A Twilight Musing

Recently, our daughter received an unexpected legacy through the will of a deceased friend of the family.  She was of course delighted to receive it and considered herself blessed by God through our friend.  But the pleasure was tempered by the fact that the gift came as a result of our friend’s death.  Her response reminded me of a passage in the book of Hebrews that speaks of Christ’s death activating a kind of will that bequeaths certain benefits to His disciples.

Therefore [Christ] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. (Heb. 9:15-17)

 Accordingly, when we partake of the Lord’s Supper, which commemorates the death of Christ, we also remember that we are receiving the benefits, or the legacy of His death.

The chief and most overarching of these benefits is, as the writer of Hebrews notes, deliverance from our transgressions and the cleansing of our consciences “from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14). We are thus enabled to “work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord [we] will receive the inheritance as [our] reward” (Eph 3:23-24).  The beauty of the bequest spoken of here is that we will inherit, not as bondservants, but as children, having “received the Spirit of adoption as sons [and daughters], by whom we cry, ’Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:15-17).

Another bequest coming to us as a result of Jesus’ death and resurrection is the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus said to His disciples, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you,” and He “will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:7, 13).  In addition, the Spirit will intercede for us with the Father (Rom. 8:26), and “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in [us], he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to [our] mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in [us]” (Rom. 8:11).  Moreover, the Spirit seals us for salvation and is “the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Eph. 1:13-14).

Also, as we inherited from the First Adam the penalty of death because of our sin, so through the death of the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, we have received “the free gift of righteousness” and are thereby “reconciled to God” (Rom. 5:17, 10; see whole passage, vv. 8-21).  How glorious that our inheritance through Christ supersedes our inheritance from the fallen Adam!

Finally, our legacy from Christ gives us citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven, for God has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:12-14).  Like Abraham, we recognize that we are pilgrims on this earth and long for “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16).  We share with Jesus a kingdom not of this world (see John 18:36), and through Him we have become “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (I Pet. 2:9).

So let us partake of the Lord’s Supper with appropriate understanding of the gifts bequeathed to us by His death.  We are privileged legatees of the Son of God.

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.