Christ – the Purification for sin

For the Lord’s Day:  the 10^th of November 2002

 

Hebrews: 1: 3d

 

“In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son,

… after making purification for sins,”

Introduction:  As we all know and are unfortunately learning from the 24/7 news broadcasts: we live in dangerous times.  The thirty year long Cold War has been ending for the last decade.  Unfortunately, what most of the world little realizes is the fact that most of our current international problems relate back to subversive activities which were subsidized during the long twilight struggle of that infamous Cold War.  SMERSH: was once an acronym more common to the James Bond films than to its true historicity. 

 

In point of fact, the devil’s own work was the object of that particular Soviet organization charged with the destabilization of the western powers.  Many means were funded and organized.  Local banditos from all over the world were invited to Moscow for funding and training.  Training accidents and such were used to purify the devotion of those trainees who were returned to Central and South America, to the Southeast of Asia, the Middle East. Even criminal gangs in Japan, Ireland and Italy prospered from covert support.  In more sophisticated areas of the world, where violence was unlikely to topple the political power structure – professors, politicians and activist intellectuals were recruited and funded to undermine the conceptual freedoms of Western Civilization.

 

Today, those formerly subsidized subordinates have taken on the pretensions and weapons of power and do exercise them with the wealth generated by oil, drugs and even many wealthy western corporate foundations.  Some of these assorted functionaries are even dangerous to their former protagonists.  There are also trails of bread crumbs (if I may use that phrase in the monetary sense), which lead to all sorts of interesting places within the disparate exercisers of power politics and corporate wealth.

 

Now, if I may be so bold to set the stage for why I begin with this scenario, let me state that it appears that only one man, with the support of a handful of faithful patriots, is willing to take a knife to the Gordian knot of politico/socialist/terrorist relationships around the world.  Will GW be successful, in the face of opposition from even American socialists who have all but taken control of our essential leading institutions?  That is a question that will remain open for some time and I will have to leave that introductory thought unresolved so that I may outline the providential plan of the Creator God laid out in and through the wisdom of the Holy Scriptures.

 

Development:  I would ask you to take the image of the long silent twilight war of recent human memory and apply that scenario to the biblical working out of God’s providence from the time of the first Adam down to the appearance of the second Adam: Jesus Christ on the stage of history!  Some months from now, we will recite the glorious working out of that history through God’s providence which is described in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews – where we read of the heroic saints who served the counter-revolution whereby God intended to reclaim the paradise lost, which Lucifer/Satan has sought to claim and control!

 

This spiritual revolution was of course disputed and very carefully, step by step the Lord God of creation revealed His sovereign plan to destroy death, hell and all the principalities and powers who would oppose His ongoing and final rule of and over all things.  Our text today announces the great theme, which like the opening notes in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: resounds throughout this glorious letter to the Hebrews penned by an unnamed Apostle.

 

The textus receptus has a couple of words in our text for today that the English Standard Version does not report.  Listen carefully to the New King James Version: “when He had by Himself purged our sins.”  Those two words “by Himself” should be so obvious from the context of our text, that even if our contemporary translations wish to leave them out, their obvious truth should be evident even if unstated.

 

But there is the grandest of themes here in the context of verse three in our first chapter of Hebrews.  Listen to the Scots commentator John Brown state our theme for the day:  “This glorious person is introduced to our notice in the next clause, in very different, but to us sinful men, in a still more interesting aspect:  ‘When He had by Himself purged our sins ….’ – The Apostle could not conceal this without mutilating, without destroying, the system; but when he brings it forward he does so in connection with the great, benevolent, absolutely necessary purpose which it was intended to serve, and the glorious consequences with which it had been followed.  He purged our sins, or made a cleansing of our sins.”

 

Brown goes on to explain that “here, and indeed throughout this Epistle, the word, and its cognate expressions, plainly refer to expiation.  To purge our sins, or to expiate our sins, - to make atonement for them, - is just to do what, in the estimation of infinite wisdom and righteousness, is necessary in order to our being delivered from the natural consequences of our sins, in a way consistent with the honour of the Divine perfections, and the stability and prosperity of the Divine moral administration – to do what may make it just in God to justify the ungodly, and lay a foundation for fitting man for intercourse with God.”

 

Our Confession describes the implication of the text in these words:  “The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience, and sacrifice of Himself, which He through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto Him.”

 

Now, there are some implications in our Confessional paragraph just read that justify using the English Standard Version translation: “after making purification for sin.,”  John Owen explains the point:  “This ‘purification for sins,’ then, which the apostle says happened before the ascension of Christ, is not the actual sanctification of believers by the Spirit, but the atonement made by Christ in his sacrifice, that our sins should not be imputed to us.  Therefore it says ‘he provided purification for sins,’ not that he purged us from our sins.  And whenever sins, not sinners, are made the object of any mediatory act of Christ, that act refers to God and not the sinners, and removes sin, so that it should not be imputed.

 

In the grand linguistic display within verse three, John Brown observes:  “The efficacy of our Lord’s sacrifice is to be traced to the dignity of His person.  It was because He gave Himself, the Son, ‘the brightness of God’s glory, the express image of His person,’ that He succeeded in purging our sins.  We have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sin; for He is the image of the invisible God, the Lord of the whole creation.”

 

Application:  Now, let us consider the placement of these key phrases within the book of Hebrews.  Here is the theme royally sounded within the first three verses.  Here, John Brown tells us, is “the germ the leading arguments for the superiority of Christianity to Judaism,” which purpose we understand is given to the letter and the major reason for its writing.  In support of this assessment Brown lists four points in support.  Two of these points of application will be the outline for our remaining time together this morning.  The other two points we will take up next week in the context of Christ’s ascension.

 

The first point for establishing the superiority of Christianity over Judaism is the scripturally revealed and reported fact that Jesus Christ offered Himself to mediate between the awesome holiness and righteous justice of our Creator God and the sheer impossibility for mere sinful man to attain to any such imputed godliness apart from the person and work of Jesus Christ.

 

Job anticipated the need for the purpose of Christ here:  “If there be for him an angel, a mediator, one of the thousand, to declare to man what is right for him, and he is merciful to him, and says ‘Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom’ … then man prays to God, and he accepts him; he sees his face with a shout of joy, and he restores to man his righteousness.” (Job 33: 23-24 & 26)

 

This fact is also reported by our same author later in the letter:  In (Hebrews 9: 12, 14 & 26b) we read: 

 

“[Jesus] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.’

 

“How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

 

“As it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

 

The second point for establishing the superiority of Christianity over Judaism is the fact that He was the only priest authorized by God to make a final once for all atoning sacrifice.  We will read about the shadowy Priestly order of Melchizedek in a later Chapter: the Seventh of Hebrews.  There we will discover several things in this context: (Hebrews 7: 3, 15-17, 22, 26-27)

 

“[Melchizedek] is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever.”

 

“This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.  For it is witnessed of him, ‘You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.’”

 

“This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.”

 

“For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.  He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily … since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.”

 

We who are Christian would think that the Jewish religious authorities would have been in a real spiritual quandary ever since 70 AD when the necessary animal sacrifices of millennia were forcibly ended through the providence of the Hebrew God?  After all, how might they offer atonement for sin, without the Temple precincts and sacrificial system?

 

I only ask the question, I am certain that the contemporary Jewish religion has a ready explanation that soothes the consciences of their people.  After all, any number of cults and even Christian sects - have developed conceptual means of atonement for sin through the works righteousness doctrines that plague the hearts of soul of millions.

 

How much the ancients looked forward for the coming of the Jewish Messiah, and how gladly did millions accept the doctrines of grace.  We would do well to better understand this atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the meditorial work of being a Priest after the order of Melchizedek did offer in Himself the only sacrifice that could or would atone for the sins of mankind.

 

Raymond Brown admonishes us to focus on this essential meaning and application of this text:  “In his own person, [Jesus] did for sinful man what man could never achieve for himself.  The law said, ‘Do this.’  It demanded man’s work.  But Christ came and effected by his saving death man’s purification from sin.  His message was, ‘Trust this.’  Man was urged to believe in Christ’s work, not his own.  It was not to be achieved by the multiplicity of good works, but by Christ’s work.”

 

This is why you often hear the invitation to “Trust in Jesus Christ”.  The reason for that invitation is based not only upon who Jesus is, but also upon what He did – and the substance of that work is the grandest theme in all of spiritual literature.  And as we study this theme in the Book of Hebrews, let us gladly accept the doctrine and glory in the work of the Savior who has called us, and will keep us as His own both now and forever after.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

 

Brown, John.  A Geneva Series Commentary: Hebrews.

Brown, Raymond.  The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of Hebrews.

Bruce, F.F. The Epistle to the Hebrews.

Owen, John:  Commentary on Book of Hebrews.

The Westminster Confession of Faith

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

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