Part 3

Apart from the divine aspect of Jesus’ own wrought-bounty, how else can the nature of His fruitfulness be described? How else does the Word of God portray it? Not surprisingly, the second aspect of His fruitfulness is very closely related to the first: Because our Lord’s fruit is divine, it can therefore be seen as superior. Yes, He bears most-superior fruit!

The many blessed details surrounding our Lord’s superior bounty will be most well-understood as we turn our attention to the Hebrew Epistle. Most scholars recognize this letter as “The Book of Better Things”, or likewise, “The Book of Better Fruit”. The writer of the Hebrew Epistle, most believe it to be Paul, goes to great and exhaustive lengths to give King Jesus the endless honor and glory that are due Him. He does this by expertly contrasting Jesus’ paramount fruitfulness to the far-lesser crop grown upon Judaism.

The apostle Paul was a man quite fitting for such a gruesome task: The Jewish economy was and is a point of much national pride and religious elitism: Even Jesus Himself noted such proud and stubborn resistance (Matt. 3:9; Jn. 8:33). To loosen such a tight grasp would no-doubt require much wisdom, insight, and effort! It’s no wonder, therefore, that Paul was the man God chose for the job. He was uniquely familiar with the varied aspects of the Jewish religion, having grown up in such dogma himself. Before his powerful conversion to Christianity, Paul lived as a Jew, even a Pharisee of the “most straitest sect” (Acts 26:5), and a Hebrew of Hebrews (Phil. 3:5). He was discipled by renowned Jewish scholars, possessed intense confidence in the wisdom of his flesh (Phil. 3:4), and felt great religious zeal for God and His laws (Acts 22:3). Paul’s zeal was so fervent, in fact, that it lead him to persecute any offenders “unto the death” (Phil. 3:6; Deut. 17:7).

Almighty God has wisely capitalized on Paul’s intellect and former profession: He was sent to accredit and defend the claims of Christianity (Acts 22:1), and to pronounce Jesus’ vast preeminence over dead and dying Jewish tradition. Paul bravely met Judaism head-on: He used their own love for religious intellect against them. Line upon line, precept upon precept, from Adam to Moses, Paul rebukes the prideful details of Judaism, and shows us how and why they’re deemed far-less fruitful than the crop grown by Jesus. By the time he’s finished addressing his Hebrew audience, the far-dominant profitability of the Lord Jesus is entirely irrefutable! The Hebrews are given a divine “word of exhortation”: Exhortation towards the better spirituality one finds in Jesus, and the better fruit one may grow upon His better vine (Heb. 13:22; Jn. 15:1). Why should the Hebrew saints return back unto that vine turned toward degeneracy (Jer. 2:21)? Simply said, they should not! Paul showed that to refuse Judaism’s mere outwardly-religious trappings is to, in fact, heal and ripen all before-withered fruit and to realign our attachment to the only true source of harvest! We’ll continue with the very first chapter of Hebrews.

To be continued…