NOTES for Heb 9:23-28
23 It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. |
24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: |
25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; |
26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. |
27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: |
28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. |
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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).
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