GOD HAS SPOKEN BY HIS SON
Meditations in Hebrews
Hebrews 9:15b
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A COVENANT has to be sealed, approved and all the terms performed. The new covenant is one which is sealed up and all the terms of the covenant have been performed by Christ. Christ's part of the covenant was that he should obtain eternal inheritance for his people. He took upon himself the task of doing all that was necessary for us sinners to be granted eternal life and a place in his eternal kingdom. He took it upon himself because there is nothing we are able to do, or contribute, to this precious and wonderful end. It is in this second part of verse 15 that the apostle speaks of this work of Christ.

Our sins have piled up an enormous and mountainous debt to God and his Law. We can't stop adding to the debt. There is no day or hour that passes that we do not fall short in some measure from the glory of God and so transgress or fall short of the holy requirements of God's law, and so far from paying off any part of the debt, we are simply adding to the debt, and this is our lost and terrible condition. Even when we are convicted of our sin, and have a true sense of our debt to God, we can't comprehend the holiness of God and how we add to our debt all the time. In this dilemma Christ, in his part of the covenant, took upon himself the responsibility and work of paying off the debt in our place. He only was the one good enough to pay the price of sin. This is not the whole - he was only the one precious and valuable enough to meet the debt of our sin. So Jesus gave himself for our sin.

The apostle describes it here in the pregnant word 'ransom'. He paid the ransom price to set us free from the just desert which our sin required. A ransom is a large sum of money which is demanded for the release of a prisoner or hostage. The idea of ransom is a biblical one, but still it is a strange concept in the context of our salvation. The question is as to whom the ransom is paid and who demands the ransom. The debt on account of our sins is owed to God, and while the debt is unpaid the sentence of death and the condition of death is upon us. But our debt to God can't be really called a ransom demand by God. God demands it as the payment of the debt as a just demand. In view of this it is more sensible to see the ransom demand coming from the devil. In chapter 2:14,15 the apostle speaks of Jesus freeing the sinner from the devil and the fear of death, which holds us all our lives until we are freed by Christ. From this we can see that it is the devil who holds us prisoner, and he claims us as his own and to suffer death with him, because by sin we have placed ourselves under his dominion.

In the light of this understanding the cross of Jesus can be seen in the context of Christ paying a ransom to the devil for our release from his clutches. The devil agreeing to accept Christ in the stead of sinners, because by doing so the devil thought he would win all, both Christ and sinners, because he imagined by Christ's death he would have defeated God. In fact the devil overreached himself, for Christ by his death, paid to the justice of God all that our sin demanded, and so released us from the authority of Satan, and then by God raising him from the dead, the devil also lost his greatest prize, Jesus the Son of God himself. In this way Christ destroyed the devil who holds the power of death over sinners, and so Christ giving himself as a ransom for our sins, brings total release from sin, Satan, death and hell, for all who believe on him.

In this way Jesus sets us free from our sins - that is the debt our sins incurred before God, and from the power of the devil who holds us in his sway on account of our sins.

The apostles speaks of sins committed under the first covenant. In the context this first covenant undoubtedly means the covenant made by God with Israel in the time of Moses. The following verses make this conclusion certain. However the idea is simply that the first covenant was ineffective in freeing the worshipper from their sins, and so the sins being spoken of are not simply transgressions against the order and ritual of the first covenant - that is failing to carry our every detail of the ritual, and falling short of different parts of the ritual, but must include sins in general committed through the period of history between Moses and Christ. In this sense the idea of sins committed under the first covenant simply is referring to sins in general, and every transgression of the moral and spiritual law of God embodied in the ten commandments which the ritual and sacrifice of the first covenant never purged or could purge.

In actual fact, although the covenant God made with Moses included a complicated ritual of sacrifice by which atonement for sin was supposed to be achieved, the apostle has already told us in verse 13 that this atonement only cleansed from ceremonial impurity, and never cleansed from moral and spiritual transgression. The covenant with Moses was only really a repeat of what had been given by God from the very time of Adam's first sin, where we see in those early days that sacrifice offered to God brought about temporary reconciliation with God, and that the principle that without shedding of blood there was no remission was understood. All these sacrifices were pointing forward to the gracious provision of God of a better and perfect sacrifice in the shedding of the blood of his one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

What we learn as believers from the words before us is that we are freed by Christ from our sins, and so are freed from the sentence of death upon sin, and so in God's sight and in the record in heaven against our name there is no record of sin to accuse us. In and through Christ we are saved from our sin eternally.