Posts tagged with ‘hebrews’
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Reflection on Hebrews 10:11-18
Mine:
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sin, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,
then he adds,
I will remember their lawless deeds and their sins no longer.
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sins.
Real:
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,
then he adds,
I will remember theirs sins and their lawless deeds no more.
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Diff:
I can’t seem to get my unified diff output to work correctly. I have no idea why. It makes me sad.
However, you can see from the above that basically I screwed up the sins vs. sin in what Christ did. During the whole process of memorizing this I struggled with whether or not sin was plural, and I kept thinking it changed between lines. Also, I messed up the order of lawless deeds and sins in what the Spirit adds.
Observations:
I love how God not only makes the law more unavoidable in the present age by putting it on our hearts and writing it on our minds, but then he also takes away the law’s guilt-inducing power by forgetting our sins and our lawless deeds. It’s like he is at once making us more worthy of guilt and more able to approach him without shame. In fact, it’s not like that, it is that.
I struggle with the idea of Messianic Jewish communities even now. I heard a ‘good’ argument for them at Onething this past year in that there is going to be a Jewish presence at the end of the age when Jesus returns that welcomes their promised Messiah with ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ as he rescues them from the hands of the Antichrist’s army at the sound of the trumpet (Romans 11, Isaiah 63, Revelation 19, Matthew 23.37-39) and so even if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah and has indeed already come, there’s clearly evidence that perhaps you should remain Jewish and continue to practice Judaism until the second coming so you can be there for him. However, a strong part of me rejects this because of testimonies such as Hebrews 10:18 where it clearly states that if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, there’s a new order to things. There is no longer any offering for sin, a clear tenet of the Jewish faith, because the sacrifice has been made. What does it mean to be Jewish and Christian? It means as much as to be Christian and Buddhist or Christian and Muslim. In other words, it’s a contradiction in and of itself. It’s as meaningless as saying I’m a Christian and an American. We are aliens here on this planet, pilgrims on our way towards our home. We are called to be a culture of our own within the culture that is hosting us. So why would you be both Jewish and Christian? It doesn’t make sense to me.
Christ’s kingship has been inaugurated and yet not realized. However, his silence at the present time, his allowance of evil to continue, should not be taken as a sign of weakness or death. There will come a day when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead. All of his enemies shall be made into a footstool for his feet. This speaks, I believe, of his active role in their punishment throughout eternity. It is one of the hardest things for me to realize that we will rejoice in heaven at the judgement of God. The saints sing songs in worship to God that he destroys Babylon the great and causes her smoke to ‘rise up forever’ (Revelation 19. The concept that we will not know that God has judged our friends and family members and the fallen world around us who rejected him and his love is one that cannot be found in scripture. His very judgements will be the subject of our rejoicing. We will then see them perfectly and realize their righteousness. It’s a terrifying thought to me. I know too many who I couldn’t say with any confidence will be with me there. May this drive me to seek their good and God’s glory.
Thank God that the work is completed in Jesus!
I understand that this has been incredibly irregular anyway, but just to be clear, I feel like God is calling me to memorize all of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). This is going to take me a considerable amount of time. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll do it chunks that I can post here as I go along or whether I’m going to wait till the end. It probably makes sense to do the former, but we’ll see. Wish me luck and keep me accountable if you’re so inclined.
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Reflection on Hebrews 9:11-14
Mine:
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then by the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Real:
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Unified Diff (A little boo this time, the Emacs fill had unfortunate splits. Oh well.):
2,7c2,7 < come, then by the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, < that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy < places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of < his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the < sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and < with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the --- > come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with > hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the > holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by > means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if > the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls > and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the 9c9 < spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience --- > Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscienceI think the phrase that hit me hardest in this particular section is:
If the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
The reason I love this so much is that it speaks to the fact that it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance and allows us to serve him whole heartedly.
The fact is that under the old covenant and the law (which we are always judged by, and in fact even more strenuously so (Matthew 5-7)) you lived with the constant weight of the need to perform. And the problem was that you were always failing. There was never anyone who didn’t have to show up at the yearly Day of Atonement with offerings for the sins that they had committed. Everyone, every day (depending on how honest they were with themselves), sinned in various ways, and each of the sins warranted punishment of some kind. If I was under that system, I can tell you exactly how I’d feel: hopeless.
But God was gracious and gave the sacrificial law so that people could be cleansed from their sins. Despite that, that system gave rise to the most self-righteous people, the Pharisees. These were people who felt like they didn’t really sin. Maybe they had some little petty sins here or there, but for the most part they were perfect, and everyone who couldn’t man up like they had was a sinner and deserved judgement.
But you see the thing is that if our conscience isn’t clear before God then we lose our energy to serve him. Why serve someone who’s constantly mad at you unless you do something? It’s exhausting living in a relationship like that. When someone’s love for you is predicated on your ability to do what they want, and you can’t ever do what they want, then you’ll just give up, even if they give you a systematic way to receive their forgiveness that you can do fairly easily.
That’s where the covenant that Christ inaugurates improves so much upon the old covenant. Under the new covenant, our sins are forever abolished and thus we are freed from dead works and stale religion. Instead, secure in the knowledge that through Christ we are delighted in and over by God, we can serve him with our whole heart knowing that when we fail, it’s been paid for. It’s both our conscience and our flesh that Christ purifies with his blood. Amen!
I find the juxtaposition of Christ’s purification of our conscience from dead works and the serving of the living God intriguing. The problem with the gospel of mercy is and has always been that it can lead to licentiousness. People have always taken the knowledge that God will not judge us for our sins any longer and used it to say, “Well then I can do whatever I want!”. This of course is a confusion of the gospel. I say again that it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. Without repentance, we haven’t understood the gospel at all.
I’m not sure if I’ve written about this here before (A quick google search didn’t turn up anything.) so I’ll just introduce it like it’s new. One of the ways that I’ve come to understand the gospel most clearly is a concept that I call Graceful Failure.
To understand the gospel it’s very important to understand the seriousness and gravity of sin. One sin is worth eternal, literal, conscious damnation under the active wrath of God. It’s useless and audacious to attempt to argue against the goodness of God because of this. God defines goodness and reality and we who are fallen and finite can’t hope to understand his reasoning. Suffice it to say that any blaming of God for our sin is a useless exercise. We sinned. We deserve judgement. End of story.
But God, in his inestimable mercy, chose to not give us what we deserved. Instead, he promised that one day he would make it right. This is unbelievably important. Notice that in the first gospel preached (Genesis 3) God takes upon himself the responsibility of making things right again. He doesn’t say, “Here’s the steps to make this right. Good luck. Maybe I’ll help.” but instead says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise [Hebrew crush] your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”.
In the interim he institutes the first covenant through Moses, in which he defines everything that he had always expected of us. This was to make it clear and without question that we are sinners who deserve judgement. However, Christ hadn’t come yet. So he instituted the sacrificial system so people could serve him without dying. But they still weren’t able to serve him whole heartedly.
But then Christ came! He lived the life we couldn’t live, died the death we should have died, and rose to give us the righteousness that he obtained. Suddenly, we can be washed in his blood (and we are) and we become pure before the God of the universe.
But to what end? To have license to sin? Of course not! In fact God makes greater demands on us than ever before through Christ (Matthew 5-7). But things are different now. Now the sacrifice has been made. I can enter boldly into the presence of my holy God because through the blood of Christ I am seen as holy, no matter what I’ve done. But it’s through this that I’m struck to the core with a love for him who saved me. Because I know what I deserved (at least in part), I’m aware of how great a love God has for me, because he pardoned my great debt to him. It is this realization that makes me want to serve him so badly. He owed me nothing, and yet he’s given me mercy. Amen.
This is where my term, Graceful Failure comes in. When I fail now, I can with confidence press on, forgetting what lies behind me, because I know that God has as well. I don’t have to wait to serve him again. All I need to do is reapproach his throne without shame, knowing that I stand clean in the blood of Jesus. Thus I am able to work again for God. Where as before I was crippled with my guilt, now my conscience is free to attempt to obey God in everything knowing that he doesn’t count my sins against me.
So we see, there is no contradiction. Yes, we no longer are slaves to dead works that lead us to destruction, so we work with our whole hearts to serve the one who made that possible.
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Reflection on Hebrews 6:17-20
From February 11, 2009 @ 6:00 am
Mine:
So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner after becoming a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Real:
So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Unified Diff:
8,9c8,9 < forerunner after becoming a high priest after the order of < Melchizedek. --- > forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after > the order of Melchizedek.One thing I really dig about this passage is God’s mercy and kindness towards us. As an example of this I’d take you over to Judges 6-10 for the story of Gideon.
Gideon floors me every time. The issue is that God seems to be really harsh sometimes (such as Moses and the exodus account) and at other times he’s unbelievably merciful. For instance, Gideon clearly does not have much intrinsic worth for the purposes of throwing off the oppression of the Midianites: He is not fighting but instead participating in the cowardly activities of the people around him, he isn’t strong, he’s not of a good tribe, etc. However, God calls him (his ‘might’ is that he longs to see the things that God had done in the past; he realized the nation’s barrenness!) anyway. But, then he questions it! First he’s too fearful to even destroy the altar of Baal and the Asherah tree in the daylight, then he refuses to go out against the Midianites until God confirms it to his doubting heart, twice, and then after his army’s reduced to 300 men, he gets a 3rd supernatural confirmation! Unbelievable!
In the same way the author of Hebrews is telling us about a mercy that God extends to us, which is that he’s not unwilling to prove himself to us. God, who has no intrinsic reason whatsoever to give us anything and who was ultimately betrayed by me and all of us, actually looks at our weak and doubting hearts and says, “I’ll give you assurances so that you don’t have to doubt”!
I love the connection with Jesus and us here. It’s such an awesome picture of his union to us through his atoning work. Jesus died on the cross and as a man (which he will be forever), as our high priest (which he will be forever), he entered into the place where we would never have been able to go on our own strength and merit and made a way for us to come after him. And, he did this on our behalf! Sw33t. ^_^
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Reflection on Hebrews 4:11-5:2
From January 29, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
I’ve been trying to memorize a section of Scripture a week recently and I’m currently moving through Hebrews. I’ve worked on Hebrews 4:11-5:2 for the past 2 weeks or so and I transitioned to Hebrews 6:17-20 this past Sunday. What I want to start doing is putting a reflection on whatever Scripture I memorized up here just so that I document whatever thoughts I had on it while I was memorizing. I don’t want to memorize for the sake of memorization. Anyway, we’ll see how I do, eh? ;)
So, Hebrews 4:11-5:2…
My Version
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect was tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, to receive mercy and to find grace to help in time of need.
For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on their behalf in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. And he is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward because he himself is beset with weakness.
Real Version
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to they eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.
Just for total fun, I thought I’d include a unified diff of the two versions for your viewing pleasure… ;)
1c1 < Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by --- > Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by 6,7c6,7 < his sight, but all are naked and exposed to they eyes of him to whom < we must give account. Since then we have a great high priest who has --- > his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we > must give account. Since then we have a great high priest who has 10c10 < sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been --- > sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect was 12,16c12,16 < near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace < to help in time of need. For every high priest chosen from among men < is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer < gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant < and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. No newline at end of file --- > near to the throne of grace, to receive mercy and to find grace to > help in time of need. For every high priest chosen from among men is > appointed to act on their behalf in relation to God, to offer gifts > and sacrifices for sins. And he is able to deal gently with the > ignorant and wayward because he himself is beset with weakness.Context: Hebrews is at the core an exaltation of Jesus as the high priest of the new covenant, an example to which we can look for encouragement and help. It opens with a discussion of the greatness of Jesus, who is greater than the angels and greater than Moses and is therefore able to offer a true and final rest for those who cling to him for refuge. He became like us so that in every way he could sympathize with our weakness and mercifully execute leadership under the new covenant that he himself inaugurates. However, the author wants to remind us that just hearing the promise is not enough, but one should react to the offer with an effort to be found faithful by joining the message with faith in honor of the work that he did at the first. Our section of scripture wraps that discussion up.
I love the juxtaposition in this passage. It starts out with an incredibly horrifying thought: This perfect God knows us and every creature perfectly. It almost seems mocking that he would say that we should strive to not fall by the same sort of disobedience, which is unbelief and testing of God. I certainly do not believe everything that God claims is true of himself. I want to, but I wouldn’t be foolish enough to state that I do. My life simply doesn’t reflect it.
And the author goes further. The word of God (here referring to Jesus) is living and active. He is not disinterested or bored or unaware. He is actively searching and looking at us. Every thought and intention of our hearts is exposed to his eyes. And even more fearfully, his eyes, which know everything, are the ones to whom we will give an account for our lives!
But, This one that knows everything to whom we must give our account, also has another quality. He is sympathetic! We see why he became like us in 2:17-18. What is so amazing about this is that though he was without sin, the fact that he was tempted, that experience, allows him to look at us with mercy fully knowing what we are feeling; the frailty of our flesh, the ineffectually of our efforts, the loving what we hate and hating what we love, all of it! This blows me away, mainly because I primarily sympathize with others weakness based not on my temptation but on my sin. I can forgive someone pretty easily for lust because I’ve struggled so deep and long with it as a Christian. I know how it feels to be addicted to something. But someone who beats their wife or gossips or murders, those people I can’t figure out how to forgive quite as easily, because those aren’t sins that I personally struggle with on a regular basis. Jesus never once sinned! And yet for all of us he can be sympathetic in his priesthood and leadership over us.
Mike Bickle once said that it’s important to remember that while God does in fact see every sin and ill intention in our hearts, there is a glorious reality that is equally true and for the same reason that he also sees every good intention and movement of our hearts. The fact is that if you are born again you have a nature inside of you that longs for God. You truly do desire to walk worthy of the calling with which he called us. And just as we imperfectly know our weakness and frailty, we also imperfectly know our longing to be holy and faithful to him. God, though, lacks no knowledge of our hearts. He pierces to the division of soul and of spirit and discerns our thoughts and intentions. That means the bad and the good!
Ultimately, Jesus deals gently with us. No matter how fallen we remain, our efforts to run after him are met with joy and our faults and failures, while being corrected, are still dealt with in the gentlest possible way. He does not sigh and lament every time we fail but instead, like a loving father, picks us up, perhaps disciplines us, and then shows us the way to walk again. His experience as a man gives him a source to draw from, and it gives a confidence to go to him time and again.
The last thing I want to write down is that all of this should be a source of confidence for us! I have a term I like to use to describe God’s model of leadership: Grace-full failure. The magnificence of our God is that no matter how many times we fail and fall due to our frailty, he is there with love in his heart for us and mercy in his behavior towards us and grace in his helping us. There is no point after which the game is up for us! This is massive! It’s not the case with our relationships with others. If I screw you over enough times you will eventually cut off your relationship from me and just be done with it. It’s natural. Not so with God. His mercy is everlasting; It’s new every morning! And beyond that, we cannot empower ourselves to obey! But God has grace to give, and he gives it freely from his thrown of grace, knowing how it feels to want to do what you don’t ever do. This single reason is why I can so confidently draw near to him every time. Because I know that he deals gently with me and gives me grace to help in time of need.
