NOTES for Heb 12:28-29

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²⁸Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

²⁹For our God is a consuming fire.

For Paul, Christianity is above all the Kingdom and life in the Kingdom. The realities of our fallen world are by no means absolute for him. Only God's being is fully and absolutely real; being whose existence God supports directly and immediately, as He supports the world He created, can be considered relatively real. But for the world's existence to become possible, it must exist with God's presence as its center.

The created world is a theophany, a manifestation of God, which, however, is not identical with God in His essence. And the created world as such, matter, the substance of which it consists, is only the outer boundary of this theophany. This is how the world appeared before Moses and his people at Sinai: in the center was the theophany, God's presence revealed to the world, the sacred mountain, and around it the rest of the world as the periphery of the sacred mountain, as the vessel of the theophany.

But that was only a projection of the universe as it is, while with the coming of Christ, when the world stands before the throne of glory because Christ opens to the world the reality of this throne, what is revealed to humanity is no longer a projection but the universe itself in all its fullness, the universe as the Kingdom of God. Meanwhile, however, man remains man, fallen man, over whom sin has, if not absolute, then decisive power. And the author of the letter reminds his readers that one cannot live in the Kingdom, before the throne of glory, without resisting one's sinfulness.

Refusal of such resistance, or still more ignoring the reality of the Kingdom, means only one thing: the person who ignores it, refusing to live in the sphere of God's love, comes face to face with God's power. And such a collision can end in only one way: the person simply disappears, ceases to exist, as every finite quantity disappears before infinity. If God has not become Love for a person, He becomes for him a "consuming fire." This, of course, is also possible, but it is not at all what God wants for man. Yet a person can come to know God's fire if he rejects God's love.

Other notes

For Heb 12:18-29

¹⁸For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,

¹⁹And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:

²⁰(For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart:

²¹And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)

²²But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

²³To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

²⁴And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

²⁵See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:

²⁶Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

²⁷And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

²⁸Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

²⁹For our God is a consuming fire.

Speaking about the history of the covenant, the author of the letter uses the traditional Jewish correlation of the revelation... Read more

Speaking about the history of the covenant, the author of the letter uses the traditional Jewish correlation of the revelation received at Sinai, where the first covenant with God in the history of the Jewish people was concluded, with the messianic revelation traditionally connected with Zion and with the promises given to David (vv. 18-24). At the same time, not surprisingly, he speaks of the promises given by God as promises already fulfilled, having in view above all the heavenly Jerusalem mentioned in the book of Isaiah (vv. 22-24; cf. Isa. 60). In this way the author of the letter brings new shades of meaning into the traditional idea: for him the comparison of Sinai with Zion becomes a comparison of the old, Sinaitic covenant with the new, messianic covenant. And for him the messianic covenant is obviously inseparable from the Kingdom, whose triumph he already sees not in the future but in the present (vv. 25-29).

Apparently, for many of his contemporaries and fellow believers, the catastrophe of A.D. 70 became a sign that the triumph of the Kingdom was being postponed, and postponed for a long time, that some failure had occurred in the fulfillment of God's plans, so that now, for a time, the Kingdom and all the plans, hopes, and works connected with it could, if not be forgotten, then at least be postponed indefinitely. But the author of the letter, remaining a faithful disciple of the apostle Paul, emphasizes that God's plan is being carried out in its own course, that the catastrophe of A.D. 70 does not mean God has abandoned all His designs, and that the Kingdom is still just as near as in the days of the Savior's earthly ministry, when He Himself bore witness to its nearness.

At first glance all this seems self-evident, at least self-evident for a Christian, but after the shock experienced in A.D. 70 by both the Synagogue and the Church, even the most obvious things ceased for a time to seem obvious. And the author of the letter never tires of reminding his readers of the main thing that forms the foundation of Christian life: the Kingdom, whose history continues despite any disasters, even the most terrible, that happen in our world, a world being transfigured but not yet transfigured, and therefore not free from evil.

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NOTES for Heb 12:28-29

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