“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
ὁ δὲ θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης ὁ ἀναγαγὼν ἐκ νεκρῶν τὸν ποιμένα τῶν προβάτων τὸν μέγαν ἐν αἵματι διαθήκης αἰωνίου τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν ἰησοῦν καταρτίσαι ὑμᾶς ἐν παντὶ ἔργῳ ἀγαθῷ εἰς τὸ ποιῆσαι τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ ποιῶν ἐν ὑμῖν τὸ εὐάρεστον ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ διὰ ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων ἀμήν
- Everlasting covenant — διαθήκης αἰωνίου
Hughes comments,
But the resurrection manifested his glory as the prince of life and conqueror of death and confirmed that the blood is the seal of the covenant that is eternal and that by this single offering of himself “he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,” (10:14).[1]
The bloody death of the immutable Savior, Jesus Christ, (Hebrews 13:8) secured the everlasting, immutable covenant, the grounds for the eternal life of the saint sealed by the resurrection. The single means of revealing such otherworldly truths to the Church in writing, namely eternality, and immutability, is through a word that can never change or pass away.
Modern critics demands that the Church explain the origin, content, and meaning of “everlasting covenant” without Scripture, and do this in real time across generations. This impossible ecclesiastical and academic pressure is the impossibility the purveyors of post-critical thought have imposed upon the Church. Now manipulating and therefore corrupting the text of Scripture, the corrupters expect the Church to speak of an immutable and everlasting covenant while holding to an ever-changing, temporal document.
- Make you perfect — καταρτίσαι ὑμᾶς
The “everlasting covenant” performs an eschatologically oriented work in the believer’s life of “making perfect.” Here, katartisai means to make fully ready; to put in full order; to make complete. The meaning here is that God would progressively, fully endow the saints with whatever grace was necessary to do his will and good works. This necessarily implies that the everlasting covenant serves a future, transgenerational purpose of sanctification in the Church. That is, the “everlasting covenant” is forward looking, in the same natural way birth is forward looking to physical maturity and rudimentary things of the gospel are foundational for more systemic truths.
Note that a mutable, temporal “covenant” fails the Church on multiple levels. First, mutability resists future spiritual growth by casting doubt upon the certainty of the sanctifying trajectory, or the words of Scripture. Much of the Church is no longer certain about what God expects from them or how spiritual growth manifests itself because the mutable scripture only serves the epoch of time in which it is empirically relevant. Second, because the mutable covenant is temporal, the transmission of the same covenant across generations has dismally failed, resulting in the transmission of contradictions.
- Working in you — ποιῶν ἐν ὑμῖν
Here, this “doing” on the part of the believer is “through Jesus Christ.” Barnes notes “The idea is, that God does not directly, and by his own immediate agency, convert and sanctify the heart, but it is through the gospel of Christ, and all good influences on the soul must be expected through the Saviour.”[2] It is through the message of the everlasting covenant that doing things “well pleasing in his sight” is accomplished. That is Christ, and His word, are not separable; they cannot be sequestered, bifurcated, or broken, John 10:35. Christ, through his word does this eschatologically oriented, sanctifying work in the life of the believer, which says that the eternal God’s eternal word, will have eternal efficacy in the life of the Church culminating finally in permanent glorification. Novel versions miserably fail one necessary component of the dynamic which drives redemptive history to eschatological consummation, that is the everlasting word in the mouth of the covenant keeper, Isa, 59:21.
- To whom be glory for ever and ever — ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων
And finally, eternal glory is ascribed to Jesus Christ as the resurrected Lord who sealed the everlasting covenant in his bodily resurrection from the dead. If the eternal covenant is mutable and temporal, the glorification of the Lord is impossible – the Church has only a glimmer maintained by ecclesiastical tradition of the purpose of this glorification. And it is here, that novel versions demonstrate profound evil. If Christ is not glorified, this void is being filled with something else to worship, Romans 1:21f. Because man is fundamentally a religious creature, he will create his own godless religion and give it some sweet and precious name.
Incremental ruin is tough to nail down because those living through it can always find vestiges of the old paths to ameliorate those that sound the alarm. But considered over generations, the case for spiritual deterioration is easier to build.
[1] Huges, Hebrews, 589.
Standard Sacred Text.com 