(avg. read time: 7–14 mins.)
Part 4: Hebrews and the General Epistles
I have much to write about Hebrews that would take me too far afield here, especially concerning resurrection in Hebrews. For now, on that subject, I direct readers to David Moffitt’s Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Book of Hebrews and Matthew Easter’s Faith and the Faithfulness of Jesus, as well as William Lane’s chapter in Life in the Face of Death (ed. Richard N. Longenecker). I can only adumbrate some of the arguments here as they concern summary statements, for the author of Hebrews otherwise does not explicitly reference the three-stage narrative as a whole at any one point in the book.
I would suggest that it is implicit from the very prologue of Hebrews, one of the theologically densest texts in the NT. The author tells us that the Son had provided purification for sins, after which he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. The term for “purification” (καθαρισμός) is used in the Gospels to refer to ritual purification, but here and in 2 Pet 1:9, the term refers to a deeper cleansing from sin. For the author of Hebrews, this usage is perhaps the first signal in his text of the theme that Jesus fulfills the cultic features of the old covenant, providing the true, deep, lasting cleansing that the Jewish rituals, by their very nature, could not provide. He did this by offering himself as a sacrifice in his crucifixion and then transferring that sacrifice to the heavenly sanctuary, which he will go on to talk about in chs. 7–10. As such, we have an implicit reference to resurrection followed by a traditional expression of his exaltation (Ps 110 is even cited directly in 1:13), which is presented as the outcome or goal of the aforementioned actions and qualities of Jesus mentioned heretofore in 1:3. As a result of who he is and what he has done, he sits on the seat of power, an image which itself implies the larger expectation of the present and coming kingdom (note the reference to “these last days” in 1:2). One reason why the “kingdom of God” per se is not as prominent in the terminology of the Church after Jesus is because it appears implicitly every time the early Christians proclaim Jesus as Lord (i.e., King). Jesus is King and his kingdom is God’s kingdom. If he is King, people must get with the program. One of the primary functions of the epistles is to unpack the meaning of Jesus’s Lordship in these situations. Therefore, they are about life under the Lordship of Jesus, otherwise known as the kingdom/reign/dominion of God. It was the resurrection, the eschatological event of vindication and bestowal of immortality, which connected Jesus’s kingdom proclamation, his death, and his exaltation as King over the Creator’s kingdom. The resurrection was an eschatological reality which would be a feature of the kingdom of the Creator. When Jesus resurrected, he brought this eschatological reality into the present and brought also the kingdom (or rather, made clear that he had been doing so all along, climaxing in this supreme affirmation of God’s kingdom agenda). The kingdom as a present reality is not experienced fully, but the dynamic power of God through the Holy Spirit and the transformative way of life are present now, having irrupted into the corrupted world through Jesus, revealing anew God’s creative intention. As the Gospel of John and various works of Paul clarify, it is the work of the Spirit—the same Spirit who was at work in Jesus, the same Spirit expected as an identifying mark of the kingdom—that provides the preview of fullness of the kingdom now. It is the community in whom the Spirit dwells which will constitute the people of the kingdom when Jesus consummates it. Furthermore, the work of the Spirit is in accordance with the image of Jesus, who is the perfect image of God, meaning that the Spirit forms Christians according to the template of Jesus. This formation is another key element of the connection between resurrection and kingdom: kingdom life will be in accordance with the life of Jesus, which includes the resurrection to everlasting life and leads to exaltation.
The author implies the same three-stage narrative, albeit with a different order of reference in 2:5–18, where he begins with the note that though we do not yet see the Scripture of Ps 8 fulfilled for humans, we do presently see Jesus exalted in fulfillment of that text, being crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death. Once again, resurrection is implied here, particularly by the reference to him destroying the power of the one who holds the power of death and freeing those he enslaved by it (2:14–15). He thus becomes the way of salvation and everyone who follows him participates in this way by participating in the story of his life, death, resurrection, and consequent exaltation. In order to open this way of salvation, by the grace of God he tasted death for all. If he tasted death for the sake of everyone, then he was resurrected and, by implication of 2:5–9, exalted for their sake as well. Such is indeed the implication of the key descriptor of Jesus as ἀρχηγός in 2:10 (sometimes translated as “author”), which properly has the sense of the one who is the pioneer, the trailblazer, the way-maker. By his complete obedience through suffering unto death, he completely fulfilled the will of God for himself and for humanity as a whole, making the way for others to follow, so that they too may be made holy through him by union in his death, resurrection, and exaltation.
A peculiar way in which Hebrews evokes the three-stage gospel narrative is by the reference to Jesus’s high priesthood. I say “peculiar” because this is a characteristic emphasis of the Christology in Hebrews that (arguably) only appears sparingly, and in any case more indirectly, elsewhere. The peculiar emphasis and its relation to the three-stage narrative are most apparent in 5:5–10 and 7:23–28. In the former, the author makes the typical argument that the gospel events fulfilled Scripture, this time by appeal to Ps 2:7 and another verse of Ps 110, namely 110:4. One must remember that the latter text concerns one who is a priestly king and not only a king, while the former text serves here as part of the author’s argument that it was the Father himself who exalted Jesus, as is fitting for a priest and king. We are told that when Jesus offered up prayers and petitions to be saved out of death (a better translation of the preposition than “from,” which is ambiguous enough to imply that he would be prevented from dying, which the author obviously does not think he was), he was heard because of his reverent submission. As I will argue more extensively another time, this is a case of implied reference to resurrection, since it was by this means that God saved Jesus out of death and thus made him complete. Since he reached his goal (more literally, “having been made complete”) and attained the resurrection life proper for God’s faithful, those who are incorporated into his story through faithful allegiance that brings union with him find in him the source of everlasting salvation through this same obedience (that is to say, Jesus’s obedience that attained salvation for his followers and his way of obedience in which they follow in their salvation). No other high priest has accomplished these things for the people they represented, nor could they by virtue of being simply human and not the union of God and human in flesh. But this one who is a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, the one who is both king and priest, has brought this salvation to his people.
As 7:23–28 makes clearer, being made complete is linked with his having indestructible life (7:16). This reference to an indestructible life—unique in the NT—is possibly multivalent in reference to Jesus’s divine life as well as to the fact of his resurrection to that life, a life that God has promised to share with his followers. I find it likely that there is an implicit reference to resurrection here because Jesus’s everlasting priesthood is attributed as an enactment of God’s faithfulness, meaning that there was some fashion in which God gave Jesus this indestructible life and the resurrection best fits this bill in the context of the larger argument of how Jesus has performed as a priest through his life, death, implied resurrection, and exaltation. By means of this indestructible life, God fulfills the great promise made in Ps 110:4 and the whole of Ps 110. The priests of the Levitical order were great in number out of necessity because of the reality of death, but because Jesus lives and remains forever, he holds his priesthood unchangeably. Furthermore, this indestructible life guarantees that he can save completely all who approach God through him. After all, he always lives in order to intercede on their behalf, guaranteeing their salvation. The author also attributes several other qualities to Jesus as appropriate complements to this indestructible life, such as how he is holy, innocent, and undefiled. He is holy both in the sense of being whole forever (v. 28)—wholly pure, wholly devoted to the purpose of God, wholly human in a way that no one ever has been—and, as is said here, in the sense of being set apart from sinners, who rebel against God. And he is the perfect priestly king because—as the author has argued in the first chapter—he is exalted above the heavens and all that is in them, sharing as he does in the throne of God. Being the sinless high priest that he is, he does not have the daily need to offer up sacrifices for his own sins prior to offering them for the sins of his people. Being sinless, eternal, and God enfleshed, he was able to offer up himself as a sacrifice once, and that is effective once and for all. The law may have appointed humans who had weakness to carry out the cultic duties, but the aforementioned oath of Ps 110 appointed the Son of God, who has been made complete forever (v. 28). He has been made complete forever because of his resurrection to the eternal, divine life (as such, this reference brings together strands of “completion” throughout Hebrews that refer to sanctification and/or resurrection; cf. 2:10; 6:11; 7:19, 25; 9:9, 11; 10:14; 11:40; 12:2, 23; 13:21).
The same narrative is assumed in shorter form in 8:1; 10:12–13; 12:2; and 13:20. In 8:1 the primary reference point is the exaltation, but given the course of the argument to this point, the other two events are clearly assumed. The text of 10:12–13 provides a more extensive summary by appeal to Jesus’s offering of his sacrifice for sins (which, for reasons noted before, implies both his death and resurrection) and his sitting down at the right hand of God, by which he is currently fulfilling Ps 110. The reference to Jesus as pioneer and completer of faith in 12:2 describes him as enduring the cross, scorning its shame, for the sake of the joy set before him (resurrection life and exaltation), after which he sat down at the right hand of God. Likewise, the closing description of what God has done already in Jesus refers to the blood of the everlasting covenant and bringing back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep (13:20).
Among the General Epistles, 1 Peter and 1 John have texts relevant to this analysis. In the opening praise of 1 Peter, Peter references what God has done for his people in Jesus through his resurrection from the dead (after earlier referencing being sprinkled with his blood in 1:2) and bringing them into an inheritance that can never perish that is currently kept in heaven with Christ (1:3–5), but will be revealed when he is revealed at the Second Coming (1:6–7). He later refers to their redemption through the precious blood of Christ (1:18–19), who has been revealed in these last times, by the will of the God who raised him from the dead and glorified him (1:20–21). Finally, where Peter applies the gospel narrative pattern to believers in ch. 3, most succinctly with his baptism reference in 3:21, he frames the story they participate in as one in which Christ suffered for sins to reconcile others to God and being put to death in the body (3:18), being made alive by/in the Spirit and resurrected (3:18–21), and going into heaven to be exalted at God’s right hand (3:22).
The situation in 1 John is more complicated, as the three-stage narrative is nowhere clearly present, but different parts are referenced at different points. My reading of the opening verses of 1 John has been influenced by Matthew Jensen’s Affirming the Resurrection of the Incarnate Christ: A Reading of 1 John. The links between 1:1–4 and the prologue of John 1:1–18 have often been noted and it is usually understood that such connections show that this opening of 1 John is also about the Incarnation. However, the links this text has with resurrection texts complicate this inference. For one, the use of ψηλαφάω for feeling with one’s hands is unique to this text in the NT, except for Luke 24:39, where it refers to the interaction of the disciples with the risen Jesus. Likewise, the text resonates with the touching and seeing in Luke 24:39–40 and John 20:24–27. The reference to life being revealed in 1:2 resonates both with Jesus revealing himself in John 21:1, 14 and with the other times “life” is connected with the verb (φανερόω) as referring directly or indirectly to resurrection (2 Cor 4:10–11; Col 3:4; 2 Tim 1:10). Finally, the reference to joy “being made complete” fits with what Jesus purposes for his disciples after his resurrection in John (15:11; 16:20–24; 17:13). As such, resurrection, not just the Incarnation, animates this prologue and thus 1 John as a whole, despite the dearth of explicit references to the same.
The message John links to Jesus is uniquely summarized as “God is light and in him there is absolutely no darkness at all” (1:5). In the larger context, this is ultimately connected with Jesus’s sacrifice to reconcile humans to the one who is light, so that the darkness may be purified from them (1:5–2:2). Of course, the sacrifice most directly refers to his death, but as seen in Hebrews, it can also entail reference to his resurrection and ascension into heaven to carry out priestly duties in the heavenly sanctuary. The exaltation is also implied not only in the collocated references to God and his Son Jesus Christ (e.g., 1:3), but also in the refences to him as the Son generally (e.g., 5:5) and in the promise of Christ’s appearing in the Second Coming and being made to be like him (3:2).
The text that comes closest to attesting to the three key events is 5:6–12. We are told that Jesus Christ came with water and blood (5:6), which could be a reference to his birth and death or baptism and death, as scholars argue for both. Of course, the closest resonance to this description in Johannine literature is from John 19:34, which refers to water and blood coming from Jesus after he was pierced with the spear on the cross. The testimony of the water and blood is combined with the testimony of the Spirit (5:6–8), the one who came upon his disciples after his resurrection and ascension, per the Farewell Discourse (as noted in Part 1) and John 20:22. The fact that God is testifying about Jesus as his Son in whom he has accomplished his purposes is itself implicit testimony of the exaltation (5:9–10). And as noted already, and which I will expand on in future writing on 1 John, the reference to the life the Son gives, the everlasting life or the life of the age to come, is linked with his resurrection (5:11–12).