Christ’S Effective Sacrifice
CHRIST’S EFFECTIVE SACRIFICE
HEBREWS 9:11-17
What does Christ’s sacrifice mean for you today?
From the ineffective the author now turns to the effective, from the ritual to what the ritual points to. He reminds us of the character in which Christ appears, “a high priest of the good things that have come” (or “to come”; the manuscripts are divided). Some understand “the greater and more perfect tent” to be an imaginative description of Christ as passing through a heavenly sanctuary on the way to the Most Holy Place where he would perform his priestly duties; others see it as a symbolic description of the incarnation. What is most important is not the resolution of such points but the shedding of the blood of Christ which is emphasized. Everything else leads to this. The writer has already made the point that there is no more than a limited and purely external purpose achieved by the performance of ritual (9:9f.) and he repeats this (9:13).
The perfect and effective sacrifice of Christ stands in contrast with the limited effect of the institutions of the old covenant. Christ’s death secures “an eternal redemption” (9:12). Redemption in the ancient world signified release from slavery or sentence of death, and release by payment of a price. So Christ paid the price that secured the release of sinners from slavery to sin (Romans 7:14) and from the sentence of death hanging over them (Romans 6:23). And this release is not temporary but “eternal.”
Next we have Christ’s work viewed as the mediation of a new covenant. Once again there is the thought of eternal worth (9:15), this being linked to the redemption that deals with sins even under the first covenant. The old sacrifices could not really take away sin. But Christ’s death can and does. The Greek word diatheke means both “covenant” and “will,” which is the point of 9:16f. The author plays on the double meaning of the term to bring out his point that the death of Christ was necessary. Death brings a will into effect and the death of Christ brought the new covenant into effect, just as if it had been a will.