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 Fifth Day of Christmas: Every Second Counts

29 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 4:14-5:14

As we saw yesterday, holding fast to our confidence in God is not a solo effort; we need to be exchanging daily encouragement with our brothers and sisters. But that’s not the only place we should be seeking help; we also have Jesus Himself as our High Priest. Like any other High Priest, He was appointed by God from among the people. He has compassion on us who are “ignorant and going astray” because He was one of us. He was tempted in every direction just as we are, with one crucial difference: He didn’t ever give in.

Because He was one of us, God could appoint Jesus as our “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (more about him later). Following the duties of that office Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears” to the Father – think Garden of Gethsemane, here. The Father heard Him, and was able to save Him from death. But He didn’t, and because He didn’t, Jesus “became the author of eternal salvation to those who obey Him.”

I’ve often heard this passage preached in a completely unsympathetic way: “Jesus endured every temptation without sin—what’s wrong with you, ya wimp?!!!” But that’s not how Hebrews presents it. Hebrews acknowledges our weaknesses, assures us that Jesus sympathizes, and orders us to “come boldly to the throne of grace” to get the help we need. You know what “come boldly” looks like? It’s how you go into the E.R. with chest pains or an arterial bleed. You don’t wait demurely in line; you stagger right up to the desk, interrupt everything, and loudly announce your problem, because every second counts. That’s how you come to Jesus. He knows that every second counts, and He stands ready to help. 

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

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Hall of Faith

26 November 2024

This week, I noticed that this will be the 700th post on Full Contact Christianity. It’s been a privilege to serve y’all here for the past 16 years. Thank you for reading!

A lot has changed since that first post in May of 2008. I still teach exegesis, but no longer in a seminary. I still serve a house church, but I also spend Saturday evenings with my homeless neighbors. I practice a trade — bodywork — alongside my ministry these days. A lot has changed in our world, too. Among the many changes, podcasts have become a thing.

Of recent, I got a chance to discuss Hebrews 11 with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries and 2 Peter 3 with Joe Anderson of The Anchor Drop podcast. Hope they’re helpful to you!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Walking through Hebrews

25 April 2023

I’m walking through Hebrews with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries. You can find chapter one here, and the links will be listed under the Media tab as they become available. Interaction in the comments on Youtube is welcome.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

What if it’s more literal than we think?

18 April 2023

Read Hebrews 3.

Go on, I’ll wait.

What is this rest into which the addressees of the book are in danger of not entering?

In American churches, we live downstream from the Great Awakenings, and so we tend to read in terms of individual salvation from hell to heaven when we die. If you read Dillow–and you should–you’ll be introduced to a good case that it’s speaking of entering into heavenly reward when we die.

But what is it about this chapter that suggests we should read it eschatologically at all? The example that the author uses is the Exodus generation. They weren’t headed to heaven; they were headed to Canaan. They didn’t fail to attain heaven and go to hell; they failed to attain Canaan and literally died in the desert. Living in the shadow of 19th-century hymnody, we effortlessly read “Canaan” as heaven, but what is the biblical case that we should read it that way? Is there one?

I’d like to suggest that we–at least experimentally–try reading this passage, with its example of earthly judgment and earthly rest in this life, as if it’s talking about earthly judgment and earthly rest in this life. Go back and read it again with that in mind — see what you think.

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Posted by Tim Nichols