Tag Archives: Christ

Bible Study, Hebrews

On Guard

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In the opening chapters of the book of Numbers, we find Israel in the wilderness of Sinai.  The LORD is speaking to Moses instructing him to take a census of Israel and to subsequently divide and arrange the 12 tribes.  While these arrangements concerned both the camping and the marching of Israel, it may be properly said that God was forming battalions for war (Numbers 1:3).

As the census of chapter 1 is undertaken, we find the people of Joseph, “namely, of the people of Ephraim,” constituting one tribe, while, “the people of Manassah” constitute another tribe.  On the surface, this would create a problem numbering the tribes- creating an additional tribe – recalling the blessing of Jacob from Genesis 48, unless one of the original twelve were not counted.  This is precisely the case as God commands Moses not to count the tribe of Levi.

“For the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, Only the tribe of Levi you shall not list, and you shall not take a census of them among the people of Israel.” Numbers 1:48

Following this, we see the role that the Levites were to have in the camp of Israel, namely their oversight of the “tabernacle of the testimony, and over all its furnishings, and over all that belongs to it.  They are to carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings, and they shall take care of it and shall camp around the tabernacle.  When the tabernacle is to set out, the Levites shall take it down, and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up.  And if any outsider comes near, he shall be put to death.” Numbers 1:49-51

The Levites were the only tribe to whom this responsibility of caring for the tabernacle and all of its appurtenances were given.  In addition to the tasks of oversight of the tabernacle and its furnishings, care and camping around it, and set up and tear down, the Levites were also the guardians of the tabernacle.

52 The people of Israel shall pitch their tents by their companies, each man in his own camp and each man by his own standard. 53 But the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, so that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the people of Israel. And the Levites shall keep guard over the tabernacle of the testimony.” Numbers 1:52-53

The Levites were exempt from day to day military campaigns, but were explicitly charged with guarding the tabernacle.  On the one hand, they guarded the tabernacle from outsiders.  In other words, the access to God was restricted by the Levites, lest those who encroached were to be put to death.  In this light, there is also guardianship to protect the people from the wrath of God.  In this respect, the Levites function as two-way guardians to prevent the common from coming into contact with the holy and also providing protection from the holy, namely God, from coming into contact with the common via His wrath.

As to the particularity of their guardianship, this is the same word used in reference to Adam in Garden.  Recall that in Adam’s Rest, we looked at Genesis 2:15 and determined that Adam was “rested” in the Garden in order to “tend and keep” it.  There we saw that this particularly phrase was priestly and is elsewhere translated in priestly contexts as guard and minister or serve.  Our passage under consideration from Numbers is one such example of this priestly context of guardianship.  This reinforces our conclusions regarding Adam’s role and function as a priest in the garden-temple of God. For the combination of both terms, see Numbers 3:7-8, where the Levitical guardianship and service are further defined.

Flowing out of a passage that discusses the mediation of God’s holiness by a Levitical Priest, one cannot help but see the parallels with the priestly ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, the One Mediator between God and Man 1 Tim. 2:5).  However, as Hebrews tells us, His priesthood is after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 5:10; 6:20; 7:17).  Access to God comes only through Christ (John 14:6).  It is through Him that we, the common, have access to the holy, namely the Father (Eph. 2:18).  But also it is through Christ that God’s wrath has been placated, or propitiated, towards us who have repented and placed our God-given faith in Christ (1 John 2:2; Heb. 2:17).  The typological picture painted for us in this Old Testament priestly passage is a picture of Christ.

With this in mind, the imagery of guardianship over God’s dwelling place can be used as an illustration for personal, individual duty of believers to guard God’s dwelling place, though not of a tabernacle made with hands, but the very temple of believer’s bodies in which God’s Spirit indwells (1 Cor. 6:19-20).  Our guardianship is likewise against the common, or profane, to keep it from coming into contact with where the holy dwells.

We are to guard against corruptions, those external and internal that would defile the tabernacle of God.  We are to guard against the placement of idols, high places if you will, that would attempt to subvert the worship of God in our hearts.  We are to guard with a recognition of the fear of God, knowing that the discipline of God is meted out against all unrighteousness.

Through this passage, perhaps somewhat obscure in its details of the Levitical guardianship of the tabernacle, we have opened up for us a gateway into meditation on the High Priestly ministry of Christ.  It should draw our hearts and minds unto Christ who stands on guard daily at the right hand of the Father to make intercession for us.  This is the direction that the passage points us.  But we also have a picture drawn for us, one that shows a priestly duty is still required by God’s priests (1 Peter 2:5-9; Heb. 4:16, 10:19), a duty unto holiness in guarding the temple of God from being profaned by the common and unholy.

 

 

Christian Living, Devotions, Genesis, Hebrews

Every Advantage

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In thinking through the circumstances surrounding both Adam and Noah that we’ve seen in recent posts, there is at least one commonality between them that is shared with believers in Christ today, primarily the advantages that they had, and those that we have, which lend themselves towards aiding in our obedience to God.  Yet like them, even with every advantage, we still sin.

Pre-fall Man

Reviewing the case with Adam, we know that God rested him in the garden, which He had ordained to bring forth lush vegetation and food, apart from the efforts of the first man.  His primary duty was obedience and service before the Lord, as a priest, but also as a protector of the garden and all that was in it.  As it is sometimes explained, Adam had the ability to sin and the ability to not sin  (Latin = posse peccare, posse non peccare).  Though he was created sinless, his nature was mutable, or changeable.  He had the moral free agency to choose to sin or choose to not sin.  He was given dominion over creation, abundant food to eat as he pleased, and a wife who came alongside him as a help-mate.  By all accounts Adam was living in perfection.  If anyone could claim to be living their best life now, it was Adam, pre-fall.

Yet despite all of these blessings from God; despite all of the advantages, Adam still succumbed to temptation, that conceived with his inmost desires of discontentment and brought forth sin.  Despite literally having it all, including most importantly, direct communion with God, Adam was dissatisfied and chose to sin.

After Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, man now had the ability to sin, but lost the ability to not sin, thus inheriting the corruption of Adam’s original sin by means of a sinful nature which carried with it the inability to not sin (non posse non peccare).  This is simply referred to as man’s inability.  Instead of retaining the moral free agency that Adam had briefly enjoyed, his offspring -namely all mankind, as was evident with Cain- became enslaved to sin, their wills now held captive to sin.

Post-Fall Man

It was with this sinful nature that Noah entered upon the scene of God’s creation, now with a cursed ground and living among a rebellious people.  However, Noah found favor in God’s sight (even with the presence of a sinful nature, which should be an encouragement to us).  With Noah, God decided to set-apart a new people for Himself and chose Noah and his family out of all the peoples of the earth.  God then rained down judgment upon the earth, because of the sinfulness of man, through a world-wide flood, preserving Noah, his wife, and their sons and wives along with a selection of animals to repopulate the earth.

It was into this new creation, this new garden, that God opened the doors of the ark to complete the rescue of his people.  Noah, as a new priest in a new temple (Genesis 8:20), had, like his great grandfather Adam, every advantage at his fingertips.  No longer was he faced with the ridicule and mockery of a people who doubted the words of his preaching, but it was him alone with his family with a renewed commandment of “be fruitful and multiply” and a new charge to have dominion over creation.  To show His steadfast love and faithfulness, God enters into a covenant with Noah.  This time there is no prohibition of eating from a particular tree, instead there is a prohibition to “not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Gen. 9:4) again carrying with it the consequences of death for its violation.  As God reveals this commandment, we see it specifically applied to the murder of man, who God reminds us, was made in His own image.

Again, despite all of the advantages presented to Noah, just like Adam he too fell, quickly (Genesis 9:21-29).  Despite the flood cleansing the world from its external wickedness, the seed of sin was allowed to germinate in the hearts of the eight who were saved through the waters of judgment.  The ability to sin and the inability to not sin remained.

Until Christ.

Sinless Man

These principles of the sinful nature, inherent in man after the fall, highlight the supreme importance of the sinlessness of Christ, more specifically that He was born sinless and remained sinless.  Because of the uniqueness of Christ’s birth, the unbroken line of the sinful nature was broken, in Him.  The generational succession of the ability to sin and the inability to not sin was not transmitted to Him.  We say then that Christ was impeccable, or that He was unable to sin (non posse peccare – note the distinction between this an Adam’s original state).  While a minority position has often claimed that Christ did have the ability to sin, all must conclude that He did not actually sin, as Scripture so adamantly asserts (1 Peter 2:22; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 3:5).  Christ alone was sinless.

Our Lord, we may be reminded, was not afforded all the advantages of His grandfathers Adam and Noah.  He entered into this world with nothing, literally being born nowhere, coming from nowhere, and then having all of this nothing stripped further away during His own wilderness garden experience.  Here, Christ was not surrounded by lush vegetation bringing forth an abundance of food effortlessly, but He fasted, for 40 days, surrounded by thorns and thistles of a cursed land and subjected to the wild beasts (Mark 1:13).  He then, throughout His ministry, was subjected to every temptation, yet unlike us, did not sin (Hebrews 4:15).  In His next garden experience, this one more lush than His last, He was given the sentence of death. Whereas His grandfather’s were given prohibitions that carried the sentence of death for their violations, Christ was given the sentence of death despite not having a violation of His own.

Renewed Man

The death of the sinless Christ for sinful man and His subseuqent resurrection, attesting to His sinlessness, now made it possible for those who have repented, and been united to Him by faith, to not sin.  Because of Christ, those in Him, given a new nature and a regenerate heart, have returned to the state of the original Adam having now both the ability to sin and the ability to not sin (posse peccare, posse non peccare).  No longer then are our wills enslaved to sin.  No longer do we possess a moral inabiltiy wherein all we do is sin continually.  No, the redeem actually do have the ability to not sin!

Like our forefathers, Adam and Noah, we have even greater advantages.  We are able to live on this side of the cross, this side of our Lord’s resurrection, we know and can see the power of sin, but the greater power of grace.

We are co-heirs with Christ, seated with Him in the heavenly places. We now have access to the Father through the Son and can come freely into His presence at anytime. Not only this but we have been united to Christ, clothed with His righteous, bought by His blood, redeemed from the power of sin, and have had the wrath of God removed from us, by Christ’s propitiation.  Not only this but we have Christ as our Mediator, our High Priest, and the Captain of our salvation.  Not only this, but we have been given His Word as a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths.  Literally the Word of the living God has been made accessible to us, to have, read, and meditate upon at any time.

As if those advantages were not numerous and weighty enough, we have been given a Helper, the Comforter, the Paraclete, God’s Holy Spirit who resides not among us on the outside, but internally in our now regenerate hearts.  All of these advantages working for our good to bring us into conformity with Christ and fulfilling His promise to complete this work until our day of salvation.  Regenerate man reclaimed the ability to not sin while simultaneously retaining the ability to sin.

But herein lies the problem.  Given far more advantages than both Adam and Noah, we still sin.  That ability to sin is still within and is an active, vital force within us until the day we die.  The Apostle Paul laments this very fact as he surveys the duality within his own heart, two laws at is were, warring against one another (Romans 7:21-23).  The flesh vs. the spirit, the former lusting against the latter while the latter wars against the former (Galatians 5:17). If Christ had simply died to return us to the former state of Adam, we would still be damned because of the continual presence of the ability to sin in our natures.

Glorified Man

But thanks be to God He did more than that.  Christ was not content to simply leave us in a pre-fall Adamic state.  No, more than this He was intent to bring us into glory.  The glorified state of man where we will one day have the ability to not sin and likewise the inability to sin, as our Lord did.  Praise be to God as we long for this day when sin is no longer crouching at our door step.  When the war within us has ceased and the spirit is alone without carrying along the rotten carcass of the flesh.  Then in the New Garden, when we return to the restful state intended by God for man, we Will serve God night and day as priests with every advantage at our fingertips, including the renewed communion with God forever to be enjoyed because sin, the devil, and the flesh have been eradicated.

Praise be to God, come quickly Lord Jesus for we long for the day!

 

Bible Study, Hebrews

The Eternal, Preexistent, Immutable Christ

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Several years ago, I was advised that anytime I stepped into a pulpit or in front of people to preach or teach I should avoid using “theological” language.  I pushed back at the time, realizing that American Christianity (Christendom) suffers from theological anemia, therefore instead of efforts to keep people in an ignorant state, a preacher/teacher should effort to raise them up to a level of theological understanding and engagement.  If we, as a people, can remember last nights box scores, follow through meandering plot lines in the latest t.v. show, or engage with endless amounts of media and data on a daily basis, then a failure to understand theological words is not due to inability, rather it’s more likely due to indifference.

In the 13th chapter of Hebrews, the Author is rounding out his epistle to the Jewish Christians of the first century (probably 65-66 A.D.) by summarizing what has been said thus far and offering a series of moral exhortations.  One key summary verse comes in Hebrews 13:8

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

At first glance, the short, pithy verses of chapter 13 seem disconnected, perhaps especially this verse.  We saw recently in an earlier post regarding the commands for these believers to remember their leaders, who had likely died.  Here we see the that despite the passing of their leaders, despite their faithful preaching of the gospel, and now despite the influx of false teaching, the one constant is Christ.  He is the stable Anchor.  He is the unchanging Shepherd who continually guides His sheep regardless of the changing circumstances.  He ordains.  He sustains.

Three key theological terms percolate from this profound verse: Christ is Prexistent.  Christ is Eternal.  Christ is Immutable.  These concepts, all related, are not mentioned here for the first time, rather they are the culmination of the letter and bring it full circle with statements made in chapter 1.  There we see the following:

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
    the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

And,

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain;
    they will all wear out like a garment,
12 like a robe you will roll them up,
    like a garment they will be changed.
But you are the same,
    and your years will have no end.”

Here in chapter 13, and in chapter 1 cited above, we see these attributes of Christ acting as bookends to the letter as His supremacy unfolds in between establishing the focus of the Christian life.

Christ’s preexistence flows out of His eternality.  The former says that He has always been, the latter says that He will always be.  In between these two great truths stands the immutability of Christ, which says that He is unchanging.  What He was in His nature before time is what He is today and what He will be in the future.  Therefore He is perfectly consistent.  Though Christ became a man, His essence or character or attributes we might say, were unchanged.  His incarnation was an addition, not implying that He was incomplete, but an addition to His completeness.

The Preexistence of Christ

When it is said that Christ is preexistent, it affirms that He has no beginning, i.e. that He’s always been.  In the third century, one of the more influential heresies originated, out of Gnosticism, and came to be known as Arianism.  This belief asserted that the Son of God was created by the Father.  The debate hinged on John 3:16 (and others) and the meaning  of monogenes, commonly translated as begotten.  The opposition to Arianism crafted the phrase, “begotten, not made” (The Nicene Creed) which led to Arianism’s eventual banishment as a departure from scripture (though it was also made the official position of the empire at one point).  However, we see Arianism alive and well today, propagated by such cults as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witness.

Christ, as the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, did not come into being at His incarnation.  He stepped out of eternity and into humanity.  The Author entered His story; the Creator His creation.  John 3:13, John 8:58, John 17:5, Hebrews 1:2; John 1:1-18; Colossians 1:15-17; Philippians 2:5-7

The Eternality of Christ

Related, and implicit in declaring Christ’s preexistence, is His eternality.  Yesterday, today, and forever speaks to the fact that Christ has and will always exist.  That His existence is a past, present, and future reality.  Not only was He not created, unlike angels as established in chapter 1 and 2, and not only did He exist prior to His incarnation, but in His divine essence (and certainly now in His resurrected humanity), Christ will always exist.

In His own words, He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.  Surprisingly, much debate has raged on recently within orthodox circles over whether Christ has eternally been the Son, a position sometimes called eternal Sonship, see also this post from Hebrews 1.  This debate hinges on whether He became a Son at His incarnation, or whether He has always existed as the Son of God, a difficulty often attributed to interpretations on Hebrews 1:5 and again the use of monogenes or begotten.  However, as we have seen this passage is unlikely to be a reference to the incarnation, rather the enthronement of Christ (see also the use of Psalm 2 in Hebrews 5:5 and Acts 13:33).  Christ has always existed as the eternal Son of God, the same in essence and distinct in person.

The Immutability of Christ

The immutability of Christ speaks to His unchangeable being and character.  It would not be enough for us to have a Savior who is prexistent, nor is it enough that He is eternal, but that He is immutable makes all the difference.  This never-changing, unending constancy makes Him reliable and faithful.  It is the nature of this consistency that makes Him trustworthy.  If he were changeable, then He would be an all-powerful, eternal, yet unpredictable.  There would be no guarantee that He would forgive sins, extend grace, or raise the righteous from the dead.  He could simply change His mind on the whole thing.  Instead, He upholds His promises.  Therefore, the immutability of Christ is an essential quality and a comforting characteristic.

While these theological concepts may be difficult and may require a bit of mental exercise and effort, nevertheless it is clear that they are extremely important, far more than for mere doctrinal precision but for the practical reality that they are certainties that need to be affirmed in our ever-changing world.  The more we come to know and understand about Christ, the more we are brought to the feet of Him who is worthy of worship.