In Hebrews 7:25, “Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him.” But why the word “completely”?
Because there’s a comparison being made in Hebrews between two ways of dealing with guilt; one way that saves from guilt completely and perfectly, and the other that does not. And it’s a crucial difference that affects the very heart of our relationship with God.
On the one hand, there was the Old Covenant system of “repeating the same sacrifices endlessly year after year,” which God set up to enable the Israelites to stay in contact with him despite their sins – but – it still left them “feeling guilty” (10:1-2). Their conscience still bothered them, so in their relationship with God they were never at rest. Which is why that “former (Old Covenant) regulation was set aside” as being “weak and useless,” because it “made nothing perfect (or complete)” (7:18-19). It didn’t save completely and perfectly.
That old system did have a purpose, though, as both an annual reminder (10:3) and as “an illustration,” Hebrews 9:9, to show that all those “gifts and sacrifices being offered (and all the “various ceremonial washings” too, verse 10), were not able to clear the conscience.”
And that was the issue, that pesky conscience that made you feel you were never really “in” with God. And that too was pictured by the high priest being the only one allowed into God’s presence on the Day of Atonement (9:7), while you and all the other Israelite tribes could only watch from a distance.
But that changed when God made Jesus our high priest, because unlike the high priests of old whose “sacrifices could never take away sins” (10:11), Jesus “entered the Most Holy Place once and for all by his own blood” (9:12) and “did away with all sin (for all time, 10:12) by the sacrifice of himself” (9:26). And topping that off – “how much morethe blood of Christ cleanses our consciences” too (9:14).
Meaning that, unlike the Israelites, we can “enter the Most Holy Place” (10:19) and “draw near to God with total confidence” – because in Jesus’ blood we’ve been saved completely from our pesky “guilty conscience” (22). That’s because, Hebrews 10:20, what’s been opened up for us is “A new and living way”….(next blog)
