Today, I am reading and commenting on  Hebrews 10-11.

The writer of this letter tells us that our salvation comes from faith, just as Paul did in his letters.  He also tells us that faith has two elements.  If we have faith, we will be confident that our hopes will come to be and assured about things which cannot be seen.  He then goes on to write about many Old Testament characters who exhibited their faith by taking actions, some of whom were rewarded in this life for their faith, but many of whom experienced only suffering.  He gives us example after example of people who accomplished more than one would expect a mere human to be able to do.  He, also, gives us examples of people who refused to stop testifying to the power of God in the face of suffering and even death.  All of these examples the writer cites could have chosen to live as citizens of a country in this world, but instead they chose to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God, which had not yet appeared.  Let us choose to follow their example and live lives of faith.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Hebrews 6-9.

Much of this letter is an exposition based on Psalm 110, although the writer does take references from other portions of the Old Testament.  Today’s passage focuses on Psalm 110:4, where the psalmist writes:

You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.

He says that this means that the Levitical priesthood, and the Law which established it, could not provide for perfection to be obtained.  If perfection could have been obtained through the law which established the Levitical priesthood, a different order of priesthood would not have been necessary.  The writer then explains that perfection could not be obtained through the order of the Levitical priesthood because those priests had to offer sacrifices for their own sins year after year, and they would all eventually die.  However, Jesus offered a sacrifice once for all time, did not need to offer sacrifices for His own sins (since He did not have any), and, once He was resurrected, would never again die.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Hebrews 1-5.

The writer of Hebrews starts out by establishing from Old Testament Scripture that Jesus is equal to God.  I would argue that he actually establishes that Jesus is God.  He goes on from there to show that in Jesus, God was made fully human, subject to the same temptation and suffering that every other human experiences.  In the process of making these points the writer tells us that God has chosen to subject the world to come to us.  Everything will be put beneath our feet.  There will be nothing that will not be subject to our rule.  The writer reminds us that this has not yet happened, except that God has already subject everything to Jesus.  The knowledge that God has already subject everything to Jesus encourages the hope in us that He will do the same for us.  So, since Jesus has conquered death, He has saved those of us who put our trust in Him from death.  And when we face temptation we know that Jesus likewise faced the same temptation, which should give us confidence that He can guide us into overcoming that temptation.

I will stop writing here.  I feel that some of what I have written above fails to convey my thoughts as I intended, but re-writing those parts would require re-writing the whole.  So, I will leave it as it stands.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.