“Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses was also faithful in all God’s house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses – as much more glory as a 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 son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
Jesus is here pictured as our Apostle and High Priest having come into finite humanity, faithfully rescuing mankind out of sin, adorning us in His righteousness. Israel is depicted as God’s house with Moses, His son, overseeing God’s righteousness in God’s House. God’s law measures Israel’s righteousness through Moses. Isn’t God’s word amazing!
Described above are two pictures revealing Jesus. Faithful to the Father, providing grace to holy brothers sharing a heavenly calling, Jesus is glorified as the builder of the House of Israel which Moses oversees as God’s son. We are about to look at three pictures revealing two themes, House structures and Life.
Let’s remind ourselves how this totally fits into scriptural context. Paul reminds us in 1Corinthians that we are the Temple of God and a holy dwelling in God’s eyes. The work we do, Paul explains, is either holy or it is gets burned up when judged because it’s trash. We are building out a structure in our life either of Gold or straw. This is the by-product of time we invest into our eternity. It will either build out for us as a structure of precious stones or hay and then tested by fire.
Moses is also pictured in contrast to Jesus, God’s son who administers righteousness through the law. Moses led Israel out of Egyptian slavery as we are rescued out of sin through grace by Jesus. Egypt was the structure for Israel but when rescued, they found themselves serving idols, a self-orientation keeping them from the righteous law of God. Salvation was provided but only available through death. The great exchange was death for life!
This great exchange also applies to us. But this exchange, in our case, is our life in exchange for the Life of Jesus. Our orientation for this exchange is internal because we can discern absolute righteousness and are equipped with resurrection power to be overcomers. Our structure comes out of the Word of God and is administered by the Holy Spirit.
Moses had to use God’s law as his construction material but we, on the other hand, have God’s absolute righteousness and truth in resurrection power. Keep in mind, we are talking about the mortal house we occupy as we move step by step in our flesh. We are constructing a Spiritual structure while living in flesh with God’s resurrection power. Moses was building a physical structure through altar sacrifices.
Now let’s turn to Peter’s contribution of context. Peter speaks about a house being built around us as our new reality in Christ becoming Spiritually mature. Peter says we are growing “into our salvation” … if we have tasted that the lord is good, or to put it in GN terms; if we have been created new in Christ by a Spiritual birth, then we will grow into a Spiritual understanding if we keep our focus in Christ.
Peter brings grace into our deliberation and our Spiritual church Body. He gives us here this wonderful “living stones” addition to our picture. This is where we find the combination of both structure and life merged into a unity that also speaks to the mystery of Christ in us. Our third picture is beginning to come into view.
Now we can turn back to Paul in Ephesians 2:13 and find we are brought into unity with Israel to become one in Jesus. “For through him we both have access to one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by His spirit.” This sets us up our third picture added to the previous two, “we are His house.” Every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God! The house we live in, you and I, is included in this picture being joined together as a whole structure growing into the Lord.
The first two pictures provide a model for the third. The first picture is Jesus Himself who is faithful to God as well as to holy brothers with a high calling and those in Israel who were subject to Moses and the law. The second picture is the house under law which includes a builder who is a subcontractor (Moses) to the builder of everything (God). But, it also pertains to us in a third picture.
Jesus Himself makes a reference we should consider. At the end of the seven parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus asks His disciples if they understood everything. Thinking they did they said, “Yes.” Jesus replies, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out his treasure what is new and what is old.” Each one of us, who is created new in Jesus, is being trained within our new creation by the Holy Spirit. Each one of us is a scribe for the kingdom of God and a master of a house! We all have been given Life with a capital “L” but our house is also under construction!
This is our third house picture but it is not complete, it is conditional. The infamous “if” clause: “if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” We are building our Spiritual grace house under God’s supervision. It speaks to the mystery of “Christ in us.” We are, in fact, a subcontractor building out our earthly dwelling by submitting to the Spiritual lessons in God’s Word. It is up to us to be responsive to the Holy Spirit dwelling in us leading us into the revelation of Jesus through personal discernment.
There are sins of commission, of which we are all familiar. There are also sins of omission. These are sins of putting off what we need to do or not laying hold of grace given so that we may more fully glorify Jesus Christ who has given us His Life. The Holy Spirit uses what we do to build us up and root us in His Life. This is the Spiritual grace house we are building.
In Ephesians 2:22 we have a Greek word translated “built up,” which means to build a house “with” God for His dwelling place. In a similar reference, Paul uses a different Greek word to speak of “putting in a foundation” upon which we can build. Here it is translated “grounded.” In both cases Paul is praying for the church to be both “rooted” and “grounded” in love. Love is the fundamental ingredient in both our foundational structure as well as our life giving source. We are “rooted” and “grounded” in agape love. This is the nature of the house we are building.
We can see why this third picture is not complete, we are in the process of both building out our structure as well as being built out with divine help and guidance. We will pick up the Life theme next GN as we consider the glory of God growing in us, as a function of His grace, while we remain in flesh building our house structure.
The first two model pictures identify Jesus the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. He is our source for information (apostle) and resolution (high priest) for our immaturity. Moses is the subcontractor/son in the second model picture who is also faithful in all of God’s house. This is the Old Testament picture of Israel. But now a new covenant in the New Testament is using the picture of living stones and collective houses forming a larger structure referred to as Christ’s Body.
Many of us are content with salvation we receive at new birth and are not building out a serious Spiritual structure, the House we take into glory made out of gold, silver and precious stones. This is what Peter means when he says we are “growing into our salvation.” This is also why we changed the title of this GraceNotes from “Living in Christ” to “Living in our Hope.” This is what our Hebrew’s text is talking about: “And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
This text is pro-active. It not only speaks to the resurrection power within us because we are in Christ, it speaks about building out our structure around us so that Christ is visibly portrayed in our house which is His House! We are His sub-contractor responding to His calling.
God provided grace rescuing His chosen Israel from slavery in Egypt. To help in viewing this complex painting, we see Jesus in the upper room explaining His relationship to us, His disciples. It’s a fair detour because the writer to the Hebrews addresses us as “holy brothers” who are in possession of a “heavenly calling.” Our relationship is in focus through the picture of Jesus in the upper room before His departure to His Father, our Father! We, like the disciples, are on a journey of deeper knowledge from Spiritual birth to maturity in Christ. Growing in grace is part of our calling.
Jesus speaks about knowing the Father to the disciples because they were seeing Jesus personally with their own physical eyes. “If you have seen me,” Jesus tells Andrew, “you have seen the Father.” One way our “structure” is built out is by “seeing” in our mind and in our heart with the eyes of our soul. We now have the capacity to see “Spiritually” with our soul’s heart and mind. We actually are created with a new Spiritual sense the non-believer does not have.
There are a couple different ways the Greek language conveys the depth of our knowledge. One word the Greek uses is from the word “to see” with our eyes. We have knowledge of something when our eyes give it visual meaning. We process knowledge through visual perception. Another Greek word refers to our intellectual grasp. There are actually two forms of this word. The first just uses the root meaning of knowledge while the second one adds a prefix to its meaning, “upon.” It conveys the meaning of additional knowledge so that we have knowledge upon knowledge. We have knowledge from what we perceive with our eyes and it can be supplemented with knowledge from our Spiritual soul’s heart and mind.
Knowledge is not limited to the mind. To love requires the knowledge of the mind. Neither is isolated from the other. The house we are building is Spiritual even though we are using our physical flesh “house” to display our Spiritual house. Love is foundational and integral to our Spiritual soul.
We are the offspring of Abraham learning to live Spiritually in Jesus’ name while contained in an earthen house vessel. We are moving His essence within us to visible behavior and character through grasping and consuming His grace. This is illustrated throughout the revelation of absolute truth in His Word. In fact, it is a common thread in the letters to the churches given in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Jesus Himself, in His letter to Pergamum, makes a relationship point for our focus.
“… To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.”
Pergamum was a pagan city. It was the dominant city in the ancient world before Smyrna and later Ephesus took its place. It was the Las Vegas of its time touting temples to Zeus, Dionysus, Athena and Asklepios. Roman emperors later built their own worship centers here.
A small fellowship of believers was located in the center of this pagan culture. Some did compromise their faith but others like Antipus were martyred for their faith. The head of the church instructs us that He will give a white stone with a secret name written on it to one who overcomes these circumstances of persecution and physical hardship.
The white stone was used to award the winner of an athletic event during the Roman times. The winner’s name would be inscribed on the white stone. Here, we have something much more personal. Here, an intimacy is placed upon the stone shared only between Jesus and the one to whom He is giving this affection.
We see here, something of the intimate relationship that develops with a member of Christ’s body, His Church, who perseveres thru the fray and overcomes! This is an intimacy in the Life of Jesus giving inside strength to members of His body. This is an aspect of our House, His Life in it, that glorifies our Father God.
This is what we will continue to develop in our next GraceNotes. It is why we are going to call it “Living in our Glory.” We want to be the people God has chosen as an example of what a relationship looks like between created man and God Himself. Jesus and Moses are held up as examples of faithfulness to Him who has also given us, you and me, a “heavenly calling.” We are His House, building for His glory!