Our Home
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to … Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel Hebrews 12:22,24
The writer has just described the mountain we Christians have not come to, Mount Sinai, with the mountain we have, Mount Zion. Mount Sinai represents the old dispensation, the old covenant. Mount Zion represents the new dispensation and the new covenant. The contrast is between law and the gospel.
The contrast is sometimes falsely portrayed as between holiness and grace, inferring the two can’t co-exist. The writer has only just noted that ‘without holiness, no one will see the Lord’ (Hebrews 12:14) so this isn’t what he’s saying. His point is that a new way has been found and accomplished through which the holiness you couldn’t attain under the Law of Moses has at last been achieved. Those who live in the holy city did not reach a new place of separation before God to be admitted, nor did they come embracing their sinful past. What the Law could not do (create truly holy people), God did, by sending His Son to die for us. Those in the heavenly city have experienced the lavish grace of God. They are washed clean by the power of the blood of Jesus.
The crowning glory of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city, is Jesus, the One through whom the new covenant has been established. His blood doesn’t call for vengeance, as did Abel’s after he was murdered (Genesis 4:10) but for cleansing and forgiveness.
This passage begins with ‘But you have come …’ Those who live by faith have in a sense already come to the heavenly city. They already belong there. Their praise, worship and prayer are already before God’s throne.
Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). Our true home is heaven, the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city. This is where God’s presence is centred. Mount Zion was the place of God’s presence in the Old Testament, the place where David’s Tabernacle was set up and where Solomon’s Temple would be built. So Hebrews’ author chooses Mount Zion as the perfect description of our destination. This is the place of God’s presence. This is our home.
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