Gary Gleans

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.     Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.     How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?     For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”     It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. This is one of those passages that absolutely MUST be understood in context of the argument of the entire book.  An isolated reading of this passage can cause one to...

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.     Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.     And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. The author of Hebrews has been pointing to the superiority of Christ over every aspect of Judaism.  The reason he has been doing this is the intense persecution his readers have been facing. ...

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.     But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.     For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.     And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,” then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”  Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. This is a sort of summary of why the work of Christ is superior to the work that was accomplished through the sacrifices made by priests.  T...

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.     Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins?     But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.     For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.     Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me;     in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.     Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”     When he said above, “You have neither desired ...

Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.     For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.     Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.     And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for...

Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.     For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.       For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.     Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.     For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.”     And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship....