Skip to main content

Judgment


"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 him." Hebrews 9.27-28, ESV

The writer of Hebrews introduces the idea of judgment in the context of new covenants or a change in the law. Having done so, he tells his hearers that Christ's return will not be to "deal with sin." This he can say because Jesus has already dealt with sin - there is nothing more anyone can do about it. So judgment isn't about dealing with sin. 

If that's true, what is Christ's coming about? Well, it and judgment are about his coming to "save those who are eagerly waiting for him." This coming isn't for you to be quizzed about all the bad stuff you've done, or an opportunity to explain why Jesus should let you into Heaven. If you love Jesus, if you are a disciple of his, if you are in a relationship with him and are being transformed into his image - Jesus already knows that. He's coming to save those who are his, who are waiting for his coming.

The writer of Hebrews has an agenda and that agenda is to keep his hearers faithful in their lives to the faith they believed. His readers are in danger of returning to what they used to know - maybe it's Judaism and maybe it's some Gentile Paganism. Whatever it was for any individual, they were being troubled by a couple things. First, it had been a while since Jesus was here and well, shouldn't he be back by now? If he isn't, did we actually believe the truth or was our faith based on just another Jewish Messiah claimant? In addition to this delay, these disciples are in danger of escalating persecution. So far, they haven't resisted to the "shedding of their blood," but they have or are expecting some significant persecution because of their faith. Our writer reminds them of those who taught them the faith - what were their lives like in the face of trouble? Simply, they remained faithful even though they couldn't always see the payoff. 

This is why we find the Hall of Faith in this book - without knowing what was going to happen, they persevered in their faithfulness to God. The writer encourages, urges, and cajoles his readers to remain faithful so that when Jesus comes they will be found as those who are eagerly waiting for his return. If we are in that group, the coming of Jesus won't be about judgment, but salvation.

Don't give up.

No matter what.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Obedience Rather Than Sacrifice

Saul it seems, was instructed to have the Israelite completely destroy the Amalekites – people and animals. Rather, Saul allowed the Israelites to capture the Amalekite king, and to bring back the choicest live stock. When Samuel returns to visit Saul, the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the cattle are clearly audible. Assuming that the Israelites had done what had been directed, Samuel finds this noise to be somewhat unexpected, and so he asks Saul to explain what has happened. Saul’s response is a two-parter. The first is that the people have brought back the best of the plunder to sacrifice it to God. The second is that Saul was afraid of the people and so he let them bring back the plunder [and in this explanation, we don’t know why]. Samuel’s response is his mission for God, and he will complete it. Samuel tells Saul that he has failed in his mission to destroy the Amalekites and as a result God has rejected him as king of Israel. In Samuel’s discussion with Saul, he says:
Post a Comment
Read more

Elders redux

A reader (I am always amazed that people actually read this blog) submitted a rather long comment on the original post on Elders. It is apparent that the reader did some good homework as the comment has several, well, more than several, reference citations. It is clear that they both read the original post and did some Bible study before posting their comment. Because the comment was so long, I thought it appropriate to post another entry rather than bury the response in the comment log. In the following discussion, I have included the text of the comment without the Scripture references. If you want to read the comment in its entirety, scroll to the Elders post and click on the comment. --------------------------------------------------------- [Comment~~~~The church is expected to be a people in exactly this sense. We are the people of God who are charged with continuing and preserving the values, culture, hopes, and the identity of God’s people in our time.~~~~ Does this include th
7 comments
Read more

Naaman's Dipping and Requests

The familiar story of Naaman dipping in the Jordan is a story with more than a few twists. Let's review the story first. Naaman we are told had been used by YHWH to punish Israel and our story describes him as a man of valor in high regard by his boss, the King of Syria the current thorn in the side of Israel. It turns out though that Naaman suffers from some sort of leprosy.  On one of Syria's raids into Israel, the Syrians captured an Jewish girl who had found her way into Naaman's household as a servant for his wife. Knowing of Naaman's illness, she suggests to her matron that there is a prophet in Israel who could help him. This message gets transmitted to Naaman who takes it to his boss. The boss - the king of Syria, tells Naaman to travel to Israel and gives him a letter to Israel's king directing that Naaman be healed. Upon Naaman's arrival in Israel he gives the letter to Israel's king who reacts in a panic. He does not even consider finding t
4 comments
Read more