GOD HAS SPOKEN
“Forever”!
(Hebrews Twenty-Three)(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. As in the previous lessons
we will document our quotations from Anderson by the page number in a parenthesis. Our dependence on
his work, however, is not limited to quotations.
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
A. The Qualifications of the Great High Priest (4:14—5:10).
B. Preparing for Advanced Teaching on Christ’s High Priesthood (5:11—6:20)
C. The High Priest like Melchizedek: The Son Perfected Forever (7:1-28).
D. The Superior Ministry of the Son’s High Priesthood (8:1—10:18)
III. Call to Persevering Faith and Acceptable Worship: Hebrews 10:19--13:25(
1. The Great High Priest (4:14-16).
2. Qualifications of Ordinary High Priests (5:1-4)
3. Qualifications of the High Priest like Melchizedek (5:5-10)
1. Reproof Concerning Arrested Spiritual Development (5:11-14)
2. Exhortation to Go On to Maturity (6:1—3)
3.Warning About Irreversible Apostasy (6:4-8)
4.Words of Reassurance (6:9-12)
5. Powerful Encouragement Based on God’s Trustworthiness (6:13-20)
1. The Greatness of Melchizedek’s Priesthood (7:1-10)
2. The Imperfection of the Levitical Priesthood (7:11-19)
3. The Son’s Permanent and Perfect Priesthood (7:20-28))
Hebrews 7: A Permanent Priesthood11-14 If the priesthood of Levi and Aaron, which provided the framework for the giving of the law, could really make people perfect, there wouldn’t have been need for a new priesthood like that of Melchizedek. But since it didn’t get the job done, there was a change of priesthood, which brought with it a radical new kind of law. There is no way of understanding this in terms of the old Levitical priesthood, which is why there is nothing in Jesus’ family tree connecting him with that priestly line.
15-19 But the Melchizedek story provides a perfect analogy: Jesus, a priest like Melchizedek, not by genealogical descent but by the sheer force of resurrection life—he lives!—“priest forever in the royal order of Melchizedek.” The former way of doing things, a system of commandments that never worked out the way it was supposed to, was set aside; the law brought nothing to maturity. Another way—Jesus!—a way that does work, that brings us right into the presence of God, is put in its place.
20-22 The old priesthood of Aaron perpetuated itself automatically, father to son, without explicit confirmation by God. But then God intervened and called this new, permanent priesthood into being with an added promise:
God gave his word;
he won’t take it back:
“You’re the permanent priest.”
This makes Jesus the guarantee of a far better way between us and God—one that really works! A new covenant.
23-25 Earlier there were a lot of priests, for they died and had to be replaced. But Jesus’ priesthood is permanent. He’s there from now to eternity to save everyone who comes to God through him, always on the job to speak up for them.
26-28 So now we have a high priest who perfectly fits our needs: completely holy, uncompromised by sin, with authority extending as high as God’s presence in heaven itself. Unlike the other high priests, he doesn’t have to offer sacrifices for his own sins every day before he can get around to us and our sins. He’s done it, once and for all: offered up himself as the sacrifice. The law appoints as high priests men who are never able to get the job done right. But this intervening command of God, which came later, appoints the Son, who is absolutely, eternally perfect.
Hebrews 7:17, 21: “You are a priest forever,
according to the order of Melchizedek. . . .
The Lord has sworn
And will not change his mind,
You are a priest forever.”
Introduction
Today our focus text is the Hebrews’ writer’s quotation of Psalm 110:4, quoted half in one place and half in another, and that in reverse order--verse 17 in 7:11-19 and verse 21 in 7:20-28. Kevin Anderson opens his interpretation of our scripture text with the observation that
Hebrews 7:11-28 shifts the focus from the narrative in Gen 14 to the divine oracle of Ps 110:4. Each half of the series of arguments is
anchored by a quotation of the psalm text (219).
As hinted in Hebrews 5:6 and 10, Psalm 110:4 is now stressed as theHebrews’ author’s interpretive key.(Anderson, Hebrews, 75, deals with the use of the Psalm in his excurse, “Psalm 110 in Hebrews.”) With it he goes about, so to speak, to open the door to what he wants his readers to grasp in thought and faith and life about Jesus.
INTERPRETATION! We cannot escape “interpretation.” We interpret everything we see and hear! We interpret each other—or misinterpret—often. Interpretation or misinterpretation is a constant issue in
human discourse and relationships! Betty and I misinterpret each other once in a great while, perhaps daily. My problem of always interpreting correctly what she says, however, is never a problem of my hearing, but only of her ambiguous and incomplete expression—in too low a voice! Why she doesn’t always interpret me correctly, I have no idea!
Accurate interpretation is a crucial issue whether on a personal,
community, national or even on international levels—history and its many needless and tragic wars confirms that! Ron Kirkemo has written three books on the history of Point Loma Nazarene University.(Ronald B. Kirkemo, For Zion’s Sake: A History of Pasadena/Point Loma ollege (San Diego, California: Point Loma Press, 1992); Ronald B. Kirkemo, Promise and Destiny: Grace in the History of Point Loma Nazarene University (San Diego, California: Point Loma Press, 2001); Ronald Kirkemo, Moving Stories: The Move of Pasadena College to Point Loma (San Diego, California: Published online by the Marketing and Creative Services, Point Loma Nazarene University, 2014).) It would be enlightening to ask him in the process of his research what role
interpretation and misinterpretation played in his historical work. How much of misinterpretation and misunderstanding plagued our college’s history in the making, and how difficult was it for Ron to always interpret correctly his sources? How much has misinterpretation compromised the accuracy of his writing?
Our biblical author’s interpretive use of Psalm 110:4 raises the issue of how we read and interpret the Bible. To read is always to interpret. In fact, we don’t really believe the Bible, we just believe what we think it says! And as Joel Green suggests, “the higher the view of Scripture, the more crucial the issue of interpretation.”(Joel B. Green, “Contribute of Capitulate? Wesleyans, Pentecostals, and Reading the Bible in a Post-
colonial Mode,” Wesleyan Theological Journal, Volume 39, Number 1 (Spring 2004), 88. Joel Green was ten years at Asbury Theological Seminary and as of July 1, 2014, is presently Dean of the School of Theology and Professor of New Testament Interpretation School of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. See his Seized by Truth: Reading the Bible as Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007).) As Wesleyans we read/interpret the Bible in a certain way, often somewhat differently from those in other Christian traditions. “Accordingly,” as Green comments,
to some significant degree, what it means to engage in a Wesleyan
reading of Scripture is that those doing the reading have been nurtured in the Wesleyan tradition of according privilege to some theological categories over others—the pursuit of holiness, for example, and the primacy of grace.(Green, “Reading the Bible,” 85.)
Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Reform, Lutheran, and Anabaptist folk all read Scripture as nurtured in their traditions with their respective theological priorities, such as the sovereignty of God for the Calvinists. And historically in the Church, the readings have had serious consequences. We need only to pursue with mind and imagination “the issue of interpretation” throughout the centuries-long history of the Christian Church with its controversies and divisions!
In our study of Hebrews, I have been awakened to a fascination with
the author’s use of Psalm 110:4. I find his use illuminating as revealing a biblical interpretative paradigm. Through Psalm 110:4 the author looks backward to Genesis 14 where he observes that Melchizedek appeared on the narrative scene as a priest king:
without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life (7:3).
Then to this interpretive backward look, the writer to the Hebrews looks forward through Psalm 110:4 to a priest of a totally different kind, Jesus, “a priest forever,” who
is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them (7:25).
Anderson pulls it all together in his closing words on Hebrews 7:1-10 (217):
The Psalm [110:4] attests to Jesus’ risen, immortal life. Here the
scriptural picture of Melchizedek’s enduring priesthood is a narrative truth, an image of its archetype in “Christ’s power of an indestructible life” (Heb 7:16).
From the work of the French Roman Catholic philosopher Jean-Luc Marion, Herb Prince has helped us “see” and “look at” the iconic function of the biblical picture of Melchizedek. He conveyed to us that what becomes visible in one’s gaze at an icon is a visible reference to the invisible, thus functioning in Marion’s words—helped by Descartes—as an “infinite hermeneutic”!(Herbert L. Prince, “Long Ago God Spoke, Part 22: From a distance” (Come and Go, October 19, 2014).) To the extent then that Psalm 110:4 partakes of the Hebrews’ writer’s iconic use of Melchizedek we are face-to-face with a most productive interpretative key, a biblical hermeneutic!
In our author’s appeal to Psalm 110:4 we do not have an attempt to
capture something, something seized by our knowledge, something our
rational minds can possess and control, that is, as an idol. Rather Psalm 110:4 functions as an icon that brings “the invisible to visibility, not by representing as such, but by opening into it.”(Robert Horner, Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical Introduction (Ashgate: 2005), 63, as quoted by Herbert L. Prince.) We are graced to gaze at the invisible other as “the Spirit of God steps out of the opening made possible through the contemplation of the iconic.”(Prince, “Part 22: From a distance.” Herb Prince approved these two paragraphs, but I did not submit to him what follows!)
From Marion’s—and Prince’s--exposition of the idol/icon can we then say that Scripture by nature and function is given as iconic, it is
ultimately beyond all our attempts to wrap it up in a neat, logical, and fully understandable package. This is not to say, however, that we are not called to apply a diligent intellect to the biblical text and to respond at the depth of our being to its witness! From what Herb Prince opened up to us in his last three studies, dare we go on to say that
Life properly lived is permeated by the iconic, and that
Life improperly lived is dominated by the idolatrous?
Before we get to work on our text, in the light of its context in Hebrews, a contextual thought demands expression. The Hebrews’ writer does not let us get far from his view of and concern for the perfection of the Christian worshipper—Christian perfection. In the opening verse of our present passage he speaks of “if perfection were attainable” (v. 11), and in the closing verse, comprising an inclusio, he declares “a Son . . . made perfect forever” (v. 28). And if that were not enough, he reminds us halfway through the argument of our text that “the law made nothing perfect” (v. 18).
So now we “look” to verses 11-28 to “see” how the writer works out
his interpretive, and may we say, iconic use of Psalm 110:4 as he presents to us “so great a salvation” (2:3). What is his first concern?
II.(Number “I” was presented in last week’s lesson.)
“the law made nothing perfect”
(The Imperfection of the Levitical Priesthood)(Anderson’s outline.)
(7:11-19)
The author’s basic thought in the verses before us is that “perfection”is not “attainable through the levitical priesthood.” Why so? Because “the law made nothing perfect.” To demonstrate this, the writer to the Hebrews returns once again to
“the order of Melchizedek”
(7:11-14)
11Now if perfection had been attainable through the levitical priesthood—for the people received the law under this priesthood—what further need would there have been to speak of another priest arising according to the order of Melchizedek, rather than one according to the order of Aaron? 12For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. 13Now the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar. 14For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.
We will attempt to sketch/analyze/clarify the author’s argument—hopefully not muddle it!
The reason that “the law made nothing perfect” is clear. If the
levitical law could indeed bring about perfection for the people, “what further need would there have been to speak of another priest arising according to the order of Melchizedek?” The law is legitimized by the priesthood over it for “the people received the law under this priesthood.” The priesthood was foundational to the law with the obvious result that if there is “a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well.” When the priesthood changes, the legal system by logical necessity must undergo alteration as well.
The result is the change brought about by a new priesthood
“according to the order of Melchizedek.” For, writes our author with a confessional ring, “our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.” This new priesthood, arising out of a different tribe and thus is a priesthood quite different(The adjective “another” in “another priest” (v. 11) and in “another tribe” (v. 13) suggests not just another like, but one of a different kind (heteron . . . heteros).) than the “one according to the order of Aaron,” brings to the people of God
“A better hope”(7:11, 17.)
(7:15-19)
15It is even more obvious when another priest arises, resembling Melchizedek, 16one who has become a priest, not through a legal
requirement concerning physical descent, but through the power of an indestructible life. 17For it is attested of him,
“You are a priest forever,
according to the order of Melchizedek.”
18There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual 19there is, on the other hand, the introduction of a better hope, through which we approach God.The Hebrews’ author probes ever deeper into the cause of the change:
This new priest, Jesus, who has arisen “resembling Melchizedek,” belongs inherently not to a legal priesthood as did Aaron. Rather Jesus, coming “not through a legal requirement concerning physical descent,” became “a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek,” meaning, “through the power of an indestructible life.” Jesus differs in that as “our Lord” his destination is heaven “at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (1:3; 7:26).
The result, now set forth in pastoral terms, is “a better hope, through which we approach God.”(For the previous references to hope, see 3:6 and 6:11, 18.) (for the law made nothing perfect); The relationship between God and humans changes. The therefore “earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual” is now set aside: “the law made nothing perfect.” As it takes life to bring forth life, Jesus, in “the power of an indestructible life,” is our hope,
a hope that has been characterized as “faith on tiptoe.” This is the way the people of God, we Christians are to “approach God” as our life in faith is grounded in a Son who is
III.
• “a priest forever’”
(The Son’s Permanent and Perfect Priesthood)
(7:20-28)
The Hebrews’ author never lets us get far from the adverb “forever”as he continues to spin out the implications of the priesthood of the Son of God. From “a better hope,” he moves on to our relationship to God now founded on
“a better covenant”(7:22.)
20This was confirmed with an oath; for others who became priests took their office without an oath, 21but this one became a priest with an oath, because of the one who said to him,
“The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever’”—
22accordingly Jesus has also become the guarantee of a better covenant.. 23Furthermore, the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; 24but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. 25Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. In contrast to the old priesthood, whose priests “took their office
without an oath,” this new priesthood was divinely sanctioned long ago, for it “was confirmed with an oath” in Psalm 110:4. As we have seen (6:13-18), the divine oath signifies the integrity and the unchanging purposes of God:
this one became a priest with an oath, because of the one who said to him,
The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever.”
Therefore this priest, “Jesus,” this one has “become the guarantee(The Greek word translated “guarantee” is a commercial term used to guarantee contracted debts or the fulfillment of a promise (225).) of a better covenant.” “Better,” Why? Because the priests under the old covenant all died and were unable to continue in office, but this Jesus “always lives to make intercession” made possible by his atoning death, resurrection, and exaltation to God’s right hand (1:3; 2:17).The risen Jesus as “such a high priest” (v. 26) is “the supreme
advocate for God’s people against every charge made against them”(See Rom. 8:33-34; 1 John 2:1.) (227).
Thus “he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him.” The deliberately ambiguous phrase “for all time” could also mean the qualitative “completely” (NIV), the meaning translated by the King James, “able to save them to the uttermost.”
So we can look finally in our own time to
“A Son . . .made perfect forever”
26For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. 27Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself. 28For the law appoints as high priests those who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.
“It was fitting that we should have,” or we now have one who “meets
our need” (NIV), declares our writer, “a Son who has been made perfect forever.” This Son, “such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners”(Anderson, Hebrew,s 230, explains these terms: the term “holy” (hosios) is not from the more common
family of words used for holiness (hagios, etc.), but following the LXX usage here “in Heb 7:26 reprises the theme of Jesus’ reverent submission and obedience to God (in 5:7-8). It is used only once in Hebrews while the other terms are used twenty-eight times. “Blameless” is predominately a moral quality describing someone who is innocent. “Undefiled,” incorrupt or “pure” (NIV), has here a broad moral sense rather than cultic purity which it can indicate. “Separated from sinners” could refer to either or both “Jesus location and status in God’s presence” or “a further explication of Jesus’ moral purity.”)who, instead of offering sacrifices daily “first for his own sins, and then for those of the people,”
offered himself
once for all for our sins.
Jesus as the Son, now “exalted above the heavens,” was not a high priest who was “subject to weakness,” but by the word of a divine oath, “which came later than the law,” was appointed by God “a Son who has been made perfect forever.” who, instead of offering sacrifices daily “first for his own
Conclusion
The theme of perfection has permeated our passage, up front, halfway, and in the final word, as the author’s concern for his readers. His theme focuses on the Son who offered himself once for all for our sins. This “Son who has been made perfect forever” is himself the very nature and substance of our perfection as Christians. How? We will see!
In our crucified and risen Lord is our “better hope” and in him we possess a “better covenant.” The author will proceed to spin out our perfection as worshippers of God in the chapters that follow. He will commence this in chapter eight as he introduces us to Christ’s supreme ministry as the mediator of a better covenant. There we will continue to look beyond Psalm 110:4 as the author’s iconic use of it has set us up to do.
____________________________
First Church of the Nazarene
3901 Lomaland Drive
San Diego, California 92016, United States
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment