Lately, God has been working on my heart in a number of ways. He's shown me some things I'm good at, shown me some things I suck at, told me NO rather emphatically on something I had gotten my hopes up for, and allowed me to be perfectly and totally content for no apparent reason. One of these things struck me in a sermon from two weeks ago, the evening service at Crossgates Baptist Church on September 26th.
I'm not a Greek scholar by any stretch (my Greek I average is pretty solid proof of that) but when it comes to the Bible I've always been pretty interested in what the original text said. That Sunday night, pastor Jett preached on Hebrews 4:16, which reads "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Pastor Jett then said something about the Greek word used in that sentence, which turned out to be "parresia." The word (I'm not exactly sure how write it in Greek on here, so that's the best I can do for right now...) is a combination of the two words "pas"and "rhesis", which mean all and speech, act of speaking. That's actually completely different than what I expected the word confidence to mean, which in English means "the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust" and even that definition is not what I expected it to be.
What do you think of when you hear the word confidence? For whatever reason, I've always associated it with the self. For example, I have confidence in myself to go and make an A on a test or I used to have confidence in myself to be a pretty decent basketball player or I'm confident in my own personality so I can get a date with a girl. (For those that know me, those are three totally ridiculous examples!) But confidence to me has always been about me. Which is really weak because not a single one of us has anything to be confident about in and of ourselves. Which is exactly where the word started to mess with me.
I mean, I think about the things I have confidence in - I have confidence in my car to get me from point A to point B. I have confidence in my friends to show up and do what they say they are going to do. I have confidence in my hands when I play guitar. I have confidence in any number of things, unfortunately, all of those things are really not worth being confident in. My car breaks down. My friends sometimes bail. I'm not really that good at guitar. So, really and truly the only thing we can be confident in is Jesus Christ, because he's the only person that has ever walked the face of this earth and not let people down.
But I feel like the "confidence" cited in Hebrews 4:16 is a different kind of confidence. As I mentioned earlier, it literally means "all speech." So we, as believers, have an audience before the God and creator of the universe, and can approach his throne in all confidence. How ridiculous is that? Think about the Old Testament for a second. When the high priest went before God on the day of atonement, he had to make sure everything was just perfect before entering the Holy of Holies, and even in that, he had to tie a rope around his waist in case something were to go wrong and he were to die in the presence of God. It's not that God wanted to try to kill anyone or anything like that, but because of His holiness, things had to be a certain way. However, you and I as believers have that confidence.
The question becomes why? Why do we have that kind of confidence to go before the throne of grace? Well, the question is answered before we even get to Hebrews 4:16. In verses 14 and 15, Paul explains that we have that high priest who has passed through - Jesus Christ. And the coolest thing is verse 15 - "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." So our confidence comes not only in Christ's blood, that he has atoned for our sins, but because he can totally relate to us in every way. He put aside his glory (just as the high priest put aside his elaborate garments to enter the Holy place) to come to earth and live amongst us.
Think about it this way, though. Back in those days, if a person was granted an audience before a person of power, they really didn't have that kind of confidence. He'd never know if the authority figure were in a bad mood or was just an evil person or couldn't relate or whatever. So, he could technically say whatever he wanted, but the authority figure could order his head cut off or his family killed or something crazy like that. But that's not how it is with our heavenly father. If we belong to him, we have that confidence! We can speak our minds because we have a high priest who relates to us in every way, yet still is perfect. Yet still came to earth, died on the cross, defeated death, and rose again.
There's a lot more to it than this, obviously, but reading the commentary I read (you can read it here) those were the things that stood out to me. It's a little bit more jumbled and rambling that I had hoped, but I just thought the word and the concept in general were both pretty cool.
-chandler
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