Monday March 1st
Hebrews 3:6
NIV (v6) – ‘And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.’
ESV (v6) – ‘And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.’
‘And we are his house’ (v6) means that we through the placing our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ have become the community of God. The New Testament uses several ways to describe our being God’s house. Today I will share various Scriptures that highlight our being the household of God, the household of faith. We normally refer to ourselves as being the Church, and Jesus himself said that he would build his Church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it, Matthew 16:16.
The apostle Paul had a great understanding of this subject, he portrays us the Church as being like a body with Christ as the Head (1 Corinthians 12) and in his Ephesian letter he makes reference to Christ who loved the Church and gave himself for her, and that one day he will present the Church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. The body becoming the bride of Christ.
We read in 1 Peter 2 that we have become a part of this Church by reason of new birth, and we have become like living stones, being built up together as a spiritual house. ‘. . . you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’ (1 Peter 2:5–6) Paul defines this even more for us by saying, ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?’ (1 Corinthians 3:16) and ‘Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.’ (1 Corinthians 6:19–20) He says more in his second epistle to the Corinthians, ‘What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Co 6:16–18).
As believers we are found to be ‘in Christ’ which is a beautiful place to be but at the same time we are temples in which the Holy Spirit chooses to come and to dwell in, Christ is in us the hope of glory, as a result it behoves us to ensure that as the temples of the living God, we do our utmost to make sure that nothing is allowed to pollute our lives, but that we keep ourselves holy. Writing to Titus, Paul says, ‘. . . if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.’ (1 Titus 3:15).
Paul has more to say in his Ephesian epistle, ‘So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.’ (Ephesians 2:19–22)
Returning to our text from Hebrews, ‘And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.’ Dwell on this thought today, we are his house’ that is we are God’s people, ‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.’ 1 Peter 2:9-10.