Come and Go Sunday School Lesson with Dr. Frank Carver & Dr. Herb Prince “God Has Spoken-The New Covenant Life-’this cup is the new covenant in my blood’” from First Church of the Nazarene in San Diego, California, United States

Come and Go Sunday School Lesson with Dr. Frank Carver & Dr. Herb Prince “God Has Spoken-The New Covenant Life-’this cup is the new covenant in my blood’” from First Church of the Nazarene in San Diego, California, United States

GOD HAS SPOKEN

The New Covenant Life

“this cup is the new covenant in my blood”[1 Cor. 11:25. Luke 22:20 also has “new, but the saying in Matt. 26:28 and Mark 14:24 does not.]

(Hebrews Twenty-Nine)[The following outline is that of Kevin L. Anderson, Hebrews: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2013), 5-6.

I. Hearing the Apostle and High Priest of Our Confession: Hebrews 1:1—4:13

II. Jesus’ Superior High Priesthood: Hebrews 4:14—10:18

1. The Qualifications of the Great High Priest (4:14—5:10).
2. Preparing for Advanced Teaching on Christ’s High Priesthood (5:11—6:20)
3. The High Priest like Melchizedek: The Son Perfected Forever (7:1-28).
4. The Superior Ministry of the Son’s High Priesthood (8:1—10:18)

1. Introduction to Christ’s Superior Ministry (8:1-13).
2. The Better and More Perfect Tabernacle (9:1-14).
3. Christ’s Sacrificial Death Inaugurated the New Covenant (9:15-28).
4. Christ’s One Obedient Offering Perfects Worshippers Forever (10:1-18).

III. Call to Persevering Faith and Acceptable Worship: Hebrews 10:19--13:25]

Hebrews 10:For the Torah has in it a shadow of the good things to come, but not the actual manifestation of the originals. Therefore, it can never, by means of the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, bring to the goal those who approach the Holy Place to offer them. 2 Otherwise, wouldn’t the offering of those sacrifices have ceased? For if the people performing the service had been cleansed once and for all, they would no longer have sins on their conscience.3 No, it is quite the contrary — in these sacrifices is a reminder of sins, year after year. 4 For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

5 This is why, on coming into the world, he says,

“It has not been your will

to have an animal sacrifice and a meal offering;

rather, you have prepared for me a body.

6 No, you have not been pleased

with burnt offerings and sin offerings.

7 Then I said, ‘Look!

In the scroll of the book

it is written about me.

1. I have come to do your will.’”[Hebrews 10:7 Psalm 40:7–9(6–8)]

8 In saying first, “You neither willed nor were pleased with animal sacrifices, meal offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings,” things which are offered in accordance with the Torah; 9 and then, “Look, I have come to do your will”; he takes away the first system in order to set up the second. 10 It is in connection with this will that we have been separated for God and made holy, once and for all, through the offering of Yeshua the Messiah’s body.

11 Now every cohen stands every day doing his service, offering over and over the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But this one, after he had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, sat down at the right hand of God, 13 from then on to wait until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.[Hebrews 10:13 Psalm 110:1] 14 For by a single offering he has brought to the goal for all time those who are being set apart for God and made holy.

15 And the Ruach HaKodesh too bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “ ‘This is the covenant which I will make

with them after those days,’ says Adonai:

‘I will put my Torah on their hearts,

and write it on their minds . . . ,’ ”[Hebrews 10:16 Jeremiah 31:32(33)]

17 he then adds,

“ ‘And their sins and their wickednesses

I will remember no more.’ ”[Hebrews 10:17 Jeremiah 31:33(34)]

18 Now where there is forgiveness for these, an offering for sins is no longer needed.

Hebrews 10:10, 14:       “And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified

through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

In Christ’s sacrifice we see the final revelation of what God is, that behind which there is nothing in God, so that the religion which rests on that sacrifice rests on the ultimate truth of the divine nature, and can never be shaken?[James Denney, The Death of Christ, ed. R. V. G. Tasker (London: The Tyndale Press,1951), 119. This is a revised and abridged edition of The Death of Christ (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909 [1902]), 208.]

From all that we have seen in the New Testament, that where there is no atonement there is no gospel.[Denney, The Death of Christ,  157, (1909 [1902]), 284.157.]

Introduction

The first-born son of Frances Young (b. 1939), a British theologian—now retired, was born with profound learning disabilities, and failing to progress as child, was extremely physically handicapped. As she and her husband supported him in their home for over forty years, she described him as “totally dependent for all his everyday functions, such as feeding, washing, dressing, [and] mobility.”[Francis M. Young, Brokenness and Blessing: Towards a Biblical Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 31. On November 15, 2005, as a Methodist minister, she preached at the opening service of the Eighth General Synod Church of England, the first Methodist and the first woman to preach at the five-yearly inauguration ceremony.] Their son Arthur had no self-help skills, no independent mobility, and no language. Over the years as she cared for him she did not ask “why me?” but “why at all?” As she took her question to her academic discipline working especially in the writings of the early Christian fathers, she came up with ten themes of what she called, profound learnings. The third theme was

Atonement [is] the only theodicy we are offered.[Frances M. Young, “Suffering and the Holy Life,” Wesleyan Theological Journal, Volume 43, Number 1 (Spring, 2008), 15-16. The theological term “theodicy” refers to the defense of God’s goodness and power in the face of suffering and evil in the world.]

Two words, first, the word “gospel” in the second quotation from James Denney above, and second, the word “theodicy” on the lips of Frances Young, indicate that atonement-truth relates to the realities of every-day human living.

Our Hebrews text for today, 10:1-18, brings us to the heart of what it means to live as a Christian. The apostle Paul understood this well when he wrote to the Ephesians in language similar to that of our writer that we are to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”[Eph. 5:1-2.] In our text the author shows his colors as a preacher “laid on the altar of the Cross,” a proclaimer par excellence who mediates the word of grace “to the Church from faith to faith, from his faith to theirs”[ P. T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980 [Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching, Yale University, 1907]), 80. ]--and now to ours!

It is helpful at this point to recap our journey from Hebrews 9:1 on. The outline we are using for our journey through Hebrews 9:1-10:18 analyses the text as follows:

1. The Ministry of the Old Covenant (9:1-10)

1. “an earthly sanctuary” (9:1-5)
2. “the priests go continually” (9:6-10)

2. The Ministry of the New Covenant (9:11-28)

1. “when Christ came” (9:11-14)
2. “the mediator of a new covenant” (9:15-22)
3. “Christ . . . entered into heaven itself” (9:23-28).

3. The Enabling of the Worshiper (10:1-18)

1. “sanctified . . . once for all” (10:1-10)
2. “perfected . . . for all time” (10:11-18).

As we move on from our attempt to grasp the meaning and significance of “atonement” and come to the more “easily understood” terms of “sanctification” and “perfection,”[A helpful read here is the late William M. Greathouse’s chapter on “Sanctification and Perfection in Hebrews” in his Wholeness in Christ: Toward a Biblical Theology of Holiness (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1988), 143-169. In our study on September 8, 2013, “Hebrews Three,” we grounded the languages of “sanctification” and “perfection” in Jewish temple worship. The two terminologies are used primarily in Hebrews to answer two fundamental religious questions: the perfection language in Hebrews asks the question of “How can one man represent all humankind before God?” and the sanctification terminology answers the question of “How is it possible for sinful human creatures to enter into the holy presence of God?” The Hebrews author applies “Perfection” to the Christian as well. As used in Hebrews (and in the New Testament) the Greek verb “to make perfect” (teleioun), the adjective “perfect” (teleios), the noun “perfecter” (teleiōtēs,), and the noun “perfection: (teleiotēs, teleiōsis), are formed on the noun telos that carries the meanings of end, close, goal, other variations. For a person or thing to make or be perfect is always in relation to the end or goal in mind—i.e. qualified to fulfil its intended function.] our preacher of the gospel concludes his essential theological argument as he brings us to

III.

The Enabling of the Worshipper

10:1-18

The writer’s two paragraphs in this section each conclude with a staggering declaration for the situation and life of the Christian: the worshipper is “sanctified . . . once for all” (vv. 1-10) and “perfected for all time” (vv. 11-18)! Is such really true? How can these be true! We look first at

A.

The Worshipper “sanctified . . . once for all”

10:1-10

1.

As we saw in chapter 9 and as our author now views it, the former worship under the law was “only a shadow” (vv. 1-4):

1Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. 2Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? 3But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year. 4For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

The Old Testament sacrifices as “only a shadow of the good things to come” were not able to “make perfect those who approach.” As “not the true form of these realities,” that is, “the good things” of the future salvation in Christ, they could not cleanse the worshipper “once for all.” They were more repeated ritual than a moral and spiritual change. As Johnson observes, “only if the conscience is cleansed from the ‘awareness of sins’ are people morally capable of approaching the living God.”[Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews, A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 249.]

The reason was that these sacrifices, “continually offered year after year, made for an annual “reminder of sin.” If the worshippers had truly been “cleansed once for all,” they would “no longer have any consciousness of sin.”  Therefore, the writer concludes with a denial, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” What does this preacher’s word mean for you and me when he talks about making us perfect with respect to conscience?

Can he be saying, for example, that when we approach the Lord’s Table on Communion Sunday that we do not necessarily come confessing our sins, but rather, we come celebrating our forgiveness! Yes, by all means! For that is where we constantly live, moment by moment, accepting forgiveness! Forsyth fully grasps this great gospel truth of Hebrews when he declares that “the feeble gospel preaches ‘God is ready to forgive’; the mighty gospel preaches ‘God has redeemed.’”[P. T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1909), 52. The quotation is from the “Forgotten Books” edition, 2012.] Freedom from the “consciousness of sin”--forgiven “once for all” is the Christian’s privilege![Such does not eliminate our need for confession and repentance as the occasion demands. But it does not take a week for us to come to it when we miss the mark in our conduct!]

2.

What more does our author have to say about all this as he moves on to speak of “God’s will” (v. 5-10)?

5Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,

but a body you have prepared for me;

6in burnt offerings and sin offerings

you have taken no pleasure.

7Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’

(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).”

8When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. 10And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

With an emphatic “Consequently,” the Hebrews writer explains what it takes to perfect the worshipper, as he puts it, to “take away sins.”  To do this he turns to Psalm 40:6-8 in which he discerns the voice of “Christ” speaking for the second time in Hebrews (2:12-13).[ As in 2:12-13 Jesus or Christ is not explicitly named in the text, but is implied from the context, being named as such in 10:10.] There, in a Psalm of David, “appropriately sung by the Messiah as he comes into the world,”[Johnson, Hebrews, 250.] Jesus, as he comes into the world in contrast to the older “sacrifices and offerings,” announces his Incarnation: “a body you have prepared for me.”[LXX: the Hebrew text of Psalm 40:6  is literally “You have dug out two ears for me.” Anderson, Hebrews, 260. NRSV translates, “you  have given me an open ear.” ] This declaration, as our writer quotes the LXX Psalm as the voice of the Messiah, finds its motivation and ultimate source in “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God.” [The precise meaning of the parenthesis, “in the scroll of the book it is written of me,” is not clear. Johnson, Hebrews, 252, suggests that “in this psalm ascribed to David, the reference may be simply be the way in which the will of God that is written in such scrolls is also written in this archetypal king’s heart: he is entirely devoted to doing what God desires.”]

To these lines the preacher gives a twofold interpretation in verses 9b and 10.[What follows is heavily dependent on Anderson, Hebrews, 261.] The first, now put into legal language, is what we have seen expressed in various ways since 7:1: “ʻSee, I have come to do your will.’ He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.” The Christ who comes annuls or abolishes the sacrificial system under the law in order to confirm or validate the will of God thorough “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Jesus’ “offering” consists of his faithful obedience to the “will” of God—“death on a cross”[Phil. 2:8.]-- for “the faithful obedience that is the essence of Christ’s priesthood is also the essence of his character”[Johnson, Hebrews, 250.]: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.”[John 4:34.] Such was true of Jesus from the beginning of his bodily, earthly life to its end—his death being the “final and perfect expression”[Johnson, Hebrews, 250] of his character.

The Hebrews author’s second interpretation or “conclusion in 10:10 unfolds the result of Christ’s execution of God’s will with respect to believers”[Anderson, Hebrews, 261.]: “And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” The Christian’s access to “so great a salvation” (2:3), to the presence of a holy God is complete--and completely open to us “once for all” and forever! It does not have to be redone! “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins”![1 John 2:1-2.]

In the Gospel of John, Jesus summed up his own life and mission in the Incarnation and the Cross as one whom “the Father has sanctified and sent into the world”[John 10:36.] as he prayed for them and us,

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so have I sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”[John 17:17-19.]

The theological nuances of the Fourth Gospel’s usage of the “sanctification” terminology is quite similar to its employment by Hebrews. We can use each to aid our understanding of the other. The atoning work of Christ in his death on the cross functions as both central and crucial for understanding of sanctification in both John’s Gospel and Hebrews.

Our “laid on the altar” preacher concludes his essential theological proclamation of the gospel with the declaration to our Christian hearts of who we are as

B.

The Worshipper “perfected for all time”

10:11-18

1.

This paragraph, writes Anderson, “brings the principle argumentative point of the whole homily full circle.”[Anderson, Hebrews, 263.] Here the writer to the Hebrews reminds us of his opening salvo of the God who “has spoken to us in a Son, . . . the heir of all things,” through whom God “created the worlds, . . . the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” who “when he had made purification for sins” (1:2-3), “he sat down”:

11And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” 13and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

Again, in the back of his mind, is the author’s basic contrast with the tabernacle/Temple ritual, the “day after day . . . same sacrifices that can never take away sin.” In stark contrast is Christ’s offering that he “had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins.” As one has ably expressed it, “the very essence of Christ’s self-offering is that it is once and for all.”[C. F. D. Moule, The Sacrifice of Christ , Facet Books: Biblical Series (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964 [1956]), 13.]

The finality of Christ’s offering is seen both in that it was “a single sacrifice” and that “he sat down at the right hand of God.” These two acts appear almost as one great and culminating action, they belong inherently together, penetrating and defining each other. Who “sat down”? The one who made “for all time a single sacrifice for sins”! Who made “a single sacrifice”? The one who “sat down at the right hand of God”!

The author further defines his latter assertion as he alludes to his quotation of Psalm 110:1 in 1:13 with “since then [he] has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’” Psalm 110:1 as a key text for the whole of Hebrews “conveys the posture of sitting in connection with holding an office or position of authority,”[Anderson, Hebrews, 263.] stressing again the completeness and the finality of the work of Christ for us.

The result for the Christian is that “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”  The verb “sanctified” is a present tense participle that has been variously interpreted. Anderson takes it as “timeless, indicating that believers have been brought into a lasting condition or state of holiness.”[Anderson, Hebrews, 264. The present participle has been interpreted as iterative, those who one by one are being sanctified, and as a continuous process of sanctification. Contextually, the iterative does not fit the author’s stress on definitive cleansing nor does an ongoing moral  transformation of character.] In this holy status we as Christians are “perfected for all time,” that is, as the result of a once and for all “single offering” we are fully qualified to live and serve in the likeness of Christ.[The path and pattern is that of our high priest who “although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (5:8-9).] At the finger-tips of our faith we have what it takes—by grace!

2.

How so? Because of the nature of “the covenant”:

15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,

16“This is the covenant that I will make with them

after those days, says the Lord:

I will put my laws in their hearts,

And I will write them on their minds,”

he also adds,

“I will remember their sins and their

lawless deeds no more.” 18

Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

The writer returns here to the prophecy of “a new covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31-34, which he quoted earlier in 8:8-12, to finalize his arguments in chapters 8:1-10:18. What we as Christians are privileged to possess or where we are graced to live, we see as we probe the new spiritual reality.

First, the new covenant is made known to us by “the Holy Spirit” who speaks in Hebrews as usual by means of the Scriptures. Second, at the effective heart of this covenant is the high priest who accomplished our sanctification and perfection by “the sacrifice of himself” (9:26). Third, is the enabling power of the new covenant in contrast to the former one by which God now will put his laws “in their hearts, and . . . write them on their minds.” The will of God has now arrived at the moral core of our lives as Christian persons, motivating and empowering our thoughts, words, and deeds in Christian purity.

Furthermore, “says the Lord, . . . ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’” The conscience has been cleansed. The Christian lives and loves and serves with a clean or pure conscience—regrets, yes, guilt, no! This is our forgiveness by God in Christ! Thus the preacher concludes the long history of God’s grace with

Where there is forgiveness of these,

there is no longer any offering for sin.

Conclusion

We close with two quotations from many years ago that can still speak to our lives of faith. The first goes back to 1902 when James Denney (1856-1917), a Scottish theologian—pastor and professor—wrote that  

The atonement is God’s work. It is God who makes the atonement. It is God who mediates forgiveness to us in this way.[Denney, The Death of Christ, 193.]

The second comes from an August 21, 1944, letter from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) to his close friend, Eberhard Bethge. Bonhoeffer was writing from his confinement in Tegel prison in Berlin after a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. He wrote:,

Everything we may with some good reason expect or beg of God is to be found in Jesus Christ.[German original:“Es kommt wohl alles auf das “in ihm” an, Alles, was wir mit Recht von Gott erwarten, erbitten dȕrfen, ist in Jesus Christus zu finden.”] . . . What is certain is that we always live aware that God is near and present with us and that this life is an utterly new life for us.[Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8, ed. John W. de Gruchy, trans, Isabel Best, Lisa Dahill, Reinhard Kraus, and Nancy Luiens (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010 [German 1951/1970, ed. Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Tӧdt]), 514-515.]

As we come to the end of this three lesson series that has the atoning life and death of Jesus at its center, we resonate with C. F. D. Moule’s closing word in his The Sacrifice of Christ:

We have only scratched the surface of a fathomless mystery. Even to do that much is to realize its awfulness and wonder and supreme complexity.[Moule, The Sacrifice of Christ, 45. C. F. D. Moule (1908-2007) was An Anglican Priest and theologian teaching New Testament as Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity for 25 years, from 1951 to 1976 at the University of Cambridge in England.]

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