NOTES for Heb 9:11-28

Continuing the theme of the Messiah as High Priest, the author of the letter gives his main attention to sacrifice as a form of communion with God that connects a person with God through purification and sanctification. It is no accident that he speaks of Christ as the One who passed through a greater and more perfect sanctuary, made not by human beings but by God Himself, calling Him "the high priest of the good things already manifested" (v. 11; in the Synodal translation, "High Priest of the good things to come"; the Greek text can mean not only "coming with a greater and more perfect tabernacle," but also "passing through a greater and more perfect tabernacle"). The former sacrifices purified a person from the outside, touching first of all his external, bodily, natural component (v. 13). Such purification could free the one being purified from the consequences of a particular sin, if that sin had been committed unintentionally or in ignorance, but it could not free a person completely from the power of sin. That is no surprise: external purification was directed not at the root cause of human sinfulness, but only at its concrete manifestations.

Jesus, however, makes "eternal redemption" possible, complete liberation from sin, after which it no longer has power over a person (v. 12). This becomes possible because the Kingdom that He brought into the world, paying for it by His death on the cross, changes a person not partially, touching only his nature, but completely, transforming his heart and therefore his spiritual and moral life, "purifying the conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (v. 14).

Since the time of Moses, sacrificial blood had sanctified both individual persons and a whole people, joining to God those who wanted this. It also purified a person from the consequences of sins he had committed, freeing him from the power of the evil in which the world lies (vv. 19-22). Such liberation was sometimes called ransom, or redemption, comparing a person's liberation from the power of worldly evil, and therefore from death, with the ransom and freeing of a fellow tribesman who had fallen into slavery, something that in every age was considered a righteous deed. But formerly the ransom was temporary, the liberation relative. Now the One has come into the world who, at the price of His own blood, ransoms forever everyone who is ready to accept His authority, finally and definitively freeing His faithful ones from the power of sin and death (v. 15). The former covenant required sacrificial blood for the purification and sanctification of those who had made it with God (v. 18); the new covenant unites the faithful with God not through sacrificial blood, but through that life of the Kingdom which the Risen One gives to everyone ready to believe Him and follow Him.

“Service to the living and true God.” As the Apostle says, the very possibility of such labor exists only because Christ’s Blood was shed for the redemption of our sins. And in the Gospel we read that following, directly imitating Christ’s path, is our only way to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord will deal with us as He did with Isaac, whom Abraham was ready to slay on the altar. What did Isaac think and know for the rest of his life after the events on Moriah? Most likely, he always thanked the Lord for stopping his father’s hand. The miracle of his salvation happened to him, a miracle that God worked upon him. So too for Christians: even if they are not called to ascend the cross, their hearts should hold the same joy and gratitude to Christ for having done this for us. And if the world should need the Gospel to be proclaimed in it once again through torture and the cross, then every Christian will hear the question addressed to him: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” Until then, through repentance and Communion we can cleanse our conscience, serve, and be servants to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

"The blood of Christ," the semantic, emotional, and spiritual center of today's apostolic reading, appears against the background of the request made by the sons of Zebedee about the time when the Lord will come "in His glory" in the Gospel reading ("Grant us to sit, one at Your right hand and the other at Your left, in Your glory"). Blood and Glory, Power and Glory, Weakness even unto death and Glory: these two poles shine upon us today, unattainable to one another yet present at the same time, one in the apostolic and the other in the Gospel reading. But what is this time when the Lord will appear in glory? And what is glory? This is one of the most difficult concepts, made more complicated still by different layers of philology. Yet this is what we read in Psalm 16 (Ps 17:15): "As for me, I will behold Your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with Your likeness." Here the word "glory" in the Church Slavonic translation apparently has no relation to the Latin Gloria, and thus none to the Russian word slava. But the meaning that appears before us here helps us understand how we are to live out the brothers' request and apply it to ourselves. For the mere sight of the image of God will fill us with such happiness that we will need no other satisfaction. We will be satisfied. Yet perhaps this will be only because we have been cleansed by His blood, have passed through His dying, have received it into ourselves, and have become participants in it. Only then will the meeting after separation truly satisfy every desire. But if that terrible separation never took place... What trifles then occupy our thoughts: who, where, with whom, why... But He is not there, because He died and rose again.

In the new messianic covenant-union, the person of the Messiah Himself as High Priest plays the decisive role, for He can cleanse those who trust Him in a way no cleansing sacrifices of former times could cleanse them. Yahwistic cleansing sacrifices really could deliver a sinner from the consequences of the sin he had committed, if the sin had been committed unintentionally, but only until the next sin. With his sin a person remained alone before God and had to think for himself what to do with his sinfulness. It is not so with Christ: He does not leave the sinner who has trusted Him alone with his sin before God.

He Himself takes upon Himself the consequences of the sin committed by the person, if only the person agrees to this and if he repents of his sin. He not only brought the Kingdom into the world; He also helps everyone who seeks to enter it, regardless of the past, regardless of the sins that could have hindered a person on his path.

Formerly a person could be cleansed for a time, for a time return to the state in which he could approach the altar and be sanctified. But such a state could not be permanent; a person was sanctified, and then rolled back again, sinned again, repented again, performed cleansing sacrifices again, and again went to the altar so that, having been sanctified, he would then roll back again. The rollback was inevitable: sin held the person in its power, never releasing him completely into freedom.

Sometimes the chain became longer, and then an illusion of liberation arose, but sooner or later the person again discovered its end, realizing that he still had no real freedom. With Christ it is not so: He breaks the chains binding us completely - at the cost of His own life, which He gives for the possibility of freeing from the power of sin everyone who is ready to allow Him to do this and who is ready to ask Him for it. Here liberation is no longer for a time, but forever. And there is the possibility of true, full life in the Kingdom, which without Him we would not have, not only because there would be no Kingdom in the world, but also because we would never be able to contain its life.

Talking about the renovation of the union with God, the author of the epistle connects it to the death of the One, Who made possible this renovation. And as argumentation of his words, he quotes for example with the testament, which comes into force only after the death of the testator. At first sight, the link is not obvious: because the union with God, quite as any other union, can not be transmitted by inheritance, as goods transfer, it is not a matter of property here, but of relationship, that each has to establish again and himself.

But all the same, if it is impossible to establish for man a relation with God, or with people, it is at least possible to put him into a well-known group of people, where to establish such relations is easier. The environment doesn’t certainly define completely the fate of man, but gives in certain cases such possibilities, that in another case the same person would never have received.

That is exactly what Jesus did for all of us together and for each in particular: He led us into His Kingdom, in this environment, where love to God and to the neighbor is a natural habitat. And, having led, He ended His earthly way: it is not by chance if the day before His death, the last thing He did, was the Last Supper, Passover seder, becoming thereby the messianic wedding, which was the first sacred meal of the Kingdom.

And then He goes away after the resurrection and the Ascension, somehow moving away, dissolving in the depths of the Kingdom, which coming into the world, becomes wider and more spacious. He leaves, granting us the possibility of living in the Kingdom He left. To live one life with Him, and at the same time be completely independent, free and responsible. So that at the end of time, when the Kingdom will be revealed in all its plenitude, we would meet again with Him. This time not like slaves or mercenaries, but as friends.

Comparing the former sacrifices with what Jesus did for His faithful ones, the author of the letter speaks about the traditional Yahwist worship, with all its forms, as an earthly image of another reality, the reality of the Kingdom, and he applies this also to sacrifice (v. 23). Now, according to him, we have the possibility through Christ to share in the Kingdom itself (v. 24). And in the Kingdom the endlessness of those partial purifications and partial sanctifications, which alone could be available to a person in our still untransformed world, is removed and loses its meaning (vv. 25-26). The author of the letter draws a fairly clear parallel between the life of the Kingdom in its relation to the life of the untransformed world, on the one hand, and the corresponding ways of communion with God, on the other. No human being can become a living Torah, be sanctified to the point of the complete transformation of human nature, and contain the Kingdom in all its fullness. Therefore the only means left to any priest for purifying and sanctifying both himself and others was sacrificial blood sanctified by God.

The human being remained human; in God's hands he was only an imperfect instrument of incomplete purification and partial sanctification. Hence the bad infinity of the process: in this way it is impossible either to tear sin out by the root or to transform human nature completely. Only the Messiah, who became the living Torah and contained in Himself the whole fullness of the Kingdom, and therefore the fullness of God, was able to change the situation qualitatively. Entering the Kingdom and sharing in its life changes a person once and for all. Here there is no longer room for constantly repeated partial purifications and regular sanctifications that never reach fullness. Meanwhile, among second-generation Christians there had already begun, apparently, to spread attitudes that were essentially Old Testament ones, extending to Christianity the former, pre-Christian ideas about spiritual life. It is apparently against these that the author of the letter argues, reminding his readers that the sacrifice of Christ, despite the similarity of the name, is fundamentally different from the former sacrifices. Unlike them, it is not repeated again and again. It is the beginning of the history of the Kingdom, which will be completed by its triumph and by the return of the Savior (vv. 27-28).