The one from whom men hide their face
Commentary
Object:
Set Christmas and Good Friday side by side in your mind. Consider them both theologically and culturally. Consider them both in their biblical contexts and in our contemporary context.
On the one hand, we recognize that the two events look a lot alike. Both the incarnation and the crucifixion bear witness to the condescension of God's love. Neither the manger nor the cross is what the Son of God deserves. Yet he stoops down, at his own expense, in order to save us. Whether we are singing "Love Came Down at Christmas" during the one holiday or "O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done" during the other, the divine posture and the gospel message are the same.
On the other hand, the two events seem night-and-day different. One is about birth, while the other is about death. We think of the one as peaceful, while the other is violent. The first seems to be marked by innocence, while the latter is marred by wickedness and guilt. We typically associate Christmas with festivity and cheer, while Good Friday is somber and dark.
In this regard, what we do with our worship spaces during the two holidays is both cause and effect in the difference between the two. For Christmas, we decorate our churches with color and light. Though it may be the dead and cold of winter outside, the look and feel inside is full of warmth and life. Yet in the spring, ironically, we make our sanctuaries dark and funereal for Good Friday. Perhaps we remove some of the traditional symbols of life -- like flowers. Perhaps we dim the lights. Perhaps we drape the cross or the altar in black.
At Christmas, we do some of our best singing. Our sanctuaries ring with songs like "Joy To The World" and "Angels We Have Heard On High." But on Good Friday, the music is heavy and the songs are slow. The congregations in attendance match, it seems, the music: full of life or not. At Christmas, we may challenge our capacity, while on Good Friday, the attendance is sparse -- perhaps even to the point of combining our services with other congregations.
Then, finally, there is the larger cultural phenomenon. While Good Friday is limited to a single day -- and a mostly neglected one, at that -- Christmas is an entire season. And that season is growing! We have all noted how the retailers shift into their Christmas emphasis earlier and earlier. While once it was the end of Thanksgiving that cued the start of the Christmas countdown, now the tinsel and lights seem to follow right on the heels of Halloween.
Theologically, therefore, we observe that Christmas and Good Friday are natural companions. In their original, biblical context, we see the consistency between the two events in salvation history. In terms of our contemporary treatment and experience of them, however, they could hardly be more different. All of which brings us to our task as preachers of the gospel.
Isaiah 52:13--53:12
Our other two authors this week are looking back at an event. The gospel writer and the author of Hebrews write about the cross and the death of Christ after the fact. But our first text is conspicuously different. The prophet Isaiah also writes about the cross of Christ, but he does so from a very different vantage point. He describes the scene some seven centuries before it happened.
The people in our pews may vary widely in the development of their thinking about prophecy. You and I know, of course, that Old Testament prophecy should not be pigeonholed into the narrow matter of just predicting the future. Yet there is the vital truth of the God who calls his shots (see, for example, Isaiah 48:3-5). And there is the beauty of the Savior whose loving work is foreshadowed.
Isaiah's "suffering servant" passage may be as familiar to our people from Handel's Messiah as from the Bible. It does not contain some of the startling details that Psalm 22 has as a presage of the cross, but its theological insight into Calvary is magnificent. Let us take a moment to highlight three.
First, there is the compelling unrecognition of the suffering servant. Isaiah reports that there was nothing superficial about him that should make us take special notice of him, and so instead he was despised, rejected, and inadequately esteemed. The report sounds very much like John's assessment of Jesus' coming (John 1:11), and it reminds us of the poignant scene in which the king of the universe is royally mocked by the idiot soldiers (Matthew 27:27-31). Surely Jesus was right when he said of them from the cross that "they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34 KJV). They couldn't know what they did, for they didn't recognize who he was.
Second, there is the strange role of God in the unidentified servant's suffering. On the one hand, the scene suggests an individual who is being brutally mistreated by other human beings. They act out of some combination of ignorance and malevolence. Yet when the prophet pulls back the curtain, it seems that the injustice perpetrated by the human actors was actually a participation in the plan of God. "It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain" (v. 10). And that surely brings to mind the strange recipe of Good Friday, which featured the same combination of ignorance and malevolence among the human co-conspirators, yet all against the backdrop that it was the will of God (see Luke 22:41-42).
Third, Isaiah bears witness to the redemptive purpose of the servant's suffering. So much suffering that we see in the world around us seems senseless to us. But this suffering, by contrast, is presented as divinely purposeful. We read the familiar images of him carrying our infirmities, being wounded for our transgressions, and bearing our iniquities, and we hear the resonating gospel truth proclaimed by Paul (Romans 5:6-10, the writer of Hebrews [10:5-14], and Peter [1 Peter 3:18]).
We know that it was because God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16). Likewise, because he so loves, he gave us a picture in advance of what his Son would experience and accomplish. For the incarnation and crucifixion were not done on a whim. These were the longstanding plan of God, as he revealed in advance and in anticipation of "the good things to come" (Hebrews 10:1).
Hebrews 10:16-25
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews stands with one foot firmly planted in each testament. And that is not a weakness on his part, like indecisiveness or a divided loyalty. On the contrary, Jesus himself commends such richness (Matthew 13:52).
The letter to the Hebrews is in the New Testament and declares the gospel of Christ. Yet it is rooted in the law and the prophets of the Old Testament. Even our brief excerpt reflects that heritage, for it begins with a quote from Jeremiah and proceeds to reference images from Leviticus.
The starting place is the prospect of a new covenant. It was anticipated and articulated in Jeremiah's day, though the people of God at that time were living still under the old covenant. The writer of Hebrews who quotes Jeremiah, however, understands that he is living under the new covenant; yet he expresses it in terms of the old. Offerings, the holy place, the veil, sprinkled cleanness, the priesthood, and blood -- these are all familiar elements of the old covenant. And this New Testament author sees in those elements of the old foreshadowing of the new. The new does not so much nullify the old as complete it. The old does not contradict or impede the new, but rather anticipates and explains it.
Meanwhile, the author is not discussing the old and new covenants at a theoretical arm's-length. On the contrary, this is personal business with individual implications. So, in addition to seeing the gospel in Leviticus, we do well to see ourselves in this new covenant relationship.
Specifically, our role in the new covenant -- at least within the confines of this particular text -- might be expressed in terms of what we may experience and what we are to do. Or, put in another way, there are our opportunities and there are our obligations. The author touches on both.
Our opportunities are the stuff of salvation. We may draw near to God and be cleaned. We may "have confidence" rather than unwholesome fear and trepidation. And we live "in full assurance" rather than groping about in doubt, uncertainty, and insecurity.
Meanwhile, our obligations are the stuff of faithfulness. The writer's vocabulary includes strong, steady imagery like "hold fast" and "without wavering." There is the call to regularity in "not forsaking." And the thing which we must not forsake -- "our own assembling together" -- is part of a larger truth: namely, our obligation to one another. For we are not saved and living out this covenant alone. And so we "stimulate one another" and are continually "encouraging one another" in this great salvation.
John 18:1--19:42
Our task is immense. Not only is the assigned gospel lection uncommonly long, but the subject at hand is so core as to be daunting. The liturgical calendar does us no favor on this count. We enjoy four weeks to ponder the Christ's coming, but only one afternoon to explore the central event in salvation history. It is not a manger that tops our steeples or adorns our altars, after all; it is the cross. And today, more than any other, is our moment to preach the cross.
The lengthy excerpt assigned from John's gospel points us to the cross. Specifically, it walks us through the entire 24 hours from Jesus' walk to Gethsemane to his being buried in the tomb. As I print out the full text before me, it covers more than five double-spaced pages. It deserves more time than we have for it today.
One option for the preacher, of course, is to select a single element in the text and preach on that, and certainly there is plenty for the preacher to choose from in this lection. The other option, meanwhile, is to try to preach the whole text by tracing one meaningful theme within it. Inclined toward that approach, I would suggest two possible themes.
I might title the one theme "The People Who Lined the Way." The narrative follows Jesus, of course, but it includes a lot of folks who intersected with him on his way to the cross. So in this sermon I would try to paint a picture of those people. That cast includes the disciples, Judas, and the arresting mob. The narrative lends the spotlight briefly to Simon Peter and Malchus. It includes the curious bystanders who suspect that they recognize Peter. There are Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate. We catch glimpses of the liberated Barabbas and the crucified criminals. We see the faithful women, along with one of the disciples, at the foot of the cross. We are introduced to Joseph of Arimathea and reintroduced to Nicodemus. And, nearly from start to finish, there are soldiers. I believe that a sensitive portrayal of some or all of these folks would help us to see the continuing variety of ways that people respond to Jesus.
The other theme, meanwhile, would focus on Jesus himself throughout those eventful 24 hours. It is a familiar portrait, but ever-new in its power. I might call it "No Turning Back."
The narrator reports "Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him..." Nothing that followed, then, was a surprise to Jesus. And we must read the account of these events with an appreciation of that truth.
Every step of the way, you see, Jesus made a choice -- an informed decision. It was a decision not to escape. It was a decision not to retaliate. It was a decision to be misunderstood and mistreated; to endure the suffering, to carry the cross, and to take on the sins. So let us paint for our people the picture of Jesus doing what he did, "knowing all that was to happen to him." For that is truly a portrait of love.
Application
The words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah anticipate the cross. We need not argue here about Isaiah of Jerusalem versus Deutero-Isaiah or Trito-Isaiah. Neither are we obliged to wrestle with questions about how much the original author knew or whom he had in mind. The bottom line is that this text that predates the cross by centuries manages to paint a profound picture of it.
That picture, as we have noted above, includes the mistreatment of Jesus, the role of God in his suffering, and the redemptive purpose and impact of his death. Throughout the whole scene, there is the irony of the anonymous human participants.
On the one hand, they are the beneficiaries of this strange, redemptive act. On the other hand, they seem to be the perpetrators of the unjust suffering. And in the next moment, they appear to be rather ignorant bystanders.
Then there is this. Along the way, Isaiah describes the Christ character as being like one from whom people hide their faces. That is another element of the human response to him. Is it revulsion? Is it discomfort? Is it shame? Isaiah doesn't say, but each possibility is believable.
The passage from Isaiah does not only depict the suffering and death of Christ, it also paints a portrait of humanity and our mixed response to him. We are the ones who, like sheep, have gone astray and stand in need of his gracious intervention. We are, at the same time, antagonistic toward him. Also, clueless. And finally, we hide our faces.
This may be the most prominent response to Jesus on this Good Friday: we hide our faces from him. We're there in force for Christmas and Easter. We have no problem with Palm Sunday. We cherish the stories of his teaching, his healing, and his miracles. Ah, but the day with the whips and the thorns, the spitting and the slapping, the blood and the cross -- that is the day that makes us shrink back.
If the Christian year were a menu at a restaurant, this is the entree we would not order. Good Friday is the dish that we decline. We turn away. We hide our faces. And we always have.
Paul discovered that the message of the cross was nonsense to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews (1 Corinthians 1:23). It persists as one or both of those to most of the people around us still today. While they celebrate his birth and gladly embrace his life and ministry, they are uneasy with his death. There on the cross, he remains as one from whom we hide our faces.
That is the context in which you and I preach this day. In the midst of it, we take our cue from the hymn writer: "In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time; all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime."
An Alternative Application
Hebrews 10:16-25. "The Nature of New." The writer of Hebrews is very conscious of the new covenant that God has established. The question for us and our people to consider is what the relationship is between the new covenant and the old. Hebrews offers us crucial insight.
For the sake of illustration, consider several different types of "new" things in our life and experience. Here is a couple that buys a new house and moves into it when they learn that the wife is pregnant with their second child. After they move in, they identify which room will be the baby's room. It was a previously unfinished room that the previous owners had used only for storage. So this young couple set about the process of finishing and decorating that room in order to make it into the new nursery. Finally, a few months later, they give birth to their new baby.
Three new things in that couple's life, you see, but they are different kinds of new. The new house, for example, replaces the old one. It is a completely different house. They move out of the one and into the other. The new child, on the other hand, does not replace the first child. Rather, the baby becomes an addition to the family, as they move from a family of three to a family of four. Then there is the case of the new room. On the one hand, it isn't really new at all. On the other hand, it is completely new.
The analogy is an imperfect one, but it helps us to explore a truth. Of what sort is this new covenant? To what shall we compare it?
We make a mistake, I think, when we understand the new covenant as being like the couple's new house. When we perceive the new covenant as an entirely different thing that replaces the old covenant, we miss the continuity between the two. As we noted above, the writer of Hebrews strongly affirms the important continuity from the one covenant to the other.
Likewise, it would be a misunderstanding to think of the new covenant being analogous to the new baby -- a mere addition to what we already have. That may well have been the nature of the mistake that the first-century Judaizers made. But it was not the purpose of God that we should retain all of the elements of the former covenant and simply add onto them the new. This undermines the sufficiency and the superiority of the new covenant that the writer of Hebrews declares.
Instead, therefore, it might be best for us to think of the new covenant being most like the new nursery. It is not completely new inasmuch as it builds upon the existing framework. On the other hand, the previous room was unfinished and thus not ultimately suitable for the task. The new covenant is built upon the old and shares with it key elements: e.g., priesthood, sacrifices, blood. But that old covenant was unfinished, incomplete. Now, in Christ, it has been finished, and it is ready for us to move in and live there.
On the one hand, we recognize that the two events look a lot alike. Both the incarnation and the crucifixion bear witness to the condescension of God's love. Neither the manger nor the cross is what the Son of God deserves. Yet he stoops down, at his own expense, in order to save us. Whether we are singing "Love Came Down at Christmas" during the one holiday or "O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done" during the other, the divine posture and the gospel message are the same.
On the other hand, the two events seem night-and-day different. One is about birth, while the other is about death. We think of the one as peaceful, while the other is violent. The first seems to be marked by innocence, while the latter is marred by wickedness and guilt. We typically associate Christmas with festivity and cheer, while Good Friday is somber and dark.
In this regard, what we do with our worship spaces during the two holidays is both cause and effect in the difference between the two. For Christmas, we decorate our churches with color and light. Though it may be the dead and cold of winter outside, the look and feel inside is full of warmth and life. Yet in the spring, ironically, we make our sanctuaries dark and funereal for Good Friday. Perhaps we remove some of the traditional symbols of life -- like flowers. Perhaps we dim the lights. Perhaps we drape the cross or the altar in black.
At Christmas, we do some of our best singing. Our sanctuaries ring with songs like "Joy To The World" and "Angels We Have Heard On High." But on Good Friday, the music is heavy and the songs are slow. The congregations in attendance match, it seems, the music: full of life or not. At Christmas, we may challenge our capacity, while on Good Friday, the attendance is sparse -- perhaps even to the point of combining our services with other congregations.
Then, finally, there is the larger cultural phenomenon. While Good Friday is limited to a single day -- and a mostly neglected one, at that -- Christmas is an entire season. And that season is growing! We have all noted how the retailers shift into their Christmas emphasis earlier and earlier. While once it was the end of Thanksgiving that cued the start of the Christmas countdown, now the tinsel and lights seem to follow right on the heels of Halloween.
Theologically, therefore, we observe that Christmas and Good Friday are natural companions. In their original, biblical context, we see the consistency between the two events in salvation history. In terms of our contemporary treatment and experience of them, however, they could hardly be more different. All of which brings us to our task as preachers of the gospel.
Isaiah 52:13--53:12
Our other two authors this week are looking back at an event. The gospel writer and the author of Hebrews write about the cross and the death of Christ after the fact. But our first text is conspicuously different. The prophet Isaiah also writes about the cross of Christ, but he does so from a very different vantage point. He describes the scene some seven centuries before it happened.
The people in our pews may vary widely in the development of their thinking about prophecy. You and I know, of course, that Old Testament prophecy should not be pigeonholed into the narrow matter of just predicting the future. Yet there is the vital truth of the God who calls his shots (see, for example, Isaiah 48:3-5). And there is the beauty of the Savior whose loving work is foreshadowed.
Isaiah's "suffering servant" passage may be as familiar to our people from Handel's Messiah as from the Bible. It does not contain some of the startling details that Psalm 22 has as a presage of the cross, but its theological insight into Calvary is magnificent. Let us take a moment to highlight three.
First, there is the compelling unrecognition of the suffering servant. Isaiah reports that there was nothing superficial about him that should make us take special notice of him, and so instead he was despised, rejected, and inadequately esteemed. The report sounds very much like John's assessment of Jesus' coming (John 1:11), and it reminds us of the poignant scene in which the king of the universe is royally mocked by the idiot soldiers (Matthew 27:27-31). Surely Jesus was right when he said of them from the cross that "they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34 KJV). They couldn't know what they did, for they didn't recognize who he was.
Second, there is the strange role of God in the unidentified servant's suffering. On the one hand, the scene suggests an individual who is being brutally mistreated by other human beings. They act out of some combination of ignorance and malevolence. Yet when the prophet pulls back the curtain, it seems that the injustice perpetrated by the human actors was actually a participation in the plan of God. "It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain" (v. 10). And that surely brings to mind the strange recipe of Good Friday, which featured the same combination of ignorance and malevolence among the human co-conspirators, yet all against the backdrop that it was the will of God (see Luke 22:41-42).
Third, Isaiah bears witness to the redemptive purpose of the servant's suffering. So much suffering that we see in the world around us seems senseless to us. But this suffering, by contrast, is presented as divinely purposeful. We read the familiar images of him carrying our infirmities, being wounded for our transgressions, and bearing our iniquities, and we hear the resonating gospel truth proclaimed by Paul (Romans 5:6-10, the writer of Hebrews [10:5-14], and Peter [1 Peter 3:18]).
We know that it was because God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16). Likewise, because he so loves, he gave us a picture in advance of what his Son would experience and accomplish. For the incarnation and crucifixion were not done on a whim. These were the longstanding plan of God, as he revealed in advance and in anticipation of "the good things to come" (Hebrews 10:1).
Hebrews 10:16-25
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews stands with one foot firmly planted in each testament. And that is not a weakness on his part, like indecisiveness or a divided loyalty. On the contrary, Jesus himself commends such richness (Matthew 13:52).
The letter to the Hebrews is in the New Testament and declares the gospel of Christ. Yet it is rooted in the law and the prophets of the Old Testament. Even our brief excerpt reflects that heritage, for it begins with a quote from Jeremiah and proceeds to reference images from Leviticus.
The starting place is the prospect of a new covenant. It was anticipated and articulated in Jeremiah's day, though the people of God at that time were living still under the old covenant. The writer of Hebrews who quotes Jeremiah, however, understands that he is living under the new covenant; yet he expresses it in terms of the old. Offerings, the holy place, the veil, sprinkled cleanness, the priesthood, and blood -- these are all familiar elements of the old covenant. And this New Testament author sees in those elements of the old foreshadowing of the new. The new does not so much nullify the old as complete it. The old does not contradict or impede the new, but rather anticipates and explains it.
Meanwhile, the author is not discussing the old and new covenants at a theoretical arm's-length. On the contrary, this is personal business with individual implications. So, in addition to seeing the gospel in Leviticus, we do well to see ourselves in this new covenant relationship.
Specifically, our role in the new covenant -- at least within the confines of this particular text -- might be expressed in terms of what we may experience and what we are to do. Or, put in another way, there are our opportunities and there are our obligations. The author touches on both.
Our opportunities are the stuff of salvation. We may draw near to God and be cleaned. We may "have confidence" rather than unwholesome fear and trepidation. And we live "in full assurance" rather than groping about in doubt, uncertainty, and insecurity.
Meanwhile, our obligations are the stuff of faithfulness. The writer's vocabulary includes strong, steady imagery like "hold fast" and "without wavering." There is the call to regularity in "not forsaking." And the thing which we must not forsake -- "our own assembling together" -- is part of a larger truth: namely, our obligation to one another. For we are not saved and living out this covenant alone. And so we "stimulate one another" and are continually "encouraging one another" in this great salvation.
John 18:1--19:42
Our task is immense. Not only is the assigned gospel lection uncommonly long, but the subject at hand is so core as to be daunting. The liturgical calendar does us no favor on this count. We enjoy four weeks to ponder the Christ's coming, but only one afternoon to explore the central event in salvation history. It is not a manger that tops our steeples or adorns our altars, after all; it is the cross. And today, more than any other, is our moment to preach the cross.
The lengthy excerpt assigned from John's gospel points us to the cross. Specifically, it walks us through the entire 24 hours from Jesus' walk to Gethsemane to his being buried in the tomb. As I print out the full text before me, it covers more than five double-spaced pages. It deserves more time than we have for it today.
One option for the preacher, of course, is to select a single element in the text and preach on that, and certainly there is plenty for the preacher to choose from in this lection. The other option, meanwhile, is to try to preach the whole text by tracing one meaningful theme within it. Inclined toward that approach, I would suggest two possible themes.
I might title the one theme "The People Who Lined the Way." The narrative follows Jesus, of course, but it includes a lot of folks who intersected with him on his way to the cross. So in this sermon I would try to paint a picture of those people. That cast includes the disciples, Judas, and the arresting mob. The narrative lends the spotlight briefly to Simon Peter and Malchus. It includes the curious bystanders who suspect that they recognize Peter. There are Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate. We catch glimpses of the liberated Barabbas and the crucified criminals. We see the faithful women, along with one of the disciples, at the foot of the cross. We are introduced to Joseph of Arimathea and reintroduced to Nicodemus. And, nearly from start to finish, there are soldiers. I believe that a sensitive portrayal of some or all of these folks would help us to see the continuing variety of ways that people respond to Jesus.
The other theme, meanwhile, would focus on Jesus himself throughout those eventful 24 hours. It is a familiar portrait, but ever-new in its power. I might call it "No Turning Back."
The narrator reports "Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him..." Nothing that followed, then, was a surprise to Jesus. And we must read the account of these events with an appreciation of that truth.
Every step of the way, you see, Jesus made a choice -- an informed decision. It was a decision not to escape. It was a decision not to retaliate. It was a decision to be misunderstood and mistreated; to endure the suffering, to carry the cross, and to take on the sins. So let us paint for our people the picture of Jesus doing what he did, "knowing all that was to happen to him." For that is truly a portrait of love.
Application
The words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah anticipate the cross. We need not argue here about Isaiah of Jerusalem versus Deutero-Isaiah or Trito-Isaiah. Neither are we obliged to wrestle with questions about how much the original author knew or whom he had in mind. The bottom line is that this text that predates the cross by centuries manages to paint a profound picture of it.
That picture, as we have noted above, includes the mistreatment of Jesus, the role of God in his suffering, and the redemptive purpose and impact of his death. Throughout the whole scene, there is the irony of the anonymous human participants.
On the one hand, they are the beneficiaries of this strange, redemptive act. On the other hand, they seem to be the perpetrators of the unjust suffering. And in the next moment, they appear to be rather ignorant bystanders.
Then there is this. Along the way, Isaiah describes the Christ character as being like one from whom people hide their faces. That is another element of the human response to him. Is it revulsion? Is it discomfort? Is it shame? Isaiah doesn't say, but each possibility is believable.
The passage from Isaiah does not only depict the suffering and death of Christ, it also paints a portrait of humanity and our mixed response to him. We are the ones who, like sheep, have gone astray and stand in need of his gracious intervention. We are, at the same time, antagonistic toward him. Also, clueless. And finally, we hide our faces.
This may be the most prominent response to Jesus on this Good Friday: we hide our faces from him. We're there in force for Christmas and Easter. We have no problem with Palm Sunday. We cherish the stories of his teaching, his healing, and his miracles. Ah, but the day with the whips and the thorns, the spitting and the slapping, the blood and the cross -- that is the day that makes us shrink back.
If the Christian year were a menu at a restaurant, this is the entree we would not order. Good Friday is the dish that we decline. We turn away. We hide our faces. And we always have.
Paul discovered that the message of the cross was nonsense to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews (1 Corinthians 1:23). It persists as one or both of those to most of the people around us still today. While they celebrate his birth and gladly embrace his life and ministry, they are uneasy with his death. There on the cross, he remains as one from whom we hide our faces.
That is the context in which you and I preach this day. In the midst of it, we take our cue from the hymn writer: "In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time; all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime."
An Alternative Application
Hebrews 10:16-25. "The Nature of New." The writer of Hebrews is very conscious of the new covenant that God has established. The question for us and our people to consider is what the relationship is between the new covenant and the old. Hebrews offers us crucial insight.
For the sake of illustration, consider several different types of "new" things in our life and experience. Here is a couple that buys a new house and moves into it when they learn that the wife is pregnant with their second child. After they move in, they identify which room will be the baby's room. It was a previously unfinished room that the previous owners had used only for storage. So this young couple set about the process of finishing and decorating that room in order to make it into the new nursery. Finally, a few months later, they give birth to their new baby.
Three new things in that couple's life, you see, but they are different kinds of new. The new house, for example, replaces the old one. It is a completely different house. They move out of the one and into the other. The new child, on the other hand, does not replace the first child. Rather, the baby becomes an addition to the family, as they move from a family of three to a family of four. Then there is the case of the new room. On the one hand, it isn't really new at all. On the other hand, it is completely new.
The analogy is an imperfect one, but it helps us to explore a truth. Of what sort is this new covenant? To what shall we compare it?
We make a mistake, I think, when we understand the new covenant as being like the couple's new house. When we perceive the new covenant as an entirely different thing that replaces the old covenant, we miss the continuity between the two. As we noted above, the writer of Hebrews strongly affirms the important continuity from the one covenant to the other.
Likewise, it would be a misunderstanding to think of the new covenant being analogous to the new baby -- a mere addition to what we already have. That may well have been the nature of the mistake that the first-century Judaizers made. But it was not the purpose of God that we should retain all of the elements of the former covenant and simply add onto them the new. This undermines the sufficiency and the superiority of the new covenant that the writer of Hebrews declares.
Instead, therefore, it might be best for us to think of the new covenant being most like the new nursery. It is not completely new inasmuch as it builds upon the existing framework. On the other hand, the previous room was unfinished and thus not ultimately suitable for the task. The new covenant is built upon the old and shares with it key elements: e.g., priesthood, sacrifices, blood. But that old covenant was unfinished, incomplete. Now, in Christ, it has been finished, and it is ready for us to move in and live there.
