Hebrews 4:12-16 Commentary

Preachers might listen for the Spirit’s promptings to move us in one of two directions with this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. We might prayerfully concentrate separately on either verses 12-13 or 14-16. Each, after all, contains a veritable goldmine of theology that has rich pastoral implications.

However, preachers might also listen for how the Spirit may summon us to proclaim the entire pericope. Those who follow that path might consider introducing their message by describing what we generally call “good news-bad news” scenarios. From time to time, after all, a person may approach us with the announcement that goes something like, “I have some good news and bad news.” She might then follow it up by asking, “Which would you like to hear first?”

When someone approaches me with that kind of announcement and question, I generally ask to hear the bad news first. That way, I assume, the good news can help to cushion the impact of the bad news. Yet sometimes the bad news is so bad that no amount of good news can soften its impact.

Hebrews 4:12-16 contains elements of what we might consider both bad news and good news. But before preachers explore that, we want to note the way Hebrews’ author introduces this pericope. Verse 12’s “for [gar]” connects this Sunday’s Lesson to what precedes it (that falls outside the Lesson). So wise preachers will at least familiarize our hearers and ourselves with Hebrews 4:1-11.

It recounts Israel’s failure to enter God’s sabbath rest by refusing to anticipate the eternal Sabbath by resting on the Sabbath. While Hebrews doesn’t explicitly say so, we sense that some of the people to whom it’s written weren’t resting from their work the way God did after God completed God’s work of creation. After all, in verses 10 and following Hebrews says, “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.”

Yet we also sense that some of Hebrews’ readers assumed that they could imitate their ancestors’ examples of disobeying the Lord in secret. They may have suspected that God wouldn’t or couldn’t notice their sin, sins and sinfulness. After all, verse 12 begins with a dramatic announcement: “The word of God [logos tou Theou] is alive [Zon] and active [energes].” It’s a profession that God’s word isn’t just a set of words written on musty parchment. It’s also both lively and powerful.

In fact, Hebrews 12:9b adds, God’s word isn’t just living and active. It’s also “sharper [tomoteros] than any two-edged sword [machairan distomon].” The Message paraphrases verse 9 by referring to God’s word as being as “sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel.” God’s word is, in fact, so sharp that “it penetrates [diiknoumenos] even to dividing [merimou] soul and spirit [psyches and pneumatos], joints [harmon] and marrow [myelon].” God’s word cuts through anything and everything. It’s, in fact, so sharp that it even divides what humans struggle to differentiate: the human spirit and soul.

To that admittedly mysterious language Hebrews’ author adds more concrete language. God’s word is so sharp, he goes on to write, that “it judges [kritikos] the thoughts [enthymeseon] and attitudes [ennoion] of the heart [kardias] (12c).” God’s word slices away all the ways we manage to hide our sinful thoughts and longings. It’s, in fact, so sharp that it cuts through our pretenses, delusions and sneaky sinfulness. In doing so, God’s Word exposes people to both God’s scrutiny and judgment.

Verse 13 insists that God’s word is so sharp that in some ways strips us bare before God. It, after all, warns, “Nothing in all creation is hidden [aphanes] from God’s sight [enopoion autou]. Everything is uncovered [gymna] and laid bare [tetrachelismena] before the eyes of him to whom we must give account [ho logos].” The American President Abraham Lincoln reportedly once said, “You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all the people all the time.” To that Hebrews would add, “But you can’t ever fool God.”

As if that warning weren’t chilling enough, this letter’s inspired author goes on to insist that the God who sees all is also the God to whom all people must finally answer. God word is so sharp that it exposes all that we try to hide from not just each other, but also from God. The God who proclaims that word is the God to whom each of us will someday have to give an account for what we’ve both done and failed to do. While we may manage to largely cover up our sins, there will be no hiding place for our sins (or us!) when Christ returns with all his angels to judge the living and the dead.

Yet preachers will also want to point to the good news in this haunting assertion. After all, were it up to us, we’d simply blithely continue to try to fool others and ourselves. Without God’s word that exposes our hidden sin, sins and sinfulness, we would naturally be content to look and sound righteous while disguising the rebellion that will ultimately condemn us. We’d assume that since God “grades on a sliding curve,” we’re nice enough to earn a passage mark from God. A grade that would prove to be, however, at the final judgment a failing grade.

In fact, The Message’s paraphrase of verse 12 suggests that God’s sharp word doesn’t just expose the sin that we often manage to hide from other people. The Holy Spirit also uses its warnings to prepare us to listen to and to obey God. That sharp word makes us long for God’s word of grace.

Yet that amazing grace most vividly sparkles in Hebrews 4:14-16. There, after all, Hebrews reminds Jesus’ friends that God’s sharp word doesn’t just expose everything, including our hidden sinfulness. It also exposes God’s gracious response to it. In fact, the preposition oun links the two “halves” of this text.

There’s no way we can, in The Message’s paraphrase of verse 12, evade God’s irresistible word. Yet while that shouldn’t cause Jesus’ friends to despair, neither should it make us complacent about our faithful reception of God’s grace. Hebrews’ author professes, “Since we have a great [megan] high priest [archierea] who has ascended to [dielelythota] heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly [kratomen] to the faith we profess [homologias].” God has graced us with, in other words, a great High Priest. But that’s no excuse for letting our faith wander away from the Jesus in whom we believe.

What Hebrews doesn’t explicitly say but implies is that the God whose sharp word exposes everything has graciously given Jesus’ followers Someone who is eager to deal with everything in and about us that will someday be exposed. What’s more, this helpful great High Priest has what The Message paraphrases “ready access to God.” He, in other words, doesn’t just graciously long to help his adopted siblings. Jesus also has the power and influence to do so.

When Israel’s priests dealt with God’s people’s sins, they could only do so partially and temporarily. By his life, death and resurrection, our High Priest Jesus deals with our sins completely and eternally. This Jesus, to use a popular media campaign phrase, “gets us.” He is, after all, not a “high priest [archierea] who is unable [me dynamenon] to empathize [sympathesai] with our weaknesses [astheneneiais] but [is] one who has been tempted [papeirasmenon] in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.”

Jesus fully empathizes with his followers’ struggles to love God and our neighbor. He, after all, dealt with virtually all the same temptations his followers do. But when God’s sharp word revealed his thoughts and motives, it found no rebellion. Jesus, after all, didn’t cave in to temptation. Our great High Priest loved God and his neighbor perfectly. He, in The Message’s paraphrase, experienced everything, including our pretenses, delusions and temptation toward sneaky sinfulness. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson insists that Jesus experienced nearly everything we do – except for the sin.

So God’s dearly beloved people can, as Hebrews 4:16 reminds its readers, “Approach [proserchometha] the throne of grace [throno tes charitos] with boldness [parresias], so that we may receive [labomen] mercy [eleos] and may find grace [charin] to help us [boetheian] in our time of need [eukairon].”

Neither God’s holiness nor our awareness of our sin must keep Christians away from God’s grace and mercy. Nor should it make us approach that throne with either hesitance or fear. Hebrews insists that we can, instead, go to God boldly with our sin, sins and sinfulness. Because, for Jesus’ sake, God longs to help us. As The Message so lyrically paraphrases Hebrews’ appeal: “So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.”

Here is God’s good news in the face of all our bad news. God refuses to let God’s adopted sons and daughters carry our hidden sins all the way to eternal separation from God. God doesn’t just expose our failure to love God and our neighbor. For Jesus’ sake God also offers us all the grace and mercy we’ll ever need.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In part of his terrific biography of Lyndon Johnson entitled, Master of the Senate, Robert Caro writes about the compassion the former American President displayed as a Senator. Johnson’s compassion was, however, only the palest imitation of Jesus’ compassion.

After all, as Caro notes, “During Lyndon Johnson’s previous political life, compassion had constantly been in conflict with ambition, and invariably ambition had won. Given the imperatives of his nature, in [the civil rights] conflict, it had been inevitable that the ambition would win.

“For the compassion to be released, it would have to be compatible with the ambition, pointing in the same direction. And now, at last, in 1957, it was … Power reveals. The compassion that had been hidden would be revealed now — in full. Did those sixteen million [black] Americans need a mighty champion in the halls of government. They were about to get one.”