Post 73 of Study: Hebrews 12:18-24

This is a long passage, and I do not mean to seem to skip over it. It just seems to be a whole in itself.

“For you have not come to the mountain that….” What follows in 18-21 is a remiscence of the Sinai story, with all its terror and judgment. That is not us.  That is not the kind of fear and trembling we experience, that we know. This is a return to the theme that Christ is superior to the Judaic system the readers had grown up in. In a sense, they had come to Mount Sinai, in that they were raised in that culture, that world. But that is not where they are now.

No, “you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God.” This is a return to Hebrews 11 and what the faithful were really searching for, a city whose builder and maker is God, a civilized place under His rule, not a wild, fiery place of judgment. You have come “to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.”

Interestingly this is not the last time the writer brings up the superior claims of Jesus in terms of salvation and righteousness; it appears in 13:8-15. Here it’s pretty stark, though. Now God is speaking through Jesus; there is a sense in the text that the Mosaic law was without merit of any kind, “things that are being shaken.” More on that tomorrow.