Hebrews
Remission of Sins and Freedom
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons
Lesson: 22-33
Genre: Lecture
Track: 22
Dictation Name: RR198L22
Location/Venue:
Year:
Let us worship God. Oh Lord open Thou my lips, and my mouth will show forth Thy praise. For Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite oh God, Thou wilt not despise. Let us pray.
Our Father, again we come into Thy presence, mindful as always that Thou art more mindful of us than we are of ourselves. Thy mercies are new every morning, Thy providential care surrounds us, envelopes us, protects and blesses us. Teach us therefore to know that all things come from Thee, and all things are for our good, our blessing in Jesus Christ. So that in all things we may be patient, thankful, and ever willing to press forward in Thy service. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
Our Scripture is Hebrews 10:11-18. Our subject, Remission of Sins and Freedom. Remission of Sins and Freedom, Hebrews 10:11-18.
“11And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:
12But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;
13From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
14For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
15Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,
16This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;
17And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
18Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.
19Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
20By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;
21And having an high priest over the house of God;
22Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”
We are told in verse 11 that every priest in Israel stood daily as he officiated in the temple, repeating sacrifices for the people which could never take away sins. If the worshippers trust was in the ritual of animal sacrifices, there was not atonement for him. Only if he recognized that the animal represented the unblemished lamb of God still to come was there in any sense a remission of his sins. Every priest stood in the temple, as he officiated he was a part of an unfinished act of atonement.
The exception to this requirement to stand, and to serve standing, we see in 2 Samuel:7-18, where David, a type of Christ, sat before the Lord.
Verse 12 tells us that this man, Jesus Christ, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. Atonement had been fully made, and the great High Priest sat down on His thrown in heaven, on the right hand of God, to rule forever.
As verse 13 tells us, “From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.” An image of total power, total conquest. This is a remarkable challenge to all who are tempted to return to Judaism with its temple and Levitical priesthood. As against a priesthood with grave limitations, with Christ there is first an High Priest at the right hand of God, ready to intercede for His people at any and all times. His atonement is fully and totally efficacious. The repetitious act is replaced by a final and eternally binding act of deliverance from the power and the penalty of sin and death.
Intercession of a continual basis replaces atonement. Atonement by Christ on the cross was fully complete and final, our sins are blotted out. We are judicially declared innocent by Christ’s regenerating power we become a new creation. Because we are His human race, His new human race, he intercedes for us.
Then second, he reigns seated at the right hand of God the Father. From henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. He reigns, He conquers, and He rules. For men to cling to shadows is to abandon victory and triumph; the shadow worshippers look not to victory, but more shadows, more rites. To a form of godliness, and not the power and substance thereof. As you can see, Hebrews is a tremendous indictment against those Hebrews who wanted to go back to the temple, because they wanted the priesthood and the sacrifices.
Then Hebrews cites a portion of Jeremiah 31:31-34, concerning the new covenant to be established by the messiah. Verse 14 tells us that He has perfected us who are sanctified by his atonement. This perfection does not mean that we are totally sanctified, rather the sanctified, those set apart for atonement, receive a full and perfect remission of sins. There is no need for a repetition, the act is complete and forever so. We are declared innocent, because Christ has paid the price, the death penalty for us. We can never be sentenced to death for sins because our Lord has paid the penalty.
Now, with a citation from Jeremiah what Hebrew’s tells us, there will be in a sense a second giving of the law. The law once given by Moses will be restated by our new Moses, who leads us to our promised land. Of course, the open proclamation of that comes from the Sermon on the Mount. Our Lord there deliberately parallels and echoes what Moses had done earlier. This time however the law will be written on the tables of the hearts of the believers, and in their minds; it will be the same law, but it will now be a part of their being, of the being of the true members of the new covenant.
Now, these verses from Jeremiah are obviously Jeremiahs, but Hebrews tells us that they come from the Holy Ghost, that Jeremiah was merely the means by which God gives us these words. This text from Jeremiah had been previously cited in Hebrews 8:8-12, it is also referred to in Psalm 40:7-9 where the messiah declared: “7Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, 8I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.”
The Law is written in all of Christ’s being, and we as His new creation have the same law inscribed in all our being. The Law is an expression of Gods being, of His justice or righteousness, and it must be the same for us. The Holy Spirit gives us both the Law and the word of God, enscriptured. Now this giving of a new nature, a new mind, and a new heart, goes hand in hand with the remission of all our sins and iniquities, verse 17 tells us. They are no longer chargeable to us, and God will remember them no more. Thus, verse 18 concludes: “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.” It’s over, with Christ’s atonement we no longer need the sacrifices. Our sins are blotted out. The temple, the Levitical priesthood and the sacrificial system are ended. To imagine in any way their return, as does C.I. Schofield in his notes, is blasphemous.
The plain implications of this are far reaching. Wherever the practice or shadow of the sacrificial system remains, their religion is past-bound. It is governed by the need to make atonement for sins. Outside the true church in the humanistic world it means the endless use of psychotherapy, which offers not cure, but an endless churning of the mind and the memory. The result is a past-bound perspective. Not surprisingly it has been Biblical faith that has opened up freedom and progress to men by the wiping out of sins through Christ’s atonement. Outside of Christianity men are past bound, because they always have the burden of the past, their sins, their iniquities. But with the cross that past is atoned for, and now we have a forward look.
It is not surprising that in the Western world the idea of progress became so powerful, but disappeared when Christianity was set aside. From the beginning of this century, when the Christian world was full of optimism, to now, a post-Christian world full of pessimism and despair.
From the Humanistic perspective the remission of sins is only possible by man, supposedly. By psychotherapy, by education, by political acts designed to salve the conscience, and so on.
I was very much interested in reading the account by a Hispanic who describes coming to this country, a land full of hope, and now, all around he sees the Americans with no hope, and only those who’ve come from the outside and picked up on the faith who have hope. Sigmund Freud recognized the mental health of Christians. They were the only ones who really if they had a strong faith avoided Neurosis. But he damned them as avoiding neurosis by accepting the cosmic neurosis, he said, God. And his explanation, so called, said nothing more than to reveal Freud’s warped mind.
For us, atonement by God the Son remits our sins, and it frees us from the past for a future under God. We become the future oriented people. This is why Hebrews is practical in emphasis, it tells us what the atonement means, and its goal is not a new ritual or shadow, but freedom of action in Christ. The ritual of the church must be oriented to obedient, er, not to obedience, and to action. Not to the past. The neglect of the deaconate is evidence of the future of the modern church. Its failure. It has not future. It has sentenced itself to failure because it does not believe that the atonement blots out the past to make us builders of the future. Let us pray.
Our Father we thank Thee that through Jesus Christ we are a new creation. Our sins are forgiven, blotted out, and Thou hast declared that Thou wilt remember them no more. Lord, we thank Thee for Thy grace and mercy to us, make us strong in thy service to the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. In His name we pray, amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson?
Yes?
[Audience Member] The concept of Christian hope also seems to be tied into vision, having vision for the future, having a vision for how things should be, having some type of vision for one’s life, I was just wondering if you had any comments on that as it relates to the vision of hope as you expressed it?
[Rushdoony] Well, I read a while back a statement by somebody who was ready to agree that really, the evidence for denying theonomy, Christian reconstruction, the idea of Gods law is very slim. That really God’s law is still applicable, everything in scripture points to it. But then, he was unwilling to go a step further and to agree with postmillennialism, with victory. So what was the result? In idea, in principle he accepted the law, in practice he did not apply it. Because he had no future. So we are going to be past bound, we are going to be tied to our yesterday’s if we don’t see that the law of God, the atonement, Postmillennialism, are tied together. The atonement requires that we be future oriented, it says that you are not going to spend all your time bemoaning your past.
In some churches, and I’ve been told by members, every Sunday they are made to feel that they are such terrible, miserable sinners. And theirs is a joyless faith. What this does is to bind them to the church, because apart from the church there is no release. But when you are in Christ, and under His atonement, then the law is a plan of action or the conquest of the future. It is inseparable, the law, the atonement, and a postmillennial hope. Does that help?
[Audience Member] Yes, very much.
[Rushdoony] We have a number of people who are following this course that I have just described, and the man is a very fine man, I am inclined to think that his fear is that if he adopts post millennialism that he will have to get out of the study and act. He will have to apply his faith. One of the great scholars of our time, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, He is an Austrian political scientist and a count, whom Dorothy and I have known for some years, has said that: “The most medieval institutions in the modern world are the protestant churches.” Because they are like convents and monasteries, they are withdrawn from the world.
They have no sense of action, and that is because they believe in neither the law nor in Post-millennialism, and therefore their doctrine of the atonement is a vague belief that: “Well, the blood of Jesus cleansed us from sins, and saved us.” But if you ask them, “Now what does that mean for you?” They are bewildered. There’s no forward vision on their part.
Are there any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.
Our Father we thank Thee for this Thy word, for the glory of our life in Christ, for the certainty of victory. Teach us day by day to commit ourselves in Thy hands, knowing that in Christ Jesus all things are for us a triumph, a part of our eternal victory. That in the worst of the battle and the worst of adversities, thou art there to make all things work together for good to us. Our God we thank thee.
And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.