Recently, an acquaintance of mine wanted to offer some children’s Bible storybooks to the church. They had them for a while and thought they might be a benefit to the church library. They looked nice. They had wonderful pictures. They covered Bible history and church history. But something seemed a little off. I can’t tell you what set off my spiritual discernment alarm. I think part of it was the fact that the editorship of the books was very vague. They didn’t have a Christian publishing house or the name of some denomination on it. And over the years I have found this type of vagueness to be a telltale sign of a cult group. They won’t really tell you who they are; you have to find out by what you read (and they hope you won’t have the discernment to discover the fact that they neglect God’s grace). And as I began to peruse the books I found that they indeed were put out by a cult group that seeks to bring people under the Old Testament law for salvation and holiness.
In this passage of Scripture the author of Hebrews wants us to understand that there were people, even in his day, who sought to bring believers back under the Old Testament law instead of the teaching of grace. Maybe they even had nice books with no publisher information ( ) that promoted their grace-minimizing doctrines.
The key idea in this passage is that strange and various “pseudo- Christian” teachings that abound neglect a key ingredient of the Christian faith: grace. The focus of this section is grace by which the believer has access to God. There are three aspects the author covers in this passage.
I. Christians Are Strengthened by Grace, Not Food
The first aspect is found in verse 9. The author gives us a glimpse at the fact that Christians are strengthened by grace. He says, “Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited.” What he wants his readers to understand is spiritual growth in a believer’s life does not come from any kind of physical rituals. Eating what was offered by a priest as a sacrifice carried with it no spiritual benefit. There is no grace to be found in partaking of the Old Testament sacrificial system or in any other ongoing sacrificial system for that matter.
There is a misunderstanding of grace in some supposed Christian systems. However, the Scripture clearly lays out what grace is and how it is obtained. God’s grace is His favor He showers upon a person to bring them to Himself for His own glory.
Grace is undeserved favor with God. It is not anything we can earn or work for. It is received only by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on our behalf. God’s grace is the means by which a person comes to know God. A person has no access to God, no relationship with God until they are saved from their sin by the grace of God. In Acts 15, we find the apostles quelling the first anti-grace heresy that arose in the early church. A certain group advocated that submission to the law of Moses was necessary for salvation. The doctrine of grace was coming under attack. And it needed to be clarified because the doctrine of grace is so essential to true Christianity. The apostle Peter, in the midst of the discussion, noted, “We believe that we (Jews) are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they (the Gentiles) also are.”
The grace of God, this gift of grace, brings to a person salvation, complete forgiveness of sins, eternal life. Paul, in his letter to Titus, said, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation.” This is why it is called in the Scripture, the Gospel or good news of grace. It is great news that salvation has been provided by God as a free gift through the death of His Son to all who would receive it by faith. Romans 3:24 tells us this. We are justified or made right with God, “as a gift by His grace through the redemption (the payment for our sin) which is in Christ Jesus.”
The Scripture describes God’s grace as multifaceted. There are so many aspects to God’s grace that we miss the glorious nature of it if we think of it casually. In Ephesians 1, Paul describes grace as glorious and filled with riches. In Ephesians 2, he notes that God’s grace is going to be a focal point of praise to Him in the ages to come. Look at verses 7-9 to note this glorious grace of God. Paul says, “In the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” God’s grace is found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it is received by faith alone. It is not by our own effort. Paul explains this in Romans 11:6. “If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise, grace is no longer grace.” If we could earn God’s undeserved favor, then guess what, it wouldn’t be God’s undeserved favor! Only in humility of mind can we receive grace. Only when we realize that we are nothing, absolutely nothing without God will He give us grace. For, as the Scripture says, “God gives grace to the humble but He hardens the proud.”
Not only does God’s grace save us from our sin but it saves us from the power of sin over our lives. The evidence of God’s grace in a person is that they hunger and thirst for righteousness and begin to live righteously. In Romans 6:14, Paul says, “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” As a recipient of God’s grace you will begin to have victory over sin as you appropriate the grace God gives to you through faith. Again it must be received by faith so that we might live lives pleasing to the One who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. In 2 Timothy 2:1, the apostle Paul encourages Timothy to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” We are to be living daily in God’s grace. The only way we can live righteously is through God’s grace.
I think one of the greatest, most astounding aspects of God’s grace is this: God didn’t have to show grace to any of us. He would have been perfectly just in sending each one of us to hell forever to suffer torment for the sin and rebellion you and I have committed against Him. God’s action to bring us to Himself is completely unmotivated by any good in us. As a matter of fact, anything that might be considered good in you is only because God’s restraining hand has kept you from being as bad as you might have been. So the next time you are tempted to judge someone else who is in your sight, loathsome, think, “except for the grace of God there go I.”
God’s mercy and love caused Him to reach out to us and bring us to Himself. He reached out to us by sending His Son to die in our place and take our wrath. How can we ever boast about who we are when we think of what God has done and given to us freely for the sake of His Son whom He did not spare so we might have life.
What we have to see is that God’s grace is never spoken of as being transmitted through a person or institution. God’s grace is always given by a person’s faith. There is no other human mediation of this grace except through Jesus Christ. A church doesn’t dispense grace. The church is to proclaim God’s grace and the free offer of it by God through faith. Any institution, that declares it is God’s means of dispensing grace, that is, that they claim to bestow it upon people, does not preach God’s grace at all but is a tool of Satan to lead people away from God’s grace.
From this short and inadequate discussion of grace, let’s look at two things the author describes for us that we must be careful to do as believers.
A. We must reject foreign teachings (foreign to the Gospel of grace)
The first thing the author describes that we must be careful to do as believers is we must reject foreign teachings. Now by foreign I don’t mean teachings that come from Germany or France but teachings that are foreign to the Gospel of grace. The author notes that we are to “not be carried away by varied and strange teachings.” The word “strange” is understood to mean something alien to a particular context. Why do I say that he speaks of teachings foreign to the Gospel of grace? The author notes what comprises these foreign teachings in the next phrase, “it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods.”
Again, as we mentioned earlier, the teachings of pseudo-Christian groups always neglect God’s grace. In this case the author focuses on those groups that look to spiritual benefit derived from some ritual event. The group will hold that these events provide favor from God. But the author rejects the teaching that there is any spiritual benefit in an ongoing sacrificial system. The foods about which the author speaks, describe those foods in which the Jews partook from the sacrifices offered. But he wants his readers to understand this is not what strengthens a person spiritually. Ritual cleansing, sacrifices, foods are all part of a system that foreshadowed Christ and His work on the cross. As we have seen in previous chapters, this sacrificial system that prefigured the coming of Christ has become obsolete. There was never any grace to be found in the ritual. The grace was to be found in the spiritual reality behind it. And now it has been manifested in Christ. This is why Paul notes in Colossians chapter 2 that “no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a [Jewish] festival or a new moon or Sabbath day – things which are a mere shadow of what is to come.
B. We must reject futile teachings (not profitable)
The second thing the author describes that we must be careful to do as believers is we must reject futile teachings. In other words, we must reject teachings that are not profitable. There are other teachings that circumvent grace. The author describes them as futile or profitless. He says at the end of verse 9, that these were practices “through which those who were so occupied were not benefited.”
The apostle Paul notes another group of graceless teachings in Colossians 2. These focus around man made religion. Man-made religion is additional tradition that is truly of no value because it doesn’t rely on God’s grace. In Colossians 2:20-23 he says, “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, ‘do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!’ (which all refer to things destined to perish with use) – in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” Notice that these pseudo-Christian groups look to commandments and teachings of men, severe treatment of the body and self-made religion as a means of culling God’s favor. But these can never be. Why? They are demonic teachings, as Paul stated in 1 Timothy 4. He said these people “forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.” There are people who say that it is more holy to not marry or to not eat certain foods at various times of the year. They will teach that you can receive grace by crawling on your knees or beating your back with a whip. But Paul says these are teachings learned by demons and taught by men. These teachings that neglect grace we are to reject.
II. Christians Have a Spiritual Altar at Which to Worship
The second aspect of this passage the author wants us to understand is that Christians have a spiritual altar at which to worship. He continues the contrast with actual physical ritual to the spiritual truth of the Gospel. Christian worship is itself set in opposition to a physical altar. Christian worship does not have a physical altar. He describes this in verses 10-14.
A. It is the cross
There are five key characteristics of this spiritual altar of which Christians partake. The first characteristic describes its identity. It is the cross. The altar of which he is speaking is the cross upon which Jesus offered Himself as an offering for our sin. Again we have to see this in contrast to sheer physical terms. The author is not speaking in physical terms. He is contrasting spiritual realities with physical entities. Though our altar can be described as the cross it is not just the wood upon which Jesus hung as if that itself becomes special. Others, who are devoid of grace, have made much of the physical entity of the cross by which they miss the whole significance of it. There is no spiritual benefit derived from a piece of wood. There are people who turn the “sign of the cross” and crosses into some kind of powerful charm by which grace is supposedly imparted. It is none of the sort.
The significance of the cross, being our altar, is found in what was accomplished on it. Again, the grace imparted to us comes from the once for all offering of Jesus upon the cross. He suffered the wrath of God for us and this is where the redemption and grace in Christ is found. It is not found in a physical altar, offering up physical sacrifices again and again as if somehow grace was imparted by these means. No the cross is the focal point, not as a physical entity, but as a spiritual victory. When Jesus Christ announced, “It is finished” as He hung upon the cross He was declaring the completion of our redemption upon it. He, at that moment, had paid the debt for our sin in full. The sacrifice was completed and the altar in this sense is now defunct. It is no longer functioning, in that sense as an altar. The cross has significance to us, not because there is special power in a cross or in making the shape of a cross but because of what occurred on that cross some 2,000 years ago.
God describes spiritual truths in physical ways, not so that we become idolaters, but so that we have a reference between spiritual realities that are difficult to communicate and physical symbols to which we can relate. However, if you don’t understand how these are being communicated, you may very well become an idolater and worship the symbol instead of the spiritual reality.