“Sinning Against the Blood of the Lord” – Hebrews 10:26-31

“Sinning Against the Blood of the Lord” – Hebrews 10:26-31

I have a very dear friend whom I admire greatly. I’ve known him since I was a teenager, and in all the years I’ve known him, I have never seen him angry. I’ve seen him vexed, but I’ve never seen him really angry. I’ve talked to his wife about it, and she said he seldom does lose his temper, but the rare times that it happens, it is not good for the person at whom he is angry. She told me she tries to get the person away from him as quickly as possible before my friend really loses it.

I mention this because I like to focus on God’s great love for us, for good reason. The entire Bible speaks to us of God’s great love. It is a love that is creative, thoughtful, deep and unconditional. It is a love that endures and is eternal.

But while it is right to focus on God’s loving nature, we are foolish to ignore other aspects of God’s character. Because He is holy, God does not tolerate sin. We know God’s hatred of sin and our inability to overcome sin on our own if for no other reason than He sent Jesus into our world to rid us of the sin that separates us from Him.

Just as God hates sin, we also are wise to realize that God has a method of dealing with sin that is unrepented. Just as God is love, Creator, Sustainer, Provider and merciful, so too is God judge. In today’s passage, the writer of Hebrews underscores what awaits the person who stands in God’s wrathful judgment.

Background

When Paul was approached by the church in Corinth about some questions they had, he began to write them inspired answers, admonishing and encouraging the fledgling congregation. As relatively new believers, they had begun to establish habits and practices that were inconsistent with Jesus’ teachings. As the apostle ticked off the subjects raised by the letter, he eventually came to the worship practices of the church. One of the first matters of worship Paul wrote about was the observance of the Lord’s Supper.

In his instructions about communion, Paul stated that he received his instructions directly from Christ—“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23). He discussed the elements of the supper, then he gives a rather vivid admonition to the recipients of his letter. He wrote, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27).

The question arises: What is an unworthy manner? It is suggested that the “unworthiness” grew out of what the Corinthians were doing, but can be summarized as a flippant attitude toward the supper, either in ignoring the love that binds us together or to take Jesus’ crucifixion lightly.

Paul wrote that such an attitude was to sin against the body and blood of the Lord. And that’s what we want to focus on today. When we take a cavalier attitude about our relationship with God through Christ, we demonstrate a lack of awareness and appreciation of what exactly God did for us through the giving of His Son. There are some who treat faith in Christ as a carte blanche to indulge in sin under the belief that it will be covered by God’s grace. To have such an attitude is to take God for granted, and the writer in Hebrews tells us that such an attitude is woefully misguided. As we look at today’s text, we need to keep in mind the following truth:

Central Truth: God’s grace is not to be trifled with.

The warning God gives us is:

1. Against deliberate sin (26-27)

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

There is a recently elected congressman from New York that has made the news for all the wrong reasons. It seems that his resume for running as a candidate consists of nothing but lies. He lied about where he went to college, about where he worked. He lied about his heritage, claiming to be Jewish but he’s not, and claiming that he lost coworkers in the collapse of the World Trade Center in September 11. He’s lied about his mother, about his past experiences—of everything that is important in defining who a person is, this congressman has lied about it.

So what? Politicians lie all the time, don’t they? Not to this degree and not so flippantly. It is this attitude toward sin and our relationship with God that the writer of Hebrews wrote about.

If we consider “deliberate sin” to be knowing what we are about to do is against God’s will and still doing it, then the writer suggests that our salvation is not secure, that we can lose our salvation. The idea of deliberate sin causing us to lose our salvation seems to go against the overall message of the Bible. Jesus stated in John 10:27-30, said that we are secure in our faith. “My Father who has given them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:29).

We can also look to the Old Testament regarding deliberate sin. David knew that committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband killed were both violations of God’s law. Yet, God did not abandon David. David suffered the consequences of his sin, but he remained in a relationship with God. It needs to be stated that David genuinely repented of the sin and there is no record of him doing anything like it again.

If willfully sinning is not deliberate sin, then what is?

Most of the commentaries indicate that the “deliberate sin” mentioned here is apostasy—claiming to be Christian but having no real relationship with God through Christ. It is akin to a person who professed to follow God but still worshipped at idols. A person who is a deliberate sinner is one who may have an intellectual awareness of God but has no relationship with Him. Such a person would be the false prophet that Jesus warned against in Matthew 17, outwardly appearing to be the genuine thing but inwardly seeking only to fulfill their own desires.

The problem with this is that the writer wrote that the person deliberately sinned after receiving knowledge of the truth; that is, these who are deliberately sinning have already known and accepted the salvation of Christ. The deliberate sinner is the person who takes his relationship with God so lightly that he or she feels no compunction to seek and to do God’s will. Such a person decides that living their life the way the want is more important to them than to follow Christ as Lord.

In my mind, the deliberate sinner is someone who continues to sin and feels no conviction or need to repent. He or she accepts the sin as a continuation of their life of faith in Christ. They see no need to have a change of life; it’s more like they are grafting the life of Christ into their own lifestyle, and are expecting Jesus to change to meet their desires rather than the other way around.

Such a person will endure the wrath and judgment of God. It is what the writer correctly called a fearful expectation.

2. Compared to the consequence of the Law (28-29)

Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?

The writer compared the New and the Old Testament in these two verses. He referenced the judgment that awaited those who “sins defiantly” (Numbers 15:30). In Numbers 15, God told Moses that the nation would need to seek God’s forgiveness through a sacrifice if the sin was unintentional and it a sin of the people. An individual would also be able to offer a sin sacrifice for his or her own inadvertent sin. But in vs. 30-31, God told Moses, “But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the Lord, and that person must be cut off from his people. Because he has despised the Lord’s word and broken His commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.”

In Deuteronomy 17:2-7, God told the people of Israel if a “person is found doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God in violation of His covenant, and contrary to My command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars of the sky” is to be stoned to death. This must be witnessed by two people and, after due deliberation, if the person is found to be guilty, then they are taken out of the city and stoned.

When Jesus was being confronted by the Pharisees in John 8, Jesus told them, “In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two men is valid. I am one who testifies for Myself; My other witness is the Father, who sent Me” (v. 18).

Here the writer listed three witnesses against the sinner. First, there is Jesus Himself. Second is the blood of Christ, and third is the Holy Spirit. What is being said is that the witnesses against the apostate Is Jesus and the Holy Spirit, with the blood of Christ being a third witness.

The writer asked, “How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished” who has shown so little regard for the atoning sacrifice Christ did and that the Spirit testifies to.

God took our salvation so seriously that He sent His only Son to die for us. Jesus took our salvation so seriously that He willingly went to the cross for us. Since they have so demonstrated the seriousness of our salvation, the writer tells us that we too must take our salvation seriously.

3. God is judge against the deliberate sinner (30-31)

For we know Him who said, “It is Mine to avenge; I will repay,” and, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

There was a time not too long ago in the history of the local church when a person could be “churched.” That is, if a person who professed to be a member of the congregation was caught in deliberate sin, if that person did not repent and renounce the sin, they could be voted out of the church, only to return when they had repented. Such actions were consistent with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18 and in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.

While such judgment seems harsh and scandalous, the writer of Hebrews wanted the readers to know that a deliberate sinner would not suffer at the hands of the local congregation, but will eventually stand before the Judgment Throne of God. His description of God is one that should send chills down our spines. It is God alone who reserves judgment and vengeance, and the writer concludes that “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

As we live our lives, we would do well to remember that God is our Judge and we will have to give account to Him.

Conclusion

What does all this mean? Would the writer of Hebrews have written these words if he meant that a person who committed a sin like David did would be forever cut off from God? Isn’t the purpose of the letter to encourage the believers to continue to grow in their faith? First, we need to realize that God takes our salvation seriously, and He expects us to do so as well. Second, God calls us to practice self-control and live holy lives. Living a holy life is to renounce the sin that entangles us. Third, we must not make the mistake of assuming God’s grace will allow us to indulge our sinful nature without consequence. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:30-31, “That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.”

We noted in Deuteronomy that God’s law demanded that idolators be taken to the city gates and stoned to death. However, in 2 Chronicles 33, the reign of Manasseh is recorded. The Bible notes that Manasseh was the most evil king in the history of Judah. According to v. 9, “Manasseh led Judah and the people of Jerusalem astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.” God brought judgment upon Manasseh. He was captured by the Babylonians and taken to Babylon in chains. But Manasseh repented and called out to God. God heard his prayer, and God restored the fallen king to his kingdom. From that time on, Manasseh was a changed man.

If we are sinning, but the Spirit is still convicting, it is not too late to repent and find the peace that God yearns to have with us.

As we come to the Lord’s Supper, we would do well to remember that the sacrifice of Jesus was a supreme sacrifice for our sins, and that would do well to examine ourselves, repent of sin and trust in Jesus for forgiveness.