God created men to be strong and faithful leaders, especially in their families and churches. Becoming that kind of man does not simply happen, however; we need to train ourselves for godliness and Christlike leadership (1 Timothy 4:7–8).

To grow as men, we follow Jesus — the only sinless man, the God-man, who alone provides us righteousness and the perfect example of how to live. But we also follow the footsteps of those who followed or foreshadowed his (1 Corinthians 11:1). Joshua, though predating the incarnate Christ, can serve as one such example, especially for younger men.

Joshua teaches us that leading well starts with realizing that all you are, have, and accomplish depends on God’s gracious provision. Joshua knew this deeply, even in his younger years, as he served God and led the people into the promised land. I would like to highlight four traits from Joshua that men young and old need today: humble confidence, humble dependence, humble submission, and humble patience.

1. Humble Confidence

At key times in Israel’s history, even as a young man, Joshua stepped forward as a great example of humble confidence. One of the first times we meet Joshua, we see his faith in action, trusting God against the tide of popular opinion.

Joshua took part in a search party sent into Canaan to spy out the land God had promised. The spies returned with a dismal prediction about Israel’s ability to take on the “giants” in the land (Numbers 13–14). Joshua and Caleb were the only two (of twelve) who urged the people to take the land, because they believed God’s word (Numbers 14:7–10). They knew God’s track record and his power to keep his promises. Their confidence was not in themselves but in the God they served.

Here we see one quality that set Joshua and Caleb apart from the rest of the Israelites — they believed the promises of God. They were not intimidated by the size of the warriors or the strength of the cities. Rather, they knew their God and remembered how he had dealt with Egypt, then the most powerful nation on the earth. If God could take care of the mighty Egyptian army, he could certainly take care of the Canaanite tribes. God rewarded Joshua’s and Caleb’s faith by exempting them from the entire generation of Israelites who would perish in the wilderness (Numbers 14:29–30).

Humility and confidence might seem like opposites, but in Joshua and Caleb, we see they are two sides of the same heart. When we find our identity and security in God, we can rest in knowing that our frailty and sin no longer define us. We can walk in the strength that God supplies, even when we are rightly aware of how weak and sinful we are. In fact, God only chooses and empowers those who know how little we can do on our own.

2. Humble Dependence

Joshua could be considered one of the greatest military leaders in history. He led the armies of Israel to victory against far more powerful enemies. Without minimizing Joshua’s gifts and abilities, he knew that God is the one who ultimately vanquishes his people’s foes. He learned this early in his military career, as he led the people in battle against the Amalekites. Exodus 17 tells the story of God’s provision:

Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. (Exodus 17:11–13)

The outcome of the battle depended on something entirely outside of Joshua’s control. Yes, he fought with great courage, but all the while, he realized that the battle belongs to the Lord. The same was true even when the victories were not as supernaturally obvious. God had promised to give the land of Canaan to his people, and Joshua’s trust in God’s power and faithfulness gave him the faith he needed to be the leader God called him to be.

Even when the challenges before us are not nearly as dramatic as Joshua’s, the basis of our confidence is still the same faith — faith not in ourselves or even in the gifts and talents God has given us, but faith in the God who is the Creator, sustainer, and provider for every breath, heartbeat, and victory in life. Joshua’s example reminds us that any skills, opportunities, accomplishments, or victories come as gifts from our gracious Creator. He deserves all the credit for any good in our lives.

We can regularly remind ourselves of this by asking the apostle Paul’s rhetorical question in 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you did not receive?” Realizing that God is the source and end of all he gives us leads to humble confidence, and that confidence frees us to follow his will and be used as he sees fit.

3. Humble Submission

As a young man, Joshua learned to trust God’s word, and it guided his life. He knew God’s promises are trustworthy, so he followed his plan even when the challenges were great. God’s word became the core of his confidence, as we see in God’s exhortation to him before the people entered the land of Canaan:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:8–9)

God calls Joshua to be strong and courageous based on his trust in God’s word. A godly man’s confidence, likewise, does not depend on his own abilities or the opinions of others to predict the outcome of circumstances; rather, it depends on what God says is true. When we submit to the authority of the word of God, we are trusting in the character of God. In our day, one’s desires in the moment have become the primary guide for many, but men of God buck that trend and live rooted in the unchanging teaching of the Bible.

4. Humble Patience

The best leaders are men who have learned to follow well. They faithfully contribute to the objectives of a team, even if they do not have a title or position. Joshua’s submission to God translated into his submission to the leader God placed over him.

Joshua served as Moses’s assistant when he was a young man (Exodus 17:8–16). After being chosen, he filled that role with patience for forty years. We are told that when Moses would go into the camp, Joshua “would not depart from the tent” (Exodus 33:11). It must have been deeply challenging at times to serve the people in Moses’s shadow, but we get no indication that Joshua was anything but a dutiful encouragement to Moses and an energetic partner in the mission. His commitment to patiently serve shaped him into the man who could lead God’s people into the promised land.

The lessons Joshua learned as a young man shaped him into an old man who could be trusted as a godly leader. And because of his leadership, “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel” (Joshua 24:31).

Joshua’s trust in God and his word formed him into a man of humble character. His confidence, dependence, submission, and patience offer powerful glimpses of Jesus, who perfectly lived out these qualities as our substitute and example. May God give many young men in the coming generation the ability to trust their God and lead with Christlike character.

The Creator of the universe, who holds everything in being, from all the galaxies to every grain of sand, and who governs everything that happens, from the fall of nations to the fall of every bird that dies — this God has decreed that he will accomplish his enemy-reconciling, worshiper-creating purposes among all the peoples of the world through your mouth.

Listen to the words of the apostle Paul: “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Think of it: there’s God, with his appeal to the peoples of the world; there’s Christ, who provided the basis of the appeal by his death for sin and his triumph over death — and there’s you, with your mouth.

You take your Christ, your great Treasure, and his magnificent salvation, and you open your mouth, and wonder of wonders, God makes his appeal through you: “Be reconciled to God.” This is how we make disciples of all nations. This is how the Great Commission is completed. God makes his appeal through us: “On behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” When you say that, it is the voice of God.

Christians, the Voice of His Excellencies

Don’t shrink back from this, as if it were meant only for apostles. Do you remember what Peter said about who you are? You are Christians: “You [you!] are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). You are the voice of his excellencies. That’s not a missionary calling. That’s your Christian identity. It’s who you are — the mouthpiece of the excellencies of God.

So, my prayer for this message — indeed, for this day and this conference — has two layers.

Layer #1: I am praying that God would redirect the lives of hundreds of you from where you were heading when you came to this conference, or from the muddle your life was in, into a life totally devoted, vocationally, to opening your mouths among the least-reached peoples of the world — God making his appeal through you for the reconciling of his enemies and the creation of his worshipers.

Layer #2: I am praying that the rest of you would see this divine enterprise as so glorious that you would celebrate it and support it in every way possible.

What can I do in the rest of this message that God might use to make you an answer to one of those prayers? What I’m going to do is to try and show you from the Gospel of John how God will use your mouth to create worshipers of the true God among the nations. I think if you could see how God actually does it, you might feel called to join him in doing it.

Whom the Father Seeks, He Will Have

Let’s start with John 4:23. Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. She has just pointed out that Samaritans worship on Mount Gerizim while Jews, like Jesus, worship in Jerusalem (John 4:20). To this Jesus responds,

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for [or because] the Father is seeking such people to worship him. (John 4:23)

The reason there will be true worship on any mountain or in any valley or on any plain is because the Father is seeking worshipers. That’s why worship among the nations happens.

This is not a seeking as in an Easter egg hunt, as if God doesn’t know who they are or where they are. This is a seeking because they are his, and he means to have them and their wholehearted, happy worship for himself forever.

“Yahweh calls the Messiah a priest ‘forever.’ Forever? Now we are at a new level of lordship.”

As Jesus prayed to his Father in John 17:6, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” The Father is seeking worshipers from all the nations because they are already his. “Yours they were!” Jesus declares. “And you gave them to me.” God chose them before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4–6). They are his. He is seeking them. He will have them.

How does he do that? How do we move from “yours they were” from all eternity to countless worshipers from every people, language, tribe, and nation at the consummation of history with you, and your mouth, in the middle?

To answer that question from the Gospel of John, we need to know, What’s the relationship between worshiping and believing in this Gospel? Because Jesus just said in John 4:23 that the Father is seeking worshipers. Yet this whole Gospel is written, according to John 20:31, to create believers: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

What’s the relationship between believing and worshiping? Which should we seek? Is there a first and second? Are they the same? Do they overlap?

Belief as Soul-Satisfaction

Here’s my very condensed answer, which starts with a stunning fact: In this so-called “Gospel of Belief,” John never uses the noun belief or faith (Greek pistis) — never! — in all 21 chapters. But he uses the verb believe (pisteuō) 98 times. That can’t be an accident. What’s the point?

I think the point is this: John wants to emphasize that believing is an action, and one of the soul, not the body. The movements of the body are the effects of believing. What the soul does is believing. And what are the actions of believing in the soul? John answers at the very beginning of his Gospel in John 1:11–12: “[Jesus] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Believing is the soul’s receiving of Christ.

Receiving as what? A ticket out of hell that you put in your back pocket and never think of? A wonder-worker to keep my wife alive and my children safe (and a failure if he doesn’t)? No. John and Jesus have a different kind of receiving in mind. It’s the receiving of Christ as soul-satisfying bread from heaven and as thirst-quenching living water: “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst’” (John 6:35).

Believing John Dewey, the American educational reformer who died in 1952, said, “We never think until we have been confronted with a problem.” That may be an overstatement, but not by much. Thinking, especially thinking with a view to attaining more truth for the sake of more worship and more obedience, is hard work. Thinking demands effort.

But the Bible encourages us to think. Paul said to the younger Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Timothy 2:7). And to the Corinthians he said, “Do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20).

A lot of people have given me T-shirts over the years. My favorite was in 1980, when I finished six years of teaching biblical studies at Bethel College and became a pastor at this church. My students gave me a T-shirt with the initials of Jonathan Edwards on the front, and on the back it said, “Asking questions is the key to understanding.” That made me feel like I had at least partially succeeded in my six years at Bethel.

The reason John Dewey’s statement and that T-shirt go together is because asking questions is a way of being confronted with a problem. We don’t think until we have a problem, Dewey said. And we don’t understand until we think. And asking questions is a way of posing problems. Therefore, asking questions triggers thinking, and thinking is a path to understanding. One of my goals as a teacher is to build into students the habit of asking good questions — not because I want them to be skeptics, but because I want them to be thinkers. “Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”

Man of Questions

One of the reasons this is relevant to our text is that, in the four Gospels, Jesus asks over three hundred questions. I checked this out, just to make sure, by reviewing the list online. Now, in my ESV Bible, the Gospels fill 101 pages, which means that on average Jesus asks three questions on every page. I don’t doubt that there are far more reasons for why he did that than we will ever know in this world, but one of those reasons was, surely, to make people think — to think their way into truth, or to think their way into self-incrimination and silence.

Which is what happens in our text. So, let’s read Matthew 22:41–46. There are four questions in this text, all directed at the Pharisees:

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, [Question #1] “What do you think about the Christ? [Question #2] Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, [Question #3] “How [therefore does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai],“Sit at my right hand,     until I put your enemies under your feet”’?

If then David calls him Lord, [Question #4] how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Jesus had silenced the Sadducees in verses 29–33 when they asked about the resurrection. Then the Pharisees tested him in verse 35 by asking what the Great Commandment is. He answered them, and now come his own four questions, after which — you can see in verse 45 — no one asked him any more questions: “nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

Let’s take Jesus’s questions one at a time to see if we can grasp what he is trying to communicate with these four questions.

Question #1: ‘What do you think about the Christ?’

“The Christ” means “the Messiah” — that is, the long-expected king of Israel who would fulfill the promises and bring Israel into her destiny as God’s chosen and ruling people in the world. Remember that the woman at the well in John 4 said,

“I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” (John 4:25–26)

And here in Matthew, Jesus asked the disciples,

“Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:15–17)

In other words, “Yes, I am the Messiah.”

So this — “What do you think about the Christ [the Messiah]?” — is an explosive question because it has more than one level of meaning. At one level, it’s a biblical, theological question about the meaning of “Christ” or “Messiah.” Jesus and the Pharisees will have a lot of common ground on this question.

But at another level, the question touches on Jesus himself. Is he the one? The answer to the first level is not explosive at first. But the answer to the second level will get Jesus crucified. At his trial the high priest will say, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew 26:63). To which Jesus responds, signing his own death warrant, “I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). In other words, he will be seen as David’s Lord, sitting at God’s right hand, according to Psalm 110.

But now in our text, after asking his first question, Jesus does not wait for an answer to this general question of “What do you think about the Christ?” Because he knows where he is going with these questions, and he is not interested in a general answer about the Christ. He aims to be more specific. So, he moves to the second question.

Question #2: ‘Whose son is he?’

Now, every Jew knew at least one right answer to that question because of 2 Samuel 7:12–13, where God says to King David through the prophet Nathan,

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The Messiah would be the son of David. This is what the ordinary folks called Jesus. When he entered Jerusalem, they cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9). The Jewish leaders knew what this meant, and so they asked him, when the children called him the son of David, “Do you hear what these are saying?” To which Jesus responded, “Out of the mouth of infants . . . [God has] prepared praise” (Matthew 21:16).

So, when Jesus asks in our text, “Whose son is he?” we have these two levels of meaning again. At one level there is theological agreement: the Messiah is the son of David — no controversy. At the other level, just below the surface, is the question, Is Jesus this son of David?

The Pharisees answer Jesus’s second question: “The son of David” (Matthew 22:42). There’s the theological agreement: the Christ is the son of David.

But now comes the third question, which the Pharisees will not answer, because Jesus is leading them with Scripture to a place they do not want to go, and they can see it coming. This is often how questions work.

Question #3: ‘How does David call him Lord?’

Let’s reread what surrounds this question.

He said to them, “How [therefore, in view of your correct answer, does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai],“Sit at my right hand,     until I put your enemies under your feet”’?” (Matthew 22:43–44)

This question has often puzzled me. But before I explain why, let’s nail down five details.

Five Clarifications

First, verse 44 is a quotation of Psalm 110:1: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

Second, the phrase “in the Spirit” (from “David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord”) means that Jesus regards these words as written by David and inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is not human opinion; it is God’s word.

Third, the first reference to “Lord” in the quote from Psalm 110:1 in Hebrew is the proper name of God, Yahweh. And the second word for “Lord” in the Psalm (“the Lord said to my Lord”) is the generic word for a master or a lord, adonai, which is used over three hundred times in the Old Testament for human masters. And the word “my” refers to David, the writer of the psalm: “The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai].”

Fourth, the second word for “Lord” (verse 44, or “master,” adonai), refers to the promised Messiah. And we know that because it says he will sit at God’s right hand, ruling over all his enemies. There was no disagreement about this reading of Psalm 110 so far with the Pharisees.

So fifth is that, since David is writing this, when he says, “[Yahweh] said to my Lord [my adonai],” David is calling the Messiah his Lord.

What’s So Controversial?

Now, what has puzzled me about Jesus’s third question — “How does David call him Lord?” — is why it would be considered controversial. Why would it stump the Pharisees, when in fact the Pharisees agree that David called the Messiah his Lord? Jewish people, from then till now, don’t deny that when or if the Messiah comes, he will be greater than David. He will be David’s superior and leader and Lord. That’s not news. That’s what the text says, and that’s what Jews have believed.

The way I used to read it simply does not seem to create the crisis Jesus seems to be creating. I think I’ve been reading it with the wrong twist. So, I’m going to suggest that we put the emphasis in this question on a different word, which I think solves my problem — my misunderstanding. I’m going to put the emphasis on the word “how” in verse 43 and treat it as a real “how” question.

Verse 43: “How [in what way, therefore, does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord?” I think it’s misleading to translate it this way: “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord?” Because if you translate it, “How is it that . . .” it means, idiomatically, in English virtually the same as “Why does he call him Lord?” And that’s what throws me off, because the answer to that question would be easy for the Pharisees to answer. Why? Because he is.

But I don’t think Jesus is asking why David calls the Messiah his Lord, but how — in what way is he Lord? In what sense is he Lord? How is the Messiah the Lord of David, according to Psalm 110? Jesus is beckoning us into the whole of Psalm 110 to see how David writes about the Messiah to bring out what his lordship involves. This would require another sermon — to work our way, verse by verse, through Psalm 110, so let me just summarize what I see.

How David Calls the Messiah His Lord

In verse 1, “[Yahweh] says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The Messiah sits at the exalted place in heaven at Yahweh’s right hand. Then in verse 4, Yahweh speaks again about the Messiah: “[Yahweh] has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’” Yahweh calls the Messiah a priest “forever.” Forever? Now we are at a new level of lordship. The Messiah is a priest-king at God’s right hand forever.

“When David called the Messiah his Lord, he was pointing to the divinity of the Messiah.”

Then he says in verse 5, “The Lord [adonai] is at your right hand.” And the most natural meaning of the word “your” is the “you” of the preceding verse — verse 4: “You are a priest forever.” Then comes verse 5: “The Lord is at your right hand.” Which means that David, as he composes Psalm 110, is now saying that God is at this priest-king’s right hand. In other words, they have, in essence, switched places from verses 1 to 5: in verse 1, the Messiah sits at God’s right hand, and in verse 5, God is at the Messiah’s right hand.

I’m suggesting that what Jesus saw in this psalm is that when David called the Messiah his Lord, he was pointing to the divinity of the Messiah. The Messiah and Yahweh are one God. This is how the book of Hebrews understands this psalm in Hebrews 1:13. This is how Matthew understood Jesus’s messiahship: he is “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). This is what I mean by focusing on the word “how” in verse 43. How does David call the Messiah his Lord? The way he does it is by showing that the Messiah is David’s God.

That’s a lot to pack into a question that gets no answer. But the fact that there is no answer from the Pharisees suggests that they can smell that Jesus is leading them somewhere they don’t want to go. So, with that understanding of what was in Jesus’s mind, we turn to the fourth question.

Question #4: ‘If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?’

This question now means, “If David calls the Messiah his God, we have a real problem. How is the Messiah David’s son?” That’s a problem because, to be David’s son, one has to be human and be in the human line of David. But if the Messiah is God, how can that be? No answer. In fact, public debating with Jesus is over. And the final question ringing in our ears is, If the Messiah is God, how is he a man, specifically a man in David’s human lineage?

Matthew has left us no doubt as to his answer: Jesus was divine and human because he was conceived in a human virgin by the divine Holy Spirit. Matthew 1:18: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

And Joseph, in the royal line of David, legally adopts Jesus, and Jesus becomes the legitimate son of David. Matthew 1:20: “An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.’” And in taking Mary as his wife, he takes Jesus as his son. And Matthew clarifies the miracle of a divine-human Messiah with these words: “‘They shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23).

Back to question #4: “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matthew 22:45). That is, “If, then, David calls him God, how is he a man in David’s line?” Not: “Is he?” But: “How is he?” Answer: by human birth in the womb of a virgin, and by legal adoption by a son of David.

Will We Have Him for Who He Is?

We are left not mainly with a question about who Jesus is.

Jesus (and Matthew) makes plain, “I am God, and I am the human son of David, the Messiah. Follow me. Devote yourself to me for the rest of your life. Treasure me above all things. Your sins will be forgiven. Your life will have its fullest meaning. And you will live forever in the joy of God’s presence.”

The question we are left with is not “Who is he?” but “Will we have him as our greatest treasure?” I pray your answer is yes.

I can’t remember the preacher, but I remember the line: “Abraham would have traded places with us in a heartbeat.” It caught my attention because I so often read my Bible and wish I could have the experiences that Abraham had. Or Moses. Or Joshua. Definitely David.

But the preacher was right. In fact, he wasn’t saying anything different from what Jesus says to his disciples: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matthew 13:16–17). Now, in other words, really is better than then: better than Abraham’s experiences at Haran (Genesis 12:1–5), Moses’s at Sinai (Exodus 19), Joshua’s at Jericho (Joshua 6), or David’s in the Valley of Elah (1 Samuel 17). Now — the present chapter in God’s story — is better, and it’s better for all kinds of reasons.

Here I want to draw our attention to one often-overlooked reason. It’s found at the end of Hebrews, and it’s full of implications for how we read our Bibles — and whom we baptize.

Running with a Limp

Right at the end of the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11, the pastor concludes his list of Old Testament heroes by telling us this: “All these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (verses 39–40). We find the same idea in two other places in the chapter (verses 1–2, 13): the Old Testament faithful lived and died without receiving what God had promised them.

The promise in view is variously described as a “land” (verse 9), a “city” built by “God” (verse 10; see also verse 16), a “homeland” (verse 14), and a “better” and, indeed, “heavenly” country (verse 16). In other places, Hebrews calls this same place “the world to come” (2:5; 1:6), “a Sabbath rest” (4:9), “the inner place behind the curtain” (6:19; 9:11–12, 24), “the promised eternal inheritance” (9:15), “a better possession” (10:34), “Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22 NET), “a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (12:28), and a “city that is to come” (13:14).

It’s a place the Old Testament faithful never reached. They didn’t reach it because God had planned “something better for us.” Or, to say it another way, God had decided “that apart from us they should not be made perfect” or fit to enter God’s presence. That’s what perfection means in Hebrews. It’s a fitness made possible by Jesus’s sacrifice (10:14), and it includes new and immediate effects upon the believer’s conscience (9:9, 14; 10:2, 22) and, one day, on his body too (see 11:35). It also gives believers new spiritual access to God now (4:16; also 4:3; 12:22–23), and bodily access to the heavenly city when Jesus returns (12:22; 13:14). It’s an extraordinary gift and one, Hebrews insists, that Old Testament believers, from Abel to Zechariah (Hebrews 11:4, 37), ran their race without.

“In the new covenant, God enables every member to keep covenant. He enables every member to persevere in faithfulness.”

The author couldn’t make his point more forcefully. When his friends asked whether it was possible to run the Christian race, they needed only to remember the “great cloud” of the Old Testament faithful, who lived and died full of faith (Hebrews 12:1 NET). These heroes were tempted in every way, just like we are, yet without giving up. Like us, they too ran their race through many dangers, toils, and snares. But, on top of all this, they also ran with a limp. They ran their race without the gift of perfection (11:39–40). Surely (and this is Hebrews’s point) if they could run and finish full of faith, so can we!

Three Lessons from Perfection

This brand-new gift of perfection makes our place in God’s story better and, at the same time, teaches us fresh lessons about how we should read and understand God’s written word, including the relationship between the covenants, the nature of Christian apostasy, and the proper subjects of Christian baptism.

1. Relationship Between the Covenants

According to Hebrews, Jesus’s perfection-bringing death inaugurated a new covenant (9:15–17, when properly translated). Hebrews calls this covenant “better” when comparing it with the old covenant that Moses inaugurated at Sinai (8:6; 9:18–22) and under which most of the faithful in Hebrews 11 lived (11:23–38).

It’s better because it’s “not like” the old covenant that God made with Israel and that Israel didn’t keep (8:8–9). Unlike the new covenant, the old covenant couldn’t guarantee its members’ faithfulness. It couldn’t keep itself from being broken or its members safe from its curses (3:11, 17–18). It had no power to ensure that its members would, like the heroes of Hebrews 11, live and die full of faith. It was good but, owing to these deficiencies, not good enough.

The new covenant’s new provisions, therefore, supply precisely what the old covenant lacked. God now puts his “laws into” his people’s “minds” and writes “them on their hearts” (8:10). In short, he enables his people’s obedience. In fact, he does this for each and every covenant member: “all” the members of God’s new covenant “know” God, from “least” to “greatest” (verse 11). The days of a believing remnant inside a hardened majority are forever ended. In this new covenant, God enables every member to keep covenant. He enables every member to persevere in faithfulness.

All of this, however, can be gifted to sinful people only because our thrice-holy God, in unfathomable love, finally and fully forgives his people’s sins through Jesus’s perfecting sacrifice (8:12; 10:14, 18).

Hebrews 11:39–40, therefore, teaches us that Jesus’s perfecting death inaugurated a covenant that is better than the old covenant precisely because it includes benefits never before experienced. None, in fact, could be experienced in earlier eras of God’s story, neither through God’s earlier covenants nor proleptically through the new, because “God had planned something better for us” (11:40 NIV).

To say it again, the Old Testament faithful were not perfected. The new covenant was not inaugurated, nor its better promises experienced, until Jesus died. This means that the new covenant is not simply a further revelation of the one covenant of grace, but a substantively new covenant, new in its revelatory content and in its soteriological provisions (1:1–3).

2. Nature of Christian Apostasy

The new covenant’s superiority implies that apostasy in the new-covenant era is substantively different from apostasy under the old covenant. While an old-covenant member might fail to “continue in” the covenant (and, sadly, many did; Hebrews 8:9), a new-covenant member cannot. It’s this very distinction — the unbreakable-ness of the covenant — that makes the new covenant better. Thus, the warnings against apostasy in Hebrews, which some in the author’s audience did not heed (10:25), refer to new-covenant experiences available to members and nonmembers alike (see 6:4–6 and 10:29). After all, the covenant is either better or breakable. There is not a third option.

3. Proper Subjects of Christian Baptism

Considering the inviolability of the new covenant and the connection Hebrews draws between faith, perfection, and covenant membership (3:6, 14; 10:14, 18, 22–23), Hebrews gives us no encouragement to treat non-professing individuals (those who do not profess faith in Christ) as covenant members. Rather, the (sad) reality of apostasy suggests that the visible new-covenant community will be phenomenologically mixed until Jesus returns, with real and false professors, while the superiority of the new covenant suggests the true covenant community will remain ontologically (and gloriously) unmixed.

To admit non-professing people into the visible (professing) community confuses these two realities. It fails to recognize the crucial difference between a professing member who claims to “know the Lord” and a non-professing member who doesn’t — and who therefore requires something that new-covenant membership itself specifically provides (8:11).

Our Place in God’s Story

What more shall I say? Time would fail me to tell of what Hebrews 11:39–40 teaches us about Levitical sacrifices or circumcision or regeneration or the intermediate state. Time and space fail already to give anything more than a cursory look at the three implications I’ve sketched above.

Still, what we’ve seen gives us more than enough reason to agree with Jesus (and the nameless preacher) about the goodness of our place in God’s story. We have even more reason to persevere in our race of faith as we await Jesus’s return, a perfected body, and life with God and in his city forever and ever.