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No . . .  I haven’t forgotten about Hebrews 10.

But, if we want to understand the warning found there, it’s going to take more than a quick reading of the text, and a few background comments. For most of us, it’s going to require a significant development in our understanding of what God is up to.

In re-examining the Story, we have begun to see that God is about the recovery of all that was lost in the Garden. In spite of the heartbreaking loss, there is hope. But this hope centers, not on forgiveness, but on the destruction of the Enemy who engineered the overthrow of God’s Kingdom on earth, and on relief from the effects of the curse on Creation.

At this point in the story, Noah looks like a potential candidate for the One Who Will Come in fulfillment of the hope found in Genesis 3:15. While the rest of mankind was so wicked that God regretted creating man, Noah found favor in God’s eyes. Of all the people on the earth, only he and his immediate family are saved from the destruction of the flood.

But, shortly after the flood, it becomes clear that he is not The One, and in the succeeding generations, mankind again turns away from God to pursue their own agendas.

During this time, the godly line of Seth (Genesis 4:26), perpetuated through Noah’s son Shem, continues down to a man from the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley – Abram, whom God will rename Abraham. In a pivotal development in the Story, God choses to make a Covenant with him. Initiated in Genesis 12:1-3, 7, the terms were confirmed and progressively clarified in 13:14-17; 15:1-7; 17:1-8, 15-19; 22:16-18; 26:2-5, 24; 28:13-15; 31:13; and 35:9-12. This Abrahamic Covenant was unilateral and had three elements –

• Seed – In the initial statement, God promises Abraham more than just offspring; He promises to make him a great nation. His descendants would have a national identity. As this element of the covenant is clarified, the emphasis shifts to the seed (descendants) who will make up this nation – they will be numerous and will inherit these promises. Through the seed the “Blessing” element will be accomplished, and they will be the recipients of the “Land” element.
• Blessing – In addition to the promise to bless Abraham and his descendants, God also promised that through Abraham, all the nations of the world would be blessed. In our rationally-based world-view, which gives little weight to the practice of blessing and cursing, the significance of this is easily missed. This is a direct answer to the curse, bringing explicit hope. God promised, not just the absence of the negative – that is, relief from the curse; in its place He promised the positive opposite – blessing.
• Land – Critical to the promise of Abraham’s descendants becoming a nation is the possession of a land. Without the land, they might be a race, but not a nation. If it were not for this element of the promise, Abraham could conceivably have stayed in Haran. But God called him to leave Haran, and go the “the land which I will show you” (12:1). After He arrives, God invites him to walk through the land, to see all that God promised to him and his descendants (13:14-17). The fulfillment of this promise requires, not just a period during which they possess the land, but ultimately, permanent possession (13:15; 17:8).

With these promises, the glimmer of hope we found in Genesis 3:15 and 5:29 becomes explicit. Not only is there relief from the curse, but blessing is promised. This blessing will come through the seed of Abraham. Placed in the succession of what we already know, we discover that The One Who Will Come, will be a descendant of Abraham, and will bring blessing, in place of the curse, to all the nations of the earth.

Something worth considering here is the fullness embodied in the term “seed”. Although God’s promise of “seed” would be fulfilled in a multitude that would become a nation, the line always continued through “one”. When God made the promise to Abraham, he was childless. Before he could have a multitude, he had to have one. And one is all he had – Isaac. And arriving at that “one” was not as simple as it might seem. Abraham tried to find fulfillment, first through a servant born in his house – Eliezer (Genesis 15:2-3), and then through the Hagar Solution (Genesis 16), which produced Ishmael. God rebuffed each of these efforts, promising to do the impossible – produce a seed through Abraham and Sarah, both of whom were past the age where their bodies could produce children.

The theme of the One continues in the next generation. Abraham had “one” – Isaac. Isaac had twins – Esau and Jacob. But only “one” – Jacob is part of the promised line. Jacob will be renamed “Israel” and have 12 sons who will become the promised nation – Israel. But of those 12, Judah will have a special prominence as the line through which the One will come, and out of Judah, David is chosen as the “one” through whose line the Ultimate One will come. More than 2000 years after the promise was made to Abraham, Paul recognizes that the promise referred specifically to This Ultimate One – Christ (Galatians 3:16).

In connection with this, is noteworthy that, although Abraham responded to God’s promise in Genesis 12, left Haran to go into Canaan, and began to experience the blessing God promised, it was not until he believed God for the seed that Abraham was justified (Genesis 15:6; cf. Romans 4:1-9ff).

But we are getting ahead of the story. For now, we discover that the hope has been expanded. The One Who Is Coming to crush the Enemy will indeed bring, not simply relief from the curse, but, in it’s place blessing. This is much more than just forgiveness . . .

(For the next article in the series, click here.)