THE EXEGESIS OF GOD - Part 2
Heb. 1:3 “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. ”
Todays meditation will be part 2 of verse 3. We saw yesterday that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. All that can be seen of God by the natural eye can be seen of Him in Christ. Jesus is the “express” or exact image of Him. Today we continue with this verse and will see that He did not just come to manifest God as Creator and Upholder of all creation but also Redeemer. There are three questions that the remainder of this verse will answer for us:
WHAT HE DID BY HIMSELF?
Our text says, “When he had by himself purged our sins.” The words “when he had purged” translate “poieo” and means, “to make, to be the author of, to provide a thing for one's self.” and “katharismos” and means, “a cleansing, purification, a ritual purgation or washing.” This word is used to describe, “ a cleansing from the guilt of sins wrought by the expiatory sacrifice of Christ.” This book is a book about Christ as our great High Priest. This is the first mention of what the High Priest does. He is a mediator. He is One who represents another. He stands is the place of the other and obtains forgiveness and cleansing from sin on the basis of sacrifice. The words “by Himself” means that He received no help from another. He is alone in His redemption of mankind through His substitutionary sacrifice.
In the Old Testament the high priest offered the blood of bulls and goats (Heb. 9:13; 10:4) which did not take away sin. These sacrifices were never meant to take away sin. The sacrifices were object lessons teaching that the forgiveness of sins is based on the death of the innocent in the place of the guilty. Jesus came to fulfill the picture made in these sacrifices. The verb here is an aorist middle participle. The aorist tense represents a point of time. The coming of Christ from birth until He took His own blood into the holiest in heaven and offered it there is represented by this point in time. It happened once for all and stands as a finished action eternally. It is a point of time divorced from time and perpetuated forever. The middle voice means that the subject (Jesus) acts and participates in the result of the action, i. e., He did it Himself and gained the forgiveness of Sins for everyone who would believe on Him. Jesus is Creator, He is the eternal Son existing in eternity past. He created the angels. They are faithful messengers and will carry out His order immediately on command. But this was not something He could delegate to another. He did this Himself. He became God in human flesh. He offered Himself as the spotless Lamb. He is not only the High Priest, He is also the Sacrifice. He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.
This means that He did not start something when He came that we would have to finish later. He finished it here before He went back to heaven. Whatever the saint has to do to serve and please Him after salvation to maintain fellowship, it is not added to what Jesus did at the cross to complete it. What Jesus did on the cross, He completed, did it by Himself, and when He went back to heaven it was accepted as all that was required to make the guilty sinner right with God.
It goes like this. God created man and he sinned against Him. God was not satisfied to let His fallen creature remain eternally in that condition. Man’s fall rendered it impossible for him to meet God’s standards. God cannot in the nature of His being lower His standards and become less than He is to restore fellowship. So God became man (but not less than God) in order to be what was necessary (perfect) for man to fellowship with Himself. Jesus as a man was perfect. But there is more to it than that. Man’s sins must be paid for.
