Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from the “Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide”, is titled “Jesus, the Perfect Sacrifice”. Once again, the writer of Hebrews uses the sacrificial system to explain the “plan of salvation”. Using the immense symbolism in the Old Testament rituals to move his hearers to a closer appreciation and love of God. The danger to those hearers (and to the readers in all ages since), is to take that symbolism and just place it in heaven. Or to just take it as written. Like so many things that God teaches us, He uses symbolism, parables and metaphors to teach us… often without explanation. And here is the “rub”. The book of Hebrews still uses symbolism as it draws parallels to Jesus that cries-out for even more explanation. Like so much of scripture, the tangible realities given us by God need to lead us to ask “what does it all mean?”. To just accept what it says without asking that question keeps us from achieving the healing (salvation) that God has for each. God does not reveal truth in this symbolic way in order to confuse us or in order to hide from us. On the contrary, He teaches like this because we sinners do not readily or intuitively understand the things of God at all. He knows, as all good teachers know, that each pupil must put forth effort to understand lessons that are truly foreign to them. And the more foreign the lesson, the more personal effort is needed to understand. And so, with the lessons of Love from our Father of Love. The hardest lessons of all. So, the Bible uses symbolism. To illuminate? Not in a direct way. But to make you dig, deeper and deeper to uncover the true meaning. The only way understanding can come.
In this week’s lesson, the quarterly does not really dig as much as I would like. Perhaps to encourage our own personal digging. For example, in Sunday’s lesson, it states “When Israel broke the covenant, God faced a painful predicament. The covenant demanded the death of the transgressors…”. Does it say that? The quarterly’s claim is based on an assumption made a couple sentences before… “This sprinkling (of blood) implies the destiny of the party who broke the covenant. This is why Hebrews says that, ‘without the shedding of blood there is no remission [of sins]’ (Hebrews 9:22)”. Is that what it means? Could we not dig a little to understand that statement more deeply?
Romans 6 gives us an explanation (please read). It says that the only way to be free from sin (remission/ forgiveness) is to die. “For he who has died has been freed from sin” (Romans 6:7). We are sinners through and through. It is not enough that Jesus dies… if we do not consent to die with Him. We must die in order to be free from sin. Our choice is either to die with Him and then have His eternal life as our own… or to die alone. But die we will. Not because the covenant demanded it but because it is a natural consequence of sin… “Sin pays its servants: the wage is death” (Romans 6:23, Phillips). Our sinful thinking cannot be improved, it cannot be appeased, it cannot be rehabilitated. The only escape from our sinful self is death. But death is final… unless we consent to “die” with Him. A submission so total, so complete, that “death” describes it most accurately.
In order to rightly understand any scripture, we must use all of Scripture in order to rightly understand. It is really one of the compelling teachings of the Seventh-Day Adventist faith. It is one of our tenets that helps us interpret and understand accurately. The Book of Hebrews along with Romans and Galatians give us a much more in-depth understanding of the sanctuary service. If we just migrate the whole service up to heaven without asking what the sacrifices all mean, then we are certainly migrating the same understanding the Jews in Christ’s day had when they rejected God-in-the-flesh. The very “god” they had come to understand, they read from the same Old Testament we read today. The Jews believed that there must be a death before God could forgive. And we Christians in the 21st Century repeat that same misunderstanding. We say that Christ needed to die in order for the Father to forgive. Yikes! We Christians have replicated the same error as the Jews in Christ’s day!
The sacrifices in the Sanctuary service do not represent a death penalty. They represent you and me recognizing that our sinfulness is death. And that we acknowledge that death… and we place ourselves, our life, in God’s hands. Christ’s death on the cross is a revelation that God carries us and our death… all the time… and calls us to surrender that sinful death to Him… die to all that thinking and acting with Him. Give it all up so totally it is really a death. And then rise to newness of life with Him. And it places the responsibility for our choice of total submission to God squarely where it belongs. On our shoulders.
I could write more (and I have before). The one compelling motive I have is that we Christians speak of God “what is right, as My servant Job has” (Job 42: 7-8). To speak accurately, affectionately and right. But to speak of the Father in a manner that demands sacrifices due to imposed penalties just “sends me”. This is not “right”. This is an interpretation based on a certain view and reading of Hebrews that does not take into consideration the “clues” dropped along the way in the book of Hebrews itself. The writer of Hebrews says that the purpose of the sanctuary services and sacrifices is to cleanse our consciences (Hebrews 9: 9, 14) and to have our hearts sprinkled and cleansed (Hebrews 10:22). Therefore, the purpose of “Jesus, the Perfect Sacrifice” and the Sanctuary service needs to be interpreted by this very important clue. The sacrifice is not to affect the Father, but to deeply affect each sinner (you and me) in a healing and life-changing way. It has everything to do with cleansing our perverted minds and hearts. And this is the purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice. Not to pay an imposed penalty. But to change you and me.
With brotherly love,
Jim