Hebrews and the Atonement

Hebrews is often read as highlighting the death and exaltation of Jesus while downplaying or ignoring his resurrection. The event of Jesus’s crucifixion is assumed to be the sacrifice whereby he made atonement. When, therefore, the author says that Jesus passed through the heavens as high priest (Heb 4:14), appears now before the Father in the heavenly tabernacle, and offers himself there (Heb 9:24–26), this exaltation language tends to be interpreted as part of a metaphor that draws on the Jewish Day of Atonement in order to explain the soteriological significance of the historical event of Jesus’s death. Such an interpretation comes into question, however, if Jesus’s bodily resurrection is an important assumption for Hebrews’ larger argument about Jesus’s atoning work. Assuming the resurrection, Hebrews’ account of Jesus’s sacrifice and atoning work aligns more coherently with a Pentateuchal account of covenant and the process of Levitical sacrifice than modern interpreters have typically noticed. Jesus now serves in the heavenly holy of holies mediating and maintaining the new covenant by way of his ongoing high-priestly intercession for his people.