Slave or Son - Trapped or Free?

 

Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. For the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. For it is witnessed of him, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 7:11–17 ESV).

 

We get back to this incredible image of Jesus’ greatness, even over Melchizedek. All of these last three chapters (cf. Hebrews 5-7) leads to this great, practical, relevant conclusion. Because Jesus is alive, and in the presence of God with the sacrifice of the blood of the Son of God, and full of sympathy for his people, therefore two things must be true: first, we must “hold fast our confession” (v. 14b); and second, we may now “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace” (v. 16).

 

This confession is simply our unshakable hope (cf. Hebrews 10:23), that God is for us and will work to bring us into his final rest and joy. Hold fast to that because you have a great High Priest. That’s the first conclusion. For days we have been seeing the call to hold fast and to be diligent and to take heed. Here we see it again. Only here is the writer spreading out powerful reasons not only for why we should hold fast to our confession, but also why we can! God is for us. We have a great High Priest. He is alive. He is in the presence of God. He is the Son of God. He is sympathetic. So, hold fast to our hope. Now we can explore what we practically do with this hope. The writer tells us: “Jesus knows the battle. He fought it all the way to the end. And he defeated the monster every time.” (v. 16).

 

If I were preaching, this would be that moment when I would take a “dramatic pause” and say, “stop… listen… don’t miss this!” It is an incredibly important point. Every one of us needs help. We are not God. We have needs. We have weaknesses. We have confusion. We have limitations of all kinds. We need help. But every one of us has something else: sin. And therefore at the bottom of our hearts we know that we do not deserve the help we need. And so, we feel trapped. I need help to live my life and to handle death and to cope with eternity — help with my family, my spouse, my children, my grandchildren, my loneliness, my retirement, my health, my finances. I need help. But I don’t deserve the help I need.

 

We are all right there. We can try to deny it all and put on that hypocritical front that we don’t need any help. Or we can try to drown it all and throw our life into a pool of sensual pleasures. Or we can simply give way to the paralysis of despair. But God declares over this hopeless conclusion that Jesus Christ became a High Priest to shatter that despair with hope and to humble that false act and to rescue us as if plucking us from the fire. Because we have a great High Priest, the throne of God is a throne of grace. And the help we get at that throne is mercy and grace to help in time of need. Grace to help! Not deserved help — gracious help. This is the whole point of the Old and New Testaments. God planned for a High Priest, a Savior, a Redeemer, a gracious Helper.

 

You are not trapped. Say no to that lie. Listen to Jesus:

 

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:34–36 ESV).

 

Jesus - He Who is Without Sin

 

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. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 5:1–6 ESV).

 

We cannot leave this passage without examination of “why” Jesus is the greater High Priest. The easy answer is because He is God Himself; however, to simply rely on that answer would be incomplete. It denies the humanity of Jesus, which was essential for His completion of the atonement and how He is perfectly fitted to guide us in our journey.

 

Remember, as I wrote a few days ago, this priestly system had some important and unavoidable inadequacies. The High Priest was fully human and as such a sinner just like any other human being since Adam and Eve. Before he could make any sacrifice for the sins of others, he had to make a sacrifice for himself. That is not true with Jesus. Though He was fully human, He was with sin (cf. Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22; and 1 John 3:5).

 

As I also wrote earlier, this is the story of Israel from its beginning. In fact, it is also the story of humanity since Adm and Eve were cast out of the Garden. Thus, we needed someone perfect and complete. We needed the only begotten Son of God. It points to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our ultimate and perfect High Priest. This is the foreshadowing that the sacrifices the high priest offered provided. Because Jesus is such a perfect and complete fulfillment of the priesthood that he is not only the High Priest, but he is also the sacrifice that the High Priest gives (Hebrews 9:12, 25–26; 13:12).

 

This is the truth that urges us to hold fast to our hope and draw near to our God! Tomorrow we will go deeper into this glorious truth!

 

 

 

Elementary Doctrine and Dead Faith

 

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. (Hebrews 6:1–3 ESV).

 

This reading is certainly worded in a way that captures our attention. Something doesn't seem to fit. Look back at an earlier verse: "Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God" (Hebrews 5:12). The question is how this fits together with our reading today where it says, "Leave the elementary teachings and don't lay a foundation again" (v. 1). One seems to say you need to be taught the basics again (v. 12), and the other seems to say you should not lay that foundation again (v. 1). Well, which is it!

 

I think the teaching they need about the basics (cf. Hebrews 5:12) is how to use these basics for Christ's sake to press on to maturity. But laying a foundation again, I think, implies that they are losing sight of the basics about Christ and are beginning to occupy themselves with Old Testament and Jewish truths that were used as the foundation for presenting and understanding Christ. And the writer doesn't want them to go that far back.

 

In this writer's mind, laying a foundation for the understanding of Christ is different from teaching about how to live in Christ based on that foundation. The striking thing about this list in the first two verses of our reading is that it is not distinctively Christian. It is made up of foundational Old Testament and Jewish truths and practices that the readers probably built on when they were converted. The context of his readers makes this easier to understand.

 

He lists "repentance from dead works and of faith toward God" (v. 1d); "instruction about washings and laying on of hands"; and, "the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment" (v. 2). All these are common Old Testament beliefs or current practices among the Jews. When these readers were evangelized and converted, these things, it seems, had been made foundational as a way of helping them understand the work of Christ. Christ is the goal and fulfillment of all these things. So when verse 1 says they should leave the "elementary teachings about Christ (or literally: "the word of the beginning of Christ"), what I think it means is that they should not occupy themselves so much with the pre-Christian foundational preparations for Christ that they neglect the glory of the gospel and how to use it to grow into maturity and holiness.

 

I wonder if we are guilty in this sometimes. We spend so much energy teaching people how to begin that I fear we have lost the mechanism of producing disciples. And, yet that is precisely what we are called to do. That is Jesus’ desire for the church. We should then take care to move forward from the foundation of our faith. We can’t neglect it. However, once we have that truth, there is so much more! We must always be in the mode of learning.

 

After the Order of Melchizedek

 

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. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 5:1–6 ESV).

 

In the last phrase of this paragraph the writer says that Jesus is “a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” (v.6). To understand this best we should read the original mention of this King/High Priest in the Old Testament (cf. Genesis 14:18-20) and the writer’s description of him later in this letter (cf. Hebrews 7:1-25). Instead of dealing with these twenty-five verses in detail today, I want us to get the big picture and the main point. The big picture is of Christ's superior priesthood over the Old Testament priests of the tribe of Levi. While the first twenty-four verses of chapter seven may be complex and difficult to understand, the last verse is wonderfully plain.

 

It has three parts: Christ can save forever (v. 25a), which is a great promise; He always lives to make intercession for us (v. 25c); and, this eternal intercession and eternal salvation are for those who draw near to God through Christ (v. 25b). Think with me about the relationship between those first two: that Christ can save forever, and that Christ always lives to make intercession for us. It says that he can save us forever since (or because) he always lives to make intercession for us. In other words, our future eternal salvation hangs on Christ's future eternal intercession for us.

 

This implies two huge things. First, it answers the question of what we need to be saved from. We need to be clear about this, especially when we talk to unbelievers. For them the very term "salvation" or "being saved" may not carry the same meaning the Bible gives these terms. It is simply that we need to be saved from God. Specifically, we need to be saved from the wrath of God that burns against all ungodliness and unrighteousness (cf. Romans 1:18). Christ can save us forever from the wrath of God because he intercedes forever with God. He continually puts himself between the Father and us as an impenetrable shield against his wrath against sin. Hebrews 10:30-31 says, "We know Him who said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.' And again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

 

That’s not a very popular message. We like the kindly, old grandpa figure of God who is indulgent in allowing his grandchildren to do whatever pleases them much better. However, that is not the God of the bible and the Father of our Savior, Jesus. Until we get this firmly and clearly fixed in our minds, hardly anything in the book of Hebrews will make sense. The major problem in the world and in our lives is not our troubled marriages or our wayward children or our financial pressures or our failing health or our cultural degeneration. The main problem in the world—everybody's problem—is our sin and how to be reconciled to God so that we escape his terrifying wrath at the judgment. That's the main problem. And the Biblical answer is priesthood. And specifically, the superior priesthood of Christ. Jesus is greater!

 

This is where the writer is going. What we need God has provided for us in His Son, who is so much greater than anything we could imagine! Melchizedek was great. Even Abraham recognized that truth; but he pales in comparison to the greatness revealed now in Jesus! Thanks be to God!

 

High Priest and Son of God

 

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. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 5:1–6 ESV).

 

In our reading today we have two declarations. First, Jesus is the appointed High Priest who is the Son of God; and second, He is a priest forever “after the order of Melchizedek” (v. 6). Both are vital in our understanding. However, we will look at them separately, one today and the other tomorrow.

 

Built into the priestly system were some inadequacies. The one we see here in Hebrews 5:3 is that the high priest was himself a sinner and had to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as the sins of the people. This meant not only that his sympathy would be imperfect and his presence in the holy place with God limited; it also meant that he would die and need to be replaced. He could never guarantee an ongoing presence with God to intervene for the people. All the inadequacies of the old priesthood will be clearer as we go forward in the book of Hebrews; however, this one is addressed with the statement that Jesus is the “Son of God.” There is no imperfection in “the only begotten Son of God” because He is fully God and fully human. There is no other like Him.

 

The whole history of Israel points to this truth. It is imperfect, inadequate, and incomplete. It all points forward to something greater, to Someone perfect and complete. It points to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our ultimate and perfect High Priest. In fact, even the sacrifices that the high priest offers (v. 3) point to Jesus, because Jesus is such a perfect and complete fulfillment of the priesthood that he is not only the High Priest, but he is also the sacrifice that the High Priest gives (Hebrews 9:12, 25–26; 13:12).

 

Fifty years ago, C.S. Lewis imagined someone objecting here. Lewis imagined the objection that if Jesus never sinned, then he doesn’t know what temptation is like. He lived a sheltered life and is out of touch with how strong temptation can be. Here is what Lewis wrote in response to that objection:

 

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is . . . A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in . . . Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.

 

We’ll see more tomorrow. Today we should recognize that Jesus is the perfect High Priest and the perfect sacrifice, willingly given, on our behalf. That brings me to the highest level of gratitude and amazes me as nothing else could!

The Great High Priest

 

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. (Hebrews 4:14–16 ESV).

 

Many believers in their enthusiasm to understand more of Jesus have tried to skip the Old Testament. This usually results in an interpretation of Jesus within their own personal experience and context. It leads to errors that can only be avoided with the biblical-historical context and categories. This is the reason some have assigned the role of a teacher, life-coach, even a hero or trailblazer to Jesus. And, while there may be some truth in each of these, they will not be as true and deep and authoritative and helpful as the categories that the Bible itself uses.

 

In our reading today we have one of those Old Testament contexts for understanding who Jesus is and what he came to do, namely, the category of “high priest” (v. 14). This reference is a bit difficult for most of us, especially if we are new to the faith. There aren’t any high priests around today. So, this is a context for understanding Jesus that is foreign to us. But God planned centuries of history with Israel, recorded in the Old Testament, so that we would have a context for understanding this reference. This also indicates the high level of importance the writer has toward the reference. We would impoverish ourselves and swerve from the truth if we said, “Well, that’s too old-fashioned and irrelevant for today. Nobody knows what a high priest is; so, let’s just translate Jesus into one of our familiar categories, say, defense attorney.” That would be foolish indeed!

 

Instead, what we need to do before we jump to contemporary analogies is to go back to God’s context, God’s history and God’s instruction, and learn some deep and wonderful things that we might otherwise miss, even to our peril, because “high priest” does not equal “defense attorney” or any other analogy in our world. Our history is simply too limited to interpret Jesus. We need God’s history. Our culture, our society, our era in time are way too provincial to give the needed categories for grasping who Jesus is and what he came to do.

 

While we will see much more of this tomorrow, today we can know this truth of the high priest’s role in being the bridge between us and God. The high priests came from among men and were appointed on behalf of the people to offer gifts and sacrifices to God for sins. A whole world of meaning is opened up to us here. There is a God. There is sin. This sin has created a barrier between God and the people. But God has made a provision for being reconciled to the people. He has ordained that there be human priests who would be a go-between; and that these priests would offer sacrifices. There is no negotiation; there is only atonement. The high priest facilitated that act.

 

Since Jesus is the greatest High Priest, His act on our behalf is perfect and eternal. This is now a role that provides so much more depth to our relationship to Him. He reall is all we ever need to be reconciled to God!

 

An Example to Persevere

 

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. (Hebrews 3:7–19 ESV).

 

As we continue through Hebrews, the writer’s main approach is with a very serious warning of the way God worked in the past. God has always been consistent. This is seen clearly in the way He dealt with Israel after they came out of Egypt and then in spite of all that power and mercy on their behalf, they responded to God with grumbling and unbelief. The result was that he gave them up to die in the wilderness and swore that they would not enter God's rest in the promised land.

 

A refresher may be helpful here. The people of Israel are used as an example for the original readers at this point. Remember, they had been treated with great mercy as God brought them out of Egypt by signs and wonders. And these people had seen signs and wonders (cf. Hebrews 2:4). The Holy Spirit had been at work in their midst, and they had participated in his power (cf. Hebrews 6:4). They had tasted the powers of the age to come (cf. Hebrews 6:5). And for a short while they were very happy and seemingly confident in God. But it didn't last. And that is why this example is so important to the writer of Hebrews. He wants the professing Christians to last, to persevere. Because that's the only way they will prove they are truly God's house and truly share in Christ's salvation. So, he says look at Israel and don't be like them.

 

Then he continues with the warning to his readers (v. 8). The warning is clear and severe: do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me [or perhaps better, "as in the embitterment", as in the day of trial in the wilderness (v. 9), where your fathers tried me by testing me, and saw my works for forty years. And it gets worse: "They always go astray in their heart; and they did not know my ways; as I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest.'" (v. 11).

 

The story of Israel should be an example for the professing church. Do not treat the grace of God with contempt, presuming to receive the benefits of grace without the responsibilities. Simply put, do not treat Jesus as a mere ticket to heaven. He calls us to life and the works of that life. We are indeed chosen for the continued spread of His Gospel!