23  Accepting Christ  (10:19-25)

Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near. (10:19-25)

There are only two possible consequences to knowing the gospel. When a person knows the truth of the gospel, he either goes on to believe or he falls back into apostasy. Hebrews 10:19-25 is speaking to the person who does the former, the one who makes a positive response to the claims of Jesus Christ.

A positive response results in salvation. As Paul makes clear in the beautiful thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, salvation involves faith, hope, and love. It is these three aspects of salvation that are focused on in our present passage.

DRAW NEAR IN FAITH

The primary basis on which we can draw near to God in faith is the blood of Jesus. The holy place of the Tabernacle, or the Temple, represented God’s special presence, and only the high priest could enter there once a year. But in Christ’s shed blood, His perfect sacrifice, we have confidence to enter the holy place, into God’s very presence.

I believe that brethren refers here, as elsewhere in Hebrews and also in Romans (9:3), to fellow Jews, not fellow Christians. These physical brothers are being urged, on the basis of the careful doctrinal groundwork that has already been given, to take hold of the perfect sacrifice, Jesus Christ—to come confidently through Him into God’s very presence and to dwell there for all eternity. To a Jew who took the Old Covenant the least bit seriously, this prospect was as awesome as it was wonderful. Realizing this, the writer uses every persuasive argument to bring them to a positive decision.

If a person tries to go into God’s presence based on his own character, his own works, or his own religious affiliation, he will find no access. He will certainly not have access on the basis of a mere verbal profession of Christ. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness’ ” (Matt. 7:21-23). All the things that Jesus mentioned were seemingly good. But they were not really in His name, because they were not done through faith in Him and by His power. These professors, Jesus said, did not know Him personally. Obviously they knew His name, in the sense of His title and position. They recognized Him as being “Lord.” But they had not received Him as their own Lord and their own Savior, and everything else counted for nothing.

The blood of Jesus Christ, however, counts for everything, and the person who trusts in His atoning work can come with complete boldness before God, claiming all the blessings and promises in His Son. We can come expecting mercy and grace (Heb. 4:16), rather than justice. For if God gave us justice, He would have to condemn us, because this is what we deserve. But Jesus, through His shed blood, satisfied God’s justice in our behalf, so that we can now claim God’s mercy and grace. God cannot be just and condemn us who are in Christ.

Jesus gave no clearer or more moving illustration of God’s grace than the parable of the prodigal son. Actually, the son who stayed home was also prodigal, but the story focuses on his brother, because his brother finally realized his prodigality and came home. He did not deserve to come home and he certainly did not deserve to be accepted back with such lavish celebration. But it was the father’s love, not the son’s merit, that prompted the welcome. The son came back out of desperation, but he came; and his coming was all the father required. Everything else the father himself provided.

The concept of simply coming to God was revolutionary to Jews—and to many others throughout the centuries and today. When Adam sinned, had not God put him out of the Garden and placed the angels and the flaming sword to guard the entrance? And were not all men forbidden, on pain of death, to enter into His presence in the Holy of Holies? But now, the writer says Jesus’ blood, in effect, has quenched the fiery sword, and He has torn the veil of the Holy of Holies in two. If you come through Him, you not only can come into God’s presence, but you can come with confidence.

Jesus’ way into God’s presence is a new and living way. The old way could not even bring man into God’s symbolic, ceremonial presence, much less into His real presence. But the new way can bring us there, through the veil, that is, His flesh. When Jesus’ flesh was torn, so was the veil that kept men from God. The blood of animals allowed only the high priest to enter the veil briefly. Jesus’ blood allows everyone who believes in Him to enter the veil permanently.

New (prosphatos) in verse 20 is used only once in the New Testament. Its original meaning was “freshly slaughtered.” Jesus is the new way, the freshly slaughtered sacrifice, who opens the way to God. It seems contradictory that the freshly slaughtered way would also be the living way. But Jesus’ death conquered death and gives life. His death is the only way to life that is everlasting.

While Jesus was preaching and teaching and healing—that is, while He was alive—His flesh was a barrier to God’s presence just as was the veil in the Tabernacle. An uncrucified Savior could not have saved. If Jesus had only come into the world and ministered in His flesh, He could not have been Savior, no matter how many years He may have preached or how many thousand more miracles He may have performed. As long as His flesh was alive it was a barrier, in the sense that only by its sacrifice could men’s sins be atoned for and the way to heaven be opened. When the physical veil of the earthly Temple was torn in two during Jesus’ crucifixion, the spiritual veil, so to speak, of His flesh was also torn.

Jesus not only opened the way to God but He is now our great priest over the house of God. He does not merely show the way to God, or even just provide the way to God; He takes us with Him to God and ministers for us in heaven. A paraphrase of Romans 5:10 could be:

“If His death could do so much to save me, what must His life be doing in the presence of God to keep me!”

Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (10:22)

Sincere (althinos) means genuine, without superficiality, hypocrisy, or ulterior motive. Coming to God with full assurance requires commitment that is genuine.

The nation of Judah, like many individuals, often had come to God with anything but a sincere heart. “ ‘Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but rather in deception,’ declares the LORD” (Jer. 3:10). But a day was to come when His people would change. “I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart” (Jer. 24:7).

Simon the magician made a profession of faith in Christ, but his heart became corrupt. He tried to use Christ’s name and power for his own glory and benefit, and was harshly rebuked by Peter. “You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you” (Acts 8:21-22). Paul counseled slaves to be obedient to their masters, “in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ” (Eph. 6:5). From the earliest days of the Old Covenant, God had demanded a sincere heart. “You will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul” (Deut. 4:29). The people who find God are those who seek Him with their whole heart, with total genuineness.

A certain type of faith is built into human nature. Even on the purely human, earthly level, we could not operate without it. We eat food taken from a can or box that we buy in the store, with perfect confidence that it will not harm us. We turn on the faucet, pour a glass of water, and drink it without question. We accept payment in printed paper because we have faith that the government will back its money. Without faith, society could not operate.

But saving faith not only requires faith in a different object, it requires faith from a different source. We can trust in food, water, and money by our own will, our own decision. Faith in Jesus Christ must include our own decision, but it must proceed from God’s decision. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Salvation is a gift of God, and part of that gift is saving faith itself. God plants in the heart the desire and the ability to believe, and the ability to receive the gift of salvation.

When we come to God in faith, our hearts should not only be sincere but also sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. This figure, as we might expect, is taken from the sacrificial ceremonies of the Old Covenant. The priests were continually washing themselves and the sacred vessels in the basins of clear water, and blood was continually being sprinkled as a sign of cleansing. But all the cleansing, whether with water or blood, was external. Only Jesus can cleanse a man’s heart. By His Spirit He cleanses the innermost thoughts and desires.

In Christ our sins are covered in the blood and our lives are transformed. There must be both; together they make up salvation. We might say the first is positional satisfaction and the second is practical sanctification. God is satisfied with the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, and sin is removed and our consciences are free. We are changed on the inside as we are washed by the Word and born again.

POSITIONAL SATISFACTION

Having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience is a beautiful picture of deliverance, already mentioned in 9:14. Conscience condemns us and reminds us of our guilt; and the guilt cannot be removed until the sin is removed. When Jesus died, His blood removed our sins, and when we embrace Him by faith, our conscience becomes free from guilt—we are cleansed from an evil conscience. We do not condemn ourselves anymore.

Cleansing of our hearts refers to satisfaction of God’s justice, the expiation of our sins, which is required before we can be acceptable to Him.

PRACTICAL SANCTIFICATION

The other part of the cleansing, having our bodies washed with pure water, does not refer to baptism, but has to do with our living, with how the Holy Spirit changes our lives. It is the same cleansing mentioned by Paul in Titus 3:5 (“the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit”) and in Ephesians 5:26 (“the washing of water with the word”).

These two aspects of cleansing are inseparable. When a man comes to Christ, they both take place. Christ’s death pays the penalty of sin for us and God is satisfied; and the cleansing act of the Holy Spirit begins to change us on the inside and He is satisfied. God’s justice and righteousness are both satisfied; and because of this, a believer can come into God’s presence with confidence.

THE THREE REQUIREMENTS OF FAITH

The faith that God honors, the faith that is from a sincere heart, requires three things: felt need, content, and commitment.

FELT NEED

Faith cannot begin until a person realizes his need for salvation. If he is without Christ, he needs salvation whether he recognizes it or not. But he will not have reason to believe until his need is felt, until it is recognized. When Saul was persecuting the church, he had a great need for salvation, but he certainly felt no need of it. He was thoroughly convinced he was doing God’s will. Only when the Lord confronted him dramatically on the Damascus road did his need become known and felt-in Saul’s case, very deeply. The need may not, at first, be clearly understood. On the Damascus road, Saul could not have explained his spiritual need in the way that he was able to do some years later when he wrote the book of Romans. He simply knew that something was desperately wrong in his life and that the answer was in God. He knew he needed something from the Lord.

Often a person’s felt need is only partial. The first feeling of need may only be for a purpose in life or for someone to love us and care for us. Or it may be a sense of need for forgiveness and removal of guilt, for inner peace. The most important thing is that a person realize that the answer to his need is in God. People came to Jesus for many reasons, some of them rather superficial. But when they came, Jesus met all their needs. They may have felt only a need for physical healing, but He also offered spiritual healing. Felt need does not require theological understanding of the doctrine of salvation, only a sincere heart that knows it needs salvation. On the other hand, a person who does not feel a need for salvation, no matter how good his theology, is far from faith in God. Felt need is essential, but inadequate on its own.

CONTENT

A person does not have to comprehend the full knowledge and understanding of the doctrine of salvation before he can be saved, but he does need the gospel truth (1 Cor. 15:1-5) that he is lost in sin and needs the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He must know the gospel. The idea of “blind faith” sounds spiritual, but it is not biblical. Even great persons of faith will not know many of the things about God until they see their Lord face to face in heaven. But God does not demand faith without giving reason for faith. The writer of Hebrews, for example, piles up truth upon truth and presents Jesus as the Jews’ promised Messiah. He also shows that the New Covenant is far superior to the Old, that the old sacrifices were ineffective, and that only the new sacrifice can bring a person to God—and so on and on.

The following story is told of Channing Pollock, a well-known playwright. Mr. Pollock was collaborating with another author in writing a play. As they were working late one night in Pollock’s New York apartment, something in the work they were doing caused the friend to say to Pollock, “Have you ever read the New Testament?” Pollock said he had not, and they continued working until early morning, when they parted. Pollock went to bed, but could not sleep. He was bothered by his friend’s question, simple and casual though it seemed. He finally got out of bed and searched the apartment until he found a New Testament. After reading the gospel of Mark through, he got dressed and walked the streets until dawn. Later, telling the story to the friend, he said, “When I returned home, I found myself on my knees, passionately in love with Jesus Christ.” Beginning with a felt need, vague as it was, he then looked at the truth and its evidence—and believed.

COMMITMENT

The climax of faith is commitment. Professing Christ, without commitment to Christ, is not saving faith.

My father often told the story of a tightrope walker who liked to walk a wire across Niagara Falls—preferably with someone on his back. Many people on the bank expressed complete confidence in his ability to do it, but he always had a difficult time getting a volunteer to climb up on him.

Many people express complete confidence in Christ but never trust themselves to Him.

As a missionary translator in the New Hebrides, John Paton was frustrated in his work for a long time because the people had no word for faith. One day a man who was working for him came into the house and flopped down into a big chair. The missionary asked him what the word would be for what he had just done. The word the man gave in reply was the one Paton used for faith in his translation of the New Testament. Without hesitation or reservation, the man had totally committed his body to the chair. He had felt his need for rest, he was convinced that the chair provided a place for rest, and he committed himself to the chair for rest. A believer must, in the same way, totally commit his life to the Lord Jesus Christ. Only then is faith, saving faith.

HOLD FAST IN HOPE

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. (10:23)

The second part of a positive response to the gospel is hope. The best Greek manuscripts of this text have the word elpis (“hope”), rather than pistis (“faith”), as in the King James version. A person who genuinely trusts, cannot help being hopeful. A hopeless believer is a contradiction in terms.

Just so, a person who is genuinely hopeful will hold fast. One who lets go has lost hope; and one who still has hope will still hold on. Continuing is a mark both of faith and of hope. Holding on does not keep us saved, any more than good works will make us saved. But both are evidence that we are saved. Many people who have confessed Christ continue to give evidence, by their lives, that they have never known Him.

I witnessed a confession of Christ, followed by baptism, of a man who soon afterward opened a pornographic nightclub and bar. His life is an extreme example of showing correspondence to the Christ he had confessed. The “confession” of his life contradicted the confession of his lips. He did not hold fast the confession of his faith and hope in Jesus Christ.

Holding on is the human side of eternal security. The Reformers called it “the perseverance of the saints.” It is not something we do to keep ourselves saved, but it is evidence, on the human side, that we are saved. It is a paradox, just as is the doctrine of election. God sovereignly chooses those who are saved, but He will not save anyone who does not believe. God keeps us secure in His Son, but our own wills, expressed in holding on in perseverance, are also involved. As the strongest Calvinist theologian recognizes, God’s sovereignty does not exclude man’s responsibility. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44), as well as, “If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine” (John 8:31).

How sad that many come to Christ and say they believe and yet are gone so soon. In the parable of the sower, Jesus illustrated four different kinds of response to the gospel. Some people are so far from wanting salvation that the devil simply takes away the seed of God’s Word before it has time to germinate at all. Others respond joyfully at hearing the Word, but their “belief lasts only until the first temptation. Still others believe until they run into a few problems. True believers, however, “are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance” (Luke 8:15).

These types of response were exemplified by those who heard and saw Jesus. During the first Passover of His ministry, “many believed in His name, beholding His signs which He was doing.” But Jesus, knowing their hearts were not with Him, “was not entrusting Himself to them” (John 2:23-24). These were examples of the second or third type of response. They made a superficial start with Jesus, but soon left Him. Jesus knew right away they were not sincere; in a few days or weeks, everyone knew it.

Similarly, “many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God” (John 12:42-43). What promised to be a revival among the religious leaders proved to be the making of a secret society of unbelievers.

One group was so impressed with Jesus’ signs and miracles that they called Him “the Prophet who is to come into the world,” and “were intending to come and take Him by force, to make Him king” (John 6:14-15). But Jesus, again reading the minds of the professed believers, knew their insincerity and withdrew to a mountain to be alone. They wanted only an outward king, not an inward one.

A true believer will be around in the end. He may become discouraged or frustrated, and occasionally fall into a sinful habit. But he will hold fast the confession of his hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. A true believer’s faith and hope are never in vain, because they are in a God who is faithful to His promises. “Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass” (1 Thess. 5:24). God will do His part and the true believer will also do his.

There was once a young boy whose dad left him on a downtown corner one morning and told him to wait there until he returned in about half an hour. But the father’s car broke down and he could not get to a phone. Five hours went by before the father managed to get back, and he was worried that his son would be in a state of panic. But when the father got there, the boy was standing in front of the dime store, looking in the window and rocking back and forth on his heels. When the father saw him, he ran up to him and threw his arms around him and hugged and kissed him. The father apologized and said, “Weren’t you worried? Did you think I was never coming back?” The boy looked up and replied, “No, Dad. I knew you were coming. You said you would.”

God’s answers may seem to be a long time in coming, and our waiting may be uncomfortable or even painful. But He will always do just as He has said He will do. The reason we can hold fast to our hope without wavering is that He who promised is faithful.

ENCOURAGE IN LOVE

And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near. (10:24-25)

The third mark of a positive response to the gospel is love. The particular expression of love mentioned here is fellowship love. The Jewish readers were having a hard time breaking with the Old Covenant, with the Temple and the sacrifices. They were still holding on to the legalism and ritual and ceremony, the outward things of Judaism. So the writer is telling them that one of the best ways to hold fast to the things of God—the real things of God that are found only in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ—is to be in the fellowship of His people, where they could love and be loved, serve and be served. There is no better place to come all the way to faith in Christ, or to hope continually in Him, than the church, His Body.

The day drawing near could refer to the imminent destruction of the Temple, which brought all the sacrifices and rituals to a close. The Old Covenant simply could not function without the Temple, which, when the book of Hebrews was written, was about to be destroyed by Titus. But I believe the primary reference is to the coming of the Lord, which makes the passage apply to all of us. The only place where we can remain steadfast until He returns is with His people. We need each other. We need to be in fellowship with each other, as we mutually strengthen each other and encourage each other.

Some years ago, a young man sat next to me on a plane and we struck up a conversation. When he discovered I was a minister, he said, “I used to belong to a church, but it seems to me that a person’s relationship to Christ ought to be personal, not institutional. What do you think?” After thanking the Lord silently for providing such an open opportunity for witness, I said, “I certainly agree with you.” He then asked if I knew how he could have a personal relationship with Christ—to which I also answered in the affirmative. I thought to myself, “He certainly seems to feel his need for Christ,” and so I asked if he had studied the truth of the gospel and the evidence for Christ’s claims. He replied, “Yes, but I just don’t know how to get to Him.” “Are you ready to commit yourself to Him?” I asked. He said that he was, and as we prayed together he made the commitment. The next Sunday he was in our morning worship service, and afterward asked me if our church had anything going on during the week that he could become involved in. This young man gave every evidence of being a true believer. He felt his need, he studied the evidence, he made a commitment to Jesus Christ, and was showing every desire to hold fast to Christ and to have fellowship with His people.

The writer is saying very simply, “The door is open, the way is made available to enter into God’s presence. Come in and stay and fellowship with His people, and enjoy God’s company forever.”