Beyond Rules

Are you looking for a better life; for hope that does not disappoint; for promises that do not fail; for a future that is beyond anything you can imagine; and for a life of meaning, purpose, and accomplishment that culminates in eternal victory?

The book of Hebrews is all about the better things God has for us. It contrasts the Old Testament object lessons and historical events with the eternal realities to which they point. It leads our minds upward, beyond the shadows of this world to the light of heaven, beyond the sickness of sin to the Remedy of Jesus, beyond the temporary (and often empty) pleasures of this world to the joys that begin today, as we walk with God here and now, and culminates in a better, eternal, life.

Let’s examine some of the better things God has promised for us as described in Hebrews.

1. A Better Hope

The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God (Hebrews 7:18, 19 NIV84, emphasis mine).

What God wants is our love, trust, loyalty, friendship, and agreement. He wants to eradicate sin from His universe and restore unity, the unity of love and trust. He knows that fear cannot be driven out of hearts by threats of punishment. Love cannot be restored into hearts by ritual, ceremony, or laws written upon stone. Lies cannot be defeated by inflicting punishment upon those who tell lies. Truth is not advanced by taking away freedom, censoring speech, and silencing dissent. There is no hope in ceremony, ritual, law, or law enforcement.

The ceremonial and written laws were teaching tools, therapeutic interventions, additions given by God to enlighten our minds and lead us to experience the reality to which they were pointing. And that reality is Jesus!

No one will be recognized as having a healthy relationship with God and being like Christ in character by adhering to a set of rules; rather, it is through the Ten Commandments that we become aware of our sickly state of mind. But now God has revealed a healthy state of being—a character that is right and perfect in every way—that did not come from the written code, but is exactly what the Scriptures and the Ten Commandments were pointing your minds toward. This perfect state of being comes from Christ and is created within us by God when we place our trust in him. Our trust in him is established by the evidence given through Jesus Christ of his supreme trustworthiness (Romans 3:20–22 REM, emphasis mine).

Jesus is our better hope, for He is the reality to which all the written laws (including the Ten Commandments), rules, regulations, and ceremonies were pointing. And Jesus, our better hope, brings us a better covenant.

2. A Better Covenant

Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant (Hebrews 7:22 NIV84, emphasis mine).

What made this covenant better than the previous one?

But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said:

“The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:6–12 NIV84, emphasis mine).

What made the new covenant better, and what was wrong with the first one? The first was focused on behavior—on rules, on externals, on law. The second is the reality of God’s kingdom—truth, love, and trust. It is about restoration of hearts and minds back into God’s ideal, eradicating fear, purging lies, removing rebellion, restoring trust—as Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21 NIV84, emphasis mine).

And restoring love and trust cannot be accomplished through might and power, but only by the Spirit of truth and love winning hearts to freely choose to say yes to God (Zechariah 4:6).

In the first covenant, God offered healing, but the people chose behavior management. God wanted a love relationship, but the people chose a legal relationship; God wanted closeness—intimacy, but the people chose distance—separation; God wanted personal connection, but the people chose to have a mediator; God wanted restoration of love and trust, but the people chose fear and selfishness. God spoke directly to His people, but the people didn’t want to speak to God:

When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire, all the leading men of your tribes and your elders came to me. And you said, “The LORD our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a man can live even if God speaks with him. But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us, and we will die if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any longer. For what mortal man has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire, as we have, and survived? Go near and listen to all that the LORD our God says. Then tell us whatever the LORD our God tells you. We will listen and obey” (Deuteronomy 5:23–27 NIV84, emphasis mine).

This is the first covenant, the old covenant, the failed covenant. It is the covenant of the people and by the people, the arrangement they insisted upon because they did not trust God and refused His plan for cleansing their hearts, minds, and characters and bringing them back into unity with Him.

The people didn’t want God to change them, to heal them, to cleanse them. They wanted a god like the pagans worshiped, one they could control through their behaviors, their performance, their law-keeping, their ceremonies, rituals, incantations, and sacrifices. They chose a rules-oriented, legal covenant in which they could do good and God was then required to bless, or if they did bad, then God was required to punish. They chose a covenant of law and law enforcement.

The old covenant focused on fear of punishment or promises of reward. But the new covenant focuses on reality; on God’s design; on God’s plan, intent, purpose; on Jesus, our substitutionary Savior restoring God’s living law of love and trust in the human species!

And this new covenant, this new understanding, the new agreement, is our agreement to trust God and open our hearts to Him, and His agreement to heal us, to renew us, to recreate us, to remove fear and selfishness, guilt, and shame, and to write into our hearts and minds His living law of love and trust. When that happens, just as the covenant says, God no longer needs to think about or focus upon or remember our sin, because our sin, the breakdown of love and trust, the rebelliousness, the fear and selfishness that causes all the pain, suffering, and death, has been removed! He doesn’t have to think about it anymore because it is gone. It is like a physician father whose child is dying of cancer saying, “Once you trust me, son, and let me heal you, I will never have to think about your cancer again.”

Yes! The new covenant in which Jesus heals us by restoring His design law into our hearts and minds, cleansing us from fear, selfishness, and distrust, is so much better than the old covenant of imposed law and law enforcement.