You won’t get to heaven unless you really want to. That’s what the Bible tells us.

Jesus wanted to go to heaven. Hebrews tells us that the joy of heaven propelled his life of faith (Hebrews 12:2). It’s what motivated him to run and run all the way to the end. The same joy motivated the other heroes too, from Abel to Zechariah (Hebrews 11:4, 37). All ran through dangers and toils and snares — too many to count — and they didn’t stop. Why? Because they longed for heaven. They longed for the heavenly country that they could see just beyond the finish line (Hebrews 11:13–16).

You can’t run the race of faith all the way to the end without a clear vision of heaven. Your legs will give out. The strength of your resolve won’t be enough. The course is too steep. The headwind too strong. Ask the heroes. Ask Jesus. They’ll all say the same thing. Only the joys of heaven can sustain the race of faith.

In their post-race interview, they’d want you to know that the race is possible. What else are we to make of the fact that they made it? But they’d also want you to know how. If we asked them that, I suspect they’d smile, perhaps pause to wipe some sweat off their face, and then begin talking about heaven.

Here’s what they might say.

Reunion

Never forget that heaven will be filled with people who know and love the Lord Jesus just like we do. Everybody there will know the Lord “from the least . . . to the greatest” (Hebrews 8:11). All the people we’ve loved and lost, and who knew and loved the Lord Jesus, will be there in that place. Every single one of them: friends who died too soon, taken by disease or worse; children taken as children; parents; grandparents; wives and husbands.

Heaven will be filled with Jesus-people, with the “church of the firstborn” (New Testament believers) and “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Old Testament believers; Hebrews 12:23). Every believer of all time will be there. Some we can’t wait to meet, like Charles Spurgeon or Martyn Lloyd-Jones or John Stott. And others we can’t wait to see again — some whose names are still too painful to say aloud. They’ll be there. All of them.

What a day of rejoicing that will be.

Perfection

Heaven is also a place where God has promised to perfectly “put [his] laws into [our] minds, and write them on [our] hearts” (Hebrews 8:10). If you’ve been a Christian for more than, say, five minutes, then you’ve longed for this reality, even as you’ve experienced it in part. It’s a promise that reminds us that heaven will be free of sin. We will be free from sin. God’s good and life-giving ways will be part of the DNA of our resurrected bodies. You’ll no longer be able to sin. And that lack of freedom won’t bother you! It’ll be one of the best things about you and that place.

It’s a reality every Christian longs for. We long to be free of our inveterate self-seeking. Our debilitating jealousy. Our too-small and ill-directed desires. Our inability to act for God’s glory with anything but mixed motives. That darkness within you that occupies so much of your mind and heart, that pattern you long to see changed, foresworn, put off, that sin that besets you now — it will be permanently removed in the sin-free world to come.

It’s a promise whose future reality extends back into the present. When Jesus died, he activated God’s promise of perfection. The Bible calls it God’s new covenant. And it gives believers in this chapter of the story not only the prospect of future perfection, but present experiences of that future world. When we believed in Jesus, sin’s power over us was broken in a brand-new way. Our slavery to sin and the devil and the fear of death ended (Hebrews 2:14–15). And all this anticipates the full flowering of God’s promise in the future, where sin’s power and presence will be eradicated.

A place without sin. A life without sin. It’s what we were made for. And it’s what God promises us at the end of our race.

Creation

Hebrews calls that coming place a “world to come” (Hebrews 2:5). I’m afraid we don’t think about this enough. Too often, heaven is a cipher for something less real, less tactile, less concrete than this world. As a result, it fails to capture our imaginations and hearts. But the end of God’s story is nothing less than a new creation. A place with food and animals of every kind. A place full of wonder and beauty. A place with things to do, to make, to create. A place filled with music, gardens, and games. A place just like this one, only unburdened by sin.

“You can’t run the race of faith all the way to the end without a clear vision of heaven.”

What do you long for in this world? What places make your heart ache? What smells and textures and sounds make your heart sing? Pine needles on a sunny forest path. Freshly baked bread. Birdsong, rushing water, cello suites. Windswept plains. Starry, starry nights. Each is a pointer given by God and meant to draw us inexorably to the world to come.

Every single good desire created by this world — every last one — will be fulfilled in the next.

There is a world at the end of our race, with joys far too large for our little words. Metaphor and simile try their best. But these too fall short, which is why the best window into that world is this one. So, we must not forget that when God created this world, he called it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). But when he talks about the world to come, he calls it even “better” (Hebrews 11:16).

Love

Now for the best part: God is there.

It’s the best reality of heaven, and it’s the hardest one to wrap our minds around. Hebrews doesn’t just tell us that God is preparing a world for us; Hebrews tells us that God is planning to live there with us. That’s why the place is called “the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:22). It’s the fulfillment of God’s age-old promise to be our God and for us to be his people (Hebrews 8:10). In that promise, we finite creatures find our best and highest good.

We’re rightly glad that heaven is a place and that it’s full of other people we know and love. But still, there is something in us, a longing, that only God himself can fill. There’s a kind of joy that comes from relating to God that is unlike anything else. It’s a joy that is often easier to experience than to explain.

But let me try.

Our deepest joys on this earth come from personal relationships. We experience them when we spend time with people we know and love and who know and love us. People who know us and still love us. That’s what each of us wants more than anything else.

This is precisely what God gives us in himself. He knows us better than anyone else. And he loves us still. In fact, he loves us more than anyone else. More than we could ever imagine. God loves you so very much. And he’s proven it beyond all shadow of doubt by sacrificing his most precious Son for our good (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; 8:31–32).

One day, Hebrews tells us, in that coming world, full of God’s family and free from sin, we’ll live with God himself. We’ll live with the one whose love for us is better than life itself (Psalm 63:3). This hope is either true or it isn’t. And, if true, then it is more than sufficient to fuel our race of faith all the way to the glorious end.

Forever

Finally, Hebrews — the heroes — want you to know one more thing. Heaven is forever.

Hebrews calls that world to come unshakable, “lasting,” and “eternal” (9:15; 12:27; 13:14). All that good comes not with a period but an ellipsis. There’s no expiration date. No final chapter. No end. Every good of this world ends to make us long for the next. Every good meal, conversation, laugh, and sunset. They all end so that we long for a world where the good never ends. Or, better, where the good ends only because what follows is better still.

All our adventures in this life, wherever our race may take us in this wide world, are, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, simply “the cover and the title page” to the “Great Story . . . which goes on . . . forever” and “in which every chapter is better than the one before” (The Last Battle, 767).

Forever joys. Forever increasing joys. It’s the kind of story only God could tell. It’s the kind of happy ending only an infinitely creative storyteller could imagine. So run, Christian, run. Run all the way to the end. Heaven will be worth it all.

At the beginning of Romans 9–11, Paul tells us he is sad. Really sad. “I speak the truth in Christ — I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit — I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart . . . for the sake of my people . . . Israel” (Romans 9:1–4 NIV). Paul is so sad that he doesn’t finish his thought and tell us what’s wrong with Israel. For that, we have to wait an entire chapter.

We come to find out that many within Israel had rejected Jesus, their long-awaited Messiah, and as a result weren’t “saved” (Romans 10:1). This reality not only made Paul sad; it also raised difficult questions about God. Did Israel’s unbelief mean that God had rejected his people — or worse, failed to keep his promises (Romans 9:6; 11:1)? And if God could reject his people and default on his promises, wasn’t this awful news for everybody, not just Israel but Gentiles too?

His Secret

To answer these questions, Paul reveals a secret hidden in the Bible and revealed only once God sent Jesus. God would save Israel and keep his word, but he would do so in a surprising way.

First, he would begin by reducing believing Israel to a tiny remnant. True, believing Israel and all Israel had never completely overlapped, even from the start (Romans 9:6–13). But it was only later, during the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles near the end of the Old Testament, that God reduced believing Israel to a mere remnant (Romans 9:27–29). And, surprisingly, believing Israel’s remnant status did not change even when the Messiah, Israel’s Savior, came (Romans 9:30–33; 11:7–10). As the apostle John put it: the Messiah “came to . . . his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11 NIV).

Second, God would use Israel’s unbelief to make space for Gentile salvation (Romans 11:28, 30). Surprising space. Everybody expected Gentiles to one day join with Israel, but nobody anticipated they would become Israel. Paul tells us, however, that Gentile salvation would fulfill Old Testament promises about the salvation of Gentiles (Romans 10:19–20; see also 4:17; 15:9–12) and the salvation of Israel (Romans 9:25–26). Paul never explicitly calls Gentiles Israel, and he preserves a place for “natural” or ethnic Israel (Romans 11:17–24). But when he applies Israel’s promises to Gentiles, he shows us that the line between the “wild” and “natural” branches in the church is harder to see than anyone would have guessed.

Third, God would use Gentile salvation to get Israel’s attention. The surprising salvation of Gentiles would provoke Israel to envy and then salvation (Romans 11:11–12, 15). This was one of the reasons Paul shared Jesus so tirelessly with Gentiles. He hoped his success as “apostle to the Gentiles” might lead to Israel’s salvation. Granted, Paul knew he couldn’t provoke all Israel, but he hoped and prayed that he could provoke some (Romans 11:13–14).

Finally, God would provoke all Israel to salvation only when Jesus returned (or “in connection with” Jesus’s return). This might just be the most surprising part of Paul’s secret. Careful readers of God’s promises in the Old Testament were right: Israel would be saved when the Messiah came. But nobody could have guessed that Israel’s salvation would be at the Messiah’s second coming. Two comings! Nobody saw that coming. Paul tells us that Israel would be saved when Jesus returned from heavenly Zion, a place Jesus opened with his death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 11:26–27). In this way, Israel’s conversion would mirror Paul’s own — transformed by a heavenly vision of the risen Lord.

Paul tells us this secret then bursts into praise (Romans 11:33–36). Only an infinitely wise author could craft a plot where (nearly) every expectation created is fulfilled in an unexpected way. Surprising faithfulness. As paradoxical as that sounds, there’s really no other way to describe it. And there’s no other story like it.

His Grief

While Paul’s secret wonderfully dispels any doubts we might have about God’s faithfulness, I don’t think it diminished Paul’s grief. We may be surprised by what Paul writes in Romans 9–11, but Paul wasn’t. He wrote Romans 9:2 knowing full well what he would write in Romans 11:25–27. He wrote these chapters with a tear-stained face despite the secret he reveals.

After all, Israel wouldn’t be saved until Jesus returned, and Jesus wouldn’t return, Paul tells us, until God completed his work among the Gentiles (Romans 11:25). For Paul, this at least meant that Israel wouldn’t be saved until somebody pushed beyond Rome and evangelized the Gentiles on the edge of the map. So, Paul tells us how eager he is to get to Spain (Romans 15:14–33). Still, Paul knew that every delay, every setback, every change of plans, every pocket of unreached Gentiles meant more time would pass without Jesus’s return and, therefore, more death and judgment for so many — too many — within Israel.

Paul also knew that the timing of Israel’s salvation would mean that many within Israel would miss out on experiences he writes about in his letters and preached about everywhere he went. The Israel that would be saved at Jesus’s return would be an Israel that would miss out on life in the church during this present age. They would miss the goodness of working out their salvation (Philippians 2:12–13), struggling to walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), and renewing their minds (Romans 12:2). Israel would miss out on the goodness of waiting for Jesus’s return and all the ways this experience prepares us for and enriches our experience in the world to come (see Matthew 25:21, 23).

His Example

Paul’s secret dispels our doubts about God’s character, but it doesn’t — it shouldn’t — diminish our grief. Not if we’re going to follow Paul’s example, which is precisely what the Bible calls us to do (1 Corinthians 11:1).

Paul’s example teaches us to celebrate every part of God’s story. In fact, it’s a sign of immaturity — or worse — if we can’t. Paul’s heart swells when he tells God’s story. That’s why he ends these chapters with a soaring doxology, reveling in God’s wisdom and knowledge. Our hearts fail to align with Paul’s if we’re unable to feel what he feels in Romans 11:33–36. We fail to follow Paul’s example if we can tell God’s story without wonder and praise.

At the same time, Paul teaches us that doxology can and should be accompanied by lament, by anguish. Paul’s heart breaks when he tells God’s story. That’s why he begins these chapters like he does and why he speaks of his tears elsewhere (Philippians 3:18). It is a sign of immaturity — or worse — if we can’t feel what Paul feels in Romans 9:2. In fact, here, as elsewhere, Paul was simply following the example of his Lord, who shed tears for precisely the same reason as Paul (Luke 19:41–44). Jesus’s tears, moreover, point us to an unfathomable mystery: God’s own “response” to his story (2 Peter 3:9).

Friends, rejoice in God’s story. Let it cause you to hallow his name. But in your rejoicing, don’t fail to weep. Don’t fail to cultivate a heart that is eager for others to share the good you have received from God and a heart that is grieved — even unceasingly grieved (Romans 9:2) — when they don’t. To the paradox of God’s surprising yet faithful story, let us add the paradox of our response to it: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). In this way, we learn to follow Paul as he followed and waited for Christ.

I can still remember when we first learned to preach it.

We’d just arrived at grad school and were stretched thin by long nights, a baby boy, a budget we couldn’t possibly balance, and immaturities to boot. My wife and I had asked one of my professors for church recommendations, and he’d given us one, a still-young church plant just up the road and across the state line. Neither of us had done a lot of church “shopping,” so all the differences we noticed that Sunday morning left impressions.

For starters, the church met in a “gym-natorium” that was long on basketball hoops but decidedly short on aesthetics. (I’m not sure any of the walls were even painted.) Then there was the music, led by a pastor, written by new-to-us artists like Getty, Townend, Kauflin, and Cook, and sung — really sung — by everybody in the room, grayheads and kids raising their hands in the air. All of it was followed by a remarkable sermon — still the best I’ve heard on Ephesians 6 — and preached, we’d come to find out, by an intern. (What kind of place has interns like that?)

All of this left its mark, but what struck us most was the surprising attention the church paid to the gospel. It was like the best news they’d ever heard, like they’d just discovered it for the first time, even though so many in the room, we guessed, were already Christians. Every part of the liturgy — from the announcements to the offering to the benediction — was shot through with a celebration of what God had done for us in Jesus and a call to live in the goodness of that news. To say we were encouraged would be insufficient. We were transformed.

The Gospel for Today

We soon learned there was a name for this fresh attention to the gospel — “gospel-centered” — and that it was, in God’s mercy, sweeping through many churches at that moment. We also soon learned that “gospel-centered” was shorthand for a cluster of underemphasized and glorious realities that Christians could “preach to themselves” on Sundays and every other day. We would spend most of the next decade learning to do just that.

Maybe you know this already. Maybe you don’t. But if you’re a Christian, the gospel is for you. It’s full of good news about your past and future — and your present day-to-day life. It’s full of good news for today. And to live in the goodness of this news, there are precious truths you simply must learn to rehearse, to preach, to yourself.

Here’s how that sermon might go.

New Ability

The gospel tells us that we’ve been regenerated. That’s a big word that points to an even bigger reality: Christians — those of us united to Jesus by faith — have been given brand-new spiritual abilities, thanks to what Jesus has done for us in his death, burial, and resurrection. We have brand-new powers. Paul calls these powers “incomparably great” (Ephesians 1:19 NIV). I like to think of them as superpowers. The gospel takes skinny little Steve Rogers and turns him — you — into Captain America. The gospel takes sinners like you and me and turns us into saints.

If you’ve been joined to God’s family, if you’ve believed the gospel, then you’ve received the Spirit Jesus sent when he ascended to heaven. And because you have the Spirit, you can and will follow Jesus and please God with your life. “The righteous requirement of the law” will be “met” by those of us “who . . . live . . . according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4 NIV). If you’re a Christian, you have God’s law written on your heart (Hebrews 8:10). What God demands, you now can do. Not yet perfectly, of course — we have to wait until we see Jesus face to face for that (1 John 3:2). But if you’re a Christian, you can and will sin less and increasingly obey more (2 Corinthians 3:18).

When we’d rehearse this one together as a church, we’d often use the words of a lovely little poem that goes like this:

Run, John, run, the law commands,but gives us neither feet nor hands.Far better news the gospel brings:It bids us fly and gives us wings.

If you know and love the Lord Jesus, the gospel — Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection — gives you wings. Satan wants you to think you’re still earthbound. Jesus, however, reminds you: it’s time to fly!

New Identity

The gospel also tells us that we’ve been justified. If you know and love the Lord Jesus, you have Jesus’s perfect life — his sin-cleansing obedience — as your own (Hebrews 5:5–10; 10:14). He’s gifted it to you. Your ledger was red as can be. Then you believed, and your debt was erased. Because of Jesus’s faithful life and death for you, you’re in the black — big time. Think Publisher’s Clearing House times infinity! If you’re connected to Jesus, you can’t out-sin his sin-covering gift. Where your sin runs deep, his gracious gift is more. It’s always more.

“If you’re a Christian, the gospel is for you. It’s full of good news about your past and future — and your present.”

We call this gift “imputed,” “alien,” or simply “outside-of-us” righteousness. While Christians still sin — after all, we’re not yet fully righteous ourselves — we’ve nevertheless been declared righteous, thanks to the gift Jesus deposited in our account when we believed. Martin Luther famously captured this dual identity, describing Christians as “simultaneously righteous and sinful.” Most of us are all too aware of the latter. The gospel, however, doesn’t want us to forget the former. To glory in the former.

Back in the early 2000s, when gospel-centrality took many churches by storm, this way of thinking about the gospel led the way. Preachers and authors told us again and again and again to remember who we are in Christ. The indicative mood (“You are forgiven”) became a place many of us took fresh comfort in.

It’s a place we can still take comfort in. For those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus, the gospel gives us a new identity. Before you believed, your sin made you God’s enemy. Now that you believe, and thanks be to Christ, you are God’s forgiven son or daughter. The gospel reminds you: this is now who you are.

New Example

The gospel also tells us we have a brand-new example to follow. If you were around in the 1990s, you might remember the popular bracelet that read “WWJD” — “What Would Jesus Do?” The gospel gives us a brand-new example of what it looks like to be the kind of humans God created us to be. Jesus himself points to the goodness of this reality when he tells us, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34 NIV).

When we wonder what it looks like to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves, it helps to glance at Abraham, Moses, Rahab, or any of the other faith-filled believers who’ve run this human race well to the end. But you’ll want to look at Jesus (Hebrews 12:1–2). There’s nobody else like him. He’s in a class all by himself. It’s “in his steps,” guided by his footprints, that you’ll want to walk this road of life (1 Peter 2:21).

How kind of our heavenly Father. He didn’t just call us to reflect his image to this world he’s made. He also showed us how by sending Jesus — and giving us four biographies of Jesus to read while we wait for his return.

New Sight

The gospel also gives us a brand-new way to read the Bible God has given us. Before Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, we’d all have been like Peter. None of us could have anticipated that God would save his people by sacrificing his Son (Mark 8:27–33). Without Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, we’d all have been like the blind man Jesus heals right before Peter’s confession (Mark 8:22–26). We’d have seen the biblically revealed realities not as the “people” they are but as “trees walking around.” Paul, at one point, says that the gospel reveals things that were hidden in the Old Testament (Romans 16:25–27). Only after Jesus’s resurrection are we able to see.

The resurrection, however, wasn’t enough. For us to see — really see — all that God has revealed for us in his word, God not only had to reveal Jesus to us; he had to reveal Jesus in us (Galatians 1:16).

The gospel, when believed, gloriously removes two sets of blinders from our eyes. It removes the hermeneutical blinders caused by the mysterious nature of God’s story and the moral blinders caused by the willful stubbornness of our sinful hearts (Matthew 13:15). Now, with the Spirit Jesus sends, we can and will profit from Holy Scripture. To those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus, the seals of God’s book have been broken, and its glorious treasures have been revealed (Matthew 13:52).

With God’s Spirit, we now read the Bible with the gospel at the center. We see that the story’s tension is fundamentally, if surprisingly, resolved by Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. We see, like never before, that the Bible’s story, begun in the Old Testament, climaxes in Jesus, continues in his church, and culminates in his return and the new creation.

The realities of the gospel shape the way we read every part of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. It’s a way of reading the Bible as only a Christian can.

Yours to Preach

It’s been nearly twenty years since that Sunday morning. We’re no longer in grad school. Our baby is a senior in high school, and he’s got two teenage (and precious) siblings. We’ve moved three times. And we’ve gotten older; we’re no longer the fresh-faced twentysomethings we were that day, so many Sundays ago. Much has changed. But one thing hasn’t: Not a day goes by when we don’t think about this sermon. Not a day goes by when we don’t preach its glorious realities to each other and ourselves. If anything, we know even more now than we did back then just how much we need to hear it.

If you know and love the Lord Jesus, this sermon is yours. It’s yours to preach and sing and pray and share. If you’re a Christian, then you can — you must — live in the goodness of this good news every day of your life.

How can Scripture say that there was a time when Jesus wasn’t “perfect”? Twice we’re told that Jesus was made perfect (Hebrews 2:10; 5:9). Hebrews even goes on to connect perfection with cleansing from sin. Old Testament sacrifices couldn’t “make perfect,” cleanse, remove guilty feelings, or “take away sins” (Hebrews 10:1–4). Yikes! Did Jesus really start his life as an imperfect human needing to be cleansed from sin? That doesn’t fit with what the Bible says in other places, even in Hebrews, where we’re told that Jesus did not sin (4:15). How can Scripture say that Jesus had to be perfected, connect perfection with sin, and still affirm that Jesus was sinless?

The Bible answers these questions in a surprising way. The perfecting of Jesus isn’t some embarrassing reality to paper over. Instead, Hebrews insists that Jesus’s perfection was “fitting” — good, right, appropriate (2:10). We’re told, in fact, that had Jesus not been perfected, then God’s story wouldn’t be good news. To hear the Bible’s surprising answer to why the sinless Jesus had to be perfected, we have to start at the beginning of the Bible’s story — with Adam.

Adam’s Imperfection

We were created to live permanently in God’s presence. That is the goal of God’s story. It’s where God’s story will one day end and, therefore, where it’s been headed from the beginning (Revelation 21:3). God wants to be our God in the perfect and permanent place he’s prepared for us (Hebrews 8:10; 9:11; 11:16). To reach that end, to enter and remain in God’s presence, humans must be perfected. Humanity’s original glory and worldwide dominion had to become permanent glory and dominion. For that to happen, Adam, our representative, needed to trust and obey God.

He didn’t.

Instead, he disbelieved in God’s goodness and disobeyed God’s word. As a result, humanity lost its original splendor. We lost our original splendor, becoming diminished in glory and restricted in our dominion. Hebrews 2 tells this sad story. It’s why perfection in a post-Adam, post-fall-into-sin world now requires unwavering trust in God and forgiveness. Faith alone won’t perfect us any longer now that we have red on our ledgers. Something has to be done about our sin too.

Jesus’s Perfection

This is the world Jesus entered and the humanity Jesus assumed. Hebrews doesn’t tell us how Jesus was “made like [us] in every respect” (2:17) while still avoiding guilt by association with Adam. Other places in the Bible give us hints. (Compare Matthew 1:18–25 and Luke 1:26–38 with Romans 5:12–21.) Hebrews only tells us that Jesus was like us and that he lived his human life full of faith and free from sin, with the help of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 2:13; 4:15; 9:14).

“Jesus did what Adam did not. And because he did, he reached humanity’s goal.”

Jesus, in other words, did what Adam did not. And because he did, he reached humanity’s goal. He was made perfect (5:9). Humanity’s original destiny — superiority to angels, glory, and dominion — is now his permanently (1:5–13; 2:9). Even his body is now “indestructible” (7:16), since perfection takes away even the possibility of mortality. It’s this new status, therefore, that makes Jesus fit to live right where God intended humans to live — in his presence forever (1:3; 11:16; 12:28).

But that’s only part of the story. After all, the Bible doesn’t just say it was fitting for Jesus to be perfected, but perfected “through suffering” (2:10). It’s a two-word phrase we cannot live without!

Our Perfection

When Jesus entered God’s presence, he went there ahead of us, not instead of us. He’s like Daniel Boone, a pioneering trailblazer who paved the way for others to follow him. That’s exactly how Hebrews describes Jesus (2:10; 12:2). It’s also why Hebrews won’t let us forget that Jesus wasn’t simply perfected but was perfected through suffering.

He ran his race. He succeeded where Adam had failed. He trusted and obeyed all the way to the cross. And he did all this for us. His final act of faith gives us a way to wash our sins clean and join him in God’s presence.

Hebrews tells the story like this: During Jesus’s final days, he prayed and prayed that God would rescue him from death and reward his sinless life with perfection. God — we’re told — heard Jesus’s request precisely because of his “reverent submission” (5:7 NIV). God listened to Jesus because Jesus listened to God all his life. Jesus ran his difficult race and, along the way, learned what it meant to trust and obey God through thick and thin. As a result, Jesus crossed the finish line and was made perfect and, at the very same time, became the “source” of our perfection (5:9). Jesus perfectly passed his test of faith, and his passed test perfects us!

Precious Perfection

Had Jesus not been perfected, then we could not be perfected. There wasn’t any other way to reach the end of God’s story. Hebrews wants us to see this so clearly that it tells us four precious goods we would lose had Jesus not been perfected.

1. PERFECT EXAMPLE

First, we would lose our perfect example. Had Jesus come as an already-perfected human, then he couldn’t be our example. His human experience would have been too different from our own to be useful. That’s why Jesus came not only as one not yet perfected but also as one lowered, diminished, and restricted. He came as a post-Adam, post-fall-into-sin human like us.

Yes, he was sinless and blameless. Had he not been, then his final act of obedience would have lacked the potency our sins required (Hebrews 9:14). But he was, nevertheless, weak and susceptible to suffering in a way pre-fall Adam — God’s “very good” humanity (Genesis 1:31) — was not (Hebrews 2:15, 18; 4:15; 5:7). Friends, it’s Jesus’s example, his likeness to us, that inspires our race of faith. That’s what it’s meant to do. Jesus is like the amazing runners of old (11:1–40), only so much better (12:1–2).

2. PERFECT PRIEST

Second, we would lose our perfect priest. Had Jesus not been perfected, had he not experienced our human condition, he could not be our priest (2:17–18; 5:1–10). After all, priests are selected from “among” others just like them (5:1). How else could they hope to “sympathize with our weaknesses” (4:15)?

It’s also Jesus’s sinless experience of our human condition that qualifies him for a unique priesthood. Only a human with an indestructible life could be appointed to the ultimate priesthood and, therefore, provide his peers with the perfection other priests could not (7:11, 16–17; 9:1–10; 10:1–4, 11–14). Because Jesus sinlessly suffered, because he faithfully trusted and obeyed to the point of death, he reached humanity’s goal. And his body was made permanently immortal, qualifying him for an eternal priesthood. The suffering, the becoming perfect, however, was essential. Jesus could not be the priest we need without it.

3. PERFECT COVENANT MEDIATOR

Third, we would lose our perfect covenant mediator. Had Jesus not been perfected, then he could not give us access to God’s best and final promises. It’s Jesus’s final act of faithful obedience that unleashes the promises God made in his new and final covenant (8:6, 8). There God promised to make a way for humans to live with him forever, to do for them what Adam had not. He promised to stitch perfect faith and obedience into their minds and hearts (8:10). But he couldn’t do this without first taking away their sin. Perfection in a post-Adam world requires faith, but it also requires forgiveness. In the new covenant, God provides both through Jesus’s faith-filled death (9:15–28).

4. PERFECT KING

Finally, we would lose our perfect king. Had Jesus not been perfected, then Jesus couldn’t be our king. As Hebrews tells us, it was Jesus’s life of faithful obedience that caused his enthronement. “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions” (1:9).

Later, Hebrews specifically draws attention to Jesus’s final act of faithful obedience. “We see . . . Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death” (2:9). It’s Jesus’s death — his final act of faithful trust in God — that led to his enthronement as our king. And it’s this king who triumphs over every one of our enemies (1:13; 10:13), including our ultimate enemy, the devil (2:14–15). Before Jesus was perfected, before Jesus died, we were slaves to the king of death. But now that Jesus has died, we serve a new and better Lord (13:20).

God’s Good Story

Far from being an embarrassing subplot in God’s grand story, Jesus’s perfection is the story’s fitting and surprising climax. It’s the reason we can call God’s story good. It’s the way — the only way — we can reach the story’s end. How precious indeed is Jesus’s perfection.

We wouldn’t want the story told any other way.

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.

ABSTRACT: Most English Bibles translate diathēkē as “covenant” throughout Hebrews — except in Hebrews 9:16–17, where they read “will.” Though good reasons lie behind the use of “will,” better evidence weighs in favor of “covenant.” Not only does the near and wider context of Hebrews make “will” unlikely, but the particular wording of the passage, along with the covenantal background it alludes to, suggests the author refers here, as elsewhere, to covenants and covenant-makers rather than wills and testators. Further, the word “will” obscures a crucial connection only hinted at elsewhere in Hebrews: when sinful humans make a covenant with God, a sacrifice must die in their place. For sinners, life with God requires death.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Jared Compton, assistant professor of New Testament and biblical theology, to argue for the best translation, and theology, of Hebrews 9:16–17.

Poor translators! It’s not an easy job. There’s a story about one unfortunate translation — now known as the “Wicked Bible” — where the translators accidentally left out the word “not” in the seventh commandment. If you remember that commandment, the “not” is kind of a big deal. Of course, not every translation “decision” is as important, much less consequential. But every decision matters, which is why I want to argue that we should change two words in most of our English translations of the Bible to best reflect what God says to us.

Most English translations translate the Greek word diathēkē in Hebrews 9:16–17 as “will,” even though they translate this same word as “covenant” everywhere else in Hebrews.1 The ESV is representative:

For where a will [diathēkē] is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will [diathēkē] takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.

In what follows, I will argue that we should change “will” in both cases to “covenant.” I’ll begin by first explaining why so many translations prefer “will.” As we’ll see, there are good reasons behind this decision. But I’ll then argue that “covenant” is the better option, especially because it preserves a connection between sin and death that Hebrews doesn’t make anywhere else.

Why Our Bibles Say ‘Will’

I’ll begin with the case for keeping “will” in our Bibles. As I said, there are good reasons behind this translation decision. Here we’ll consider four.

First, diathēkē referred to a will in the first-century Greco-Roman world. The word was used to describe how a testator — a will-maker — committed to having his property distributed upon his death. It could refer to other binding commitments, which is why the Greek Old Testament (third century BC) used diathēkē to describe the binding commitments God made with Abraham and Moses and David. But such alternative uses were quite rare in comparison.2 What’s more, while the author of Hebrews keeps a firm eye on his audience’s Bible (the Greek Old Testament), he is also attuned to their everyday lives (see 3:4; 5:1–4; 6:16; 9:27). Thus, the case goes, an appeal to his readers’ everyday experience of diathēkē-making (i.e., will-making) wouldn’t be out of character.

Second, Jesus could be the diathēkē-maker in Hebrews 9:16–17. He could be “the one,” Hebrews says, “who made it” and, therefore, whose “death . . . must be established” (verse 16). If these verses are about a will, then Jesus would have to be the diathēkē-maker. Who else could be the (necessarily dying) testator? Since the previous five verses focus on Jesus and his death (verses 11–15), it’s not a stretch to think verses 16–17 have the same focus, with their threefold mention of a diathēkē-maker who must die. And when we zoom out to the larger argument (8:1–10:18), we see that Hebrews has already called Jesus a “priest” (8:1–2) and a “mediator” (8:6; 9:15). It would be easy, therefore, to imagine Hebrews adding one more title to that list — “testator.”

Third, what Hebrews describes in Hebrews 9:16–17 initially may sound like a will. After connecting Jesus to a diathēkē (“He is the mediator of a new diathēkē”) and an “inheritance” (verse 15), Hebrews says, “Where a [diathēkē] is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established” (verse 16). Hebrews goes on to say the same thing two more times: “A [diathēkē] takes effect only at death” and “is not in force as long as the [diathēkē-maker] is alive” (verse 17). What Hebrews describes, to say it again, sounds like a will: a testator’s inheritance is distributed when he dies. If Hebrews is not describing a will and is instead describing a covenant, then this focus on the maker’s death would seem out of place. Moses and Israel were in covenant relationship with God and (apparently) lived to tell about it (see Exodus 24). If they had to die first, then that part seems to have been left out of the story.

Fourth, there is a good reason for briefly introducing the idea of a will in Hebrews 9:16–17. By talking about Jesus as a testator, this gives Hebrews one more way to explain the necessity of his death, which is the author’s larger point (see, e.g., “it was necessary,” verse 23). Granted, he makes the point with a parenthetical pun, since diathēkē means “covenant” everywhere else. But it’s a move that serves his purpose and was right at hand. The idea of diathēkē-as-will was simply too obvious and too useful to overlook.

“‘Diathēkē’ refers to a covenant everywhere else in Hebrews — a total of fifteen times.”

These four arguments explain why so many of our translations say “will” instead of “covenant” in Hebrews 9:16–17. In these verses, translators assume that Hebrews briefly departs from his normal pattern of speech and appeals to the commonplace experience of his readers in a two-verse wordplay on diathēkē. Jesus had to die so that we might receive the inheritance he so graciously willed to us.3

Case for ‘Covenant’

While good reasons exist for keeping “will” in our English Bibles, there are even better reasons for replacing it with “covenant.” Here I’ll give the four best, moving as Hebrews does from the lesser to the greater. Further, when giving my third reason, I’ll also interact with two versions of an increasingly popular argument used in support of “covenant.” I am not convinced either is right, but both are worth considering.

1. Diathēkē Elsewhere in Hebrews

First, diathēkē refers to a covenant everywhere else in Hebrews — a total of fifteen times (7:22; 8:6, 8, 9 [2x], 10; 9:4 [2x], 15 [2x], 20; 10:16, 29; 12:24; and 13:20). Hebrews, in fact, refers to a covenant just before (9:15 [2x]) and just after (9:20) Hebrews 9:16–17. What’s more, when Hebrews 9:18 begins, “Not even the first . . . was inaugurated without blood,” most translations supply “covenant” there too, since Hebrews goes on to describe the first covenant’s inauguration in Exodus 24 (see Hebrews 9:18–22). Of course, this doesn’t mean that diathēkē must be translated “covenant” in Hebrews 9:16–17; otherwise, how could an author ever make a wordplay? Still, the evidence gives “covenant” a kind of inertia. Or, to put it another way, it predisposes us to consider diathēkē-as-covenant innocent until proven guilty.

2. Sinful Humans as Diathēkē-Makers

Second, sinful humans are the diathēkē-makers, the ones entering into covenant with God, in Hebrews 9:16–17. Jesus is present, but he is not the focus. Sinners are. Already in the previous paragraph (verses 11–14), Hebrews introduces us to people who need to be “purif[ied]” and “rede[emed]” by sacrificial “blood” (verses 12, 14). Then, just before verses 16–17, Hebrews talks about the same people, this time of their need to be “redeem[ed] . . . from . . . transgressions” by sacrificial “death” (verse 15). Without “blood” (verses 11–14) or “death” (verse 15), sinners can’t receive the benefits of a covenant relationship with God (verse 15a, “so that”). They can’t enter his presence (compare 9:1–10 with 9:24 and 10:19–21; see also 2:5–9, 10). Then, just after verses 16–17, Hebrews says that covenants are not “inaugurated without blood” (verse 18), once again linking “blood” (or “death,” verse 15) with sin — “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (verse 22).

When Hebrews talks about “death” in verses 16–17 and links that death with a diathēkē-maker, we’re prepared to see a reference to the sacrificial debt sinful humans owe because of their sin. Jesus is present, only not as the covenant-maker but as the sacrificial death that gives sinners access to God.

3. Covenantal Background

Third, what Hebrews describes in Hebrews 9:16–17 fits a covenant even better than it does a will. It’s true, on a first reading, the connection between death and diathēkē-making may seem straightforward: the diathēkē-maker himself must die. This, of course, fits a testator’s case easily since he actually dies. A covenant-maker, on the other hand, dies only vicariously — through a sacrificial substitute. The description of the diathēkē-maker’s death, however, isn’t as straightforward as it may first appear. Hebrews doesn’t say that the diathēkē-maker must die but, rather, that his death “must be established” (verse 16), which translates a verb (pherō) elsewhere translated “endure” (so 12:20; see also “go on,” 6:1; “bear,” 13:13; compare “uphold” [or “bears up” YLT], 1:3). Neither inside nor outside of Hebrews does the word ever mean “establish.” Even if “endure” (or “endured”) is the better translation, it’s still an odd way to describe someone’s death, whether covenant-maker or testator.

This “odd” word’s close-cousin (ana+pherō), however, is used in Exodus 24 to describe the sacrifices Israel “brought” (anapherō) at Sinai. Hebrews recalls this scene in 9:18–22, even quoting directly from it (verse 20, citing Exodus 24:8). The same close-cousin word is used at the end of Hebrews 9, in this case referring to the sins Jesus bore for his people: “So Christ, having been offered once to bear [anapherō] the sins of many . . .” (verse 28). Here once more, Hebrews uses language from the Old Testament, this time from Isaiah 53:12, where the Servant vicariously suffers for his people (see also pherō in Isaiah 53:4 LXX).

Hebrews also doesn’t say that a diathēkē “takes effect only at death” (verse 17a). Rather, he says, “upon dead bodies” (epi nekrois). Again, it’s an odd way to describe someone’s death. This peculiar language, however, also recalls the Sinai story, this time the bodies — the calves — Israel sacrificed (Hebrews 9:18; see Exodus 24:5). It’s a moment in Israel’s story later described in the Psalms in language almost identical to Hebrews: “Bring my faithful people to me — those who made a covenant [diathēkē] with me by giving sacrifices [epi thysiais]” (Psalm 50:5 NLT; compare Brenton LXX). A diathēkē upon bodies — it’s an unusual way to talk about death, but it certainly fits a covenant better than a will.

The same can be said for other details in Hebrews 9:16–17. For example, Hebrews says a diathēkē “takes effect” (bebaios, verse 17a) and is “in force” (ischyō, verse 17b) only upon its maker’s death. In the first century, these were true not at death but at the moment a will was drawn up and notarized. If we insist that both refer instead to the execution of a will, then we still run into trouble. For starters, neither word means “execution.”4 And Hebrews goes on to claim that a diathēkē is “never [mēpote] in force [i.e., executed] as long as the one who made it is alive” (verse 17b; on “never,” see NIV, NASB, CSB). Such a sweeping claim would be out of step with first-century will-making, which allowed for the execution of a will before the testator’s death.5

SELF-MALEDICTORY RITUAL

Some think the details of Hebrews 9:16–17 fit a covenant better than a will for another reason. These insist that Hebrews describes a well-known covenant-making ritual known as a drohritus. In the ritual, covenant-makers swore an oath, calling down curses upon themselves were they to violate the terms of the covenant (see, e.g., Ezekiel 17:13–19, esp. verses 15–16). The oath would then be followed (in some cases) by a sacrifice symbolizing the penalty if the oath should be broken. Thus, the parties said, in effect, “What we are doing to this animal, may God do to us if we violate our covenant commitments” (see Jeremiah 34:18–20). The ritual’s focus on future, potential sins (i.e., covenant-breaking), however, is out of step with Hebrews. In Hebrews, it is actual sins that must be forgiven by sacrifice if sinners are to enter into covenant with God (9:22; also verse 15).

Still others insist that Hebrews 9:16–17 describes the self-maledictory ritual from the perspective of covenant-breaking, not covenant-making. These argue that a covenant-maker must die “since [a broken covenant] is not in force as long as the one who made it [and has now broken it] is alive (verse 17b; compare Ezekiel 17:15). This view rightly maintains the connection between death and actual sin but wrongly characterizes the sin as covenant-breaking. Those needing and receiving forgiveness in Hebrews aren’t first-covenant breakers but faithful believers who sinned under the first covenant (9:15) and whose subsequent sacrifices pointed to but simply could not provide the forgiveness they needed (see, esp., 9:8–10 and 10:1–4; see also 11:39–40). There were first-covenant breakers (10:28). But in their case, the problem went beyond the limits of the Levitical priesthood and included hearts hardened by disobedience and unbelief (3:7–4:13; see also 8:8–9; compare with the faithful in 11:1–40). Again, this latter group is present in Hebrews but not in Hebrews 9:16–17 (see “called,” verse 15; also “our,” verse 14).

“Hebrews 9:16–17 uniquely explains what Levitical sacrifices pointed to and what Jesus’s death finally provides.”

We might also wonder why, if Hebrews 9:16–17 have a broken first covenant in view, Hebrews 9:18 then says, “Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.” Hebrews 9:18 makes it sound like verses 16–17 have another covenant and covenant inauguration (not maintenance) in view. If, however, we grant that the transition from Hebrews 9:16–17 to 9:18 is from the first covenant’s breaking (verses 16–17) to its beginning (verse 18), we are still surprised by “not even” (oude). We would expect “not” (ou): “The first covenant is enforced by sacrifice, since it was not inaugurated without blood.” That is to say, “Of course the first covenant is enforced by a death penalty, since it did not begin without sacrificially symbolizing such a punishment.” Again, I can see how “not” fits that reading; however, I do not see how “not even” can.

Further, Hebrews says the (inauguratory) blood of Hebrews 9:18 was necessary for “forgiveness of sins” (verse 22). That is different from saying it prefigured the forgiveness future sins would require. Plus, a focus on future sins downplays the immediate and continued, if still insufficient, cleansing first-covenant members needed if they were to live in covenant with God. It downplays, in other words, the connection Hebrews everywhere makes between sacrifice and atonement (see, for example, 5:1–3; 7:27; 8:3–5; 9:1–10, 11–14, 18–22, 23, 25; 10:1–4, 11). Finally, on either drohritus reading, the need for “better sacrifices” in Hebrews 9:23 is hard to explain. In the ritual, the quality of the sacrifice isn’t relevant — beyond, of course, being blemish-free. What mattered was the symbolism: “As to this animal, so to me.” Even allowing for a substitute penalty-taker, the substitute’s quality matters only if it is somehow less than the guilty party (e.g., an animal). To require something more than or superior to the covenant-breaker wouldn’t fit the ritual.

4. Life Through Substitutionary Death

Fourth, Hebrews uses diathēkē-as-covenant in Hebrews 9:16–17 to make a theological connection only hinted at in other places. Life with God (i.e., the goal of covenant-making) is here explicitly linked with the sinful covenant-maker’s necessary death. The idea is implied elsewhere in the purification, redemption, and forgiveness available in sacrificial blood (see verses 15 and 18–22; compare Hebrews 2:9). Animals — to put it plainly — weren’t killed for their own sins! But Hebrews only here explains that the sacrifice’s death takes the place of the sacrificer’s (necessary) death. Thus, after saying that “transgressions” require “death” if sinners want to experience a relationship with God (Hebrews 9:15), Hebrews explains,

For where a covenant promising life to sinful human beings is involved, sin’s debt — the death of the human covenant partner — must be borne. For a covenant like this takes effect only upon dead bodies, since a covenant promising life to sinful human beings is not in force as long as the sinful human partner lives and sin’s debt remains unpaid. (verses 16–17, ESV altered + my own additions)

“Take away ‘covenant,’ and we lose a crucial step in the author’s larger argument.”

Hebrews 9:16–17, in other words, uniquely explains what Levitical sacrifices pointed to and what Jesus’s death finally provides: death-escaping life with God for sinners. What’s only hinted at elsewhere finally rises above the surface here.6

Recovering ‘Covenant’

Translating the Bible is tough business — and not just for those poor souls in the pre-digital age! Those who give their lives to this task deserve our gratitude and our support and, on occasion, our thoughtful feedback. Such is the case in Hebrews 9:16–17. As we’ve seen, the reasons for translating diathēkē as “covenant” are superior to those for translating it as “will.” On top of this, the decision made in most of our English translations comes with a hidden cost. After all, take away “covenant,” and we lose a crucial step in the author’s larger argument. For the moment, this step has been lost in translation. And I think it’s time we ask to have it back.

The Christian life is a lot like improv night at the local coffee shop. Let me explain.

When I was in seminary, there was this strange and wonderful little coffee shop near campus called City Coffee. In my first semester, I probably studied there every night. And every once in a while, the shop would host an improv night. Local “artists” would show up and do their thing. I’m actually not entirely sure I ever stayed around for it, though I do have a vague recollection of some very bad poetry. I certainly never participated. After all, I had homework to do — plus something called inhibition.

The Christian life is like improv night at City Coffee, only it’s improv night every day of the week.

Constant Word, Changing World

We might wish the Christian life were like karaoke night — in that case, you would at least have the words — but it’s not. It’s improv: the curtain opens, you’re on stage without a script, and somebody yells “Action!” after stuffing a prompt into your hand:

“What’s the Christian approach to TikTok?”
“Postmodernism”
“Post Malone” (Not to be confused with the “Mailman” Karl Malone, which would, of course, be a very different prompt.)

We know that we won’t find headings in our Bible like “Social Media” or “Paul & Public Schools” or “Jesus’s Sermon on MMA.” And we’ll search in vain for specific answers to questions like “Whom should I marry?” or “Where, how long, with whom, and in what specific ways should I engage in Jesus’s Great Commission?”

“God wants us to develop the skill needed to extend his never-changing word into our ever-changing world.”

Does the Bible have everything we need for life and godliness? Absolutely. But it doesn’t give us a line-by-line script. Instead, it asks us to improvise, to develop what theologian Kevin Vanhoozer calls “improvisatory reasoning” (The Drama of Doctrine, 336). That’s how God has designed the Christian life to work. He wants us to develop the skill needed to extend his never-changing word into our ever-changing world. He simply calls it wisdom, and, in one place — Proverbs 2 — he tells us not only where to get it but also why.

Let’s begin with why.

Learning the Good Life

Why learn to improvise? According to Proverbs 2:9, if you get wisdom — if you learn to reason improvisationally — “then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path.” Find wisdom, God says, and you’ll be able to identify and walk down “every good path.” It’s so important for us to hear this that God through Solomon says it again at the end of the chapter. Find wisdom, Solomon says, and “you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous” (Proverbs 2:20). In short: find wisdom, find the good life.

Now, of course, good doesn’t guarantee you’ll be healthy or wealthy or even trouble-free — at least not yet. (Remember Jesus and the suffering faithful in Hebrews 11?) But there is a correspondence between your idea of good and the Bible’s, which is why I feel perfectly comfortable defining good as “satisfying” or “joyful” or “fulfilling.”

That’s why we should get wisdom; what about where?

God’s Words of Wisdom

Solomon writes, “The Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding” (Proverbs 2:6). The wisdom we need — the wisdom we want — is something God gives.

Proverbs, in fact, says that God gives it to us “from his mouth.” Certainly this includes the wisdom God embedded in the world he created (and sustains) with his mouth: “In the beginning, God . . . said,” and the world was (Genesis 1; see Hebrews 1:2–3). Proverbs is full of just this sort of wisdom (see, for example, Proverbs 6:6–11). But this wisdom isn’t Solomon’s focus here. Creation isn’t the only thing breathed out by God; so too is every word of Holy Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16). And this wisdom is precisely what God has in mind here.

“The wisdom we need — the wisdom we want — is something God gives.”

Solomon makes this connection in verses 1 and 5. He says, “If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you . . . then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:1, 5). To receive Solomon’s words — to receive the Bible’s words — is, at the same time, to receive the understanding and knowledge — the wisdom — that comes from God.

Now, it’s one thing to know that Scripture teaches us wisdom; it’s still another to know where to look in the Bible to see it modeled. Here we move beyond Proverbs 2 and, as Vanhoozer reminds us, learn to “cultivate biblical wisdom by reading stories of how the prophets and apostles spoke and acted in concrete situations” (334). It’s from these stories, these canonical case studies, that we learn how to faithfully improvise.

Priceless Case Studies

Prompt: A church is struggling to believe the gospel. Presently, they’re being harassed by old friends questioning the Christian claim of a crucified messiah. (One report has it that these friends are calling that claim “foolish” and “scandalous” — another cynically wonders “how any moderately intelligent reader of the Scriptures could affirm something so implausible.”) And this is to say nothing of the bleak economic forecast facing the Christian community. Increased taxes, they suspect, might be only the front end of the bad news.

How’s that for a real and specific prompt? What if somebody gave it to you? What would you say?

In time, the prompt makes its way to the church’s pastor, who, with God’s help, traces the problem all the way to its roots — or, to borrow from Vanhoozer one more time, “sees and tastes everything about [the] situation that is theologically relevant” (334). And he responds with a brilliant and original piece of Christological reasoning drawn from the Old Testament, carefully and winsomely arguing his case using premises he knows his doubting friends can still very much affirm.

If you’re wondering, I’ve just summarized Hebrews. And it’s just one of dozens of case studies in our Bibles teaching us how to apply God’s never-changing word to our ever-changing world. You may not have thought about the apostles (or the prophets) like this before, but they are master improvisers. And we can — we must — learn from their example. It’s one of the reasons they’re in our Bibles.

Improv Discipleship

How do we learn to improvise? We attend to God’s word, not least to the model improvisers God has so generously given us. Attend, though, is probably too weak or, at the very least, insufficient. After all, Solomon uses half a dozen or so verbs, pleading with his son and with us to get wisdom. If you want it, Solomon says, you’ve got to “receive” it (Proverbs 2:1), “treasure [it] up” (Proverbs 2:1), “mak[e] your ear attentive” and “inclin[e] your heart” (Proverbs 2:2) to it. You need to “call out” and “raise your voice” (Proverbs 2:3) for it. (Ask for it and really mean it; see James 1:5–7.). “Seek” and “search for it,” Solomon says, “as for hidden treasures” (Proverbs 2:4).

Don’t you want this priceless treasure God offers you for your good? Don’t you want to get better at applying God’s never-changing word to our ever-changing world? Friends, you have to improvise. That’s how God has designed the Christian life to work. So don’t you want to get better at it? I know I do. It’s not too late, and it’s not beyond your reach. You don’t have to be super smart, creative, or outgoing to excel at it. You simply have to know where to look and go after it with all your heart.

I wouldn’t delay; I think the curtain’s about to open.

I get asked two questions every time I teach Hebrews. You can probably guess both. (1) Who wrote Hebrews? That one’s always first. And (2) what are we supposed to do with Hebrews’ warning passages? Does Hebrews teach that believers can lose their salvation? After all, the letter issues warnings like this: “If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment” (Hebrews 10:26–27). Which of us hasn’t felt the sting of a text like that? And that’s just one of five such warnings in the book (see 2:1–4; 3:7–4:13; 6:4–8; 12:25–29).

Three Strategies

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we can get very far in answering that first question. (For a start, see here.) But I do think we can make some headway with the second. To that end, I want to suggest three strategies that will help us read Hebrews’ warnings better. I’ll sketch each first and then take a step back and conclude by reflecting on the help each provides.

Read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ structure.

Hebrews is tough to outline. It’s different from the other letters in the New Testament. Paul, for example, often makes his arguments first and only then applies them to his audience. Thus, we get the argument of Ephesians 1–3 and only then the application of Ephesians 4–6. Hebrews, however, breathes a different air. The letter moves back and forth between argument and application or, as these genres are commonly called, between exposition and exhortation. The author is like a preacher who pauses to apply after every main point. It’s an effective rhetorical strategy, but it also makes outlining the letter difficult. And it can hinder us from seeing the developing logic of his argument and feeling the cumulative weight of his applications.

For example, we can struggle to see the connections between what Hebrews says about the “world” Jesus entered in 1:6 and that God subjected to humans in 2:5. Hebrews gives us a clue, telling us the “world” in 2:5 is that one “of which we are speaking.” But the author also interrupts his argument with an exhortation — his first warning (2:1–4) — causing us, if we’re not careful, to lose the trail. Other examples like this could be easily given (see the mentions of Melchizedek in 5:1–10 and 7:1–10, in light of the exhortation of 5:11–6:20).

The point is, the structure of Hebrews invites us to read the letter not only front-to-back but also “genre-by-genre” or, we might say, “side-by-side.” If we don’t, we run the risk of misreading its theology and missing its pastoral force.

Read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ story line.

Hebrews everywhere tells the Bible’s story. We can see this with even a cursory look at the typography of our English Bibles, with page after page of Hebrews punctuated by indented quotations of the Old Testament — one, the longest in the New Testament (see Jeremiah 31:31–34 in Hebrews 8:8–12). Hebrews, however, tells the Bible’s story in two ways or, better, with two distinct emphases. In the author’s arguments or expositions, he emphasizes the discontinuity between the Old Testament story and his audience. What was only promised in the Old Testament has now been fulfilled in the New Testament. In his applications or exhortations, however, it’s just the reverse. In these he emphasizes the continuity between the Old Testament story and his audience. What happened in the Old Testament era is just like what’s happening in the New Testament era.

What’s more, in his exhortations, his analogy of choice is the wilderness generation (see 2:2; 3:7–4:6; 10:28; 12:25). If we miss the analogy, if we fail to feel the continuity, then we’ll blunt the sharp edge of the warnings themselves. After all, it was precisely that former generation — remarkably rescued by God from Egypt, led through the desert by God’s visible presence, sustained in the desert by God’s miraculous provision, and given a law from God himself (see 3:9; compare 2:4; 6:4–6; 10:29; 12:26) — who hardened their hearts and perished in unbelief. There’s a reason, in other words, that Hebrews skips over the wilderness generation in chapter 11’s “hall of faith.” Just like the author’s audience, the wilderness generation lived “between the times,” between the exodus and the promised land, experiencing a kind of inaugurated eschatology. We are not meant to miss the similarities. Thus, the question that hangs in the air exhortation by exhortation and warning by warning isn’t simply “How could they?” but rather “Will you too?”

“The question that hangs in the air isn’t simply ‘How could they?’ but rather ‘Will you too?’”

Now, we must add that this way of describing the author’s storytelling risks oversimplification. After all, while Hebrews emphasizes discontinuity in its arguments, continuity is nevertheless everywhere present. What else are we to make of the author’s consistent focus on the “self-confessed inadequacy” of the Old Testament? Of course, the New Testament era is an advance beyond the Old Testament era, but the advance is precisely what the Old Testament era led us to expect all along with its anticipations, for example, of another priestly order (Psalm 110:4) or a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Similarly, while Hebrews emphasizes continuity in its exhortations, notes of discontinuity are sounded as well. It’s these notes of discontinuity, in fact, that underwrite the ratcheting-up we see in the warnings: If the wilderness generation suffered for its unbelief, how much more will you (see 2:3, 12:25)? It’s one thing to refuse to believe God’s Old Testament speech; it’s quite another to refuse his superior New Testament speech (see 1:1–2; 2:1–4).

In short, Hebrews invites us to read its warnings “side-by-side” and in light of the continuity between its audience and the wilderness generation. Both lived during incredible chapters in God’s story. But, even here, Hebrews also invites us to see the discontinuity between the two. After all, the author’s audience doesn’t just live during an important chapter in God’s story but during a later and, indeed, better chapter.

Read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ soteriology.

Hebrews’ soteriology — doctrine of salvation — is wonderfully rich, so I can only summarize a little part of it here. It’s important that we see that Jesus’s death has inaugurated a better covenant, one that’s better both because it has better promises — new spiritual abilities for every covenant member (8:6, 10–11) — and because it provides better forgiveness. New-covenant members, Hebrews tells us, are completely forgiven (8:12; 10:17–18). God promises them that he’ll remember their sins no more! Hebrews calls this complete forgiveness perfection. It’s something that wasn’t available for the wilderness generation (10:2–3; cf. 11:39–40) but is now, thanks to Jesus’s sacrifice-ending sacrifice (10:14). This perfection, moreover, is what gives covenant members — Hebrews calls these believers — access to God’s presence, in part now (10:19–22; 12:22) and fully later (12:26–28). Again, this access simply wasn’t available under the old covenant, as Hebrews says again and again (see 9:8–10). Hebrews goes on to assure new-covenant believers that in the interim period, their pilgrimage to the heavenly city is sustained by an indestructible high priest, whose intercessory ministry is described as infallible (7:25), and by a heavenly Father, who not only initiates but also continually energizes their perseverance (13:20).

Thus, if we accept the author’s invitation to read his warnings “side-by-side” and against the backdrop of the wilderness period, we’ll see that his own community lives in a new era of God’s story, an era in which covenant membership means something even better than it meant for the wilderness generation.

Three Reflections

With these strategies in place, we’re now in a position to reflect on the warnings. Does Hebrews teach that believers can lose their salvation? And, if not, what are we to make of them? Let’s tackle these questions head-on by looking once more at each strategy, reflecting on them in reverse order.

Secure Salvation

When we read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ soteriology, we see that the nature of the new covenant implies — guarantees — that its members cannot and will not fall away. New-covenant members cannot lose their salvation. To suggest otherwise risks undoing precisely those features that make the new covenant new and, thus, better.

Story Line

If we read the warnings in light of Hebrews’ story line, we see that the author’s analogy of the wilderness generation only goes so far. Again, Hebrews’ audience lives in a new and better era of God’s story. This means that the two communities — the wilderness community and the author’s — are mixed but in different ways. Everybody in the wilderness generation was part of the covenant community, but only a few persevered to salvation (for example, Caleb and Joshua). The rest perished in unbelief, as the author’s warnings repeatedly tell us. In other words, old-covenant membership did not guarantee salvation in the way that new-covenant membership does.

The old-covenant community was a mixture of believing covenant members and nonbelieving covenant members. The author’s community, however, is still mixed but in a very different way. While everyone the letter addresses professed to be part of the new-covenant community, only those who persevered actually were. Those who apparently had fallen away (10:25) were, at one point, part of the author’s congregation — part of the Christian community — but never truly included in the new covenant. Otherwise, they would have persevered. Again, to say otherwise risks misreading the Bible’s story and seeing continuity where there is now glorious discontinuity.

Structure

In light of all this, when we read Hebrews’ warnings “side-by-side” to feel their collective weight, we may now discern their pastoral function with more precision. I see at least three such functions.

First, the warnings explain the spiritual status of those who walk away from the Christian community. And it’s devastating (see 6:6; 10:26). What else would you expect to happen to someone who’d seen and experienced the goodness of the gospel — God’s new-covenant work — only to deliberately turn away from it? It’s like seeing and experiencing the goodness of the exodus and rebelling on the cusp of the promised land. People like this, Hebrews tells us, neither want nor get a second chance. One doesn’t get to deliberately reject Jesus twice.

“One doesn’t get to deliberately reject Jesus twice.”

Second, the warnings also enable the perseverance of new-covenant members. They are one means God uses to sustain the faith of those he’s perfected. (For others, see, for example, the author’s prayer in 13:20 and his biographical sketches in 11:1–40.)

Third, and finally, the warnings exhort professing covenant members to walk in true repentance and genuine faith by showing them the consequences of turning their backs on what they’ve heard and experienced.

Hearing Hebrews

Applying these strategies to Hebrews won’t alone answer every question we have about the warnings, but they will point us in the right direction. They’ll help us, above all, benefit even more from the goodness of this part of our Bibles, to the end that we’re better equipped to do God’s will (13:20), leading to our greater joy and God’s ever-deserved glory.