Month: August 2020

The Eternal Moment and The Morality of Time

On By AaronIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Recently in our Bible study we were discussing universalism. The universalist, in short, believes that all mankind will be saved. One pro-universalist argument is that it would not matter how long it would take but eventually everyone would be made subject to God and eventually submit themselves to Him. No one who knew God’s love could resist Him forever. Another is that a good God could not punish someone forever for a finite infraction against his law. However, these universalist arguments are based on a flawed understanding of the relationship of eternity and time and an incomplete understanding of what it means to be good.

Eternity cannot be understood as billions more years after you have already existed for billions of years in an unending line of time.  If this were true, then time would have to extend eternally in both directions; both forward and backward in order to understand God as having no beginning and no end; the traditional understanding of God’s eternality.

In physics there is a distance, at the smallest level, in which you can not go any smaller without loosing the concept of distance.  The question of what is smaller than this distance can not be answered in terms of these distances and so can not be distance as we know it.  This is called Planck distance.  To go smaller something else, entirely other than distance, would have to exist.  The same is true of time; there is also a Planck time.  Before the beginning, something other than time existed, or exists, before time.   Therefore, eternity must be something other than time.  Perhaps, it is more precise, although imperfect because it is also being expressed in terms of time, to think of eternity as a single moment that exists forever.  I am not yet sure what that would be, but it would be different than what we currently experience as time.

On the way home I started thinking about what that eternal moment would be like and could we enjoy existing in it.  I am most fortunate because there have been moments in my life in which I would like to exist forever.  Maybe those moments are imperfect similes of the eternal moment.  One example of an eternal moment for me was the first hug between Sarah and I on my return from a deployment into a combat theater of operations.  I can still feel her presence in that moment.  Every curve of her body as she pressed hers into mine and I pressed mine into hers.  The smell of her skin the warmth of her breath…; I can remember it all.  I had not seen her and had been existing in a reality in which I might not have gotten to see her again.  I missed her and longed for her and in that moment of reunion I wanted to be fully in her presence and not for mere physical gratification but because I loved her and she loved me.

What made that moment eternally significant, or at the very least more significant than every other hug before or since, was the gratitude that came with the fact of this specific hug’s existence as contrasted by the real possibility of its non existence.  Our first kiss, the first time she told me she loved me, the moment her dad walked her to me down the isle at our wedding, the moment she told me she was pregnant, and the moment we found out together that she was pregnant again. All significant because they could not exist on the strength of my own will and had to exist in a context of gratitude towards something apart from me.  All moments I could live in forever.

But those aren’t the only moments of my existence.  If there are moments in which I could live forever aren’t there also moments that I would rather had never existed at all?  There seems to me to be two kinds of these moments.  Those in which there is pain inflicted on me, a recent trip to the dentist would suffice as proof of these, and those in which I inflict pain on others.  And not by accident but by intent.  That might be an oversimplification because I spend a lot of time at work not inflicting any pain that aren’t really painful in and of themselves but that are also not significant enough that I would think them worthy of living in forever or of eternal significance.  But there are some moments that are significantly painful enough or in which I know I have inflicted a significant enough of a wound that I would rather they had not existed at all.  I won’t list those here because the pain can be overwhelming and, well,  I would rather you not know the pain I have inflicted on others to my own shame.   It also seems to me these moments are defined by the justice owed or the justice demanded.  I demand justice for the pain inflicted on me and I owe justice for the pain I inflicted on others.

If our understanding of eternity as a single moment existing forever is more accurate then heaven could be thought of as existing forever in a moment of perfect love, held there by perfect power, in a state of perfect gratitude that the moment can exist inviolate of perfect justice despite who we were.  Hell would then be existing forever in a moment of perfect justice held by perfect power in the perfect knowledge of who you are.  One you would never want out of and the other you could never escape.

With this understanding of heaven and hell the argument that a good god would never subject a finite being to an eternal punishment starts to look more and more like a straw man.  Eternity simply is a binary in which you exist in one of the two states above.  The reality is that justice is demanded and if you demanded justice would your demand be satisfied by something less?  No, a good god would provide perfect justice or he would be a fraud.  If injustice is evil and justice is good then isn’t an appeal for justice an appeal to a higher good and if justice is denied isn’t that denial of justice just another injustice.  God’s goodness is tied to justice and in the face of injustice hell is required.  The straw man is only put forth in order to deceive ourselves into thinking that we might escape the justice that is owed, by a good god.  God’s mercy is appealed to at the expense of His goodness.

No, hell is necessary for God to be good in the face of the injustice of man.  Or more Biblically accurate hell is necessary for God to be good in the face of Satan’s injustice while hell is merely convenient for God to be good in the face of the injustice of man.  Heaven is not necessary it merely is as the abode of perfection.  Philosophically the existence of heaven and hell are not hard to work out.  However, until Jesus, bringing man into heaven was philosophically impossible.  Jesus as an eternal being sacrificed in a single moment is still sufficient for your injustice, even if it were only in a single moment. Your single injustice against an eternal God would still warrant an eternal justice.  That Jesus is sufficient and obedient is the mercy that saves you from the justice of God’s goodness without violating either His goodness or His love for us.

Anyway, I am more philosopher than physicist so don’t forget to remind me how I misused Planck’s ideas in the comments below. I am, however, confident in the sufficiency of Christ!

Thanks for reading and do not forget to subscribe to my e-mail below.  I am working on some great things and I would hate for you to miss out.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Why You should be Part of a Life Group

On By AaronIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I’m not sure where I heard it. Probably from a Drill Sergeant in basic training encouraging me to keep going and not to give up. But I have heard that most people can give 50% more than they think they can give. Those who are athletic or have spent some time living and working in the outdoors or in harder physical conditions can give 30% more than they think they can give. But the real anomaly is that professional athletes and special forces, the elite of the elite, know that they can give 10% more than they think they can and that the 90% they have already given is more than most people will ever know they are capable of.

I used to think it was because those professional athletes and special forces were accustomed to giving more; giving and pushing is essential to the nature of what they do.  But I suspect there is more.  I suspect that those who know that they are capable of doing and giving more are those who surround themselves with people who share that knowledge.  Your faith, your Christianity is the same.

How many of us would like to get healthier?  How many of us would like to run faster and to lift more?  I know I would and yet I fail; again and again.  But there are those who do succeed.  What is their secret?  Are they just wired different?  No, they commit and then surround themselves by people who share the same commitment.  I have the privilege of praying with our local police officers before some of their shifts.  There are some, and I could name them because they are consistent, who as soon as they are off work are preparing for their work out at the gym.  They work out together.  Their banter as they leave the station is what both unites them and what encourages them not to simply go home and sleep but to push on in their commitment.  That is what a Life Group is for your Christianity.

Now, Life Group is the term used by my local church.  But call it a life group, small group, bible study, connection group or even Sunday school ultimately they do three things for both the individual Christian and the church as a whole; they facilitate the discernment of the truth, they encourage the pursuit of righteousness, and they facilitate church discipline.

I have the greatest life group ever.  It meets virtually every Thursday night.  We have law enforcement professionals, a college educator, an IT professional, three people who are pursuing seminary degrees but what unites us is our commitment to Christ; to the truth that who He says He is and what He says He has done is real.  We have committed to one hour because we are all busy husbands, fathers, and professionals who are pursuing success in all those areas and yet the center of gravity of who we are is found in our commitment to the truth of Christ.  This is the first function of the Christian Life Group.

The plain meaning is that we need one another to test our understanding of scripture.

In Proverbs we read, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another (Pro 27:17, ESV).”  The plain meaning is that we need one another to test our understanding of scripture.  I like to think that I am well read and intelligent regarding God’s word but occasionally I come up with some wild ideas.  Ask me about my theory on aliens sometime.  Being honest, I am usually wrong before I am right.  What moves me from one to the other though is the opportunity to bounce ideas off of other people; other people that I trust.

On my second tour in Iraq God called me to lead the men’s study at the base chapel.  Initially I refused.  I wasn’t doing the things I needed to be doing as a leader of a men’s bible study and I didn’t feel worthy of the call.  I wasn’t regularly reading the Bible and I was not spending the necessary time in prayer.  But God eventually turned me to obedience and what astonishes me as I look back is that I don’t think God used that call to bring me back to study and prayer.  Don’t get me wrong, that happened.  But, I think his intent was to introduce me to men who took scripture seriously.  They didn’t tell me what they thought the scripture said they either told me what the scripture said or we spent the evening confirming that it did say what we thought it said.  My understanding of God’s truth and, as a result, my faith in that truth grew.  Our interaction with God’s truth was intended to be a social interaction.  We are to fellowship with God and with one another.  We start by hearing, we move to reading, but it is the social interaction with the truth that solidifies our convictions.

Our interaction with God’s truth was intended to be a social interaction.

Second, is the call to righteousness.  A successful life group results in conviction that moves us towards righteous works.  The Word tells us that we are, “to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near (Heb 10:24-25, ESV).”  This year I have found a blessing in the COVID-19 pandemic.  Everyone is trying to figure out how to get together without getting together.  That is not new for me.  I am writing these thoughts on an early flight to Seattle.  I can look east out over the wing to the sunrise.  My wife and family are at home still in their beds.  I have sought a non-traveling job and for what ever reason it is not yet in God’s plan.  I have been trying to figure out how to be together without being together since the beginning of this phase of my life.  I miss Saturday morning breakfast with the men’s group in Ellensburg.  You can’t beet meeting together in person.  However, this year I have met consistently with eight fellow Christians regardless of our locations; often for me from a distant hotel room and even once twelve miles from my in-law’s cabin at the first spot with a strong enough cell connection.  What a miracle that is!!!

We are free to be better because we have been made free from the requirement of perfection by the blood of Jesus and yet in that freedom we don’t long to pursue the desires of our flesh.

And I love each of them.  Their commitment to understanding the truth is a commitment to being better men, better husbands, better brothers, and better fathers.  Better is a moral statement.  It is the idea that one man can be better morally than another.  We are free to be better because we have been made free from the requirement of perfection by the blood of Jesus and yet in that freedom we don’t long to pursue the desires of our flesh.  Rather, we desire to pursue obedience and righteousness.  And that is hard!!!  Harder than getting up every morning and going for a run.  Harder than committing to eat healthy.  To deny your sinful self is harder than denying that Venti Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte!!!  And because it is hard we need encouragement and motivation.

I’ve been a leader in the Army National Guard for a long time.  What amazes me is that as a leader my number one responsibility is to motivate people to do that which they have already volunteered to do.  Every soldier has already volunteered to serve under extreme conditions.  Every soldier has already volunteered to do a very specific job.  And I am no exception!  I can’t count how many times I have had to check myself for not wanting to do that for which I have already volunteered and agreed to do.  We need each other for encouragement and motivation to do even those things that we have already individually committed to do.

Lastly a Life Group is to implement church discipline.  Church discipline is unique to that which most of us have experienced.  It is geared towards repentance and restoration rather than punishment.  Jesus tells us how we are to do it…

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them (Mat 18:15-20, ESV).”

We need a way to fail and be restored.

It starts with the individual and it is geared towards repentance and restoration.  That repentance and restoration hinges on the love of Christ shared between those individuals.  Because I love the men in my Life Group I am more likely to hear them when one of them comes to me and says, “Aaron, you are sinning.”  And what if I don’t listen?  What if the next “one or two others” is from my life group?  Am I still not more likely to listen to them because of the love and truth we share?  And heaven forbid, my sin goes before the church and I am asked to leave, is there not still hope?  Gentiles and tax collectors have repented in the past.  Should I finally repent those men who surrounded me each become a point of contact for restoration.  In my repentance each of my brothers is a place where I can go and request forgiveness and restoration.  We are not yet perfected.  We need a way to fail and be restored.  God’s discipline is always aimed towards repentance and restoration.  We need a way to fail and be restored.  That can only take place in the context of fellowship grounded on truth in an environment love and respect.

The life group is the life of the church in that it encourages discernment of the truth, motivates the individual towards works of righteousness, and is the context of love and respect in which church discipline can be executed towards repentance and restoration. If you are not a member of a life group, then I would encourage you to change that today. If your church does not have a life group program or your church does not offer a life group program that interests you I would encourage you to step forward and host one. What it looks like will be a combination of your vision and the vision of those He puts into it. Without one another… without one another in real relationship with one another, we perish.

Thanks for reading and do not forget to subscribe to my e-mail below.  I am working on some great things and I would hate for you to miss out.

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Faith, Hope, and Love

On By AaronIn Uncategorized2 Comments

“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part,  but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
  So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

Have you ever been reading through a passage and a question jumps into your mind that you just didn’t expect?  For example, “if the greatest of these is love then why isn’t it first?”  It happens to me all the time; and I love it!  The Bible, the word of God, is a mine filled with value that must be mined and experienced miners know when to get excited.  That first hint of gold, that moment when you know there might be more here and that more is the real vein of value.  These random questions are that moment and I have learned to get excited.  Just a little more digging and I am going to find something valuable.

So, what are we talking about when we are talking about faith, hope, and love?  I am not a Greek or Hebrew scholar, but I have come to recognize that I have to be careful when trying to clarify the meaning of words in the Bible.  Our contemporary understanding of a word might not be the understanding that the author intended to convey to his reader.  You and I today live in a culture that has come to view faith as blind.  It is something that we believe apart from evidence.  But this is the exact opposite of the meaning intended by this author.

The word used by the writer is the Greek word pistis.  According to Strongs, pistis comes from the Greek word pĕithō.  Pistis means a persuasion or conviction of the truthfulness of something.  This persuasion or conviction comes from pĕithō which is a verb that means to convince by argument that something is true or false.  It is to agree that something is true or false based on an argument that something is true or false.  So, the author of this passage understands that faith is the belief that something is true based on an argument.   To share the author’s faith is to agree with the author that something is true.

Regarding hope the author uses the Greek term ĕlpis.  Ĕlpis is the anticipation or, expectation of or convince in something.

Marty is one of my favorite examples of how these two terms work together.  He and I served together through two deployments and we are also avid video gamers.  In the years that we have served together I have seen repeatedly his competence in action.  Each of those observations is an argument for my conviction that Marty knows what he is doing.  If I explained them to you there is a good chance that we would agree that he is competent.  We would share faith in Marty’s competence.  I included that we are avid video gamers because in this aspect of our relationship I have also seen Marty snatch victory from the grasp of defeat when I thought victory was impossible.  Marty doesn’t give up and even when surrender might be warranted from my perspective, I know that if Marty is still working at victory we might have a chance.  This is how hope is connected to faith.  I know that Marty is both competent and tenacious.  If we were to find ourselves together on a real battlefield in which we were outnumbered, surrounded, and overmatched I would look to Marty.  I would look to Marty and as long as he was still working, I would have hope of victory.  But my hope is not a blind overly optimistic hope.  It is based on a faith in Marty that is built on a reasonable argument about who Marty is.  It is based on what I know.

When the author of Hebrews writes, “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Heb 11:1, ESV)” he is reminding you that those things you already know of God are those things that that you can base your hope for the future on.  When we can’t see the future, we can rest upon who God is and know, as a conviction, that the future is good.

This is where love comes in.  The term the author is using here is agapē.  Agapē love is an affection or benevolence for the object of that love that results in active love, i.e. charity, or an affection or benevolence that results from the active love of another.  Therefore love is both first and last.  However, before we get there, this still hinges on two things that we have not discussed; the object of our faith and hope and what it means to the author to abide.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

1 John 4:7-8

First, let us abide.  Faith, hope, and love abide.  Abide is from the Greek word mĕnō.  Mĕnō is a verb which means to continue, to dwell, to endure, to be present, and to stand.  We are to dwell in faith, hope, and love.  We are to endure in faith, hope, and love.

Now, faith and hope are not enough in and of themselves; there must be an object of faith and an object of hope.  The author of First Corinthians was writing to the Corinthians regarding several disputes among the believers at the Corinthian church.  They wanted to know how to be the best Christians they could be.  After addressing those questions, the author describes the more excellent way, the way of love or more specifically the way of God’s love.  This way is central in that it is how we are to evaluate everything else that we, as the church, are doing.  The more excellent way is to abide in your faith in God’s love.  How has God demonstrated His love to you in the past?  Do you know that when you count your blessings you are really remembering all those times in which God has lavished His love on you?  The single greatest blessing of all time is that God gave His son on your behalf that one day you would be worthy to stand in His presence free of the judgment required for your own sins.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16

Each of those demonstrations is a reason for you to hope that His love for you will continue.  To hope that you will one day stand in His presence.  When you rest in that reality then you can stop living your life trying to make up for the mistakes that you have made.  You are free to live your life in such a way that it demonstrates the love of God.  Our faith, our hope, and our ability to love are built on the love that God has shown for us.  If you don’t believe that He loves you, then you can not hope that He will ever love you, and you are not free to love anyone past your own desires to get something in exchange for that love.

Anyway, all of that came as the result of one random question. A question I am sure was presented by the Holy Spirit and answers that came as the Holy Spirit taught me as I sought the meaning of each word. My hope is that my random thoughts might help you to answer some of your own or even better help us all to generate more random thoughts that will each lead to a rich, deep vein of the most eternal value. If you read anything else that I write do not hesitate to ask questions. Iron sharpens iron as we clarify and reclarify our understanding of God’s word. And if you have a random thought of your own on other topics, drop me a line and ask me if I know the answer. If I don’t well then… maybe, we can work God’s mine together. I am sure that what ever we find it will add to our faith and secure our hope that God will love us forever.

Thanks for reading and do not forget to subscribe to my e-mail below.  I am working on some great things and I would hate for you to miss out.

Strong, James. A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament and The Hebrew Bible. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009. Find this resource in the Faith, Hope Love (Life) Store

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Of That Which is Hidden for Kings

On By AaronIn Uncategorized1 Comment

The Gospel of John opens with the description of the Word.  It is proper in that it is capitalized and it is specific in that it is “the” Word.  The Word is a specific and proper thing, or more precisely a specific and proper person, and yet as we read this introduction, we are inclined to interpret it rhetorically.  To interpret the writer’s meaning as if he is writing a flowering introduction as opposed to saying something specific and definitive.  But that would be in contradiction to the proper and the specific that we see just in terms of the definitive article, the, that proceeds the word and the capitalization of word.  The concept might be illustrated; We are not talking about an Aaron.  We are not even talking about Aaron.  We are talking about the Aaron.  The same is true of the Word in the beginning of the Gospel of John.  We are not talking about a word, or even the word, but we are talking about the Word.

In the Greek word is translated from logos.  Adam Clarke in his commentary suggests that we should refrain from translating this word (Clarke); i.e., “In the beginning was the Logos.”  But this is exactly what I mean.  He is placing too heavy a meaning of the text on the meaning of the term logos.  For Clarke the term, “signifies a word spoken, speech, eloquence, doctrine, reason, or the faculty of reasoning.”  All of which is true specifically when applied to Jesus and thus the reasoning for the selection of the word logos by the author of the Gospel at the beginning of the Gospel of John.  However, that assumes a Greek understanding of both the writer and the audience as the preeminent understanding.  But wasn’t the Gospel of John written by a Hebrew, to a Hebrew audience, about a Hebrew concept?  Granted it was written in Aramaic and then translated to Greek, but the ideas conveyed are Hebraic ideas.  What then is the Hebrew understanding of “the Word?”

Here is where we have to reverse translate.  Not simply translate from the English back to the Greek but to translate from the Greek back to the Hebrew to find a meaning and then express that meaning in English.  We have to look for the best matching word in Hebrew for logos and I believe that matching word is the Hebrew devar.

Now, if you are interested in a more thorough discussion Douglas Estes writes a great article in The Lexham Bible Dictionary describing all the theories regarding the use of the Greek logos in the Gospel of John.  My point is much simpler and it is possible that it is an oversimplification.

In Proverbs we read, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out (Pro 25:2, ESV).”  In the Hebrew the things that God conceals and the things that the king is searching out come from the word davar.  When translating davar into English from Hebrew the vast majority of times it is translated as word.  When translating logs into English from Greek the vast majority of times it translated as word.

When the author of the Gospel of John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Joh 1:1).”  Could he be saying that in the beginning was this thing or this matter, this thing or matter was with God, and this thing or matter was God.  The story of the fall in Genesis, through the flood, the promises of God to Abraham, the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, the Law, and the story of the nation of Israel; the entire Old Testament revolves around God’s unveiling plan of redemption.  God had hidden that plan and that plan was the matter or thing that every King should search out.  The writer of the Gospel of John wasn’t telling his audience about some Greek mystery he was revealing Jesus to be that matter or thing that while hidden united the Old Testament.  He was telling his audience that although they had been rejected from the synagogue for their acceptance of Jesus the reality was that their acceptance of Jesus more thoroughly united them with the Israel of there heritage.

Sometimes we think that Jesus was plan B.  He had to do what He had to do because of our fall and our need of redemption.  But even before Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, even before the garden was created, the matter of their redemption was before God.  We are not talking about a thing, or even the thing, but we are talking about the Thing.  That Thing which all of creation was created for.  That Jesus could demonstrate His love for you by providing for you the redemption that you can not hope to attain on your own.  That redemption that secures for you an inheritance in His kingdom.  Are you the king that has found that glory?

Thanks for reading and do not forget to subscribe to my e-mail below.  I am working on some great things and I would hate for you to miss out.

Clarke, Adam. The Holy Bible with a Commentary and Critical Notes. New Edition. Vol. I–VI. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife Corporation, 2014. Find this resource in the Faith, Hope, Love (Life) Store

Estes, Douglas. “Logos.” Edited by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Lazarus Wentz, Elliot Ritzema, and Wendy Widder. The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The Perfected Conscience

On By AaronIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

What does it mean to have a perfected conscience?  The writer of Hebrews rights that the Old Covenant is inferior in that the gifts and sacrifices offered under it failed to, “perfect the conscience of the worshiper (Heb 9:9, ESV).”  What does that mean?

The central difference between the Old and New Testaments is that under the New Covenant the blood of Jesus is offered as a sacrifice on behalf of His people.  The Old Covenant, too, required a sacrifice of blood but that sacrifice was insufficient except that it pointed to the the necessity of the sacrifice of Christ.  The writer of Hebrews spends significant amount of time up to this point explaining how the New Covenant is better than the Old and one of his final arguments is that the Old Testament could not perfect the conscience.

Under the Old Covenant, The Law pointed to the guilt of sin.  When an Israelite failed, when he transgressed that law, a sacrifice was required; a sacrifice of blood.  Each time he failed or transgresses another sacrifice was required.  Over and over again the Israelite’s guilt was illustrated as illuminated by the law and specifically as he transgressed against it.  Our consciences are the mechanism or organ that recognizes that guilt; for the Israelite it was recognized specifically within the context of The Law.  When our conscience is functioning properly it is reminding us of our guilt for our own evil deeds and even our own evil desires.

But all the Old Covenant could do is remind of us that guilt.  It could not make the believer innocent and guilt by definition requires a punishment.

What is injustice without justice?  Dare We answer that it is another injustice.  I once watched a video of a sentencing hearing in which a man convicted of raping another man’s daughter was sentenced to a sentence so slight that the father in anguish leapt across a barrier in an attempt to get at the man who had offended against his daughter.  This man’s plea for justice on behalf of his daughter had gone unanswered and I had two thoughts.  First, that the justice which had been refused was in that refusal another injustice.  There was a “rightness” in wanting to see that father reach his intended target and deliver the justice owed.  Second, that the injustice of a failure of justice was directly tied to the love that the father had for his daughter.  Do we realize that in refusing to deal justice for sin God would be committing sin?  He can’t simply wave away our injustice.  And how often do we declare that a good God could not punish that which He loves?  Do we not recognize that not only is His perfect justice at stake but His perfect love if He were to pardon an offense against that which he loves?  When we appeal to God to right an injustice committed against us we are in part appealing to His perfect justice but we are also in part appealing to His love for us.  Why would He answer such an appeal if he was either unjust or didn’t care?

The Old Covenant is limited in that it can only point to our injustices.  Our consciences continually remind us of that guilt until we sear our conscience or deal with the guilt.  The Old Covenant was incapable of dealing with that guilt and so are we.  The power of the New Covenant is that it perfects our consciousness in that it deals with the guilt.  Jesus became the punishment.  When He says that you are forgiven he is not waving away the guilt by simply ignoring it.  He is taking on the punishment that guilt requires.  Justice was delivered on Him for your injustice.  You no longer need to feel the guilt.  Your conscience is perfect before God.

Later in verse 14 of that same chapter in Hebrews we find that the New Covenant not only perfects our conscience it liberates it from dead works.  When we commit an injustice our conscience tells us that we are guilty.  What are we to do?  When we offer any good work, any sacrifice, as payment for that injustice it fails.  It fails because perfection, The Law, requires that we are good all the time.  The good work of today can only pay for itself it can not pay for yesterday’s deed of injustice.  The penalty is still owed.  Every good work that you do is dead and meaningless because none of them remedy the guilt of the offense.  And all are guilty of more than that first offense (Rom 3:23).

However, the offering made to mediate the New Covenant (Heb 9:15) changes that.  It is first sufficient in that Christ’s sacrifice is not needed to atone for Himself.  But He offered it, none the less, as an act of love on your behalf.  He didn’t need to but He did and when you recognize the love that this act demonstrates and signifies you are not simply liberated from pursuing works that can not save but you are liberated to live your life as a response to His love for you.  Your good works do not need to liberate you and they are now free to testify of His love.  You are free to live a life that emulates that love for others.

“Today is the day”

Thanks for reading and do not forget to subscribe to my e-mail below.  I am working on some great things and I would hate for you to miss out.

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.