But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. (Hebrews 09:11-12, NKJV).
For now, Christians are bi-dimensional. Simultaneously, we live in two realities, with two natures, under two very different regimes, operating under two very different sets of rules.
Alive and active in this world, we are also citizens of the next. We are at war within ourselves - flesh and spirit - and which one is in ascendancy at any given moment is dependent on which one we have been feeding. Our daily lives are immersed in both the natural and supernatural - walking both by sight and faith, navigating between the realms of what is seen, the temporal, and what is not seen, the eternal.
Without a doubt, and due to absolutely no effort or will on our part, we are one of the most interesting creatures in existence.
We do not emerge from the womb this way, of course, but this bi-dimensional dichotomy is a function of being born again, and the entire purpose of our time on this planet is to be fully transformed into beings who are not of this creation.
Not surprisingly, this metamorphosis begins and is sustained by the power of God - the One who is the author and finisher of our faith; the Eternal King who has begun this good work in us and promises to complete it to the end.
This belief, this way of life founded on divinely inspired revelation in conjunction with existential transformation, seems crazy to those who are still citizens of the world. At least that was true for me before I became one myself. At the time it all sounded like so much fantastical gibberish to me, but that is understandable because I was looking at things not of this world through lenses of perception and thought that were.
That's very much like a shortsighted man trying to make sense of something too far off to really see, and the vague shadows and shapes he does perceive appear nothing at all like they are in reality.
The indescribably tragic thing about all this is that the greater realm we are no longer a natural part of was the original sphere in which humans were intended to thrive.
Our ancestors rebelled and were exiled - an act of mercy since the real penalty was death, not banishment - and ever since then our Creator has done everything necessary and possible to reinstate our citizenship; even sending His own Son to die in our place so that we could be transformed and live in Him.
Again, to those still outside, these truths don't make sense, But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come so that they could make sense, at least to those who were willing to listen. And He came with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, which was, in a very real and tangible sense, His own physical Person.
In a way not readily comprehensible by earth-bound minds, His Presence as a Man tore open the veil between the merely temporal and created realm, and the uncreated eternal realm of the Creator Himself. And that tearing aside of the barrier was no mere symbolic act, but was accomplished Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood.
Look, there are laws of the material universe that we humans barely comprehend, and there are others, like Quantum Electrodynamics, that our most lofty scientific minds can describe, but cannot admittedly "make sense" of in terms of the underlying reasons and purposes. These rules of materiality just are, from our current perspective.
Will we ever discover and be able to understand the illusive and supposedly elegant physical Law of Everything? That's a question great intellects have been pursuing now, officially, for close to a hundred years, and the more data that is discovered, the more questions emerge.
If that is true of the merely physical realm, why do we think it strange that the same level of mystery exists in that greater realm not of this creation?
We may never know why God's Plan of Salvation had to be played out the way it is in the Bible, certainly not while still barely through the foyer from this realm into the next, but we can know and trust in the results, in the very same way we can know and trust the results of the laws of light, and gravity and nuclear forces.
And the singular, most momentous and significant result of Christ's ministry on our behalf is this: He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
His sacrifice made it possible for each one of us to live forever.
Is it possible to fully understand why that is so? Maybe not in the way you want to, but face it, you really don't understand why the sky is blue, or why the proven and repeatable probability of a single red photon traveling through a given photon-sized pinhole is 4 instead of 16, either. But you can believe it nonetheless.
So the writer of Hebrews provides us with the facts in a way that emphasizes the magnificence of what Jesus did on our behalf. Can you fully understand it? Maybe not in the way you want to.
But you can believe it nonetheless.
And when you do, you are granted citizenship into this other, larger, and more substantial realm that is not of this creation.
