Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25 Commentary

While Hebrews’ author uses the word only in chapter 10:22, one might argue that plerophoria that most English versions translate as “assurance” is the beating heart of not just this week’s Epistolary Lesson’s message, but also all of Hebrews’. In fact, while the entirety of the Scriptures uses the word only twice, one might make a case for plerophoria being near the center of the whole Bible’s message.

After all, for people who have any religious inklings, one of the central questions is always something like, “Am I in a healthy enough relationship with the deity whom I try to worship and serve?” We always wonder if our God (or god) is somehow sufficiently satisfied with us. Especially as we approach or walk through death’s shadowy valley, religious folk nearly universally wonder if we’ve done enough to earn the divine being’s acceptance, if not pleasure. Even Christians sometimes feel hounded by questions like, “Does God in Jesus Christ accept me?”

That may be one of the issues that underlies arguments about Christian ethics that so deeply roil large parts of the Church. We question whether certain behaviors and attitudes should at least rattle, if not destroy our confidence in God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ. Are there things that Jesus’ followers do, say and even think that should make us unsure of our right standing before the God to whom we all will someday have to give account?

We won’t settle such questions in this space – if, in fact, ever on this side of heaven’s curtain. But the Holy Spirit can use the book of Hebrews, including chapter 10, to help provide us with a lens through which to view some of our most perplexing theological and ethical controversies.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson begins with a familiar theme to those who follow the RCL: God’s Old Testament priests provided a valuable but flawed service to both God and people. Most of them faithfully performed their religious duties. Yet no matter how faithful Israel’s priests were, they could never fix humanity’s deepest need: the complete payment for people’s sin, sins and sinfulness. As a result, Hebrews implies God’s Israelite people who knew they’d someday have to answer to God for their sins were plagued by doubts about rather than bolstered by assurance of their healthy relationship with God.

That’s, in fact, the problem with all religion. One can never know if one has done enough to placate the deity. Even the best person on his or her best day can always do better. None of us can look back on a day that’s ended and claim we’ve done everything right that we might have done. So religious people can never, by nature, be assured that they’ve done enough

That’s a reason, implies this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, why God’s gracious gift of God’s Son to God’s dearly beloved people is such a precious gift. Once Jesus offered the sacrificial payment for humanity’s sin that was his life and death, he didn’t have to stay standing like Israel’s priests so that he could repeat that sacrifice. He could sit down at God’s right hand because he’d finished the job. The risen, ascended Christ could, in fact, wait for his enemies’ vanquishment because he’d sealed both their eternal destruction and his adopted siblings’ confidence in God’s unconditional, loving acceptance and favor.

As a result, Hebrews’ author continues, Christians can “draw near to God [proserchometha*] with a sincere [alethines] heart and with the full assurance [plerophoria] that faith brings (22).” We don’t have to be afraid of God’s rejection and condemnation. Jesus’ friends can, in fact, approach God in ways God’s Old Testament people, including even their priests, never even dreamed of doing. We can dare to approach God with a heart the Spirit has made genuine and assurance the Spirit has implanted within it.

God’s dearly beloved children no longer must worry about what God thinks of us. The Spirit assures us that God not only thinks of but also treats us as God’s adopted children. Jesus’ followers don’t have to worry about what others think of us either. We can have complete confidence that God loves us deeply and unconditionally.

Christians can, on top of that, according to verse 23, “hold unswervingly [katachomen] to the hope [elpidos] we profess [homologian].” We can, in the words of The Message, “keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going.” Even when everything and everyone seems hopeless, Jesus’ friends can cling tenaciously to the hope that the world and its people who already belong to God will someday be fully transformed into what God created them to be.

Yet, Hebrews makes clear, none of this is a product of human efforts. We can’t dare to approach God because we’re naturally good enough to do so. In fact, even Christians have every right to be naturally terrified of getting anywhere near God. We have no natural reason to confidently approach God.

Our assurance and hope lie nowhere but in the finished work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Like a snowplow that goes before drivers to clear a path through a snowfall to their destination, Jesus Christ has gone before us to graciously clear a path for his friends to boldly approach God. Christians can be sure that Christ has cleared a path for us to approach God with not just our faith and hope, but also our burdens and worries. After all, the One whose Spirit has planted faith deep within us is faithful [pistos] to keep his promises (23).

Here is a word of amazing, even shocking grace for a world and culture that knows so little of it. While we naturally crave others’ acceptance, people naturally dole it out to us sporadically with little more than eyedroppers. People also crave God’s acceptance – whether we recognize it or not. Religious folks will do almost anything – and demand that others do almost anything – to gain that favor.

Hebrews reminds its hearers that we can go to God with complete confidence, not in ourselves but in Christ’s redeeming work on our behalf. Because of Christ’s gracious finished work for us, Christians can approach God, in both life and at death, with complete assurance that God will receive us.

Yet it may be because we don’t naturally have that assurance that Hebrews invites its readers to turn our attention away from ourselves and towards others. After all, while we can be sure of God’s favor, our fellow Christians may not yet share that assurance. In verse 24 Hebrews’ author urges Christians to “consider [katanoomen]” how we “may spur [paroxysmon] one another on toward love [agapes] and good deeds [kalon ergon].” The Message interprets this as a summons to “be inventive … in encouraging love and helping out.”

How might that tie into this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s message about assurance? Perhaps at least in part because in some mysterious way the Spirit graciously uses our words and acts of kindness to deepen both our faith and confidence in God’s favor toward us. God’s dearly beloved people think of ways to stir up in our siblings in Christ works and words of the kind of love and mercy that characterizes the God whom we worship in Jesus Christ. We trust, after all, that the Spirit will use them to deepen assurance and hope of God’s grace and love.

However, as the New Testament scholar Katherine Shaner notes, the Greek word paroxysmon (literally “stirring up”) contains suggestions of provocation and even exasperation. It hints, Shaner points out, at a community that relentlessly, sometimes even irritatingly calls its members to acts of love and kindness.

One of the best contexts in which to do that work of provocation, verse 25 implies, is by continuing to “meet together [episynagogen].” This suggests the 21^st century growing habit of Western Christians’ failing to gather together for worship is more troubling than new. Verse 25 suggests that neglect is nearly as old as Christ’s Church itself.

Such neglect, warns verse 25b, deprives Jesus’ followers of a necessary component of hope – the act of “encouraging [parakalountes] one another.” The tendency toward fearing rather than approaching God is relentless. The loss of hope in God’s good and loving purposes remains a real threat even for God’s dearly beloved children. Hebrews implies that those threats are heightened when Jesus’ friends try to be solitary Christians. So rather than avoiding worship – and our fellow Christians – Hebrews summons us to come together to encourage each other as the day of Christ’s return draws closer and closer.

Much both within and outside of Jesus’ followers threatens to sap our confidence and hope in both the future and God’s favor and good purposes. Even if we do little else in worship, encouraging each other to let the Spirit help us stand up against that relentless avalanche is a gracious gift from God that’s often mediated for us through our fellow Christians.

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

Illustration

In his book about Jackie Robinson’s Christian faith entitled 42 Faith, Ed Henry writes about one of one of the baseball Hall of Famer’s rare baserunning gaffes as well as the power of “encouragement” (v. 24). In one of his first spring training games, Robinson was thrown out at home plate.

Henry writes, “After being just a few seconds from the ecstasy of scoring a run and proving his worth, Robinson instead faced a torrent of boos from the crowd. And when he returned to the bench, his Royals teammates said not a word of encouragement. ‘They’ve made up their minds already,’ thought Robinson, ‘that I can’t make it.’

“Except a moment later a boy stood up in the front row near the Royals’ bench, and he declared, loud enough for Robinson to hear, ‘Attaboy, Jackie! Nice try, Jackie’!” As Robinson looked up, he noticed the boy happened to be white. “It wasn’t much of a voice, but you’ll never know how it lifted me inside,’ noted Robinson. ‘I was hungry for a few words like those. Outside of my wife, Rachel, and Mr. Rickey, and a few friends I had made among the … people [of color] of Florida, nobody was saying them.”