Wandering Through Hebrews 5:7 - Jesus’ Loud Cries and Tears

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So also Christ did not glorify in himself in becoming a high priest…  In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
Hebrews 5:5a and 7, NRSV

The book of Hebrews emphasizes Jesus’ humanity more than any other book in the New Testament.[1]  The alternating divine/human language about Christ can be perplexing at times, since the author weaves back and forth between the two in the same breath.  The epistle (and thus, Christianity) poses a perplexing paradox: 

Why does God have to be human to save humanity?

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Wandering Through Hebrews 3:1-6: We Are God’s House

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Therefore, brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, consider that Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses also “was faithful in all God’s house.” Yet Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.  (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)  Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later.  Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.

This passage forces me to do a double take:  The last phrase (“we are his house…”) feels like an invitation to re-read the passage but with a personal flavor.  When “God’s house” is used, it is not an abstract conception of the people of God, but a rendering of ourselves within the letter of Hebrews.

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Forgiveness and Ethics

In Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 18:23-35, we hear an unsettling story:

A servant owes a king an insurmountable debt and in order to pay it off, the verdict is that the servant’s wife and children were to be sold.  The servant begged for more time, but the king goes a step further and entirely cancels the debt.  The same servant then runs into a fellow servant who owes him a fairly small amount of money.

When the fellow servant begs for more time, the servant whose debt had just been cancelled does not reflect the king’s attitude.  The unmerciful servant had his debtor thrown in jail until the debt was payed.  The other servants heard about this and informed the King.

‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.  Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’  In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

Jesus prefaces this story with “[T]he kingdom of heaven is like…” in response to Peter’s question of “[H]ow many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?” and concludes with the statement:  “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart”.

What does this parable imply in terms of our forgiveness in light of our ethics?

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“Biblical” Interpretation - More Than One Meaning?

Have you ever read the New Testament’s use of Old Testament Scripture and became puzzled that the authors didn’t employ historical-grammatical exegesis on the text, but rather employed what looked like a metaphorical interpretation, mistranslation or an odd application of the Old Testament that disregarded the Old Testament context?  (Or is that just me?) 


Here are some examples of the issues I am referring to:
- How did Peter turn Psalm 16, a Psalm, when read contextually, about David’s relationship with God, into a Psalm about the resurrection of Christ?[1] 
- How did Paul come to the conclusion that Christ was “the Rock” in 1 Cor. 10:4 (referring to Exodus 17:6 and Numbers 20:11)? 
- Why do Paul and the Author of Hebrews prooftext a certain part of Psalm 8(v4-6) in 1 Cor. 15:27 and Hebrews 2:6-8 to make a certain Messianic point when the grammatical-historical point of the Psalm is about human domain over the natural world (Psalm 8:7-8)?
- In Matthew 2:14-15, the author quotes a part of Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt I called My Son”) making the text out to be a future/prophetic text.  However, the text in its original context is recounting the history of Israel as a reprimand of their disobedience (Hosea 11:1-11).

In my previous post, I looked at two weaknesses of historical-grammatical exegesis.  In this post, I want to show how our interpretation methods aren’t always “biblical”.

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Yeshua: Jesus as The New Joshua

In my previous post, I established the etymological relationship between Joshua and Jesus and now I want to explore the speculative question of:
“How did Yeshua [Jesus] of Galilee compare to Yeshua [Joshua] that lead the Israelites into the Promised Land?”

Joshua’s military leadership of Israel into Canaan is the driving story in the book of Joshua.  It is through violent conquests that Joshua leads the Israelites into the land of Canaan.  According to a literal reading of the text, Joshua killed inhabitants and kings of this land so Israel could establish its kingdom there.

Fast forward to Jesus.  What was His relationship to the Canaanites?

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New Covenant Theology and Old Testament Law








In my previous post, I discussed the original intent of the Old Testament Law, its relation to the New Testament and stated:

So our ethical standards as New Testament Christians are based on the principles of the OT Law, but not the actual practices/rituals themselves.  Jesus and the rest of the NT have laid out our “Christian Ethic”.

One objection to this post on Facebook was that I “divide the old testament from the new testament and choose which parts you want” and basically accused me of Antinomianism.  After a few lengthy posts back and forth, I repeated my statement that “Jesus and the rest of the NT have laid out our Christian Ethic.”

New Covenant Theology
In my former conclusion, I stated that “we need to have a hermeneutic that handles the Old Testament Law in light of the New Testament ethic.”  One Theology that contains such a hermeneutic is New Covenant Theology.[1] 

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