A Blue-Collar Guy with a Whip

27 January 2026

Of recent I found myself discussing immigration policy and the protests thereof with some folks. One of them—not a Christian, as it happens—quoted Matthew 25:40: “And the King will answer and say to them,`Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'” This was presented as a mic-drop moment that required no further comment or argument: of course all Christians should be pro-immigration, legal or not, at all times and under all circumstances, because Jesus.

Perhaps you’ve encountered this kind of argument yourself. Are they right? What does one say to this?

We’ll get to the argument itself shortly, but before we do, there’s something we shouldn’t miss. Here we have someone, not a Christian, arguing in all seriousness that our national policy should be a certain way because that’s what Jesus wants. Or at the very least arguing that I, as a Christian, should support a particular national policy because that’s what Jesus wants.

Now, let me be the first to say that I agree! We, both individually and as a nation, should definitely do the things that Jesus wants. But isn’t this the Christian Nationalism that everybody from PBS to Kevin DeYoung warned us about? Why is the pagan, of all people, both encouraging me to be Christian Nationalist and arguably being a little Christian Nationalist themselves?

This is the sort of thing that you should point out when it comes up in conversation. Having done that, you can then proceed to the argument itself. Concerns about Christian Nationalism aside, does Jesus want us to have unrestricted immigration?

The verse doesn’t quite say that, does it? What it does say is that the way you treat “the least of these” is the way you’re treating God. He takes it that personally. So what should you do? Paul offers some very practical advice: “For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack—that there may be equality. As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.'” (2 Cor. 8:12-15)

So you should live generously. As a person or a church can be generous, a nation might also choose to be generous. But as with personal generosity, so with national generosity: it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have. You can’t give what you ain’t got, in other words.

For example, my martial arts students and I used to run a team with Denver’s Severe Weather Shelter Network. We didn’t have the manpower to run a shelter all winter, but on the really cold nights (below freezing and wet, or below 20 regardless) we would activate the network. In those days, it was actually illegal, if you can believe it, to house people overnight in a church in Englewood city limits (yet another instance of government actively impeding charity). So we would gather people at a site in Englewood to warm up, and then bus them to suburban churches outside city limits for a hot supper and an overnight stay. The goal was to keep everybody safe on the most dangerous nights of the year. We had the manpower and space to do that for about 30 people at a time.

Unfortunately, there were some nights that we had to turn people away, because we didn’t have enough beds. And even when we had enough beds, there were violent offenders we couldn’t serve in that program—made it unsafe for everybody else. It wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t help everybody, but we did what we were able to do.

These people we couldn’t help…why didn’t I just bring them home with me? Because my home ceases to be a safe place for my wife if I have a couple meth-addicted rapists crashing on my couch. I can only do what I can do. And you know what? Everybody kind of understands this. In all the guilt-tripping I’ve seen in life—and I’m a pastor’s kid; I’ve seen a lot—nobody has ever condemned me for keeping my home a safe place for my wife. My home has a primary mission, and everybody understands these sorts of things when we’re talking about their own living room.

What people seem not to grasp is that the same thing is true for a nation. A nation also has a mission, and finite resources to accomplish that mission with. The United States is presently a place that people flee to rather than flee from, for which all thanksgiving. If we become inhospitable and hostile to everybody that ain’t us, and we just put up barbed wire at the borders and don’t let anybody in, that’s sin, and it would have to be reckoned with. But that’s not really the problem we have right now.

At the moment, we’re confronting the opposite problem: we cannot assimilate an infinite number of people fleeing from the most violent and tribalist places on earth without becoming just another place that people flee from. If we want to remain a place that people flee to, we have to decide how many people we can assimilate, and how we’re going to actually assimilate them. That number’s not zero, but it’s not infinite either–and since it’s not infinite, we have immigration laws and the law enforcement that goes with them.

Now that doesn’t mean that whoever happens to be doing that job in this moment in this country is getting everything right all the time. We need not believe that ICE is administered from heaven and peopled entirely with seraphim to believe that immigration enforcement is necessary. And unless you slept right through the entire Biden administration, you can’t possibly be unaware that we have a major problem with illegal immigration. So on the one hand, the fact that immigration enforcement is necessary doesn’t mean it’s being done well; on the other, we should not be surprised or disappointed if we find that we’re in a season of vigorous enforcement.

Which brings us, alas, to Minneapolis. Having discovered in the wake of the Good shooting that interfering with actual ICE operations might have real consequences, protestors targeted a church instead. Now, judging from the video, these folks could stand to spend more time in church! Perhaps next time they’ll learn to listen more than they talk (which is a good rule of thumb for church, even for preachers. Especially for preachers, actually.) Why this particular church? The protestors had learned that one of the pastors of the church also has a day job working as a supervisor for ICE. Feeling that these two roles are a moral contradiction, and moved by compassion for an erring brother (James 5:19-20) and seeking his restoration in a spirit of gentleness (Galatians 6:1), they respectfully sought reasoned dialogue…

…oh wait. No, protestors invaded a church service chanting slogans, shouting down the speaker, and generally making a nuisance of themselves and seeking to intimidate worshipers, which was the point. “But wait, Tim,” you’ll say, “didn’t Jesus kind of do the same thing–or worse–in the Temple?”

Why yes He did. Twice, in fact. And then again, no He didn’t. Let’s look closer.

The Second Temple religious authorities were running a racket, and everybody knew it. According to the Levitical law, when you came up to make an offering, the sacrificial animal had to be without blemish. The original intent of the law was for you to bring your own animal, but of course if you didn’t have an unblemished lamb (ox, goat, turtledove), it was permissible for you to buy one from someone who did. When you brought the animal, the priest would inspect it to ensure it was truly unblemished and fit for sacrifice, and then the ceremonies could proceed. With me so far?

Well, over time, here’s what happened. The Temple authorities decided to provide for sale (for the worshipers’ convenience, of course) pre-approved, unblemished animals, available right there on the Temple grounds. Of course, all that pre-approving and keeping animals unblemished takes effort, so you paid handsomely for the service. And since your homegrown animal competes with that lucrative enterprise, what do you think the odds are of your animal passing inspection?

But we’re not done yet. In the sacred precincts of the Temple, of course only sacred money may be used, so you have to buy your pre-approved sheep with Temple shekels. For your convenience, there are money-changers right there on Temple premises where you can exchange your everyday money for the sacred Temple shekels you need to buy that pre-approved sheep. For a reasonable fee, of course.

Long story short, these guys are getting rich fleecing the worshipers, but it gets worse.

The whole operating principle of Old Covenant worship was “draw near to God, but not too near.” Temple was therefore built in a series of layers; who you are determines how close to the center you can come.

  • At the center, the Holy of Holies, the dwelling of God Himself. Only the High Priest enters there, and then only once a year, on the Day of Atonement.
  • Just before that, the Holy Place, which housed the altar of incense, the table of showbread, and the golden lampstand. Only specifically consecrated priests could enter that far.
  • The next layer outward housed the laver where the priests washed and the altar of burnt offering, where (only circumcised Jewish male) worshipers would present their sacrifices to God.
  • The next layer out was the Court of the Women, where the women would come to pray–and that was as close as they could come.
  • The next layer out from that was the Court of the Gentiles, which was specifically intended to be a place where all nations could come approach Yahweh and offer up worship on Mount Zion. The Court of the Gentiles was as close as a Gentile was allowed to come to the physical, earthly dwelling place of God.

Guess where the Temple authorities housed their whole money-changing-and-animal-bazaar? That’s right — the Court of the Gentiles. Imagine being a God-fearing Gentile: you come up to the Temple to pray, and the one place you’re allowed to be has been turned into a crooked flea market! There you stand, up to your ankles in manure, trying to pray with swindlers hard at work all around you. Do you see why Jesus quoted the prophets as He did? “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it ‘a den of thieves!'” (Isaiah 56:7, Jeremiah 7:11)

So Jesus trashed the place. Twice. Once at the beginning of His ministry, and again at the end—fitting bookends for a life that was going to put the whole enterprise out of business for good.

Returning to the Minneapolis question: did Jesus interrupt a worship service? Not a bit of it! He interrupted the racketeers who were impeding the worship! If we apply this story to the Minneapolis fiasco, the protestors are not Jesus;the protestors are the money-changers. The part of Jesus would be played by a brawny blue-collar guy who drove the protestors out of the building with a whip so the people could worship in peace. A cop with a taser would be an acceptable substitute, I suppose.

Maybe next time…

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Posted by Tim Nichols

And the Rest of DeYoung’s Six Questions

20 January 2026

For reasons I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m taking up Kevin DeYoung’s Six Questions for Christian Nationalists. I tackled the first one in that post, and got sidetracked — or did I? — talking about the rhetoric of that one. That turned out to be a discussion unto itself, so we’re handling the rest of them here. To review, here are the questions:

  1. Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
  2. When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
  3. What is the purpose of civil government?
  4. What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
  5. Was the First Amendment a mistake?
  6. What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person? Based on how God talks to nations, always. Now of course we’re using a metaphor here; a nation is not a person. But a nation can sin; Daniel and Ezra both confess the sins of their nations, and the prophets regularly take whole nations to task for their sins. A nation really isn’t just a collection of individuals; there’s authority in the entity. When we went to war in WWII, it wasn’t just a collection of Americans who all decided to grab a rifle out of the closet and go across the pond to pot a German or three. America went to war. The war is just or not; the treaty that ends it is just or not; we keep it or not. All these are things the nation does, and they have moral qualities.

Likewise, the nation has internal responsibilities, and those responsibilities include limitations. We can’t make certain sins illegal, because they’re beyond the province of the civil magistrate (lust, hatred, covetousness). We must make other sins illegal, because they are within the province of the civil magistrate, like adultery, murder (including in utero), or theft.

What is the purpose of civil government? Paul says the civil magistrate is God’s servant (diakonos) to be a reward to good and a terror to evil. The one time God ever laid out a whole system of law, it was in Torah. God did not say that system should spread to all the Gentile nations, but He did say that the nations would see it in action and be impressed by the wisdom of it. God institutes multiple authorities (family, civil, ecclesial), each with their separate responsibilities and powers.

What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion? Solomon built the Temple and dedicated it; he didn’t serve as a priest in it. The civil magistrate should never endorse a false religion, should be visibly devoted to the true religion, and should have the sort of public space that the true religion cultivates. Ultimately, every single person in the civil government should be an orthodox Christian, not because there’s some sort of religious test for office, but because every single person in the world should be an orthodox Christian. That’s what the Great Commission means, and it’s high time we embraced it.

Was the First Amendment a mistake? Of course not. Some of the uses to which it’s been put certainly have been, though. We’ve had some absurdly broad readings of the establishment clause (e.g., pretending it requires a federal judge to be officially agnostic on the question of whether God has spoken in the Ten Commandments) and some absurdly narrow readings of the free exercise clause (e.g., pretending that covid panic justified closing churches but not BLM rallies).

What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America? Having begun with a trick question, DeYoung is ending the same way. The American political order was historically unprecedented, and he knows it. It was an experiment, widely acknowledged as such at the time, and continues to be widely acknowledged. (For evidence of this claim, if you need it, Google “the American experiment” and have a look at the 575,000 results.)

There’s no reason to think a more Christian America is going to morph into something we can find in a history book. Our past has lessons worth mining, and there have been some wrong turns that we should repent of — taking the Ten Commandments out of the courthouse comes to mind — but we’re headed to the New Jerusalem! You can’t ignore the rearview mirror, but “Eyes on the road!” is an expression for a reason — you gotta look where you’re going. Our goal is to get closer to the New Jerusalem within the framework we’ve been providentially given, not to recapture some bygone age.

DeYoung is, in the main, a grounded and sensible guy, and his work is often helpful. I hope that this reflection on his questions will be helpful to you.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

That First Question

13 January 2026

Christian Nationalism has gotten to be enough of a talking point that even I am speaking to it; it has come to this. I commend to your attention Kevin DeYoung’s Six Questions for Christian Nationalists, but not particularly because I’m a fan. Beginning by talking about how he could almost be a Christian nationalist (but not quite), DeYoung positions himself as the loyal opposition, the thoughtful friend who’s just raising some things that more impetuous voices maybe haven’t thought of. By most accounts, he’s eminently qualified to be just such a voice: frequently grounded, charitable, and quite thoughtful.

Which makes his performance all the more disappointing.

While I haven’t felt a need to embroider “Christian Nationalist” on the back of my jacket or anything, I’ve certainly been accused of being one, and I’ve a bunch of friends who cheerfully cop to it. So it seems like something worth speaking to. Without further ado, here are the questions:

  1. Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
  2. When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
  3. What is the purpose of civil government?
  4. What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
  5. Was the First Amendment a mistake?
  6. What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

I’ll take up questions 2-6 in another post, because it turns out that first question deserves a whole lot of consideration.

Antisemitism, racism, and Nazism are sin, and not the subtle kind that takes grey hair and decades of walking with God to see. All three of them are big, ugly, obvious violations of very basic biblical ethics. If you’re feeling like antisemites, racists, or Nazis might “kind of have a point,” I suggest prayer, fasting, and several gallons of brain bleach. Of course, all three terms have been badly debased in current discourse; in their slur-from-left-of-center usage, they apply to anybody to the right of Trotsky, especially if he’s winning an argument. That’s another discussion; here I’m assuming the real definitions of all three terms. Which is assuming quite a lot, but let that go for now.

With that said, why a whole blog post about the question? Let’s look at it again: Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?

Notice anything odd about this? I see two things that concern me. The first is the rhetorical strategy of leading with this question. The assumption none-too-subtly embedded here is that the mere designation “Christian nationalist” implies some sort of legacy of antisemitism, racism, or Nazism which must be dealt with. If a person is a Christian nationalist, then we should immediately check for those other things too — or so DeYoung would have us believe.

Pardon me, schoolmarm, but who sez? This purported legacy would be news to the Armenians, who were the first to become a Christian nation in A.D. 301. It would be a real shock to the Kingdom of Aksum (in modern-day Ethiopia), which became the second Christian nation shortly thereafter, in the 320s. That’s where Christian nationalism got its start: Asia and Africa. When, exactly, did the idea of a Christian nation acquire antisemitic/racist/Nazi connotations? Or did it ever?

I think this is bald assumption on DeYoung’s part, and a particularly odd assumption given his admission that the term “Christian nationalism” has no single accepted definition. The term is being applied to everybody from George Washington to Randall Terry to pastors who just think America should stop doing things that make God mad. Which is a good idea, come to think of it. What is it about that that somehow suggests antisemitism? Nothing, that’s what — which means DeYoung is just indulging in a little old-fashioned guilt-by-association smear here. Balls.

“Come on, Tim,” you’ll say. “Surely you’re overthinking this. It’s just a question. You can just say you’re against those things and move on.”

Which brings us to the second issue. Look at the question again: Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism? Consulting a dictionary, I find that “renounce” means to give up something once held, to reject something once believed, to repudiate an authority once followed. In other words, “Do you renounce antisemitism, etc.?” is the equivalent of “Have you stopped beating your wife?” I never held to any of that bilge; I have no need to renounce it. DeYoung thinks Christian nationalists need to renounce these things. What’s he trying to say?

Kevin DeYoung may not be doing this entirely consciously — I don’t know his heart, after all, just what he said — but he’s far too educated and articulate not to know what the words mean. What he’s doing with his very first question is positioning Christian Nationalism as necessarily connected to antisemitism, racism, and Nazism in some undefined way. Then he generously offers the particular person answering the question an opportunity to repent of their associations. “Why yes, Kevin, I have stopped beating my wife” is the price of admission to even have the rest of the conversation.

This is a clinic in well-constructed, if cheap, rhetoric. I commend it as an example worthy of study by all rhetoricians. The mechanics of the smear are subtle; the effect is anything but. It is a verbal act of war, and he’s employing it against his brothers.

Kevin DeYoung should renounce his unjustified smear tactics. And yes, I meant renounce.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

You, Naively Dead

12 January 2026

A cop of my acquaintance once told me that most people don’t really go all-out when they’re “resisting arrest.” The way he described it, normal people have a kind of internal governor that kicks in when they know they screwed up. Sure, they’ll take a swing to save face, or try to get away, but at the end of the day they know they deserve to be in trouble, and it shows. There are, he said, two* major exceptions: hardened criminals with nothing to lose, and spoiled rich kids who simply can’t believe that a lowly cop has the right to lay hands on them. That spoiled rich kid tends to get really hurt, because he escalates without any appreciation for the consequences.

Various voices are encouraging you to be that spoiled rich kid. They want you to think that you can decide for yourself, right on the sidewalk, what a specific law enforcement officer is allowed to do. What orders they can give. Whether their agency’s jurisdiction requires your obedience.

That’s not how our system—or any legal system—works. In the moment, you comply under protest, and adjudicate the matter later in court. Trying to fight or flee is how you win an award of the Darwin variety. Look, I’m maybe better equipped than average for such an adventure. Against a handful of LEOs, at a moment’s notice, with whatever I got in my pockets that day? Forget it. I would not expect to survive. Whatever is going on, if it’s not worth that, I’m complying on the sidewalk, and we can sort it out in court later.

Should it be that way? Probably yes, but who cares? That’s a whole separate conversation. Lots of things should be some way. Healthcare should be transparently priced. Home builders should be allowed to build what the market wants. Unicorns should frolic in the median along the highway. The courtroom is a fine place for addressing what should be; on the sidewalk, we need to deal with what is.

The voices encouraging you to do a dumb on the sidewalk are knowingly putting you in harm’s way. I repeat, this is not an accident. You, naively dead, are politically useful. Your friends, radicalized by your untimely demise when you were “Only trying to [fill in whatever platitude]” are even more useful.

Me, I just don’t wanna go to your funeral yet. Please be an adult about this, and don’t play stupid games with use-of-arms professionals.

*A couple of LEO friends suggest a third category: people with particular kinds of mental health issues.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Epiphany: Joining the Dance

6 January 2026

I love Epiphany. Christmastide is a celebration of the Divine Word becoming flesh, with all that entails. But in those first couple years, only a few people knew, all of them Jews: Mary and Joseph, of course, Elizabeth and Zacharias, Simeon and Anna, some shepherds. That’s pretty much it. At Epiphany, we celebrate the good news going to the Gentiles, to the astrologers, to the world beyond the “known world” of the Roman Empire. 

1400 years before Jesus was born, Balaam (another Gentile prophet) gave a prophetic word: “A star will rise out of Jacob.” In 586 B.C., the people and treasures of Israel, including their scriptures, were carried away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. There Daniel and the three Hebrew children—vocal devotees of the God of Israel—became leaders among the Magi, a leadership that survived the fall of Babylon and the rise of the Persian empire. About a hundred years after that, a Hebrew girl named Hadassa became Esther, the queen of Persia, once again bringing the Jews to official attention. And nearly 500 years later, a star appeared in the East, bringing the Magi to Bethlehem, and here we are: the Divine Word became flesh. Blasphemy to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks, and sedition to the Romans, but it happened all the same.

The very fact that such a thing is even possible demonstrates the central promise of Christianity: that we human beings, just as we are, can partake of the divine nature, just as it is, without any fudging, equivocation, or dismal compromises. Any and all of the resources of heaven—whatever you might need to face the natural and supernatural challenges of your life—will fit into a human being.

We know this, because it has already happened. And when Jesus proved it possible, He also invited you to join Him in the dance. Want in? Ask, and it will be given to you, like the Man said.

If you’ve enjoyed these reflections on Hebrews over the past 12 days, you might want to hear the Hebrews Overview that concludes my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Twelfth Day of Christmas: Every Beggar’s Hand an Altar

5 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 13

If we really can go into the throne room of heaven, what do we do there? Up until now, the whole book has focused on one activity: ask for help! Writing to people who are tired, worn out, and struggling to endure very trying circumstances, the author focuses on that first. But there’s more. 

Before we get to that, we’re given some very practical reminders about what endurance looks like: brotherly love and hospitality, especially toward strangers and imprisoned brothers, taking good care of your marriage, placing high value on contentment, trusting God to protect us, minding our spiritual leaders. And lastly, don’t get preoccupied with weird arguments about food purity. 

That seems an odd way to finish that section, but it leads right into a discussion of eating from the altar. See, not everything that happened on the altar was a sacrifice for sin; there were also peace offerings that were a meal you ate with God. It was an important part of fellowship with God under the old covenant. As followers of Jesus the superior Priest of a superior covenant, we have superior means of fellowship; those who are still serving the obsolete earthly tabernacle have no right to what we can now do. What is that?

To understand the answer, we go back to the sin offering: the bodies of the sin offering animals were burned outside the camp. Jesus therefore suffered outside the city; we go outside the city to Him, rejected as He was rejected, knowing that we have no continuing city on earth, and seeking the heavenly Jerusalem. Through Jesus—our High Priest who entered God’s sanctuary as our Forerunner—”let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” There’s no longer a pin on the map locating the spot where heaven meets earth in some particular building. You are the pin on the map. You have the authority to call heaven down, wherever you happen to be standing. How do you do it? Some elaborate ritual? Nope. Every praise and thanksgiving to God is a fellowship offering, and heaven meets you, right where you’re standing, to receive it. Every beggar’s hand is an altar when you share with him in Jesus’ name. Every good deed you do, no matter how slight, is a sacrifice that God receives in His throne room, which meets you wherever you’re doing it. 

This God-given ability—dare I call it a magical power?— does not depend on unique clothing, specially formulated oils and incense, specific furniture or buildings or elaborate rituals of any kind. God doesn’t have any problem with those things; He used them all at one time. But those were the trappings of an earthly city, and we are the ambassadors of a better—a heavenly—city, wielding a more powerful magic. Let’s be about it.

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out the Hebrews 13 episode of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Eleventh Day of Christmas: On Sapphire Pavement

4 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12 starts with a claim that we’re surrounded by the witnesses of Hebrews 11. We tend to think of them as above us in heaven, not all around us. Ever wonder why “surrounded”? That question gets answered, but first there’s some instructions: put aside everything that interferes with your endurance. Look to Jesus to fend off discouragement. Know that present difficulties are like the wind sprints a coach makes you run—it’s training. Accept the training. Pursue peace, look out for each other, watch out for bitterness. 

And then we get the answer: we are surrounded by witnesses because we “have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire [Sinai]…But you have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.” Notice: “you have come,” not “will come.” This is not a promise that we’ll be in heaven one day; it’s a claim that we’ve already been there. What could that possibly mean?

This is what Jesus bought us in the Incarnation. God became man; lived as one of us lived and died as the last sacrifice for sin, was raised and ascended to heaven as our Forerunner, where He sits today at God’s right hand in the Holy of Holies of the heavenly tabernacle. Earthbound and embodied as we are, the Incarnate Christ brings us with Him. When we draw near to God seeking help, where are we? 

In the heavenly tabernacle, that’s where. In the throne room of God Himself; we go there whenever we draw near for help. We go there whenever we make our offerings (we’ll get to that tomorrow). When we do these things—even something as simple as calling out to God for help with a screaming toddler—the roof opens up, the walls evaporate, and we are standing in front of God’s throne, surrounded by the entire company of heaven, the angels, and all the saints who have gone before us. That’s where we really are. If we can’t see it, well, we walk by faith, not by sight. 

This is what the Incarnation bought us: you, in this body, embedded in this life, can stand on the sapphire pavement before God Himself in heaven—boldly, let us not forget—and ask for help. And you can expect to get it, because your High Priest is sympathetic. So ask.

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out the Hebrews 12 episode of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Tenth Day of Christmas: Still No More Sacrifice!

3 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 10:19-11:40

Since there is no more sacrifice for sin, since Jesus put paid to all of that forever, what’s stopping us from going into the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God? Nothing, that’s what! So now we draw near boldly, trusting His faithfulness to His promise. Part of that life is making a point to be with God’s people so that we can encourage one another. 

At the time and place this was written (Jerusalem, c. A.D. 60), that was bold advice. The Hebrew church was greatly persecuted, and publicly associating with Christians would bring the persecution down on your head, too. It would have been much easier to go back to the Temple service, and forget about the whole Jesus thing. After all, God built the Temple, too, right? We can just serve God by offering sacrifices there, and life will be so much easier. 

Nope. There’s no more sacrifice for sin, remember? Jesus finished it. If you turn your back on Jesus to go back to that, (1) the sacrifices don’t help, because that magic doesn’t work anymore, and (2) you face God’s judgment for rejecting His Son. Again, remember the time and place: Jesus promised the destruction of the Temple before that generation was over. Clock’s ticking. Now anybody who’d just ignored Moses’ Law on a serious matter would be stoned to death—not the most humane way to go, maybe, but pretty quick. If you knowingly, willfully disregarded this warning and went back to the Temple, then you got caught up in the Jewish revolt of A.D. 68. The Christians fled the city; they knew the revolt was doomed. The Temple believers stayed to fight—a slow death by starvation in the siege at best, and a crucifixion when the city fell at worst. Titus lined the roads in Judaea with crosses: days of constant torture eventually ending in death by thirst or asphyxia, whichever came first. 

How terrible would it be to have endured decades of persecution as a Christian only to give up at the last minute just in time to catch that judgment? So the writer urges them to keep trusting God and remain faithful, and sets before them a series of examples. Some of them trusted God and triumphed in this life; others trusted God and “wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, benign destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.” What they all have in common is that God is allowing them to wait to receive His final consolation, because He is giving us a chance to join them. So follow the Man Jesus, who lived His life trusting God. 

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out my Hebrews podcast episodes on The Fourth Warning Passage and The Hall of Faith with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Ninth Day of Christmas: Sit Down; There’s No More Sacrifice

2 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 9:1-10:18

As we saw yesterday, the second half of Hebrews’ main point (8:1-2) is that Jesus ministers in the heavenly tabernacle, the reality that Moses copied in Israel’s tabernacle. Even the earthly copy had a whole set of furniture and services, Hebrews says, but “of these things we cannot now speak in detail.” (That’s an invitation if there ever was one! If you want to read more, the description starts in Exodus 25. Notice that among all that furniture, there’s nowhere to sit. The work is never done!)

Once the furnishings were consecrated, then the sacrifices began in earnest. There’s a whole litany of services, pre-eminent among them the annual Day of Atonement sacrifice. No one ever entered the Holiest Place in the tabernacle, except on this day, when the High Priest would go in to present the blood of the sacrifice and cover the nation’s sins for the year. In that very service, the Holy Spirit showed the planned obsolescence of the Levitical order: the sins were only covered (not taken away) and only for a year. Next year, you had to do it all again…. 

…until Christ—”pleased as Man with men to dwell”—came into the heavenly tabernacle. He too bore the blood of a sacrifice, not of bulls and goats, but of a sinless man. Administering a superior priesthood in a better sanctuary, He offered the final sacrifice: His own innocent blood. The innocent man died for guilty mankind’s sin, and that’s the end of the matter. The stain is gone, the debt settled. And then Jesus sat down at God’s right hand, until His enemies are made His footstool (Psalm 110 again!). Remember how I said there’s nowhere to sit in the tabernacle? That’s not quite true. There is the Mercy Seat—the top of the Ark of the Covenant, between the cherubim, where God Himself sits. “Come and sit at My right hand” indeed! 

Jesus sits, as no priest did before him, because He fully and finally settled the matter. Fulfilling Jeremiah’s New Covenant promise, God says, “Their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more.” When that happens, when Jesus puts paid to all the sin forever, there is no more sacrifice for sin. There’s nothing you must do—or can do—to expiate your sins and failings. It’s all been done. It’s over. That’s the best possible news.

If you’d like to hear more about this section of Hebrews, check out Episode Ten and Episode Eleven of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Eighth Day of Christmas: Incarnate God in the Heavenly Tabernacle

1 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 8

Anytime a speaker says, “Now here’s the main point…,” pay attention. The main point of Hebrews is right here: We have this High Priest in Jesus, seated at God’s right hand, ministering in the heavenly tabernacle.  The first part of that is not a surprise; it’s what the whole first half of the book was about. But…heavenly tabernacle? That hasn’t come up before. 

The hints are there in Exodus. God brings Moses and the elders of Israel up the mountain, and they see God standing on a pavement of sapphire stone, and eat in His presence (24:9-11). Then God takes Moses further up the mountain, gives him detailed instructions on the tabernacle furniture, and concludes with the instruction Hebrews quotes: “See to it that you make them according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.” In other words, Moses didn’t just hear instruction, he saw the real tabernacle in heaven. When he had the earthly tabernacle made, he was copying what he’d seen. 

And Jesus, who couldn’t enter the earthly copy of the sanctuary under the Law because He’s from the wrong tribe, serves as High Priest of an older, superior priesthood in the real tabernacle—the one God built, not the earthly copy—administering a new covenant, as the prophet Jeremiah once promised. The old covenant of external laws was always meant to go obsolete, to make way for a covenant that could transform the human heart. This—the complete renovation of the human heart—is what Jesus came to do. And He succeeded.

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out Episode Nine of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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