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.