in effect from the foundation of the world, which is why faith was possible from Abel on, why it is said that Christ would have to be offered many times from the foundation of the world, why forgiveness for OT believers was possible through sacrifices that could not take away sin, why the word spoken through Moses can be described as “gospel,” and how it is that Moses’s tabernacle was to be fashioned according to what already existed whole in heaven. And we see also that the old creation (with its covenant) is still ongoing, contemporaneous with the inauguration of the new, until the great removal. The “overlap” of the ages is something that was true in one way before Christ and in another way after Christ, but there was always an overlap. In order to show the continuity of God’s speech of past and present, the presence of faith in the one promise across history, and the culmination of all things in the Son—the culmination that defines the present moment with its possibility and its urgency—Hebrews dwells more fully on the overlap that preceded Christ than most other NT writers, even as it draws more sharply the line that separates and distinguishes the new covenant/age from the old. At the same time, Hebrews develops in its own fashion the overlap that follows Christ as a continuation of the time of the promise within the conditions of the old age even after the promised new covenant (with the world to come; 2:5) has already been instituted as a world-invading reality (3:14; 6:4–6; 11:1). More on this as we read Hebrews itself.
It is within this dynamic that the law of Moses (Torah) has its history. The Torah before Christ was part of the chrysalis of the gospel. Detached from Christ in his death and resurrection, it is no longer alive but lifeless matter, the shell from which the new organism emerged. Paradoxically—for here all analogy breaks down in light of the active presence and application of the gospel before Christ and the continuation of the present already-judged age after him—that same Torah remains organically related to Christ as long as the present age continues, and so remains in that sense—as rightly related to Christ—a part of the living gospel. Turning back to it as if it was something in itself, is to find that it is merely a dead casing, worthless. To disown and renounce it for what it was and what it continues to be, a witness to Christ, the gospel in the idiom of shadows, is to disown and renounce Christ.
The Hope of Salvation
We begin to close this introduction by returning to Hebrews’ vision of the goal of salvation, that toward which we are summoned to move.
The reader of an English translation of Hebrews, if not also the reader of the Greek text, might be excused for missing the character of salvation as a place in Hebrews until as late as 11:10. From that point on it is obvious, leading up to 12:22–24 and 13:14. Yet all along it has been a question of approaching or entering into a place, the Most Holy Place of God’s throne, and in 2:5 we discover that it is the coming world about which the preacher has been speaking ever since the sermon’s beginning. It is in this sense that we should understand 3:7—4:11 as well, as a matter of God’s resting place; likewise the inheritance (1:2, 14; cf. Deut 12:9).
Hebrews’ vision of a secure home and household is a compelling one. Our cities are not built to last. That the readers had suffered significant social and economic hardship is clear (10:32–39) and this dimension of a life of faith is highlighted (11:24–26, 35b–38). If we diminish what could be called the merely human aspect of this—that which would be experienced by all peoples regardless of their belief systems—we have departed from Hebrews’ and the gospel’s outlook.46 The loss of one’s “world” can be the experience of any individual, family, or other social group in any otherwise stable political state, though the horrors of a collapsing civilization are the stuff of apocalyptic nightmares.47
If, however, we fail to recognize that all of this spatial imagery coalesces against the backdrop of Israel’s inheritance of the land, her resting place, with the Most Holy Place of the temple as its center, we have failed to appreciate Hebrews’ entire vision of salvation. It is not a city as such that forms this vision, but the Jerusalem that is above, the Mount that is before us. This city has a name. Rome was the greater city by any human standard, and was probably the city that loomed largest in the social existence of the original readers, but in the perspective of the history of God’s speech Rome was no equal of Jerusalem. Moreover, this city on which hope centers does have a history. Just as the Son is known from the shadows and copies constructed according to God’s command, so this city. This understanding draws us into the broader, integrated drama of Israel’s pilgrimage as we see that in the Pentateuch and then reenacted in the prophets. Again, to find one’s identity in relation to a city requires that we know something of that city’s ethos, and in the case of this city this is what was revealed through the covenant that centered in the life of the sanctuary. This aspect of Hebrews is more implicit than explicit but it is everywhere the air we are breathing in its exhortations. To draw near to the divine throne is to participate in the full compass of covenantal life inscribed in the laws for Israel—as these carry over in the righteousness realized in the new covenant. Hebrews’ vision is finally that of the fullness of the covenantal life with God and neighbor that was presented in the shadows and copies of Israel’s history. What lies before us, and what is to shape our lives even now, is our citizenship in that city. As such, we do not retreat from but actively inhabit the cities of this age whether or not they will have us.
Encountering the Holy
That place of salvation is the place of the holy God of Israel.
One of the off-putting features of Hebrews for moderns is the controlling language of holiness, cleansing, and the like. If any aspect of its vision belongs to the scientifically debunked thought of antiquity’s mythological world it is this. However backwards the rest of the New Testament writings remain, they at least seem to represent a step forward for humanity’s emergence from myth’s hold on the mind. For many, Hebrews can itself be interpreted as a welcome translation of all of this quasi-magical blood-spilling ritual into the more palatable ideas of human interiority and moral formation.
Yet only by isolating certain of Hebrews’ comments can the latter conclusion be sustained. Body and blood sacrifice is not rejected but brought to its goal in the blood, flesh, bodily sacrifice of Jesus. The approach to God is not made without a sacrifice ritual. It is made through the once-for-all offering of the body of the Son. Blood is a symbol but only with reference to the material, physical blood of the Son. When this is seen even the word ‘symbol’ becomes inadequate if it masks the reality that all language, including scientific language, is symbolic and that in Jesus’ blood, which means in his whole person, we have to do with the living and active presence and power of God. The language of symbolism is getting at the way of understanding this reality and its effects by associating it with the copies and shadows ordained by God himself.
Our intent in saying these things is limited to asserting that Hebrews is not giving us conceptual categories that must be “de-mythologized” so as to connect them to reality as moderns conceive it by their scientific standards of knowing. If we do that we have only projected our world onto Hebrews’ or screened out what is essential to our loss. Instead Hebrews compels us to recognize the reality that creation exists in the presence of the holy God, that history is a matter of his covenants, and that the encounter with God’s holiness—the cultic—is simply a fact of human existence as well as its destiny. Where this is not acknowledged it is no less true but only suppressed and distorted. If we think otherwise we are not receiving Hebrews’ witness but arguing with it. Our efforts of understanding, translation, and explanation must work with and for that witness. Hebrews’ vision of covenant and sacrifice is the one most needed by moderns. It is a vision to be inhabited.
The Summons
We have said that the call of Hebrews is less, “Do not turn back!” than it is, “Move forward!” “Let us approach!” Disobedience here, it must be understood, is the characteristic failing of the human creature. Whether through sloth, indifference, ignorance, desire for the
