Bible Diary - Hebrews 9:11-14

September 14, 2008

There are two reasonable responses to the words below - the response of faith and the response of human skepticism to all things supernatural. We naturally wonder why one reasonable person responds one way and another equally reasonable person comes down on the other side of the divide. In a sense the whole Bible exists to answer just that question.

Christ’s Service in the Heavenly Sanctuary

9:11 But now Christ has come as the high priest of the good things to come. He passed through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, 9:12 and he entered once for all into the most holy place not by the blood of goats and calves but by his own blood, and so he himself secured eternal redemption. 9:13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow sprinkled on those who are defiled consecrated them and provided ritual purity, 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.

If I am becoming more aware of the huge gap between my fumbling, stumbling effort to “be good” and the perfect “goodness” of the God of the Bible, in all His omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign power; and if I crave some sort of fellowship with my Creator, these words have the ring of truth, and I can respond to that truth.

And yet, …and yet, my neighbor and friend, also a pretty smart fellow, and a reasonable person, reads these same words as patent nonsense. Why?

Which is to ask why God operates on some people’s thinker one way and doesn’t extend the same gift to others. The only possible answer seems to be “just because he did.” Who am I to question God’s judgment when a better response is my heart’s response of “thank you?”

Dave, just a lump of clay in God’s hands.

-sdg-

Posted by Dave | Filed Under Bible