Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Hebrews 10:19-25 ESV
For the past several weeks, the author of Hebrews has been setting our sights exclusively upon the work of Christ as our great high priest to offer Himself as a sacrifice for our sins and to guarantee the new and better covenant for us. That mighty truth is the gospel, the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ. However, much like the structure of the book of Hebrews, the gospel is at the center and is the foundation of our Christian life, yet there is more to the Christian life than simply the gospel. Indeed, this is perhaps most clearly seen in Ephesians 2:1-10 or the book of Romans (both follow the same pattern). In Ephesians 2:1-9 and Romans 1-11, the apostle Paul articulates the glories of the gospel of our redemption in Christ. Then in Ephesians 2:10 and Romans 12-16, the apostle shifts to the topic of for what purpose we have been saved. In Ephesians 2:10, it is to do good works, and in Romans 12:1, it is to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices.
While the sermon-letter of Hebrews not so distinctly divided between doctrinal and practical sections as either Ephesians or Romans, there is nevertheless a shift into more exhortation rather an exposition for the remainder of the book. The text before us marks that transition. In verses 19-21, the author summarizes the message of the past several chapters, while verses 22-25 give us three commands, each prefaced by the words ‘let us.’
SINCE WE HAVE CONFIDENCE & A GREAT HIGH PRIEST // VERSES 19-21
The phrasing of these first three verses marks the author’s shift in subject matter from exposition of Christ’s work as our great high priest to exhortation on how to live in light of such a marvelous truth. By this time, we should not be strangers to the word therefore, which indicates that the following words will be building upon the previous ones. The immediate context here is verse 18, where the author already began his shift back into exhortation, saying: “where there is forgiveness of [sins and trespasses], there is no longer any offering for sin.”
That verse was a very pointed warning to his readers who were considering a return to Judaism that the rituals of the old covenant have been destroyed by Christ’s coming. Before His sacrificial death, each animal sacrifice pointed forward to His ultimate coming; however, after His atoning death, such sacrifices are now an abomination, for they falsely declare Jesus once for all offering to be insufficient. Thus, they were being warned that a return to Judaism was nothing but judgment and death.
Yet the fact that the author again calls his readers brothers is clue that this therefore is meant to go even further back. Indeed, as we read verses 19-21, we will notice that the author is summarizing the previous chapters for us:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God
Notice that two truths are being presented here that are in our possession as Christians, both being introduced with the words since we have. We have a confidence to enter the holy places and a great high priest in Jesus.
The second in verse 21 is, of course, a direct summary of what the author has been teaching us. Indeed, remember the words of 8:1: “Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.” Christ is our high priest as He ministers over the house of God, which we should remember from 3:6 is us: “but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” Jesus is our high priest, living eternally to intercede on our behalf before the Father. R. Kent Hughes makes a wonderful reminder of Christ’s great advocacy for us:
As we know, the appointments of the tabernacle and the daily vestments of the Aaronic high priests were specially spelled out to Moses by God, because they were shadows of Christ’s ultimate heavenly advocacy. God’s instructions demanded that the Old Testament high priest wear twelve stones on his breastplate–over his heart–to represent his people (Exodus 28:21) and representative stones on his shoulder as well, for “Aaron shall bear their names before the LORD on his two shoulders for remembrance” (Exodus 28:12). Now Jesus, our ultimate advocate, bears our names not just over his body and heart, but in the very center of his being, for we are ‘in’ him, our advocate! Even more, he is our constant high priest. His intercession never ceases![1]
The first gift is built upon the second. Because Christ is our great high priest, we also have confidence to the enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.
Upon Christ’s death, the curtain that kept God’s people out of the Most Holy Place was torn in two, which was a sign that both the need for atonement had been met once for all as well as that God’s presence was no longer locked behind the curtain from God’s people. Because our sins have been dealt with once for all by Christ’s sacrifice of Himself in our place, we can now enter into the Most Holy Place. In Christ, we are now able to go where previously only the high priest was able to go and that but once a year. And we are able to enter through the true curtain of Jesus’ flesh, which was torn to pay the price of our eternal redemption.
Therefore, because Christ is our ever-living high priest, we have a great confidence to enter the holy places, which is the first of the three exhortations that the author makes to us.
LET US DRAW NEAR // VERSE 22
Let us draw near with true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Since we have the confidence in Christ our high priest to enter the holy places, we are now commanded to draw near. Of course, the author has already given us this command before. In 4:16, which also began in verse 14 by being rooted in Christ’s priesthood, we were told: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.” As we noted when studying that verse, we primarily draw near to God today through prayer.
Consider the wonder of this command. All throughout the Pentateuch, God repeatedly tells people to draw near to Him, yet He also warns them not to come too close lest they die in the presence of His holiness. But since our sin has finally been put away once for all by Christ, we can now draw near into the very presence of God without the terror of being killed. Indeed, we can draw near with boldness because our Advocate sits at the Father’s right hand. He died to redeem us and now forever lives to usher us into the presence of His Father, even teaching us to pray to the Holy One as our Father.
We can approach God “in full assurance of faith,” just as we must persevere in “full assurance of hope until the end” (6:11). Our confident assurance comes from the fact that our hearts have been “sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.” Under the old covenant, ceremonially defiled persons were sprinkled with water containing the ashes of a heifer for ritual cleansing (9:13). Now our consciousness of defilement from sins has been removed through the “sprinkling of Christ’s blood (12:23-24; cf. 1 Pet. 1:2). This cleansing of conscience is received through faith and is visibly signified and sealed in baptism: “our bodies washed with pure water.”[2]
This true heart and clean conscience that Christ has purchased for us and that our baptism testifies to is a positive contrast to the warning from 3:12: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” Indeed, that verse and the one before us present the two options before each person. Either draw near to God or fall away from Him. Or as Bunyan once said, “Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will make a man to cease from prayer.”
The first is done by belief; the second by unbelief. That is the great struggle of Christianity. Because Christ has accomplished everything on our behalf, no work remains for us to earn God’s favor. We must simply have confident and assured faith in Christ’s work. We must wage war against unbelief, which keeps us from drawing near through prayer and receiving mercy and grace in the time of need.
LET US HOLD FAST // VERSE 23
Our battle for belief bleeds into the second command:
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
Again, the author has urged us to hold fast to our confession and hope before, but now he places them together: the confession of our hope. Remember that our great hope was made explicit in 9:27-28:
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
The return of Christ to rescue His people fully and finally is our blessed hope, and it is a hope that we ought to confess. A confession, after all, is a publicly stated belief. That is why we rightly call Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Christ a confession. Richard Phillips is right to note:
What other generations of Christians willingly died for, we consider needless points of doctrine. All the time today we hear that theology doesn’t matter so long as we are living good lives. But that is a false and dangerous position, and one that leads us away from God and back to the world… Nothing is more important than what we believe; nothing so shapes the way that we will live, and nothing is more important to the Christian life than the content of the faith we profess. Therefore, we are not to be silent, not to comprise the truth we have received, but to hold unswervingly to the gospel truths and promises that give us our hope. “He who promised is faithful,” says our writer, and we, as a result, can be faithful to him.[3]
Indeed, I would argue that Christians have been so unprepared for the societal changes of the last several decades precisely because we have not held fast to our confession. We have not been diligent to know what we believe and why, and so we compromised little by little on creation, on the imago Dei, on marriage, on the church, on Scripture, etc. The gradual erosion has been rather like the frog in pot unaware that the water was slowly coming to boil. We’ve kept waiting to be told that we can’t worship Jesus and didn’t expect for everything around that profession to be chipped away.
Of course, if we do indeed hold fast to such a counter-cultural confession of hope as the Scriptures presents, we must also be prepared to defend our hope against the slander of the world:
But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
1 Peter 3:14-16
To hold fast despite opposition is made easier by the encouragement of one another, which takes us to the third command.
LET US CONSIDER HOW TO STIR UP ONE ANOTHER // VERSES 24-25
The final command is lengthier than the first two:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Notice how each of these three commandments aligns with one of our church values. The command to draw near is primarily a call to prayer. The confession of our hope and the assurance of God’s faithfulness are both revealed to us in Scripture. And this command to stir up one another to love and good works can only be obeyed within a community of fellow disciples. Indeed, put together these form a nutshell picture of how each Christian’s life ought to be lived. Draw near to God in prayer. Hold fast our public confession of His Word. And stir up one another to do the same.
Yet notice also that stir up is not the primary verb here; consider is. This ought to remind us of 3:1’s command for us to “consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.” Just as our minds ought to be constantly meditating upon the supremacy and goodness of Jesus, so they also ought to be perpetually considering how to stir up our brothers and sisters in Christ toward love and good works. Of course, this clearly aligns Jesus’ teaching on the greatest commandment. We ought to fix our eyes upon Christ as we strive to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, but we also ought to look outward to our fellow believers for how we might love them, particularly by stirring one another up in the faith. About this action, Richard Phillips writes:
The next term, “stir up,” means to incite or provoke or stimulate. The way we live and talk and act should be provocative to other Christians, in the best sense of the word. They should be reminded of spiritual truth because of what we are saying and how we are living. The result of our example and conversation should be love and good works in the lives of other believers. Let me ask you, then, if the way you handle yourself provokes others to take seriously what the Bible teaches. Does you counsel cut against the grain of worldly logic and press home the claims and promises of God? Does your behavior set a helpful model for weak or new believers? If not, you are not making the impact you should for Christ’s work in the church.[4]
Pause for a moment to consider that stir up, incite, provoke, and stimulate do not necessarily have the most positive of connotations, yet it is the same idea that the author presents again in verse 25 as encouraging one another. Indeed, while the ESV translates this as encouraging here, it is the same Greek word used in 3:13 as exhort: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” It will be used again as exhortation in 13:22, where the author calls the whole book of Hebrews “my word of exhortation.”
Of course, the English word encourage is also fitting so long as we remember what encouragement actually is. Sadly, even among Christians, encouragement as come to be synonymous with affirmation. “You are awesome!” “You can do this!” “Follow your heart!” That is what many would call encouragement. Yet here are the first three definitions of the verb to encourage, according to Merriam-Webster: “to inspire with courage, spirit, or hope; to attempt to persuade; to spur on.” Thus, encouraging one another is simply another angle of stirring up one another to love and good works, particularly encouraging carries the notion of urging to press on through difficulty, which is what the original readers were preparing to encounter.
Indeed, because Hebrews is a “word of exhortation” or encouragement, we should use this sermon-letter as a model for how we are to encourage one another. Does your encouragement of your brothers and sisters in Christ look resemble the book of Hebrews? How often are you calling your struggling friend to look to and consider Jesus?
The other modifying phrase to the command to consider how to stir up one another is found at the beginning of verse 25: not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some. Robert Paul Martin notes:
It seems evident that here he brings into view the role of the meetings of the church… The Christian life is meant to be lived in the context of a nurturing corporate body in which there is mutual concern and responsibility. The assembled local church is the native soil of persevering faith. To change the image, within the womb of a well-ordered, mutually watchful, local church, and in connection with its gatherings, God has provided the optimum conditions for the nurture of persevering faith and its fruits.[5]
Indeed, Paul was readily aware of the encouragement to be gained by gathering with fellow believers. Although we often only think of our singing in church as being praise and worship to God, the apostle encourages us to sing to one another: “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Ephesians 5:19). Or as he wrote in Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
But our ability to encourage others and be encouraged by others is greatly diminished if we neglect to actually meet together. And make no mistake a failure to gather with other believers, outside of special and unavoidable circumstances, is neglect, which is a word that should bring the author’s first warning of the book back to mind:
Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?
2:1-3
Taking these two passages together, we ought to conclude that a chief strategy for not neglecting the great salvation that Christ offers to us is to not neglect the regular gathering together with God’s people. Of course, while many obituaries seem to think that church membership is the only necessary qualification for heaven, that is not the case. A person can be a true Christian without being connected to a local church. However, such a neglect of the regular gathering together is a warning that a much larger drift away from the faith entirely may be underway.
Indeed, to further stir us up toward prioritizing gathering together, we ought to remember that the original readers of the letter were about to enter a new period of persecution, perhaps one of the worst in church history. Meeting together would have surely greatly increased their danger. It would mark them as Christians, and it would publicly associate them with one another, meaning that if one were arrested all would be in danger by association. Of course, there are still millions of our brothers and sisters today who still risk their lives each time they gather as a church, yet for the love of Christ and one another, they do not neglect to meet together. Let their example put to death the excuses that so readily come from our lips.
The final phrase of our text is itself a stirring up of us from the author as well as another connective link that unites these three commands together: and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. The ESV has capitalized day because it most certainly refers to Christ’s return, which is synonymous with what the Old Testament calls the Day of the Lord. As that great and awesome Day draws near, we ought to encourage one another all the more to draw near to God and to hold fast the confession of our hope, which happens to be that glorious Day. We must stir up one another to cling to that blessed hope, “through which we draw near to God” (7:19). For our hope is that our great high priest who offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins will be the very same judge of all the living and the dead.
[1] R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, 258.
[2] ESV Expository Commentary Vol 12, 149.
[3] Richard Phillips, Hebrews, 363.
[4] Phillips, Hebrews, 365.
B. C. Newton 