It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Hebrews 10:31 KJV
He invites us into the Holy of Holies, a place of the presence of the LORD, a place where the priest offers blood sacrifices to cover our sin, a place so holy that only one high priest will enter humbly just once a year.
Boldness in the Blood of Jesus
Therefore, be bold, have confidence – fear not.
Come into the sanctuary, the Holy Place of the Lord. For before you, Christ Jesus has entered with the Perfect Sacrifice as our High Priest – He IS our Perfect Sacrifice by His own Blood.
We have climbed the holy mountain, entered the courts of the Temple with thanksgiving and sacrifice. And as the Lord’s chosen we have come to this place to worship the Lord. Our High Priest is no longer a sinful man, but Christ; and He invites us to enter the Temple.
Walk toward the altar of sacrifice, that holiest of places just past the curtain. (For in fact, by the crucifixion of Christ on the Cross the curtain is torn.)
22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith…
With sincere hearts sprinkled clean, our evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water, because our hearts have been sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. By the Blood of Christ, hold firmly to our confession of faith.
Hold firmly, hold fast without wavering, since He who promised it is faithful.
To do a good deed
Here is our action and not our obligation or prescribed work for heaven.
Let us be concerned for one another, to help one another to show love and to do good.
Hebrews 10:24 GNT
[CSB] 25 not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other…
Others in the flock of faith, the congregation of believers, are important. Yet how can the saints encourage each other in Christ if they neglect time together?
A teacher of the Law asked the Messiah, Christ Jesus, “What is the greatest Commandment?” He responded, ‘love the LORD and love one another.’ Of course the faithful want to love the Lord God, yet the second (a golden rule) often challenges us.
The writer of Hebrews challenges Christians to incite each other to agape love AND good deeds. It is a personal love of others to do God’s good will. And he cautions of the Day when all will be judged.
Jesus had warned: “Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold.” – Matthew 24:12 NLT
Justified or Judged?
Even in the first century followers of The Way often detoured in their own way. The love of some in the beginning of these last days had already grown cold.
Sinners in Zion are terrified; Trembling has seized the godless. “Who among us can live with the consuming fire? Who among us can live with continual burning?”
Heb. 10:26 [NKJV] For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.
HELL!even for one who has accepted Christ, but turns away.
[CSB] 28 Anyone who disregarded the law of Moses died without mercy…29 How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, who has regarded as profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
Scriptural support
Once again the writer of Hebrews quotes familiar Old Testament scripture to support his teaching of a new and better covenant he introduced in chapter 8.
30 For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The Lord will judge His people.”
Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith. – KJV
Remember the early days
32 … you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.
35 So don’t lose your confidence, since it holds a great reward for you. 36 For you need endurance, so that after you have done God’s will you can receive what he has promised.
37 For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay.. 38 My righteous people, however, will believe and live..
We are not people who turn back and are lost. Instead, we have faith and are saved.
Christ died to set them free from the penalty of the sins they had committed under that first covenant.
Hebrews 9:15B NLT
It’s not an exact translation from the Greek, but the heart of the author’s message from his letter to the Hebrews. He now proceeds from the main point in Hebrews 8 that Christ is our High Priest to the nature of a new and better covenant.
Old Covenant Ministry
High Priest in Holy of Holies
Remember how the sanctuary is a holy place to the LORD, separated from the sin of the world. Only the priests may enter as the worshipers stand near and the unclean kept distant. To think of the sanctuary as ‘only a tent’ would be contemporary error, for it is the Tent Altar where the LORD meets with His worshipers, hopefully accepting their sacrifices through the appointed priest.
Now the first covenant also had regulations for ministry and an earthly sanctuary. 2 For a tabernacle was set up, and in the first room, which is called the holy place, were the lampstand, the table, and the presentation loaves.
6 Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God.
The High Priest alone enters the Holy of Holies, the inner room of the sanctuary, and that just once a year. (A special place to meet the LORD, within the confines of a Tent or Temple.) Then this author of the letter to the Hebrews points to the holy sacrifice.
And he always offered blood for his own sins and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.
Hebrews 9:7B NLT
A Revelation of the Holy Spirit
We do not preach much about the Person of the Holy Spirit, once called the Holy Ghost. He is a revelation of the New Testament (or new covenant), which the writer of Hebrews unwraps here as when Christ is revealed.
The Holy Spirit makes this the way into the Holy place.
The path into the Holy place had not been revealed while the outer or first Tabernacle was still standing. [This would also be evident by the succession from Tent to Temple to rebuilt temples made by man for worship of God.]
The author tells his first century Hebrew readers “[the first Tabernacle] is a symbol for the present time [the first generation after Christ’s anointing.]
Neither gifts nor sacrifices offered can make the worshiper perfect in conscience.
Since offerings [gifts or sacrifices to the LORD] are physical regulations and only deal with food, drink, and various washings.
God imposed ceremonial ordinances only until the time of reformation.
This reformation of worship revealed by the Holy Spirit creates a new covenant with the Lord.
But when the Messiah appeared as cohen gadol of the good things that are happening already, then, through the greater and more perfect Tent which is not man-made (that is, it is not of this created world), he entered the Holiest Place once and for all.
Hebrews 9:11-12A Complete Jewish Bible
I like this translation, for it provides a contemporary context to the readers of Hebrews. The Messiah appeared, the Tabernacle is a less perfect Tent and Christ entered the Holiest Place once and for all.
Just a contemporary reminder for 21st century readers:
“Christ” is not Jesus’ last name. For in Greek, the common language of the Roman Empire, Χριστός Christos is the anointed Messiah of God. We sometimes forget that faithful Jews had expected our Messiah for centuries ‘before Christ.’
New Covenant Ministry
Christ (the Messiah) appeared as High Priest. And He entered the Most Holy Place once for all time.
Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood…
Hebrews 9:12A KJV
Think of the ritualistic sacrifices of the Old Covenant. Are we not repulsed by the slaughter and blood at the alter of sacrifice?
Christ brings a cleansing of blood by His own Sacrifice!
By His own Blood Christ obtained eternal redemption for the worshipers of God. פָּדָהRedeem your soul from sin through our Savior’s blood.
then how much more the blood of the Messiah, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself to God as a sacrifice without blemish, will purify our conscience from works that lead to death, so that we can serve the living God!
Hebrews 9:14 Complete Jewish Bible
Jesus, our Mediator
15 Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance..
[Don’t miss this:]
.. because a death has taken place for redemption from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
The writer of Hebrews now presents a legal case for dissolution of the old covenant.
a death has occurred
a will exists and is valid because of the death
(for a will is never in effect while the one who made it is living.)
Moses initiated the first covenant by blood (quoting Exodus 24)
Moses took the blood, splattered it on the people, and said,
“This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you concerning all these words.”
Exodus 24:8 CSB
The writer of Hebrews words it as a vow or covenant reminiscent of marriage.
20 Saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. – KJV
21 Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. – KJV
In fact, according to the Torah, almost everything is purified with blood; indeed, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Hebrews 9:22 CJB
Copies cleansed
23 Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these.
Christ entered heaven itself (not a copy). He appeared on our behalf in the very presence of God. Once, not many times like a priest on earth.
… But now he has appeared one time, at the end of the ages, for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Some versions translate this as the consummation or completion of the ages. Jesus speaks of the ages as both ending and forever. Believers would do well to consider it.
And just as it is appointed for people to die once
—and after this, judgment
— so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many,
will appear a second time, not to bear sin,
but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Hebrews 9:27 CSB
Do you look forward to the judgment? Have you considered the love of God to offer the Blood of His only Son to bear your sin? And do you await Christ’s completion of God’s new covenant?
The writer of Hebrews continues with more good news in Christ’s sacrifice.
“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Christ Jesus – Gospel of John 3:5
The Apostle John begins his Good News with creation then proceeds to verify the identity of Christ as prophesied and witnessed in Jesus’ earthly ministry.
Previously I addressed the very question of God, for not everyone believes in Almighty God, creator of the heavens and earth. We will for the moment skip over the powerful testimony of John the Baptist and continue with creation.
If so, it must follow that you want to know more about God. John refers to Jesus as logosor ‘the Word.’ He tells us: “… the Word was God.”
Therefore, Jesus IS at the beginning – He created with God and He IS God.
Note that the Hebrew word for God, אֱלֹהִים ‘elohiym is plural. Jesus speaks of Himself in this same plural sense.
John 3:11, “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony.
Perhaps you believe in God, but do you believe what God says?
Jesus speaks the very words of God!
John acknowledges the Messiah Jesus the Son as part of the One True God; but John witnesses even more. So let’s continue with the nature of God, also considering Spirit and the intangible attributes of that which is unseen.
John introduces the Holy Spirit in a dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus.
Nicodemus, a faithful Jew
Visit of Nicodemus to Christ painting by John La Farge
Nicodemus was a Pharisee and therefore believed in the resurrection. His learned position as a leader of the Jews brought him to question Jesus, who had performed many miracles.
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”
We make the same mistake, thinking of birth as creation. It is not.
Just as the resurrection marks an event uniting a created soul with God, birth is an event marking a new existence of that which was already created. The birth of the flesh marks an event connected to the breath of a baby whose spirit is formed by the Lord.
Just as you don’t know the path of the wind, or how bones develop in the womb of a pregnant woman, so also you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.
Does the work of God in the spirit of man end with the end of our flesh? The Pharisees and Jesus believed the spirit to exist beyond the life of man. (We will not here discuss the nature and timing of the resurrected body here.)
Note that the Hebrew word for wind, רוּחַ ruwach, is equivalent to ‘spirit,’ which we note in the creation narrative of Genesis.
Genesis 1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
A description of a chaotic void of darkness, an emptiness, watery depths describes a formless space without purpose or life itself. Yet God, specifically the Spirit of God (רוּחַ ruwach אֱלֹהִים ‘elohiym) was moving over this formless void.
God IS the only Life in the instant of creation.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, ‘you should know that God is Spirit.’
5 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Born of water
Genesis 1:6-7 Then God said,
“Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.”
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so.
Consider for a moment that if Jesus is the logos, the very spoken Word of God, then these Mosaic quotes may be attributed to the Messiah.
Jesus implies, ‘I AM He who separated the waters and I tell you that you must be born of water and the Spirit.’
Be born again from your chaotic sinful life into the resurrection, reborn pure and forgiven that you might have eternal life.
John also witnesses a connective symbolism between the pure water and the blood at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee.
6 Now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish purification…
7 “Fill the jars with water,” Jesus told them. So they filled them to the brim… the headwaiter tasted the water (after it had become wine)…
11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
John then tells us how after this Jesus goes to Jerusalem and cleanses the Temple marketplace. As a result of these events Nicodemus will come to Jesus privately one night.
23 While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.
John points out additional connections between the purification water and the purification of the wine of the Passover sacrifice. In his first letter John speaks again of this rebirth as he writes to the church:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.
6 Jesus Christ—he is the one who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and these three are in agreement.
Born of flesh
Imagine a personal conversation with God! The Lord, a flesh and blood ‘Son of Man’ as Jesus referred to himself, answers a learned teacher of scripture. He essentially suggests to Nicodemus that what is created of water and Spirit is different from our flesh created from dust.
Water becomes essential to bones and flesh, as blood flowing with life. Spirit separates the chaos of created man from the lifeless nature of a formless and godless earth.
Perhaps Jesus referred to the scripture from Ecclesiastes in His dialogue with Nicodemus asking about being born of water and the Spirit.
10 “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied.
Jesus, the Messiah in the flesh, tells Nicodemus that we must be born again – born again in the Spirit.
John the Baptist and many other Prophets urged true believers in the Lord to repent. Jesus also preached repentance and emphasizes a return to a new and pure relationship between the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man.
To be ‘born again’ is much more than mere repentance, which may be temporal and lacking in guilt, contrition and an earnest desire for the cleansing of sin.
Our born again spirit is rebirth of a relationship between the new spirit of changed flesh and the Spirit of the Living God.
John also witnesses much more of the difference between spirit and flesh, mostly in the spoken words of Christ Jesus.
“The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
The concepts of spirit, as in the Holy Spirit and the spirit of man, is more complex than what we can address in discussion of John’s Gospel, letters and the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John. Jesus’ simple reply to Nicodemus that we must be born again does point to the Holy Spirit.
For a more detailed study worthy of academic study of Scripture as Nicodemus would have been familiar see the entry below:
“Holy Spirit.” Examples where the Person is meant when the article is absent… Sometimes the absence is to be accounted for by the fact that Pneuma (like Theos) is substantially a proper name, e.g., in Jhn 7:39. As a general rule the article is present where the subject of the teaching is the Personality of the Holy Spirit, e.g., Jhn 14:26, where He is spoken of in distinction from the Father and the Son. See also Jhn 15:26 and cp. Luk 3:22…
The subject of the “Holy Spirit” in the NT may be considered as to His Divine attributes; His distinct Personality in the Godhead; His operation in connection with the Lord Jesus in His birth, His life, His baptism, His death; His operations in the world; in the church; His having been sent at Pentecost by the Father and by Christ; His operations in the individual believer; in local churches; His operations in the production of Holy Scripture; His work in the world, etc.
We could, as many do, become entangled in more theological argument of what Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3 and consequently neglect John’s witness of what Jesus reveals about the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus states that we must be born again in Spirit. Where else does John mention this?
Because the Holy Spirit commonly the Person of God most misrepresented and least mentioned, let’s look first to the examples cited in Vine’s Dictionary (above) to the scriptures from John.
“The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” He [Jesus] said this about the Spirit. Those who believed in Jesus were going to receive the Spirit, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
John 7:38-39 CSB
In our next post we will take a look at the witness of John the Baptist, who also bears witness to Jesus receiving the Holy Spirit, to which the Apostle John refers here.
Jesus, prior to His crucifixion and resurrection in the flesh and in the spirit, instructs the Apostles further about the Holy Spirit.
25 “I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. 26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.
Jesus’s Gift of Peace 27 “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.
Who would not love a personal counselor like this? Jesus promises a Person with His same love in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Later John affirms this testimony of Jesus:
“When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father — the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father — he will testify about me.
“You also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.
John 15:26-27
John is witness and testifies to this for many years, more years than all other Apostles. Jesus also refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Spirit of truth.’
Does one desiring God seek truth?
John provides both witness and explanation of the Truth. Therefore, even in this present day we would not want to miss what he shares with the church in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.
“Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will never be harmed by the second death.
