The Atonement Part 7: Hebrews

Doc Ryan and Matt Mouzakis Dive into atonement in the book of
Hebrews.  


By offering his own life and blood Jesus made purification (1:3)
and atonement for sin (2:17- 18). These are big picture summary
statements. But where, how, and by what logic? For this, we need
other passages to provide details. 


 • Jesus’ death obviously happened on the cross, but Hebrews
is explicit that the atonement happened somewhere else—in
9:11-14, 24—the heavenly tabernacle. Atonement didn’t happen on
the cross.  


• Jesus’ atoning work accomplishing many things:  - Removes
(purges) sin (9:24-28)  - Forgives sin (10:18)  -
Sanctifies and perfects us (10:10, 12-14)  - Gives us
confidence to approach God with a clean conscience (Heb 10:19)
 - Frees us from the fear of death and destroys the one who
has the power of death (Heb 2:14)  - Mediated a new covenant
with his sprinkled blood – this alludes to the blood Moses
sprinkled on the people when making the old covenant (Exod
24:6-8) and the blood Jesus sprinkled in the heavenly tabernacle
to make a new covenant. This points to the function of the blood
being what it does for us in the heavenly tabernacle, not how it
satisfied God’s wrath on the cross. (Heb 12:22-24)  - Makes
us complete in everything so we may do God’s will (Heb
13:20-21) 


• Jesus became flesh, learned obedience, suffered, and tasted
death to become a perfect high priest by virtue of being able to
relate to us in our suffering and death (Heb 2:9-10, 17-18;
5:8) 


• Jesus became priest through the power of an indestructible
life, which means that “death” died on the cross more so than
Jesus! (Heb 7:16) 


• Christ endured the cross for the joy set before him – nothing
about facing God’s wrath on our behalf (Heb 12:2)
   


So, what’s missing here in Hebrew’s view of Jesus’ death?... It
does accomplish a lot of things… but there’s nothing about His
death as what finally satisfies the wrath of God. There’s nothing
related to a payment for sins.  There’s nothing about Jesus
taking our place or dying the death we deserved. It’s all missing
from the text… to get there you have to import it or read it into
the scriptures.