Morning Manna | Hebrews 10:19 | Boldness

Hebrews 10:19 – Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,

When you do a word search on boldness, you find that it was a trait of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many times, He would speak openly or say things plainly—both words translated from the same Greek term used here. It is no surprise, then, that boldness was also a mark of His apostles. The word appears 21 times throughout Acts and the epistles.

Solomon said, The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion (Proverbs 28:1). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our Lord is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah and that He demonstrated boldness in every aspect of His life. He was bold in the face of ridicule, bold in suffering, bold in betrayal, and bold in prayer. And those who have been made righteous in Him exhibit the same boldness—not just the boldness of a lion, but the boldness of the Lion, Jesus Christ Himself.

The book of Hebrews doesn’t just command or encourage boldness; it instructs us on how to be bold. Notice how our verse begins: Therefore. That word always signals us to look back at what has already been said. When you see it, the Holy Ghost is saying, “Based on what has been established, here is the conclusion.” So what has been established?

Read the beginning of chapter 10, and you’ll see that Jesus has paid our sin debt once and for all, sat down at the right hand of God, written His law in our hearts, removed our sins from remembrance, and perfected us in His final atonement. That is the foundation of our boldness!

Boldness is not a personality trait for the Christian—it is the logical response to the finished work of Christ. It is not boastful pride, but a confident assurance that no matter how great my sins were, they were not greater than my Lord’s perfection. My confidence and boldness are not rooted in myself, my works, or my worthiness, but entirely in Jesus.

This is the boldness we see in Stephen as he preaches his last sermon. The boldness of Peter at Pentecost. The boldness of Paul before Agrippa. It is the same boldness Christ displayed before the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod, and even before God the Father. This boldness is the boldness of Christ.

And where does this boldness lead us? To enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus! Imagine how shocking this must have sounded to the Hebrew mind. Under the Old Covenant, only the high priest could enter the holiest place, and only once a year—under strict requirements of purification and sacrifice. For an ordinary man to attempt such a thing would have been not just bold but presumptuous and foolish.

Yet in Christ, we have not only permission but boldness to enter into the very presence of God! The work of Jesus on our behalf—His perfecting and sanctifying us—is so complete that we are granted access to God’s throne, not as second-rate citizens, but as sons and daughters crying, Abba, Father!

To drive this point home, let’s look at verse 22: Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

Who Jesus is and what He has done should embolden us to draw near to God—not with hesitation, but with full assurance. Our confidence is not in ourselves but in Him. Even when our own conscience accuses us, we rest in the justification of our Savior. He bore the just punishment for our sins, and even the remembrance of sin has been put behind us. Our outward life, once stained by sin, has been washed, cleansed, and sanctified.

When we fix our eyes on Him—when He is our confidence—we are emboldened to pray, emboldened to preach, emboldened to claim His promises and live in them, no matter how unworthy we once were.

Dear friend, consider who Jesus is and what He has done and “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having an high priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”