Holy Week DevotionalSample

Our passage today is quite different from the gospel narratives we have been reading this week, but it is fitting for Holy Saturday when we remember the time in which Christ remained under the power of death. The book of Hebrews is a masterpiece that shows, chapter by chapter, all of the ways in which Jesus had fulfilled every covenant promise that God had made. We have spoken at length this week about Christ and his kingdom. Hebrews makes clear that there can be no going back after the day of the Lord has come because the eternal King has also become our great High Priest. Apart from him there can be no forgiveness.

We can only understand the full significance of Jesus’ crucifixion within the context of the sacrificial system that God instituted under the old covenant. Hebrews 9:22 describes that the law required “that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22 ESV). Purification by blood was central and in the law given through Moses, only the shedding of blood could provide a covering for sin. We see this principle from the very beginning of God’s story. 

When sin entered the world, God killed an animal to cover Adam and Eve in its skins (Gen. 3:21). When God rescued Israel from Egypt, it was the blood of the Passover lamb sprinkled above their door which saved them from death (Ex. 11-12). Hebrews makes clear that all of the sacrifices, the priesthood, and the temple itself were “copies” and “shadows”—faint reflections of heaven. They all were intended to be signposts leading us directly to Christ and what he alone would accomplish. He is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). 

Jesus is not merely a lamb, nor only a man, but “the Author of life” (Acts 3:15 ESV). Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3 ESV). The temple in Jerusalem had Caiaphas- a high priest who perverted justice and sought to destroy the very God of Israel who had come in the flesh. God’s people have Christ who is a greater High Priest than any below because he reigns over the heavenly temple which “the Lord set up, not man” (Heb. 8:2 ESV). Jesus “entered once for all into the holy places [by] means of his own blood” and is therefore able to secure for us “an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12 ESV). 

When all humanity had fallen into sin, God the Son took on human nature to accomplish what we failed to do and now we have been saved “from the wrath of God” (Rom. 5:9 ESV). As Karl Barth powerfully wrote, “God’s wrath had to be revealed against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. But only God could carry through this necessary revelation of His righteousness without involving an end of all things. [This] is just what did happen on the cross of Golgotha: that double proof of omnipotence in which God did not abate the demands of His righteousness but showed Himself equal to His own wrath; on the one hand by submitting to it and on the other by not being consumed by it.”

As Holy Week comes to a close, I invite you to trust in Christ. We have a “great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:14-16).