Faith and Faithfulness

Jesus has identified with us and become the mediator between us and God. Our part now is to keep our eyes fixed on him. The writer will return to this idea powerfully in 12:1-3. He will have much more to say about Jesus as our high priest. Jesus is also an “apostle,” or someone who is sent. This is the only place where the word “apostle” is used of Jesus. Paul uses the term (in the Greek) to describe Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25) and Titus (2 Cor. 8:23)–in both contexts they were sent. Moses, too, was sent by God (Exod. 3:10); but when Aaron and Miriam claimed that they, too, spoke for him, God warned them that it was not so–it was with Moses that he spoke “mouth to mouth” because Moses was “faithful in all [his] house.” 

We saw in ch. 1 that Jesus is superior to the angels. Now he is presented as superior to Moses, whom the Jews looked up to as the bringer of the Law. Like Moses, Jesus was faithful, but Jesus, as God’s only Son, is over–not in–God’s house (6). 

God’s house. That’s us, with a proviso (6). We have to keep firm our parrhésia (“confidence”) and our kauchéma (“hope”). Neither of these Greek words has an exact English equivalent, and they can be misleading. Literally, parrhésia means “speaking freely,” but its meaning extended to any kind of honest, open behavior. It is not hard to see how it comes to mean “boldness,” as in Acts 4:13. Kauchéma means “boasting,” but it does not have the arrogant connotations of the English word. These two words are also paired in 2 Corinthians 7:4. In the present context, “the hope in which we glory” is perhaps the best translation. The hope is, of course, no vague wish for the future, but certainty about what the future will bring.

God’s people are described as a bold and confident family (6). Using this picture as a plumb line, how do you and your church measure up? Any changes needed?