Hebrews 9

Today’s Passage: Hebrews 9

The writer has told us that the new covenant is better. Now he takes us inside the old one and shows us why. He walks us through the tabernacle room by room, the lampstand and the table and the bread in the first room, the curtain, and behind it the ark with its gold and its relics and the cherubim spreading their wings over the mercy seat. He is not giving a museum tour. He is building an argument out of furniture. Every detail he names is a detail God Himself commanded, and every detail says the same thing: you may come this far and no farther. The priests go into the first room every day. Into the second room one man goes, once a year, and never without blood. And the Holy Spirit, the writer says, was preaching a sermon by that arrangement. As long as the tent still stood with its curtain hanging, the way in had not been opened. Then the chapter turns, and the hinge is the word But. “But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come,” He went through a greater tent, not made with hands, and He did not carry the blood of goats and calves. He carried His own. From there the writer will not let the subject go. Once for all. Once at the end of the ages. Once to bear the sins of many. He is telling a people tempted to go back to the old ceremonies that the sacrifice they are being drawn toward has already been surpassed, finished, and closed, and that the finished thing cleanses not merely the outside of a person but the conscience.

As you read, hold this: The old sanctuary kept the way to God shut behind a curtain, but Christ has entered heaven itself once for all by His own blood, and that blood cleanses the conscience no animal sacrifice could ever reach.

Hebrews 9:1–5 (BSB)

¹ Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. ² A tabernacle was prepared. In its first room were the lampstand, the table, and the consecrated bread. This was called the Holy Place. ³ Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, ⁴ containing the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. Inside the ark were the gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. ⁵ Above the ark were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat. But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.

Read that list slowly instead of skimming it, because if you skim it you will hear a catalogue when the writer means you to see a room. There is real gold here, and real bread going stale and being replaced week after week, and a lamp trimmed by hand so that it never guttered out. There is a heavy curtain, and behind it a darkness with a box in it, and inside the box three things that no Israelite could look at but every Israelite could name. A jar of manna, because God fed them when there was nothing to eat. A dead stick that had blossomed overnight and put out almonds, because God had chosen this family to serve and had settled the argument in a way no one could dispute. And two slabs of stone, because God had spoken, and what He said was still in the box. The whole history of a redeemed people, kept in a chest under the wings of two golden angels. And over the lid, the writer says, were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat (ἱλαστήριον) hilastērion, pronounced hee-las-TAY-ree-on. Strong's G2435, propitiation, mercy seat, atoning sacrifice. The lid of the ark had its own name. In Hebrew it was the kapporeth, the place of covering, and the Greek translators rendered it hilastērion, the place where wrath is turned away and sin is covered. It was not a seat in the sense of a chair. It was a slab of pure gold with the two cherubim worked out of the same piece, and it lay over the stone tablets like a lid over an accusation. Think about what that means. Inside the box was the law the people had broken. On top of the box, hiding it from the eyes of God who dwelt above the wings, was the gold, and once a year that gold was wet with blood. The law still said what it said. The blood stood between. Now hear where else this word turns up in the New Testament: Paul writes that God presented Christ Jesus as a hilastērion through faith in His blood. The lid has become a Person. What the ark held in shadow, God has done in the open, on a hill outside a city wall, in daylight. There is no room in that room for a casual approach to God, and no room either for despair, because the same God who wrote the law provided the covering, and the covering is His own Son. .

Notice, too, what the writer does not do. He mentions the golden altar of incense in the same breath as the inner room, though the altar itself stood just outside the curtain, because its whole ministry pointed inward and once a year its blood was carried through. And then he stops himself: “But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.” He is not being coy. He is a man who could talk about this furniture all day and knows it would take him off his road. He has something better in view, and he means to get there. So should we. Every gleaming object in that tent was beautiful, and every one of them was a signpost, and a signpost that never gets you anywhere has failed at the one thing it was for.

Hebrews 9:6–10 (BSB)

⁶ When everything had been prepared in this way, the priests entered regularly into the first room to perform their sacred duties. ⁷ But only the high priest entered the second room, and then only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. ⁸ By this arrangement the Holy Spirit was showing that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing. ⁹ It is an illustration for the present time, because the gifts and sacrifices being offered were unable to cleanse the conscience of the worshiper. ¹⁰ They consist only in food and drink and special washings—external regulations imposed until the time of reform.

Here is the point of the whole tour, and it is made by a set of restrictions. The priests went in and out of the first room continually. That door was busy. But the inner door opened for one man, on one day of the year, and he did not walk in casually even then. He came in with blood, and the first blood he brought was for himself, because the high priest of Israel was a sinner like the people he represented. If you had asked an Israelite why he could not go in, he would not have said the room was small. He would have said what the LORD had said to Moses:

"And the LORD said to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron not to enter freely into the Most Holy Place behind the veil in front of the mercy seat on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud above the mercy seat." Leviticus 16:2 (BSB)

That is the arrangement, and now catch the astonishing thing the writer says about it. He does not say the arrangement was a limitation God regretted. He says the Holy Spirit was showing something by it. The closed door was itself a message, preached silently, year after year, for fifteen centuries: the way in has not yet been opened. Every time that curtain hung unmoved through another twelve months, God was teaching His people to want something they did not yet have. And He was teaching them the limit of what they did have, which is verse nine, and verse nine is the ache of the old covenant. The gifts and sacrifices were unable to cleanse the conscience of the worshiper. They could put a man right with the community. They could make his body clean, so that he might come to the courtyard again. They could not reach the place where he lay awake. Food and drink and washings, external regulations, imposed, the writer says, until the time of reform. Not worthless. Not permanent. Given by God with a date stamped on them, like scaffolding on a building that is going up.

Hebrews 9:11–14 (BSB)

¹¹ But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come, He went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made by hands and is not a part of this creation. ¹² He did not enter by the blood of goats and calves, but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. ¹³ For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that their bodies are clean, ¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, purify our consciences from works of death, so that we may serve the living God!

But. One small word, and the whole letter turns on it. Everything before has been a tent with a curtain in it and a door that stayed shut. Now Christ comes, and He comes as high priest of the good things that have come, and He goes through a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by hands, not a part of this creation. No craftsman hammered that gold. No family of Levi carried it on poles. And He did not come to the door with a basin of animal blood, borrowed from a creature that had no say in the matter. He entered once for all (ἐφάπαξ) ephapax, pronounced ef-AH-pax. Strong's G2178, once for all, once and never again. Ephapax is built out of two pieces, epi and hapax, and hapax by itself already means “once.” Adding the prefix is like a man leaning across the table and saying it again with his hand flat on the wood: once, and that is the end of it. The word is rare, and where it appears it does heavy work. Paul uses it of the death Christ died to sin, once for all. This letter uses it here of His entrance into the sanctuary, and again in the next chapter of the offering of His body by which we have been sanctified. Hear it against the background of the tent. The old system ran on repetition. Morning and evening, Sabbath and new moon, year after year the same basin, the same knife, the same man walking back out to do it all again next autumn. Repetition was mercy, but repetition was also confession, an annual admission that nothing had yet been finished. Into that endless calendar the gospel drops one word, and the calendar stops. There is nothing left to add to what Christ has done, and nothing anyone can subtract from it. You cannot re-crucify Him and you do not need to. That is not a small comfort for a soul that keeps trying to pay again for something already paid. by His own blood, and He came out having secured eternal redemption. Read that last phrase again and let it stand. Not offered redemption. Not made redemption available pending further arrangements. Secured it. The verb is the language of a transaction completed and a thing now held. And it is eternal, which means it does not expire next Yom Kippur, and it will not need renewing when you are old, and it will not have quietly lapsed on the day you die.

Then comes the argument the writer loves best, the one that runs from lesser to greater, and here it reaches its summit. If, he says, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkled on people who had touched a corpse or fallen into some defilement, could make their bodies clean, then how much more will the blood of Christ do the deeper work? Notice he grants the old rites their real power. They did what God said they would do. A man really was restored to the camp. But the whole of that cleansing stopped at the skin. Now look at what is offered instead, and look at who offers it: Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God. Every lamb brought to that altar was inspected for blemish and was brought whether it wished to come or not. This Priest is the offering. This Lamb walked to the altar on His own feet, without spot, and laid Himself down, and the whole Trinity is in the sentence, the Son offering, through the eternal Spirit, to God. And the result is not a clean body but a purified conscience (συνείδησις) syneidēsis, pronounced soon-ay-DAY-sis. Strong's G4893, conscience, the inner witness of right and wrong. Syneidēsis is literally a knowing-together, a knowing alongside, and the Greeks used it of that second voice in a person that stands off to one side and reports on what he has done. It is the faculty that will not let a man forget. The old sacrifices could not touch it, and that is precisely the ache of the previous paragraph: the worshiper walked home ceremonially clean and morally haunted. Notice what this verse says the conscience is cleansed from, and it is a startling phrase. Works of death. Not merely guilty feelings, but the dead deeds themselves, the whole account of them, purged. And notice what it is cleansed for: so that we may serve the living God. A conscience is not scoured out so that it can be admired. It is cleared so that hands can work and knees can bend without the paralysis of a shameful memory. Here is the difference between religion and the gospel in a single word. Religion works on the outside and hopes the inside will follow. The blood of Christ starts at the place where you accuse yourself and works outward. If you have been washed by that blood, then the voice that keeps replaying your worst day has been overruled by a better voice, and the accusation has been answered in full by Someone who is unblemished. , cleansed from works of death, so that we may serve the living God. That is the goal. Not merely a quiet mind, wonderful as that is, but a freed worshiper. Blessed be God, who did not stop at making us presentable.

Hebrews 9:15–18 (BSB)

¹⁵ Therefore Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, now that He has died to redeem them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. ¹⁶ In the case of a will, it is necessary to establish the death of the one who made it, ¹⁷ because a will does not take effect until the one who made it has died; it cannot be executed while he is still alive. ¹⁸ That is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.

Christ is the mediator (μεσίτης) mesitēs, pronounced mes-EE-tace. Strong's G3316, mediator, the one who stands between two parties. A mesitēs is a middle man, someone who stands between two parties who cannot come together on their own and makes an agreement hold. In the everyday Greek of the day the word turned up in business documents and legal disputes: a neutral arbitrator, a guarantor who put his own name to a contract, a go-between trusted by both sides. Moses stood in that place at Sinai, running up and down the mountain with the words of God in his mouth and the fear of the people at his back. But Moses could only carry messages, and he broke the tablets when he came down. Christ is a mediator of a different order, because He does not merely carry terms between the parties. He is both parties in one Person, fully God and fully man, and the guarantee He puts down is not His signature but His blood. That is why this covenant cannot fail in the middle. A treaty is only as good as the parties who keep it, and one of the parties at Sinai was a people who could not keep anything. In the new covenant the God who makes the promise is the Man who keeps it. Praise Him for that. Your inheritance is not held in place by your steadiness. It is held by His. of a new covenant, and see what His death accomplishes in both directions. It reaches forward, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance. And it reaches backward, to redeem them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. Sit with that second half, because it answers a question that has troubled thoughtful readers for a long time. What about the faithful of the old covenant, who brought their lambs in obedience and died before Christ came? Their sins were not swept under a rug and forgotten by a God who did not much mind. They were carried, all of them, to the same cross. The blood that could not take away sin was pointing at blood that could, and God in His patience held the account open until it was paid in full. Nothing has been overlooked in the government of God. Everything has been paid for.

Then the writer does something that reads oddly in English, and the oddness is in the Greek word itself, which can mean either a covenant or a last will and testament. He lets it swing both ways. A will, he says, does nothing at all while the man who wrote it is alive. His children may know every line of it and hold a copy in their hands, and it is only paper until there is a death. Then, at once, it is in force, and the inheritance is not earned by the heirs but simply received. That is what the death of Christ has done with all the promises of God. And then, having made the point from a lawyer’s office, he swings back to the sanctuary in verse eighteen: which is why even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood. God has never dealt with sinners cheaply. There was blood at Sinai, and there was blood at Calvary, and the first was pointing at the second the whole time.

Hebrews 9:19–22 (BSB)

¹⁹ For when Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, along with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people, ²⁰ saying, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” ²¹ In the same way, he sprinkled with blood the tabernacle and all the vessels used in worship. ²² According to the law, in fact, nearly everything must be purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Picture the scene at the foot of Sinai, because it was not a tidy ceremony. Moses read the whole law aloud to the people, and the people said they would do it, and then Moses took basins of blood and threw it over them. Over the scroll he had just read from, and over the crowd standing in front of him. Scarlet wool and a bunch of hyssop dipped and shaken out, and blood on their clothes and in their hair, and a sentence spoken over them that they would never afterward forget: “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” That is how a covenant was sealed. Not with a handshake, and not with ink. Later the tent itself and every dish and snuffer and basin in it was smeared and sprinkled the same way, because in a world under sin even the furniture of worship needs cleansing before it may be used for God.

Then verse twenty-two states the principle in a line that has echoed down every generation since: without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. It is a hard sentence and a merciful one, and we should be careful not to soften either half. It is hard because it tells the plain truth about sin, which is that sin costs a life and God will not pretend otherwise. Modern people find this offensive, and it is worth asking honestly whether the offense is at God’s severity or at our own low estimate of what we have done. It is merciful because God said it Himself when He gave the law, and He said it in the form of a gift:

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for your souls upon the altar; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul." Leviticus 17:11 (BSB)

I have given it to you. The altar was never a device by which frightened people bought off an angry deity. It was God’s own provision, handed down to a people who could not have invented it, so that they might live. And every drop of it was a promise. Somebody is going to bleed for this, and one day it will be Somebody whose life is worth the whole world.

Hebrews 9:23–28 (BSB)

²³ So it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴ For Christ did not enter a man-made copy of the true sanctuary, but He entered heaven itself, now to appear on our behalf in the presence of God. ²⁵ Nor did He enter heaven to offer Himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. ²⁶ Otherwise, Christ would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But now He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself. ²⁷ Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment, ²⁸ so also Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him.

Now the chapter climbs to its height, and it climbs by the same lesser-to-greater stair. The tent was a copy, and even the copy had to be purified with blood. The realities it copied are cleansed with better sacrifices than these. And then the sentence every reader of this letter should carry with him: Christ did not enter a man-made copy of the true sanctuary, but He entered heaven itself, now to appear on our behalf in the presence of God. Take that in slowly. When the high priest of Israel went behind the curtain, no one saw him. The nation stood outside in silence, and the only proof he was still alive was that he came back out. Our High Priest went in and has not come out, and He went in not to spend a few minutes but to appear on our behalf in the presence of God. He is there now, in the presence of God, for you. Not to plead a doubtful case, since the blood was accepted the moment He entered. He is there as the standing evidence that the sacrifice was received. There is a Man in heaven whose scars are the reason we may pray.

And He is not going back for another basin. Verse twenty-five is almost startling in its logic: if His sacrifice needed repeating, He would have had to suffer over and over since the foundation of the world, an unending Calvary, a cross that never finished. He did not. He appeared once, at the culmination of the ages, to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Everything before was preparation for that hour, and everything since has been the working out of it. Then verses twenty-seven and twenty-eight lay two “once” statements side by side, and the parallel is meant to be felt. You are appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment. There is no rehearsal for that and no second attempt at it, and the sober honesty of the Bible about this is one of its kindnesses to us. And over against your one death stands His one offering: Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. The word bear means to lift and carry away, as a man shoulders a load that would break someone else’s back.

The chapter ends looking up. He will appear a second time. Notice how carefully the writer says it, and notice what he does not say. He gives no schedule, no season, no chain of events to be worked out on a chart. He gives us the certainty and leaves the timing where the Lord Himself left it. What he does tell us is the purpose, and the purpose is glorious: not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him. Sin-bearing is finished business. He will not be carrying that load when He comes. He comes to complete what He began, for people who are, at this moment, waiting for Him with their heads up. That is the posture the whole chapter has been forming in us. The nation once stood outside the tent waiting for a man to come back out. We stand under an open heaven, waiting for our Priest, and He will not disappoint us.