According to Hebrews 12:23, God is the Judge of all. In Hebrews 12:22-24 is a list of the eight positive items to which the New Testament believers have come. The fifth of the eight items is God the Judge of all. God is the Creator and the Lord, the Owner, of all things, and He is just in all things and with all things. As such a God He must keep all things right in His eyes. He must justify the right and condemn the wrong. Hence, He is the Judge of all. In the list of the eight positive items, the item next to God the Judge of all is the spirits of just men who had been made perfect. These just men were the Old Testament saints who had been made perfect, that is, rectified, by God as the Judge of all who rectifies the wrongdoings of His chosen people to make them perfect. Hebrews is a book dealing with the Hebrew believers who were wrong both in their concept concerning God’s New Testament economy and in their act to drift back to the old Judaism. For this, God will judge them (Heb. 10:26-31), to rectify their error that eventually they might be made perfect by God as the Judge of all. Thus they were told in chapter twelve that the very God to whom they had come is the Judge of all. This should have warned them to rectify themselves of their error that they would not need God as the Judge of all to judge them that they might fit in with His justice.
A number of verses in the New Testament indicate that God is the Lord (Matt. 1:20, 22; Acts 3:19-20; Rev. 1:8). God, the almighty One, is the Lord. His being the Lord means that He is the Owner of the universe. We may say that He is the “Landlord” of the whole universe. He is the Ruler, the Authority. What we or others say means nothing, but what God says means everything because He is the Lord. When He says, “Yes,” it means yes, and when He says, “No,” it means no. God is the Lord, the Owner, the Authority.
Hebrews 11:10 indicates that God is the Architect and the Maker of the New Jerusalem. Referring to Abraham, this verse tells us, “He waited for the city which has the foundations, whose Architect and Maker is God.” This is “the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22), “the Jerusalem above” (Gal. 4:26), “the holy city, New Jerusalem” (Rev. 21:2; 3:12), which God has prepared for His people (Heb. 11:16), and the tabernacle of God in which God will dwell with men for eternity (Rev. 21:3). As the patriarchs waited for this city, so we also seek it (Heb. 13:14).
The Greek word rendered “Architect” in Hebrews 11:10 is technites, an artificer, one who does a thing by rules of art; hence, an architect. The Greek word translated “Maker” is demiourgos and literally means one who works for the people. In general usage it came to denote a builder or maker. In Hebrews 11:10 both technites and demiourgos are used of God. The former speaks of God as the Architect, the Designer of the New Jerusalem; the latter, as the actual Maker or Framer of the city.
Some translations of Hebrews 11:10 obscure the fact that God is an Architect, the Architect of the New Jerusalem. Consider the New Jerusalem as it is revealed in the New Testament. Who other than God is capable of designing such a city? Only God as the supreme Architect is able to design it. The New Jerusalem was designed by the eternal, divine Architect.
The person of God is also revealed in the parables of the New Testament. In the parable of the evil husbandman (Matt. 21:33-46) God is the Householder. Concerning this, Matthew 21:33 says, “There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard and put a hedge around it, and dug a winepress in it, and built a tower, and leased it out to husbandmen, and went into another country.” The householder is God, the vineyard is the city of Jerusalem (Isa. 5:1), and the husbandmen are the leaders of the Israelites (Matt. 21:34). In this parable we see that as the Householder God sent His slaves, the prophets. Later, the Householder sent His Son, the Lord Jesus. Eventually, the Householder destroyed the evil husbandmen and leased the vineyard to other husbandmen. This was fulfilled when Titus and his army destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The “other husbandmen” in this parable were the apostles, who took care of the church, the kingdom of God (Matt. 21:41) in the New Testament.
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