But this casual attitude about God would seem very strange to the Jewish people. The people who are responsible for writing most of our Bible would probably not say that God’s dominant character quality is love. They would probably say it is God’s holiness that defines the nature of God. And holiness is not something you can take casually. Holiness can kill you, and that is why no sane Israelite would have wanted to get very close to the presence of God. When the people came out of Egypt and stood together at Mt. Sinai, the presence of God scared them so much they asked God to leave them alone and just talk to Moses. Moses got closer to God than perhaps any other man ever has, yet God did not allow Moses to see very much because full exposure would prove fatal to human flesh. Isaiah saw the glory of God in the Temple and thought he was going to die. The priests who served in the Tabernacle were risking their lives when they came into the presence of God. The Law that God gave to Israel at Mt. Sinai seemed to say “stay back!” The presence of God was an experience to be feared and avoided if possible.
With that Old Testament background in mind, the whole argument in the New Testament book of Hebrews sounds strange, almost unbiblical. Hebrews tells us to draw near to the presence of God!
The book of Hebrews is an elaborate argument that what we have in Christ is better than what the people of Israel had under the Law of Moses. The primary difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant has to do with our approach to God. Coming into the presence of God under the Old Covenant was facilitated by bloody animal sacrifices and the intercession of the priests. But Jesus brought something much better.
He is a better priest and He has offered a better sacrifice, which was His own life. Jesus has opened up a new way to come to God that was unheard of under the Old Covenant. This new way to come to God has made the old way obsolete. There is no reason to cling to the old when something new and better has come.
Most of the book of Hebrews is a series of contrasts between the Old Covenant that God made with Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai, and the New Covenant that God made through Christ. There is a contrast between ceremonial religion and spiritual faith, between a shame-filled fear of God’s presence and a confident access to God. The Old Covenant had a physical, earthly sanctuary. The Tabernacle Moses built in the wilderness was a symbol of the presence of God among the people of Israel as they wandered toward the Promised Land. There were elaborate ceremonies by which the priests ministered to God in behalf of the people, who could not come near. But in the New Covenant there is no physical earthly place of worship. And we don’t come to God by a ceremony, we must come to Him by faith (Heb. 11.1, 6). Christ is our priest in heaven where He has entered the very presence of God and opened up a way for us to come after Him – to a holy place that was once forbidden and full of fear. We can come into that Holy Place, into the very presence of God, with confidence and even with boldness, knowing that we will be accepted there.
The book of Hebrews is arguing that the Old Covenant is now obsolete because Christ has established a New Covenant. But what was the purpose for the Old Covenant if it was simply meant to pass away? The writer of Hebrews argues that the Old Covenant, particularly the Tabernacle, the priesthood, and the sacrifices, were shadows or types of Christ.
So the Old Covenant was given to help us understand what Christ would come to do and why He needed to do it. How could we understand what a sacrifice would mean unless there was some kind of introduction to this concept? How would we understand the function of a priest unless we had seen this in action? And how would we understand the idea of approaching the presence of God unless there was an earthly sanctuary to show us what this looked like? What all of these types and shadows seem to emphasize is that there is a great distance or alienation between God and people.
God is holy, or separate, from the people. Sin is the cause of this separation and something must be done to make the people acceptable to God. It was not left up to the people to decide or to negotiate with God. It was God who gave the commandments concerning the Tabernacle, priesthood, and the sacrifices. The solution for overcoming the alienation between God and the people came directly from God. A crucial precedent was being established: the way for the people to come to God is established by God Himself. In other words, the only way to approach God is if God opens up the way for us to come to Him. The way to the presence of God is like a door that only has a handle on the inside and can only be unlocked and opened from one side. God must open the door.
We cannot force our way into His presence or perhaps negotiate some kind of deal with God. God cannot be bribed or appeased. Either He lets us in or we remain locked out. We do not come to God in just any old way and we do not have the freedom to invent our own personal, private, religion or worship and expect to be accepted by God.
Hebrews was originally written to Jewish Christians who were being tempted to go back to Judaism. The writer is warning them that if they reject the way that God has opened through Christ, then they will have cut themselves off from God completely. There is no going back to the old dispensation because God has opened up a new way. You must come to God by the way that He has opened and prescribed. Hebrews argues that if disobeying the Law brought the sentence of death, what will happen to those who reject Christ (See Hebrews 10.28-29)?
God Himself has provided a way for us to come to Him and we dare not reject it or try to come another way. Jesus is the way to God (John 14.6). There is no other way. That “New and Living Way” was opened by Christ’s death. What Jesus has done is our source of confidence in the presence of God.
The fact that Jesus gives us full, unrestricted access to God is almost blasphemous to anyone familiar with the Old Testament and the Law of Moses. The Israelites could not just come into the presence of God whenever they wanted. Only the priests had some access to the presence of God and it was a very limited and regulated access. The reason for this restricted access had to do with the nature of God.
All true knowledge, even the knowledge of ourselves, begins with the knowledge of God. We must become familiar with God. It is in the Old Testament Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, that we are introduced to God. The primary revelation in Scripture is God.
The primary revelation of the character of God under the Old Covenant was holiness. All of God’s dealing with the people of Israel had to conform to His nature, which could never be compromised. The love of God was also seen under the Law. God often referred to Israel as His wife or as His firstborn son. But what we must see is that the love of God does not simply cancel out God’s holiness. In other words, we must not think that God’s love makes Him “soft.”
It is a mistake for us to think of God in purely human terms, as if God is just like us. That is why we need to understand the holiness of God. Holiness means that God is not like us but is someone unique. God is not a man. God is in a class all by Himself. This is why the people of Israel also had to be different from the other nations. If you belong to a holy God you must reflect His character. (That’s the book of Leviticus in a very condensed form!)
God taught about holiness through a Holy Place (the Tabernacle), the priesthood, and the sacrifices. The Tabernacle represented the holy presence of God. The priests were to act as intercessors, or mediators, between God and the people. And the sacrifices were to make atonement for the people’s sin.
These were the things that had to be done if the people were to be acceptable in the presence of a holy God. And there could be no compromises or exceptions to what God commanded. Holiness was a life or death matter.
Some people almost seem to think that God changed at some point between the end of the Old Testament and the coming of Christ. Maybe God has relaxed a bit and softened up, perhaps lowering His impossibly high standards. The book of Hebrews is arguing that Christ has brought a significant change in how we come to God. But it is not the nature of God that changed. Our coming into God’s presence could not be on the basis of God having to compromise His holiness.
When you read about God’s dealings with Israel under the Law you might conclude that God can hardly stand being anywhere near the people. He is constantly angered by them and kills large numbers of them with poisonous snakes, plagues, and fissures opening up in the earth. But for Moses’ intercession, God would have wiped them out. God finally appears to be fed up with the people and their disobedience and grumbling and He tells Moses that He will not go up with them to the Promised Land lest He lose His patience with them and destroy them on the way (Ex. 33.3-5). God always seems to be restraining His wrath. God doesn’t want to destroy the people, even though that is what they deserved. God doesn’t give us what we deserve and that is what we call mercy, which is another aspect of God’s character. The only reason the human race has endured is because God is merciful. We deserve to die in our sins and yet God has allowed us to live. That does not just apply to the “really bad sinners” but to all who have ever sinned and fall short of the glory of God… yes, it even applies to you! But God is willing to forgive sin and He does not take pleasure in the death of wicked people like us.
The Law reveals a God who is both holy and merciful. It was Moses who received what is arguably the greatest revelation of God recorded in the Scriptures. This revelation came from God Himself and it summarizes everything God revealed to Israel in the Old Covenant:
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).
How can we reconcile the fact that God is merciful, gracious, and loving yet also holy and righteous? If God is going to treat us according to His holiness then there is no question that none of us would survive! But if God is merciful and allows sinners to live, then how can God still be true to His character?
It is almost as if humanity has presented God with a dilemma, if it is possible for God to have a dilemma. On the one hand, God wants to be with His people. (God dwelling in the mist of His people was the whole point of the Tabernacle.) But on the other hand, God’s holy wrath is aroused by the people’s sin and unrighteousness. It is actually dangerous to be in God’s presence. We could die in the presence of a holy God!
How can we come to God without being consumed by His holiness? He cannot simply pretend that our sin is not there. That is not an option. Obviously God does not immediately strike everyone dead the first time we sin. God is patient with us and some have interpreted God’s patience and His mercy as tolerance of sin. This is a grave error. There were times in history when God let the nations go their own way and seemed to turn a blind eye to their sin (Romans 1.18-32). But just because God seems to take no obvious action against sin does not mean that God’s disposition toward sin is neutral. God is always against sin because sin, by its very nature, is unlike God. God is righteous. Sin is unrighteousness. Sin is really rebellion against God. Does God simply ignore rebellion? What happened when Satan and his angels rebelled against God in heaven? They were cast out. Likewise, when Adam and Eve sinned they were also cast out. Sin casts us out.
So how can we get back in? I am afraid the answer is much more complicated than people tend to think. People seem to think that forgiveness is easy for God. After all, God can do anything, right? God does forgive sin. But if you think that forgiveness is easy then you don’t really understand the nature of God or what it means to sin against God.
Consider how difficult forgiveness is in human relationships. The need for forgiveness implies some kind of debt. We often hear of “debt forgiveness.” What does that mean? It means that someone owes something to someone else. There is an imbalance.
Picture an old scale that rests on a balance. We use this kind of scale to illustrate the process of justice and the legal system. Why? Because justice means a perfect balance. But if the scale is tipped in one direction, something is out of balance and must be corrected. If someone wrongs you and offends you, your relationship is out of balance. They are in debt to you. Will you forgive? You may be willing to forgive, but what has to happen? They have to “make it right.” They have to tip the scale back to zero. In other words, you expect them to pay the price necessary to repair the relationship. There is always a price to be paid in order to bring justice or repair a relationship. Who is going to pay the price? Now if someone is in your debt and you just forgive the debt, does that mean there was no price? No. It just means that you decided to absorb the debt and pay the price yourself. But there was still a cost. That’s why forgiveness is usually a very painful process.
Likewise, our access to God comes at a price. Someone or something has to pay a price because of the debt of sin. God’s love does not cancel out that debt, as if it doesn’t really exist. That debt must be paid. Who will pay that debt? Paying the price of sin will cost all we have to give. If we pay for our own sin then we will just be dead. This may sound extreme, but we must consider what it means to sin against God. God is not just another person. Offending God is a serious liability.
If God wanted to destroy us He could have found any number of good reasons to do that. But instead of destroying the people God gave them a way of atoning for their sins.
The idea of atonement, or offering a sacrifice, includes a covering and a substitute. The sin is covered, and the debt removed, but the payment is made vicariously. In other words, God provided a way for sin to be covered that did not require the life of the people to be taken as the payment. God accepted the life-blood of animal sacrifices as an atonement for the people’s sin.
So the Law of Moses gave rules and regulations concerning various animal sacrifices. The priests were to offer these sacrifices in behalf of the people. And the sacrifices had to be offered in the Holy Place that was the Tabernacle. Of particular importance was the sacrifice offered each year on the Day of Atonement (See Lev. 16). The sacrificial system was not something that the people negotiated with God. God is one who established it. God is the one who provided for the atonement of the people’s sin.
Some modern people find all of the blood in the Old Testament offensive. Is God some kind of blood-thirsty tyrant? What many do not understand is that when the Bible uses the word “blood” it is actually talking about the taking of a life. “The life is in the blood.” If the blood is shed the result is death. So it is not just the blood that makes atonement, but the taking of a life. A life is taken so that another life may be spared. That is atonement.
But animal sacrifices could never really pay the debt of sin, which is why these sacrifices had to be brought continually. That is one of the great arguments of the book of Hebrews (10.1-4). The animal sacrifices were a temporary provision, but not an ultimate solution to the problem of sin and alienation from the presence of God. No animal sacrifice could deal with sin in the aggregate. If an animal sacrifice could have taken away sin in its totality then there would have been no reason for more sacrifices.
But God has now provided a Sacrifice through the blood of Christ that effectively paid the debt of sin, all of it at one time. God paid the debt Himself and absorbed the cost of our sin. Jesus was the propitiation for our sin (Rom. 3.25). Jesus became the lightning rod for God’s holy wrath against sin. Christ’s sacrifice is superior to all the sacrifices under the Old Covenant because Jesus only had to die once (Heb. 9.12).
Jesus could not have saved us just by coming to earth as a man. The Incarnation alone did not atone for sin. The Incarnation was in order to make atonement for sin. Jesus had to have a physical body if He was going to offer Himself as a sacrifice.
But Jesus could not have saved us just by bleeding. When Christians say that we are saved by the blood of Christ we are really saying that we are saved by the life (blood) of Jesus being poured out until He died. So it is the body and the blood of Jesus that gave us access to God. There is a sense in which the body of Christ is the veil through which we can have access to God. When Jesus died the veil separating man from God was torn apart and the way into the Holy Place was opened. If we don’t come through Him we will not get to God.
But there is more to the Atonement than just His death on the Cross. There was something else that Jesus had to do in order to open up the way to God. He had to go back into Heaven.
The Tabernacle that Moses built was really a pattern, or a kind of earthly model, of Heaven itself and the presence of God. There was the Holy Place that was separated from the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies, by a veil. Behind that veil was the Mercy Seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant. That Mercy Seat was an earthly symbol of the Throne of God. Only the High Priest could enter beyond the veil on the Day of Atonement. And he could never enter without the blood of a sacrifice being offered.
All of this is showing us how Jesus has given us access to God. Jesus offered the sacrifice on earth when He offered His own life. But then Jesus had to enter the presence of God. The Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ is when our great High Priest entered the Holy Place. Jesus did not stay on earth. He entered the heavenly sanctuary which is the true presence of God and not just symbolic (Heb. 9.24). His being there as our eternal High Priest before God is what gives us access to the presence of God. If Jesus were not there we could not go there either. (I am not talking about when we die and go to heaven. I am talking about us entering the Holy Place now! Jesus gives us access even now to the presence of God!)
If we really trust in the sufficiency of Christ’s death and eternal priesthood, then the result is that we will have full confidence that God has accepted us and all fear of punishment and alienation will melt away. What is your source of confidence in the presence of God? Is it your own morality? Your religious practices? Your doctrinal orthodoxy? None of those things provide an acceptable basis for approaching God. All of those things involve us earning our standing with God. If your focus is on yourself and what you do then you will not have an adequate basis for coming to God. Our confidence must be in Christ alone and His atoning death, as well as His current intercession. Christ is our confidence, not what we do. So we do not earn our standing with God. That is Old Covenant religion. It is for us to believe the Gospel and accept what Christ has done to bring us to God. We live by faith in Christ, not by religious ritual. Christ is the LIVING way to come to God. The way to come to God is a Person, not a religious ritual or ceremony.
Learning to live in the presence of God is now our goal. What does it mean to enter the Holy Place? It simply means that God dominates our attention. This is preparing us for the World to come where we will be forever with the Lord (Rev. 21.16, 22; 22.3-4). How can a person who never had any interest in the presence of God here expect to then be at home in a world in which the presence of God is pervasive? There can be no more separation of the sacred and the secular. We LIVE in the Holy Place! Everything in our lives in now holy to the Lord. We have a constant access to God. We can go to Him at any time and in any place. There is no longer an earthly holy place to which we must go to have contact with God. Everywhere is the Holy Place. Now we worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4.21-24).
This has a particular application to our prayers. We can approach the Throne of Grace in our time of need (Heb. 4.16). Notice that the Throne of God, which was once a place of fear, is now a place of grace and acceptance.
There remains a danger that we substitute ritual or ceremony for actually entering the Holy Place. For example, coming to church is not a substitute for entering and living in God’s presence each day. You cannot worship God by proxy. You have to come to God yourself.
This is why a system of priests or a clergy/laity division in the Church is so wrong. That system is essentially a reinstitution of the Law of Moses in which the people are kept at a distance from God. No person or priest on earth can bring you into the presence of God. Only Jesus can do that and we dare not settle for any substitute.
Coming to God is not only a personal, private activity. There are times when we need to come to God together. But those times of fellowship with other believers is not the thing that ushers us into the Holy Place, nor should it be the only time we spend in God’s presence. We should come together to exhort each other to stay in the Holy Place. We don’t come to Church to GET in the Holy Place. The presence of God is now our home every moment of every day.
There is no greater blessing or privilege than having access to God. “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple” (Psalm 65:4).
