5.27.15–>”Loving Covenant or Transactional Contract?: Hebrews 9:11-28″

Holy-of-Holies

Hebrews 9:24

For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by human hands, the copy and pattern of the heavenly one, but into the heavenly one itself, where he now appears in God’s presence on our behalf.

It’s kind of a mind-bending thought that Jesus, upon his death on the cross, entered the actual Holy of Holies, God’s presence, and offered his blood to YHWH on our behalf.

YHWH gave specific instructions to Israel way back in the day to construct the tabernacle to be an earthly, human-made representation of what exists in the heavenly realm. The point was not the old Jewish sacrificial system itself, but to foreshadow the work his son would do thousands of years later.

As we’ve already said, the high priest descended from Levi would enter the Holy of Holies one day a year to offer blood for all the people’s sins. But this Jesus enters the real HOH, offering his own blood, as opposed to animals’, and offers it just one time, which is all that is needed forever.

Again, what we crazy Christians believe.

This is pretty out there, right? Yet, oddly comforting and beautiful when you think about it. Someone has gone to incredibly great lengths to be close to us. I think that’s the message, not that we’re so disgusting and Jesus had to save us from God. Obviously, we’re quite precious to God.

I can’t really wrap my head around all of this.

I see the reiteration of Christianity being a “done” religion as opposed to a “do” religion. We talk about receiving, but I wonder if a good word would be recognizing. Recognizing what already is, and then living into it.

Also, I’ve been thinking how American Christianity has been very transactional. The emphasis seems to be on the contractual nature of atonement rather than the covenantal picture we see over and over in Scripture. Christ calls us to a loving covenant, not a transactional contract.

In the name of Jesus, Soli Deo Gloria

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