Hebrews
(4 posts)Originally posted at The Calvinist Gadfly.
Q. 13. What has God especially decreed concerning angels and men?
A. God, by an eternal and immutable decree, out of his mere love, for the praise of his glorious grace, to be manifested in due time, has elected some angels to glory; and in Christ has chosen some men to eternal life, and the means thereof: and also, according to his sovereign power, and the unsearchable counsel of his own will (whereby he extends or withholds favor as he pleases), has passed by and foreordained the rest to dishonor and wrath, to be for their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of his justice.
Question 13 definitely takes us into the deep end of the theological pool, and if we get too caught up in those things that pertain to “the unsearchable counsel of his own will,” we will only tread water until we become fatigued and drown. Am I one of those “chosen . . . to eternal life”? Are you? Never mind that.
That you are even thinking about it is God’s call to you toSeek the Lord while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the Lord,
And He will have compassion on him,
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
—Isaiah 55:6–7
This is the today’s word for you if you are in doubt of your place in eternity: Seek the Lord; seek him today!Have you sought the Lord? Have you found him? Then now is the time to consider his eternal decree for you:
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
—Romans 8:29–30
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
—Ephesians 1:3–6
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
—1 John 3:2
Before the creation of the world, we were predestined to ultimate glory. Our entire salvation was worked out, from our election in Christ to our final glorification with Christ. In the in-between time, we are day-by-day being conformed to his image. One day, in our glorified state, we will be like him. We will be like him because we will see him, not “in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12), but just as he is in the full glory of his perfection. We will see Christ as he is, holy and blameless, and we will finally be perfectly holy and blameless, conformed to his image. What a glorious day that will be!
What, then, are we to be doing now? If seeing Christ as he is will be the final cause of our future glorification, does it not stand to reason that looking to Christ now will be the means of our present sanctification? The writer to the Hebrews tells us it is so:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
—Hebrews 12:1–3
Q. What has God especially decreed concerning you?
A. Look to Jesus!
Get your own copy of The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms here.
Originally posted at The Calvinist Gadfly
Q. 15: What is the work of creation?
A. The work of creation is that wherein God did in the beginning, by the word of his power, make of nothing the world, and all things therein, for himself, within the space of six days, and all very good.
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
—Hebrews 11:3
Nothing: it's a big word. Wrapped up in those two syllables is a concept that won't fit into my head (spare me the jokes). But I need to try to get a grip on it, because it's a very important concept, vital, in fact, to my understanding of God. If you were to ask me what it is that convinces me of the existence of God, I would reply, “Nothing.” “Yeah, me too,” says the atheist. But you know I don’t mean that. Let me explain.
In the beginning, everything we see came from somewhere, and was caused by something. Let’s say there is no God. Let’s say the universe is the result of a giant cosmic explosion creatively called the Big Bang. Answer me this: what exploded? Pick your answer, any answer, and then tell me where that came from. You might have an answer, but I’ll only repeat the question, and this could go on interminably. Eventually, we’ll have to get back to a time before that original matter existed, when there was no matter to explode. After all, we’re not stupid. We don’t believe anything could be eternally self-existent.
Billy Preston exhibits his scale model of the Big Bang
The only way to get something when there is nothing is for someone to create it. If we go back as close to the beginning as we can get, we must find an uncaused cause which would be, by definition, without beginning and self-existent. It would also have to have the ability to create from less than thin air. It would have to be a who.
The nothing I have described is impossible for the human mind to imagine, but we can and must understand that that was the state of things — that is, not things — before the first creative act took place. Having admitted that, it is simply obtuse to argue that all that is came to be independently. So there is a God who created the heavens and the earth, and everyone reading this knows it. He created it out of absolute nothing.
Atheists will, of course, deny it, but that doesn’t bother me (Psalm 53:1). What bothers me is that all this is plainly true, yet some men to whom God has entrusted his truth are too sophisticated to believe that it was done in six days, as God has plainly declared, and have the hubris to teach their improved history to Christ’s flock.
Get your own copy of The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms here.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.” He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.
—Hebrews 11:17–19
Just a few quick observations from this text:
- By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac . . . Genuine obedience is by faith (Romans 14:23).
- By faith Abraham . . . was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.” . . . Abraham trusted God to keep his promise, in spite of incomprehensible evidence to the contrary.
- By faith Abraham . . . was offering up his only begotten son; . . . He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead . . . Abraham believed that God was able to do the impossible to keep his promise.
- By faith Abraham . . . offered up Isaac [and] also received him back as a type. This passage is thick with typology. First, Abraham typifies the Father, offering his only son. Isaac typifies Christ, willingly and knowingly laying down his life in obedience to his father. Abraham’s faith is an example of saving faith in Christ: Abraham surely believed that Isaac would die, yet believed that God would keep his promise and raise him from the dead. Finally, the ram is a type of Christ, and an illustration of substitutionary atonement. Abraham owed God a supreme sacrifice. That sacrifice was his only son, who was more than just precious as a beloved son, but also the fulfillment of God’s promise of Abraham’s future legacy. Isaac was Abraham’s everything, his very life. And that is our debt to God, for our sin. We owe him a death, and he will be paid. But he has provided a substitute. Abraham called the place Jehovah-jireh (the Lord will provide, Genesis 22:14). Jesus is our “ram caught in the thicket.” Calvary is our Jehovah-jireh. Most immediately important to us is that, in Isaac, we see ourselves, desperately in need of a substitute that only God can provide.
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
Hymn 12. (c. m.)
Christ is the substance of the Levitical priesthood.
The true Messiah now appears,
The types are all withdrawn;
So fly the shadows and the stars
Before the rising dawn.
No smoking sweets, nor bleeding lambs,
Nor kid nor bullock slain;
Incense and spice of costly names
Would all be burnt in vain.
Aaron must lay his robes away,
His mitre and his vest,
When God himself comes down to be
The off’ring and the priest.
He took our mortal flesh, to show
The wonders of his love;
For us he paid his life below,
And prays for us above.
“Father,” he cries, “forgive their sins,
For I myself have died;”
And then he shows his open’d veins,
And pleads his wounded side.
—from The Psalms & Hymns of Isaac Watts. Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Book II: Composed on Divine Subjects (Soli Deo Gloria, 1997).
11Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; 12but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, 13waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.
—Hebrews 10
The Imperfect And The Perfect Priesthood.
It is to the contrast between Christ and the ancient priesthood that I ask your attention; between the priesthood of the earthly and of the heavenly temple. It is this contrast that brings out the true nature and character both of Christ and of His work.
I. The many priests and the one.—‘Every priest,’—‘this man,’ or ‘this priest.’ The Old Testament priests were many. Not one of them fully accomplished the priestly work. A continual succession was needed; and even by these many the work was not done. It remained at the last just where it was at the first. For these many were, after all, not doers of the work, but symbols or prophetical representatives of the great Doer of it all who was to come. They said, ‘The work shall yet be done; it shall be done completely; God shall be approached; the conscience shall be purged; but not by us; the Doer shall come; He will accomplish what we can only foreshadow.’ These many passed away, and in their stead there came the one—one to do the work which hundreds and thousands of priests and Levites could not do. Yes, one Doer; one work; one sacrifice; one blood shedding; one atonement. Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. What a contrast! The whole tribe of Levi for ages; the tens of thousands of sacrifices; the rivers of bloodshed, and all incomplete! And, on the other, the one single Man, taking up the incomplete work of these thousands, and doing it all at once! This Man! This Priest! But what a Man! What a Priest! The High Priest of the good things to come! The others might do their symbolic work well; but the real priestly final work was beyond their power. That consummation was reserved for the greater than Aaron or Moses, the Son of God Himself. O finished work, how sufficient! O perfect High Priest, how glorious and complete!
II. The many sacrifices and the one sacrifice.—In two senses were the sacrifices many. They were many (1) as to number, almost innumerable;
(2) as to kind, burnt offering, trespass offering, sin offering, meat offering, drink offering, peace offering. Christ’s sacrifice was one, in both of these aspects. Only one sacrifice, once offered; and all the various kinds of sacrifice gathered, in Him, into the one sacrifice, which by its fullness satisfies the utmost need of the worshipper in every case. One full, complete, perfect sacrifice! ‘It is finished;’ ‘by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.’ His one sacrifice did the whole work. ‘By Himself He purged our sins;’ by His blood He purged our consciences. Let that one sacrifice do its work for us. We need no more.
III. The many ministries and the one ministry.—Besides the offering of sacrifice, there were many duties connected with priestly ministry, some smaller, some more important. Each day and hour had their ministries or services. In a hundred different ways they ministered. Priest and Levite ministered in the various parts of the manifold temple worship. But now Christ has taken up all their various ministries into Himself. All the little or great things which we need as the sinful or the helpless, are ministered by the one priestly servant. Through His hands alone come to us the numerous blessings which we need every hour. Let us deal with Him about these. He is exalted a Prince and Saviour to bestow these. We have not to deal with many priests, nor are we perplexed with many ministers. All the channels and instruments through which blessings come to a sinner are now found in Jesus only. His one ministry has superseded all the rest. It is with His one priesthood that we have to do.
IV. The daily and the everlasting work.—It is the daily many, and the everlasting one that are contrasted. Oh, what a routine of endless sacrifice and service for ages,—daily, daily,—yes, almost every hour! Always doing, never done! Each hour a repetition of past hours, without prospect of end! But the daily ceased, and the ‘for ever’ came at length. Everlasting salvation; eternal redemption! Once and for ever! Once for all! No second sacrifice; no daily repetition. How unsatisfactory that daily work; how satisfying, how pacifying, how perfecting that one everlasting atonement! Yes, it is for evermore! He has offered it once for all! What a gospel is brought out to us in the contrast between the daily and the forever! A pardon that lasts for ever! A peace that lasts for ever! A salvation that lasts forever! A reconciliation that lasts forever!
V. The effectual work and the ineffectual.—What was daily offered up could never take away sin; it could not purge the conscience, nor give us confidence in drawing near to God. But the one true work was ‘for sin;’
i.e. it was meant to take away sin. The other sacrifices could not. This could and did. It was truly and fully sin bearing. Nothing else can avail but this. Guilt but half borne, half exhausted, will avail nothing. Sin laid on any one save the appointed priest and sacrifice, will not be taken away. It must remain. The one Sin bearer is He ‘who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.’ He is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. He has finished transgression and made an end of sin.
VI. The standing and the sitting down.—The priests and Levites all stood. From morn to night they stood. There was no time for sitting down, for at any time they might be called on to offer a sacrifice; so that their work was never done. There was no place for sitting in any part of the temple where the service was going on, and. the sacrifices were offered. There were rooms at the side for sitting, but not in the courts of the altar and laver. There the priests must stand or move about. Theirs was perpetual and unfinished work, as their posture indicated. The king might sit when ruling and judging. The prophet might sit when giving his message. But the priest must stand. What a symbol was the priestly posture! What a truth was embodied in it!
The one Priest sat down. As soon as He had finished His sacrifice He sat down. And this said, in language beyond mistake, both to heaven and earth, ‘It is finished!’ He sat down—
(1.) On the throne of grace.—The mercy seat was His throne. He sat down to dispense the free love of God to sinners. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace.
(2.) On the seat of honour.—The throne of grace is the throne of heaven. It is the seat before which the ‘many angels’ as well as the ‘elders’ and ‘living creatures’ bow, singing, ‘Blessing, and honour, and glory’ (Revelations 5:11, 12).
(3.) On the place of power.—The Father’s right hand is the place of power. Seated there, He is, in every sense, ‘able to save to the uttermost.’
(4.) On the height of expectation.—His throne is a ‘glorious high throne.’ From it He looks down on earth, sees its iniquity and rebellion, and calmly waits for the time, when His enemies shall be made His footstool, and earth become His glorious kingdom. Are we, too, looking for this?
‘Sit Thou at my right hand,’ is the Father’s word to the Son. In answer to that He sat down, and He is now sitting. That throne He occupies for us. From that throne He dispenses the gifts which, as the glorified Christ, He has received for the rebellious. All that belongs to Him of excellence and fullness is there; it is there for us. The glory of His person, the riches of His varied offices, the suitableness of His great propitiation, and the love of His gracious heart, are all there,—available for sinners, and that to the uttermost. Such is their value, and such their efficacy, that no amount of evil in us, of whatever kind, can in the least obstruct that availableness. It may be the evil of long and dark transgression, or of obduracy and stout-heartedness, or of backsliding and inconsistency and worldliness, or of imperfect faith and feeble repentance; it may be evil committed before our connection with this High Priest, or evil after our connection with Him, or evil in our deficient way of apprehending His work, or evil in our want of love and confidence, evil in our defective sense of sin and guilt, the evil of a hard and stony heart,—it matters not. None of these evils in us can exceed the boundless value of the expiation or the Expiator; nor surpass the divine perfection of the finished work either as bearing upon God or man; nor neutralize the preciousness of the blood of the Lamb; nor prevent the great burnt offering from sheltering the sinner beneath its wide shadowing and impenetrable canopy; nor repel the free love that comes out from the cross to the unworthiest of the sons of Adam; nor render less potent the fragrance of the sweet incense that is continually going up from the golden altar of ‘the more perfect tabernacle not made with hands.’ The fullness of the finished work covers all deficiencies, were they a thousand timed greater than they are or can be. Nothing but our rejection of that fullness, and our preference for something else, can prevent our being saved by it. Its sufficiency is infinite; its suitableness is perfect; its freeness unconditional; its nearness like Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being.
Such is the provision made for the taking away of our sin, and for our drawing near to God. Such is the great love of God. There is nothing like it for greatness, either in heaven above or in the earth beneath. Truly He has no pleasure in the sinner’s death. He is not seeking occasion to destroy him; He is not trying to find out reasons for rejecting him or for disregarding his cries; He is not waiting for further amendment and repentance, or greater earnestness or bitterer remorse. He is stretching out His hands to him, just as he is. He is most sincerely desirous to bless even the worst. His compassions are infinite; His bowels yearn over His prodigals; He wants them to come back to His house. He knows what hell is, and He wants to save them from it; He knows what heaven is, and He wants to win them to it.
His grace and pity are beyond all measure; and he who, on the credit of the divine testimony to them, given in the word of the truth of the gospel, goes to Him for pardon and life, shall be welcomed and blest, receiving not only what he goes for, but exceeding abundantly, above all he asks or thinks.
—Horatius Bonar, Light & Truth: Bible Thoughts & Themes
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
