Psalm 105:1-22; Ezek. 18:1-4,19-32; Heb. 7:18-28; Luke 10:25-37
I knew a bishop whose favorite saying was “God ain’t got no grandchildren.” That was his way of saying exactly what the Lord says to Ezekiel in these first verses. We are all responsible for our own actions and for ours alone with respect to God’s judgment. That does not mean that we do not pay some temporal price for the sins of our ancestors. We are products, at least in part, of our environment and that includes the sinful natures of our forebears and therefore we pay a price for the sins of all those who come before us. Our relationship with God, however, is strictly personal. We are judged by Him on the basis of our own actions. We are saved by grace but our lives tell the truth about what we truly believe and what we truly value. Can you imagine someone saying the way of the Lord is not just? It happens all the time, it is happening now with the rejection of Hell as a reality for those who have rejected God and His offer of salvation. The truth is that what God is proposing is more than just, it is grace-ful, we all deserve death for sin but He graciously and mercifully offers us heaven if we will agree with Him on what constitutes sin and then turn from it to another way of life. That is the nature of grace, sin, confession and repentance. If you turn that down then why should you benefit from what you rejected? It is not God’s will that any should perish, it is our own will that is being done in that instance, not God’s.
We can think ourselves righteous so long as we control all the definitions. This lawyer wanted to justify himself and the reality is that we cannot justify ourselves because of sin, we need an unust verdict, we need someone to justify us even though we don’t deserve justification. In the parable of the Good Samaritan we first see a priest and a Levite coming down the road and the reason they don’t stop to help the man is for reasons of legalities regarding righteousness. If the man is dead or even bleeding and they have contact with him then they are defiled and unfit for the service towards which they are likely headed in Jerusalem. It was an honor to be on duty at the temple and neither would have wanted to jeopardize that opportunity and they could justify their neglect under the law but Jesus says that they can’t justify their conduct to God, they have a higher duty to the neighbor that demands their action on his behalf. Jesus doesn’t directly answer the question who is my neighbor, He answers by asking who was the neighbor, which implies that my neighbor is anyone who needs me to be a neighbor. If the second commandment is to love my neighbor then even the lawyer would not argue that it has higher priority than ritual purity. Sin is more than what we do, it is things done and left undone.
Jesus is the only priest in the better priesthood of the new covenant as He is the only one who endures forever according to the oath. Not only is the covenant better he is able to “save to the uttermost” which implies completion, forever, to the end, something the Aaronic priesthood lacked the ability to do because their intercessions ended with their death but Jesus intercedes for us all our lives if we believe in Him and trust in Him. Today there are many who would call themselves Christians who don’t believe Jesus lived a sinless life. Verse 26 shows the writer could not disagree more, “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” We can know that His intercessions are heard and acted upon simply because He is unstained by sin, Jesus alone is justifiable and it is through Him that we are justified. If He is not without sin, we cannot be justified through Him. He is all the justification I need.
We know that Christ is raised and dies nor more
Embraced by death He broke its fearful hold
And our despair He turned to blazing joy
Alleluia!
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