into blood, and what it means, both for the old and the new covenant. God through Moses introduced the first covenant that could only be put into effect with blood, and what we learn by that:

 ²² In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Why in the world would blood be required for forgiveness? Our 21st century neighbors have a hard time with this. It seems so barbaric, but there is a simple biblical answer. God promised Adam death if he disobeyed, he did and he did, and so do we. Possibly, the author is thinking of this verse in Leviticus 17:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

We are body and soul, and it is the soul that lives or dies in relationship to its Creator. The wages of sin is the loss of life, and justice must be done if we are to attain the life we lost in Adam’s sin. The only problem is we can’t pay that price ourselves because we’ll be dead, both physically and spiritually. So God painted a 1,500 year picture of just how great the cost of sin was to point us to the one who could pay the price for us, and come back to life, as man. The human high priest had to enter the Most Holy Place year after year with the blood of bulls and goats to atone for the sins of the people, but Jesus entered heaven itself. “He has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.” The author emphasizes the “onceness” of Christ’s sacrifice, stating it twice to contrast with the never ending sacrifices of the earthly system, the second time contrasting it with something that happens once:

²⁷ And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, ²⁸ so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many . . .

This is a sobering statement, that we have one shot at this. When we die we either face judgment alone, or we face it in Christ. Denying there will be a judgment will not get us out of being judged, and every human being knows it because we already know we are judged at this very moment. It’s called a conscience. There is not a person who’s ever lived who can say with a straight face they are not guilty, who can say they have never done anything wrong, with the exception Christ.

The moral law written on our beings is a foolproof argument for the existence of a moral law giver. How do we know a line is crooked unless we know there is such a thing as a straight line? As I’m writing these words this statement is being proved right on my front lawn! Our neighbors have a toddler, less than two, and he’s running across our yard while dad is insisting he comes back, or else! What does the kid to? Run the other way, of course! A born sinner, and it won’t be long before he knows it, that he’s bent and broken, and hopefully he’ll realize in need of a Savior. If all we are is lucky dirt, there is no explanation for the kid running away and doing wrong that even in his little brain he knows is wrong. The moral argument for God’s existence is powerful, and irrefutable.

Christ, we’re told, “will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” The moral law giver has satisfied his justice for us in our sin bearer, and we live in confident hope for his second coming and the resurrection of the dead, saved souls and new bodies made one to live with him and each other for ever. It’s so hard for me to believe it’s true, but it’s harder for me to believe any of the alternatives. Come Lord Jesus!

Hebrews 9:11-14 – The Blood of Christ to Serve the Living God!

Having set out the inferiority of the old order with the earthly tabernacle, the author now establishes the superiority of “the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made by hands, not part of this creation.” This is the tabernacle that Christ as high priest went through. The old system could not clear the conscience of the worshiper because it was done with the blood of goats and calves, while Jesus entered the Most Holy Place “by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.” In our secular age most people think that a religion based on sacrifice and blood is archaic and barbaric. We’re far too sophisticated now to fall for such a thing, and worship a much more enlightened god, science. The Old Testament sacrificial system, however, was an absolutely necessary process in the history of redemption because human beings always, then and now, downplay the seriousness of sin. God told Adam in the garden that the day he ate of the fruit of the tree, he would surely die. The wages of sin is death, as Paul reminded us, and the bloody disgusting system of killing animals reminded God’s people, and us, about the cost of sin. It is horrific because it separates us from the only source of life; how could it not be death!

Fortunately, from the beginning, God decided not to leave us in our sin, and so he himself came to earth in the person of his Son, to shed his own blood as the God-man, and thus provide redemption for his people. The concept of lutrósis-λύτρωσις, means a transaction took place on the cross, properly, it is the payment of the full ransom-price to free a slave – particularly the redemption of an individual. Which is why Jesus’ payment, the ransom-price, was not a potential payment for the sins of his people, but an actual payment. Jesus gave us an eternal, forever redemption, not a he’ll do it and wait to see if we’ll accept it redemption. It was all about you, me, we, his people, specifically, his people he came to save, not to try to save.

This is a tough one for Arminians, and anyone who believes that Jesus paid for the sins of the entire world, meaning each and every human who ever lived. If he had, than each and every human who ever lived would be saved because an actual transaction took place on the cross. For some reason the L in TULIP, that Jesus’ death was limited to the elect, to his people, is a real problem for those who don’t embrace Calvinism. I’ve come across and heard people get visibly upset if you dare even suggest such a thing, but it’s a biblical thing, and it makes perfect sense because a redemption that is a possible redemption isn’t a redemption at all! We ought to take great comfort knowing that Christ didn’t die for potential me, but for actual me! And the beauty of the new covenant is that it doesn’t clean outwardly like the old, but works to the core of our inner being:

¹⁴ How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

The reason I’m a Calvinist is because this transformation is so radical and our state apart from Christ so dire, that we could never by our own choice or will or decision make this happen. In our natural, sinful unsaved state, we are God’s enemies, we hate him, run away from him, curse him because he is against us, our judge, jury, and executioner, as I’ve said many time. I’ve heard of Arminians, just recently John Wesley, try to make the case that God gives everyone just enough grace to make it fair, to give everyone a shot at salvation, but that’s clearly not the case. How many times have we had skeptics ask us, what about people in Africa or some jungle in the Amazon who have never heard of Jesus? What sense does it make to think God would give them grace so that they could choose to believe in someone they’ve never heard of? No, the Arminian system doesn’t get God off the hook. Not everyone is saved whether that is ultimately God’s or man’s decision, but I think Scripture is more than clear that, that God came to save his people from their sin. That would be you and me!

So back to our text. The point of our salvation is to restore our relationship to a holy God, to be reconciled to him by a means we could never accomplish of ourselves. We are born in sin, enemies of God as Paul says, not because we are against God, rebellious, treasonous little wannabe gods who by nature are determined to usurp God’s throne to rule our own lives, but because God is against us. We, by nature, take Satan’s temptation to Eve very seriously, you will be like God . . . . In such a state apart from the mighty sovereign saving grace of Almighty God we are lost and without hope in the world. Our consciences are not and can never be clean apart from God’s supernatural action in our souls based on Christ’s offering himself “unblemished to God” because we know we are guilty, and like Macbeth we can never wash away the stain no matter what we do or how hard we try. The old system based on the law can never cleanse our consciences because God’s wrath and justice could never be fully satisfied by the blood of bulls and goats. All of that was done to point to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, who took the punishment we deserve, a la Isaiah 53. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed! Our guilt is gone! Disappeared!

Let’s put it this way. The “acts that lead to death” are still there. We don’t become sinless when we trust Christ, obviously. If that isn’t obvious to us, we have serious problems. So our relationship as sinners to a holy God is no longer determined by our action, what we do or don’t do. Got can’t love us more or less, or accept us more or less based on our performance. That is really hard for many Christians to accept, and thus why their faith so easily turns into moralism or legalism, and misery. We can’t measure up, ever. But the point of our redemption and reconciliation isn’t to fall into Romans 6, since grace abounds let sin abound. No! Our conscience’s are cleansed so we may serve the living God! We’re not terribly good at it, but so what! We get up every morning, dust ourselves off, repent, and serve him, love other, and be followers of Jesus!