Christ is Superior in His Accomplishment (Heb. 1:3)

when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

·        Note the Past Tense of the statement - the action of the accomplishment is in the past.

·    Note the Definiteness of the statement - the action of the accomplishment is finished.

·    Note the “Singleness” of the statement - He did it by Himself…

·    Note the Propitious of the statement - the action of the accomplishment is on our behalf - not on His own.

·    Note the Marvel of the Statement - Christ entered into that Presence where even Holy Angels cannot go without veiled eyes…

·    Note the Effectiveness of the accomplishment - He “sat down” in the presence of God.

·    No one sits in God’s presence - no one - NO ONE!

·    Only God Himself! (an argument for the Deity of Christ)

·    The sitting indicates and accepted work…a received offering.

·    The work that Christ had done had been received by the Majesty on High, the offended party if you will…

·    The matter was settled - forever settled and done.

·    All of this sets us up for a discussion, a view in the rest of the chapter of the superiority of our Lord in the superiority…

Humbling Yet Gladdening

   Lord, It is my earnest hope and desire to be the man of God that You desire me to be. I know that one is always what one truly desires to be, and I truly believe that is for Your Word says that it is out of the ABUNDANCE of the heart that the mouth speaks, and the implication of the passage is that it is out of the abundance of the hear that the mouth is silent as well.
   Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is confess my sin and my sinfulness. But I suppose that is better than not doing so...not to be flip, but it my earnest desire not to give up and not to simply cave into the frailty and the cravenness of my flesh. It is indeed a traitorous and betraying mass of what seems like a foreigner to me at times, but then at other times it is that which I know and love all to well and I can only throw myself on my face before You, wishing myself to be in black corner of the world somewhere, lamenting that there is nowhere that I can crawl to escape Your sight. So often, all TOO often, that which is wondrous and a great blessing for we who are You children becomes that which haunts and pursues and beleaguers us.
   Ultimately, of course, (and THANKFULLY) this is magnificent and a great benefit and blessing, for without it we could lapse into the same moral condition as the unredeemed (at least I would). Apart from the dogged pursuit of God's Spirit, not ever giving up and never resting in His pursuit of me, despite my repeated descent into the same filth and nonsense, the same rebellion and blasphemy of His Name and purpose - let's call it what it is - without HIS faithfulness to what HE promised in the face of MY unfaithfulness to all that I have promised...
   But as always, was this not what out Lord had in mind when, in eternity past when He and our gracious Father entered into covenant together to redeem us? My goodness - how truly humbling and how very, VERY crushing to the ego and the pride is it to remember that it was not our merit, such as it might be, that God had in mind when he called me to be His child, but rather that He called me IN SPITE OF the very lack of that merit.
   Somehow I have to believe that this is thing that you desire and this is thing that is of benefit to to me and to my spiritual life...and for that I am grateful - Father, use these matters to enable me to be that which You have called and prepared me to be...

Christ As the Image of God’s Person

³ who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

·      the express image

·         χαρακτήρ[1] (charaktēr), ῆρος (ēros), ὁ (ho): the exact representation, or reproduction

·         From an older word denoting “the tool for engraving,” χαρακτήρ came to be used of the “mark,” “impress” made, with special reference to any distinguishing peculiarity, and hence = “an exact reproduction.”[2]

·         In the secular Greek it referred generally

·    To the impression on a coin (esp. the image on the coin),

·    The impression of a seal, indeed,

·    Ultimately to coins, stamps, or seals themselves[3].

·         Philo in particular applies χαρακτήρ to mankind, which according to Gen 1:26f. received God’s → “εἰκών” or image as the basic imprint at its creation; i.e., in the logos mankind is imprinted by God.[4]

·         This is another instance where this is only occurrence of the word in the NT.

 

·      of His person,[5]

·         Speaks of substance, nature, or essence - (Heb 1:3+)

…who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,…

·         Lit., “a standing under, support” (hupo, “under,” histemi, “to stand”), hence, an “assurance,” is so rendered in Heb. 11:1, rv, for kjv, “substance.”

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

·         It here may signify a title-deed, as giving a guarantee, or reality. ^[6]

·         More often it speaks of the fact of trust, confidence, or being sure; the intangible substance of a quality.

·         2 Corinthians 9:4

⁴ lest if some Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we (not to mention you!) should be ashamed of this confident boasting.

·         2 Corinthians 11:17  

¹⁷ What I speak, I speak not according to the Lord, but as it were, foolishly, in this confidence of boasting.

·         Hebrews 3:14

¹⁴ For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end,

·         The Scripture has some things to say about mages…In the OT there at least two kinds^[7] (Not counting man being in the image of God, of course, for that is entirely another matter)

 

Images Of Foreign Gods

·         Of course, the making and worshipping of images is forbidden by Pentateuchal law

·         Exodus 20:4–5

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; ⁵ you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

·         Likewise they were condemned by the prophets

·         Jeremiah 10:3–5

³ For the customs of the peoples are futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
⁴ They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.
⁵ They are upright, like a palm tree,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot go by themselves.
Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good.”

·         Hosea 11:2

² As they called them,
So they went from them;
They sacrificed to the Baals,
And burned incense to carved images.

·         Even so, throughout pre-exilic times Idolatry was common

·         Judges 6:25

²⁵ Now it came to pass the same night that the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the wooden image that is beside it;

·         1 Kings 11:5–8

⁵ For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. ⁶ Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not fully follow the Lord, as did his father David. ⁷ Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. ⁸ And he did likewise for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. (300)

·         1 Kings 16:31–33

³¹ And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians; and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. ³² Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. ³³ And Ahab made a wooden image. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

·         even at times within the Temple itself

·         2 Kings 21:3-7

³ For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; he raised up altars for Baal, and made a wooden image, as Ahab king of Israel had done; and he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. ⁴ He also built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put My name.” ⁵ And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. ⁶ Also he made his son pass through the fire, practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft, and consulted spiritists and mediums. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. ⁷ He even set a carved image of Asherah that he had made, in the house of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My name forever;

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[1]   James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains : Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

[2]   James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930). 683.

[3]   BAGD s.v.; G. Kelber, TDNT IX, 418f.

[4]   Horst Robert Balz and Gerhard Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990-). 456.

[5]   Op. Cit., Swanson, Dictionary.

^[6]   W. E. Vine, Merrill F. Unger and William White, Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 1996). 43.

^[7]    D. R. W. Wood and I. Howard Marshall, New Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996). 499.

Christ is Superior in His Purging (Hebrews 1:3)

“When He had by himself purged our sins” (Hebrews 1:3).

·         This is the work of Christ on Calvary. Salvation is a purging from sins. Sin makes one defiled. The prophets could condemn and warn about sin, but they could not cleanse anyone from sin.

·      when

·         Included in the verb form

·      by Himself

·         “by” is another  use of the instrumental preposition we have seen before.

·         Here it suggests the instrument or means by which a thing is accomplished.

·         The Son, by Himself, purged our sins.

·         The real emphasis in the phrase is thus on the “by Himself” part.

·         “Himself” is a reflexive pronoun.  The action of the phrase reflects back on the subject.

·         It is usually rendered “He, Himself”

·         Luke 23:2

² And they began to accuse Him, saying, “We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.”

·         Acts 25:4

⁴ But Festus answered that Paul should be kept at Caesarea, and that he himself was going there shortly.

·      He had purged

·         Actually a combination of terms:

·         A simple verb: “Made” - but a participle form in that “snapshot” past tense we’ve talked about before

·         We’re meant to see this as an ongoing, active event, just in the past (The actual time is not important).

·         And then the noun for “purification”, ^[1] speaking of spiritually cleansing or ceremonial washing

·         Mark 1:44

⁴⁴ and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

·         Luke 2:22

²² Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord

·         Similarly Lk. 5:14; Jn 2:6; Jn. 3:25; 2Pe 1:9

·         2 Peter 1:9

⁹ For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

·         A change of verb tense focuses attention on the Son’s atoning death in history, the priestly act that cleanses us to worship in God’s presence. ^[2]

·         Hebrews 9:14

¹⁴ how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

·         “Purification” of sins was the work of priests; mention of it here anticipates a theme that appears later in the book. ^[3]

·      our sins,

·         “sins” is plural and so does not refer to the two non-specific meanings of the word “hamartia”.

·         It speaks of sin^[4] in the sense of wrong-doing

·         1 Timothy 5:22

²² Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people’s sins; keep yourself pure.

·         They are “our” sins, not His.

·         Specific sins for each of us sinners!

·         Used 18 Times (Between LXX and NT)

·         1 Samuel 12:19

And all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, that we may not die; for we have added to all our sins the evil of asking a king for ourselves.”

·         2 Chronicles 28:13

and said to them, “You shall not bring the captives here, for we already have offended the Lord. You intend to add to our sins and to our guilt; for our guilt is great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel.”

·         Nehemiah 9:37

And it yields much increase to the kings You have set over us, Because of our sins; Also they have dominion over our bodies and our cattle At their pleasure; And we are in great distress.

·         Psalm 79:9

Help us, O God of our salvation, For the glory of Your name; And deliver us, and provide atonement for our sins, For Your name’s sake!

·         Psalm 103:10

He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities.

·         Isaiah 59:12

For our transgressions are multiplied before You, And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And as for our iniquities, we know them:

·         Ezekiel 33:10

“Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: ‘Thus you say, “If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?” ’

·         Daniel 9:16

“O Lord, according to all Your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all those around us.

·         Micah 7:19

He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea.

·         Luke 11:4

And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.”

·         1 Corinthians 15:3

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

·         Galatians 1:4

who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

·         1 Peter 2:24

who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness— by whose stripes you were healed.

·         1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

·         1 John 2:2

And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

·         1 John 3:5

And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.

·         1 John 4:10

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

·         Revelation 1:5

and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,  

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^[1]       Op. Cit., Swanson.

^[2]       Op. Cit., Whitlock, Sproul, Waltke and Silva, Reformation Study Bible, the : Bringing the Light of the Reformation to Scripture : Heb 1:3.

[3]       Craig S. Keener and InterVarsity Press, The IVP Bible Background Commentary : New Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993). Heb 1:3.

^[4]       Op. Cit., Swanson.