Unshakable hope.

Hebrews, Part 15: Hebrews 12 and the journey of faith from Sinai to Zion.

Photo by Sébastien Goldberg on Unsplash

A version of this article originally appeared on 1517.

For the bulk of Hebrews Chapter 12, the writer encourages his readers to persevere in faith and “run with endurance” by “looking to Jesus” (Heb. 12:1–2), even through seasons of trial and discipline (Heb. 12:7). Endurance under such circumstances would indeed be difficult, but there was grace and strength to be had in abundance in the consideration of the crucified Christ (Heb. 12:3). The hope for sufferers and sinners, for those barely hanging on, is nothing less than the Christ of God who “endured” for them. Our perseverance for him proceeds from his for us. No matter how tenuous things might get for Christ’s church, the word and work of Christ remain sure. As the writer has previously remarked, the Lord himself is the church’s “sure and steadfast anchor” (Heb. 6:19). Accordingly, we look to him as the one-and-only immovable truth in a world riddled with instability.

Poignantly, this epistle was published at a time when it was convenient to abandon the faith. The threat of persecution and death loomed large over those Hebrew believers, turning their future into a gloomy cloud. Interestingly enough, the writer suggests that things were about to get even gloomier. In verse 25, he seems to assume the role of an Old Testament prophet, proclaiming that his message should not be “refused”: “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven” (Heb. 12:25). His was an announcement of absolute importance, not because it was his but because it was God’s. The writer’s words should be received wholeheartedly precisely because they are divine. This is just to say that even though the anonymous writer might have been the mouthpiece of this message, he wasn’t the author of it. That is a role reserved for none other than the Christ of God.

This hearkens back to the way in which this epistle opens, where the author affirms that God the Father has spoken his word to the world through the work of his Son (Heb. 1:1–2). The good news is that he is still speaking to us, his church, through the same means — namely, the Word and Spirit of Christ. But what is the message that God wants us to hear? In short, his message is all about how sinners, no matter how filthy, can be brought into right standing with God because of the never-ending priesthood of Christ. We are in good standing with God the Father because God the Son took our place on the cross and he is still standing in our place in glory (Heb. 7:25). It is only that right standing with God that steadies us when the end of all things arrives:

At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken — that is, things that have been made — in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Heb. 12:26–29)

The writer cites the prophet Haggai and his oracle alluding to the day when all creation “will shake” (Hag. 2:6–9, 20–22). This, of course, is both a literal and figurative shaking, as all of Earth’s powers, people of influence, and pillars of security and cultural progress will be rocked to the core by the in-breaking of the King of kings. Everything will be shaken off its moorings. All that seemed so steady and certain will be exposed as frail, fickle, and fragile. On that day, “not only the earth but also the heavens” will be made to tremble. The only things that will remain will be “the things that cannot be shaken.” Consequently, the question naturally arises: Will you be among the unshaken things? Or will you be part of the shaken and unsettled things? Furthermore, how can you know which one you belong to? According to the writer of Hebrews, the difference comes down to whether your faith is found at the base of Sinai or the foot of Zion:

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God . . . (Heb. 12:18–22)

The writer sets up a contrast between the events at Mount Sinai and what is given to us through the person and work of Christ. Sinai, of course, epitomized one of the most remarkable and memorable episodes in all of Israel’s history as the Lord himself hand-delivered his law to his people. At its core, the law is nothing but the revelation of God’s everlasting righteousness, which is thoroughly unfolded throughout the rest of Exodus and in the accompanying books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. As regulations were heaped upon stipulations, the Israelites were made to stagger under the subsuming cloud of Yahweh’s panoramic righteousness. Israel’s relationship with God almighty, therefore, is rooted in the reality that he is perfectly holy, while they are not. He is so holy, in fact, that he cannot be approached by stinking sinners. If anyone dared to touch that mount whereupon his holy presence descended, they would die (Heb. 12:20; Exod. 19:11–13).

Accordingly, as God gave his people his law, he was, likewise, establishing the only God-approved method to approach him. “This is how you will commune with me,” he says, “this is how I will be worshiped.” Sinai is the place of the law; the place of God’s inflexible requirement, which reads, “Be holy, for I am holy.” Understandably, the enunciation of the law leaves Moses and the Israelites utterly terrified, begging for no more words to be spoken to them (Heb. 12:19–21; Exod. 20:19). This is what God’s holy law does — namely, it causes anyone who dares to stand before it to tremble and shake and get weak in the knees. No one can endure the requirements of the law because no one can fulfill all of its demands. No human has ever kept all of its requirements nor has anyone ever even come close. This hasn’t stopped us from trying. Similar to the foibles of Israel, we are often caught taking the matter of our standing before God into our own hands, which is the same as saying that we don’t need God to tell us how to approach nor do we need him to make a way for us. We can do that ourselves. We can be our own saviors.

This is what the debacle of the golden calf so crushingly demonstrates (Exod. 32). It is a scene wherein mankind rehearses the failure of the Garden all over again (Gen. 3). Consequently if we are not left terrified and trembling at the severity of the Lord’s holiness, we have yet to hear the law in its fullness. God’s law, which reveals God’s holiness, is meant to expose our utter inability to endure its immense commands. At the base of Mount Sinai, therefore, humanity is given an unmistakable reminder that God’s holiness is infinitely beyond them. Even still, there are countless churchgoers who are staking their faith there. If you believe that your hope of redemption comes from your own works; if you reckon that you can punch your ticket to heaven by keeping God’s law or by doing “enough,” you have categorically missed the point of the law.

The law was not meant to be a checklist by which we can make ourselves holy. Rather, the law was meant to show us just how unholy we actually are (Rom. 3:19–20). If your faith is situated in the foothills of Sinai, much like Israel of old, you will not be able to endure when God’s word of consuming holiness shakes the entire cosmos. On that day when, once again, the Lord descends to shake “not only the earth but also the heavens,” all those who are caught clinging to their works will be left in their distress. Mankind’s best efforts to make himself holy only afford him a trophy made of sand. When God’s “holy sifting” occurs during the End of All Things, our attempts to be righteous in and of ourselves leave us to find refuge in sandcastles at high tide. The good news, of course, is that we are left with a better word that affords us a better foundation and a better hope. God does not abandon his people to shake with fear at the awesome weight of his holiness. Rather, through Christ, he not only announces his demand for holiness but also meets that demand for us. This is what is found at the foot of Mount Zion:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb. 12:22–24)

Zion is suggestive of Israel’s eschatological hope that the Christ of God will one day reign over the Earth as its One True King. As the writer suggests, however, this is already true. We do not have to wait for Jesus to reign since he is already enthroned. The kingdom that he is bringing into this world is an accomplished reality in and through him. What’s more, we have already been made citizens of that kingdom by faith. “Hebrews,” Carey C. Newman attests, “uses Zion imagery to define Jerusalem as the city of God’s abiding presence and conversion as citizenship in God’s cosmic and eschatological metropolis” (563). Therefore, if your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22). You are part of the “church of the firstborn,” that is the “festal gathering” of the redeemed (Heb. 12:23). Your name has been recorded in heaven with ink that cannot be erased. The “better word” that Jesus delivers to us makes us righteous and no amount of shaking can make that word untrue.

The good news is that because of Christ, the place of God’s holiness is no longer an unapproachable place nor is it a place of fear and trembling since Christ has made us holy. Through his Son, God gifts his righteousness to us. “Holiness,” writes Chad Bird, “is always a divine gift, never a human achievement” (160). The “darkness and gloom,” the tempest and terror of the law is gone because of Christ who silences the law by satisfying all of its demands and thereby finishing our redemption. Accordingly, we who have been made holy through the blood of Jesus are among those who are “unshaken.” Zion is an unshakable kingdom (Heb. 12:28) that houses sinners who have been made into saints. All are welcome inside the ramparts of this kingdom through faith alone. Nothing else gets you in because nothing else can make you holy. It is only what God in Christ did for you on a mount called Calvary that ever fulfills what is demanded of you on the mount called Sinai.

The gospel message tells us that we are welcome at Zion because of what happened at Golgotha. In unforeseen grace, the very God whose law boomed with severity on Sinai is the same God whose body heaved and died on Calvary to reconcile sinners to himself. The fingers that were used to inscribe his holiness on tablets of stone, likewise, writhed in agony as his side was split open to accomplish redemption for you and me. “On Sinai,” says 19th-century preacher John Henry Jowett, “we see God’s holy will; on Calvary we see the sacred heart. On Sinai law is enthroned; on Calvary grace comes down our souls to meet, and glory crowns the mercy seat” (137). Therefore, we who stake our faith at the foot of Zion are those who belong to the immovable kingdom of the living God who welcomes the wretched to find relief in the unassailable sacrifice of his Son. It is only by faith in him and what he has done that we can face that coming day of God’s shaking without fear.

Works cited:

Chad Bird, “May 23,” Daily Grace: The Mockingbird Devotional, Vol. 2, edited by CJ Green (Charlottesville, VA: Mockingbird, 2020).

John Henry Jowett, God—Our Contemporary (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1922).

Carey C. Newman, “Jerusalem, Zion, Holy City,” Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Development, edited by Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 561–65.