Christ Our Contemporary: Paul and Hebrews on Participation in Christ

Abstract

Participation in Christ in Paul's epistles, and the heavenly priesthood of the risen and ascended Christ in Hebrews, are focal points in recent NT scholarship. This essay explores four aspects of contemporaneity with Christ in Paul and Hebrews. First, trinitarian and incarnational substructures are integral to contemporaneity with Christ, because the Spirit unites us with the eternal Son who shared in humanity's mortal condition that we might share in his life. Second, Christ's self-revelation in Scripture is an ever-contemporaneous divine speech that slays and makes alive its hearers; third, those who partake of Christ become participants in Christ's prophetic, priestly, and royal vocation; last, we become contemporaries with Christ as we by faith behold and contemplate invisible, eschatological, heavenly realities—fixing our eyes on Christ himself—who becomes manifested by the Spirit as the means of grace form the church into the image of Christ via faith, hope, and love.