Episode Transcript
Hebrews 10
14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,
16 “THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM
AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD:
I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART,
AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,”
He then says,
17 “AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS
I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE.”
18 Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.
One Offering
I spent a lot of time in my life considering what church is, and what it isn’t. From what I can tell, there are two basic perspectives on church. People either think church is what you do or who you are. Church is either a ritual that moves us closer to God and keeps us in His good graces, or it is worship in response to His goodness. People who see church as something they do seem to prioritize all the rituals—the programs, the music, the personality of the pastor, all the church’s missions projects, and all the ways they are doing good religious things. They seem to idolize numbers and think they are in competition with other religious groups or local churches. I understand those statements are probably going to rest uneasily on some people. I hope you don’t misread my words. I don’t think those things are bad. In fact, I think they are good, given the right priority. I’ll say something a little more about that later. People who see the church as who they are tend to be happier and more content no matter the genre of music or the types of programs a church offers. I’m going to show my hand up front. I am the second type of person. I believe church is about worship, not ritual. That conviction causes me to think about church a little bit differently than many people I have met—because I think most people tend to think about church in terms of ritual, not worship. Scripture speaks to what church is. Here are some facts about what Scripture says that may surprise you:
Never are Christians instructed to go to church.
Sunday School is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
The Bible does not tell us to segregate by age.
Most modern day local church membership is foreign to Scripture.
There is no mention of a sermon time anywhere in Scripture.
The Bible doesn’t prescribe any worship leaders, music ministers, or professional preachers.
The church isn’t instructed to take up offerings anywhere in Scripture.
There is never an altar call prescribed or described in Scripture.
That doesn’t mean these practices are wrong, but it does mean the Bible has a different priority than we often do when it comes to being the church. Being the church isn’t about any of the religious stuff we do. Concerning the church of Jesus Christ, the Bible majors on who we are, not exactly what we are doing. If we prioritize and boast in our works rather than how Christ is forming us as people, I think we have missed the point of being Christ’s church altogether.
For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14).
To be sanctified means to be set apart. The preacher to the Hebrews is speaking about those who have been set apart by Christ. He is speaking about those who have been chosen, the elect.
By how many offerings are the chosen perfected? Only one—the offering Jesus made on the cross—Himself. Jesus alone is the atonement for all our sin. By His wounds, we are healed. In fact, the preacher who wrote Hebrews makes a bold and final claim. We are not perfected by all of our striving and religious ritual. We don’t make ourselves better people. One offering, that of Christ, perfected us for all time. Period.
Muslims are over there thinking that their prayers, offerings, and acts of violence will get them rewards and positions in paradise. In reality, their religion is no different from the Hindus who are trying to earn a better place in the next life or the atheists who are trying to live their best life now by earning it. Christians who think they will be closer to God or somehow better off by doing more are no different than the Muslim, Hindu, or Atheist in their belief. Most of this world’s religious perspectives are exactly the same with different terminology and perhaps a different origin story. Jesus is the only different thing in the world. Religious, or irreligious worldviews, built by people always center their precepts on people earning their place—especially atheism. My life is about what I can do to get what I want. I want to go to Heaven, what must I do to be saved? I want to be rich, what must I do to make money? I want to have power, what must I do to gain power? I want to be my own master, what must I do to show there is no higher authority than self? I want a better position in the next life, what must I do in this life to earn the karma? I want this life to treat me well, what must I do to earn good returns in this life? I want to grow a church, reach young people, and build a following; what must I do to attract people? Selfish and worldly religion always centers on the works of the people seeking.
Here comes the Bible, claiming something completely different from many Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Atheistic prescriptions. Forget doing the right religious thing to earn for yourself. God has perfected you by one offering—the offering He made. Biblical Christianity is different and superior to any other worldview because it is honest about the fact that we are not the main characters in the story. God doesn’t need us to do anything. Our rituals don’t benefit God in any way as if He ever needed anything from us. God doesn’t need us. He is not swayed by our confessions or religious actions. He transcends. If God transcends this plane, the only proper perspective is to say that God must provide all things. We provide nothing to Him. He provides everything to us—which has severe implications for the way we church.
One Gospel
15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,
16 “THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM
AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD:
I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART,
AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,”
He then says,
17 “AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS
I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE.”
The Hebrew preacher takes us back to the Old Testament, Jeremiah 31:33-34 to be exact, to show that God’s plan is truly worship and not ritual. I’ll provide a couple extra verses for the context in Jeremiah 31:
31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
600 years before Jesus was born and introduced the New Covenant, Jeremiah told Israel, from God, that there would be a New Covenant. The New Covenant would not be like the Old, made with Israel when God brought them out of Egypt. The Old Covenant promised to safeguard and preserve Israel as a nation and called the nation of Israel to obey God’s Law as a means for the nation to live long and prosper in the land of Canaan. According to Jeremiah, the New Covenant would not deal with that at all.
Instead of giving a Civil and Ritual Law on tablets made of stone and calling the populace to obey them, God put His law within the people of Israel, writing it on their hearts. He would transform them as people instead of merely calling them to be religious or ritualistic. This sanctification is the explicit difference between religion and actually being the people of God.
Notice, pertaining explicitly to the coming of Christ and the establishing of a New Covenant in Him, that people would not have to teach, saying, “Know Yahweh!” People would know Yahweh because He would forgive their iniquity—their sins. People would have actual relationships with God, meaning after Christ, people have no need of people to stand in front of them and tell them who God is. Before I met my wife, someone would have to have told me about her if I was to know anything about her. Once I entered into a relationship with her, I didn’t need anyone to tell me because I was with her. After Christ, no prophets are needed because God Himself is forgiving sin and entering into relationships with people.
This explicitly means our pastors and preachers today do not bear the responsibility to reveal who God is to you. You can know God personally in Christ because of this New Covenant, foretold in the Old Testament and revealed in the New. Pastors and preachers, even the Pope, are not closer to God than you. No person has a more direct line to God than any other person. If you are the people of God, you know Him directly in Christ. This is explicitly true for the least and the greatest among people from a worldly perspective. God doesn’t show favoritism. Since I believe God to have all knowledge, I believe Jeremiah foretold that in Christ, God would no longer recall the sin of His people.
I know. In Jeremiah, this promise is explicitly for the nation of Israel, and there is a longer conversation to be had about what is meant by “Israel,” when it comes to the work of Christ. We should remember God’s promise to Abraham, that all the families of the earth would be blessed through Him. I believe this means that the rest of the world can have a place as the people of God with Israel, or does Scripture say for nothing in Isaiah 19,
23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.
24 In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth,
25 whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”
Worship V. Ritual
18 Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.
If we have been forgiven in Christ according to the New Covenant and God chooses not even to recall our sin, why do people get so ritualistic in their religion? We do we try to make offerings, offer confession, go to church, hear a sermon, do penance, give to the poor, pray so often, have quiet times, and otherwise try to keep an endless list of religious rituals? We can’t earn God’s favor because He doesn’t need anything from us. In fact, He is the one who must supply all things to us—and I believe that even includes our faith. Why do church at all?
This is where we see the difference between ritualistic religion and true worship. If your answer is something like, “That’s how we please God,” or “God commands us to,” you’ve messed the whole point of the Biblical story. You don’t have to earn God’s favor. In fact, you can’t. God gives His favor freely and chooses not to call our iniquities to mind at all. He calls us as children, not slaves.
Why do we participate with the body of Christ? Why do we church when Scripture never commands us to go to church? It’s because we want to. You don’t have to command people to do something that comes as a natural desire. I didn’t take my wife on dates when we first met because I was following some rule book. I took her out because I wanted to. God writes His law upon our hearts if we are in Christ. We desire to do what honors Him. We don’t have to be forced, and it doesn’t have to be written down for us to check off a list. This is worship. Ritual is what we force ourselves to do so we can become better. Worship is what we do because we want to based on our relationship with God.
This truth has implications for why we do what we do as a local church. We don’t design church so we can become something we are not. We are not trying to attract the masses. We come together to build one another up in Christ because we want to, not because it is some ritualistic requirement as if God needed us or because we are trying to better ourselves like they do in worldly religion. Sincere church is something different, real, and so much better than anything the world has to offer in all of its ritualism.
What about you? Do you church because you desire to or because its some kind of forced ritual? If its ritual for you, and nothing more, it may be time to repent and reorient your heart. God doesn’t need you. He doesn’t need me. He has already given His favor. We can’t earn it. He already loves you. Christ already gave the only offering that matters—Himself. Stop trying to add to it. Rest in His grace. Find your place with God’s true family.
