Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews Part 2

Does not this tell us that the words (ver. 3), "It is necessary that He too should have something to offer," are to be explained not of a continuous historical procedure (to which idea, by the way, the aorist verb [Greek: prosenenke] would hardly be appropriate), but as the statement of a principle in terms of time? The "necessity" is, not that He should have something to offer now, and to-morrow, and always, but that the matter and act of offering should belong to Him. And they do so belong, in principle and effect, for priestly purposes, by having been once and for ever handled and performed by Him. His "need" is, not to be always offering, but to be always an Offerer. He meets that need by being for ever the Priest who had Himself to offer, and who offered Himself, and who now dispenses from His sacerdotal seat the benedictions based upon the sacrifice of which He is for ever the once accepted Offerer.

Only thus viewed, I venture to say, can this phrase be read in its full harmony with the whole Epistle. "He hath somewhat to offer," in the sense that He has for ever the grand sacerdotal qualification of being an Offerer who, having executed that function, now bears to all eternity its _character_. But He is not therefore always executing the function.

Otherwise He must descend from His throne. But His enthronement, His session, is a fact of His present position as important and characteristic as possible in this whole Epistle.

Aaron was not always offering. But he was always an offerer. On the morrow of the Atonement Day he was as much an offerer as on the day itself. All through the year, even until the next Atonement, he was still an offerer. He exercised his priestly functions at all times because, in principle, he "had somewhat to offer" in its proper time.

_Our_ High Priest knows only one Atonement Day, and it is over for ever.

And His Israel have it for their privilege and glory not to be "serving unto an example and shadow" of even His work and office, but to be going always, daily and hourly, direct to Him in His perfect Priesthood, in which they always "have" Him, and to be always abiding, in virtue of Him, "boldly," "with confidence," in the very presence of the Lord.

Then the chapter moves forward (verses 6 and following) to consider the relation between our High Priest and _the Covenant_ of which He is the Mediator. Here begins one of the great themes of the Epistle. It will recur again and again, till at last we read (xiii. 20) of "the blood of the Covenant eternal."

This pregnant subject is introduced by a solemn reference to the "promises upon which has been legislated," legally inst.i.tuted, [Greek: nenomothetetai], this new compact between G.o.d and man. The reference is to the thirtieth chapter of Jeremiah, from which an extract is here made at length. There the prophet, in the name of his G.o.d, explicitly foretells the advent of what we may reverently call a new departure in the revealed relations between Jehovah and His people. At Sinai He had engaged to bless them, yet under conditions which left them to discover the total inability of their own sin-stricken wills to meet His holy while benignant will. They failed, they broke the pact, and judgment followed them of course. But now another order is to be taken. Their King and Lawgiver, without for one moment ceasing to be such, will also undertake another function, wholly new, as regards the method of covenant. He will place Himself so upon their side as Himself to readjust and empower their affections and their wills. He "will put His laws into their mind and write them upon their hearts," and "they shall all know Him," with the knowledge which is life eternal. And further, as the antecedent to all this, in order to open the path to it, to place them where this wonderful blessing can rightly reach and fill them, their King and Lawgiver pledges Himself to a _previous_ pardon, full and unreserved; "Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more."

They shall be set before Him in an acceptance as full as if they had never fallen. And then, not as the condition to this but as the sequel to it, He will so deal with them, internally and spiritually, that they shall will His will and live His law. There shall be no mechanical compulsion; "their mind," "their hearts," full as ever of personality and volition, shall be the matter acted upon. But there shall be a gracious and prevailing influence, deciding their spiritual action along its one true line; "I will put," "I will write."

This is the new, the better, the everlasting Covenant. It is placed here in the largest and most decisive contrast over against the old covenant, the compact of Sinai, "written and engraven in stones" (2 Cor. iii. 7).

That compact had done its mysterious work, in convincing man of his sinful incapacity to meet the will of G.o.d. Now emerges its wonderful ant.i.thesis, in which man is first entirely pardoned, with a pardon which means acceptance, peace, re-instatement into the home and family of G.o.d, and then and therefore is internally transfigured by his Father's power into a being who loves his Father's law.

What the prophet foretold was claimed by the Lord Christ Himself, as fulfilled in His Person and His work, when He took the cup of blessing, at the feast of the new Pa.s.sover of the new Israel, and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." And what He so claimed His great apostle rejoiced in, when he wrote to Corinth (2 iii. 6, etc.) of the "ministry of the new covenant," the covenant of the Spirit, of life, of glory. And here the same truth is stated again, and in strong connexion again with Him who is at once its Sacrifice, its Surety, its Mediator; the Cause, and Guardian, and Giver of all its blessings. He is such that it is such; ours is "_so great_ a salvation," because of so great and wonderful a High Priest, the possessor in very deed of "somewhat to offer," and now, with hands full of the fruits of that offering, "seated" for us "on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens."

Here is a message for our times, in a sense which seems to me special, pressing, and deeply beneficent. For the terms of that new covenant are nothing less than the glorious essence, the Divine peculiarity, of the Gospel of the grace of G.o.d. This forgiveness, this most sincere and entirely unearned amnesty, this oblivion of the sins of the people of G.o.d--do we hear very much about it now, even where by tradition it might be most expected? But do we not need it now? Was there ever a time when human hearts would be more settled and more energized than now, amidst their moral restlessness, by a wise, thoughtful, but perfectly unmistakable reaffirmation of the sublime fulness of Divine forgiveness in Christ? Men may think that they can do without that message. They may bid us throw the whole weight of preaching upon self-sacrifice, upon social service, upon conduct at large. But the fully wakeful soul knows that it is only then capacitated for self-sacrifice in the Lord's footsteps when it has received the warrant of forgiveness, written large in His sacred blood, finding pardon and peace at the foot of His sacrificial Cross. Then turn to the second limb of the covenant, a limb greater even than the first, inasmuch as for it the first is provided and guaranteed. Do we hear too much about this covenant blessing now? Do our pulpits too frequently and too fully give out the affirmation that G.o.d in Christ stands pledged and covenanted to work the moral transfiguration of His believing Israel, to act so on "the first springs of thought and will" that our being shall freely respond to His free action upon it, and will His will, and live His law? But was there ever greater need for such an affirmation than in our time, so restless, so unsatisfied, and, deep below all its superficial arrogance, so disappointed, so discouraged?

Let us return upon the rich treasures of this great Compact of G.o.d in Christ. The Covenant is ever new, for it is eternal. And it lies safe in the ministering hands of Him who died to inaugurate it and make it good, and who lives to shower its blessings down. He is on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. And "_we have_" Him.

CHAPTER VI

SANCTUARY AND SACRIFICE

HEB. ix.

The Epistle has exhibited to us the glory of the eternal Priest and the wealth and grandeur of the new Covenant. It advances now towards the Sanctuary and the Sacrifice wherein we see that covenant sanctified and sealed, under the auspices of our great "Priest upon His throne."

The Teacher first dilates to the Hebrews upon the outstanding features of the type. He enumerates the main features of that "sanctuary, adapted to this (visible) world" ([Greek: to hagion, kosmikon]), which was attached to the first covenant (ver. 1).[F] Particularly, he emphasizes its double structure, which presented first a consecrated chamber, holy but not holiest, the depository of lamp and table, but then beyond it, parted from it by the inner curtain, the _adylum_ itself, the Holiest Place, where lay ready for use "a golden censer," the vessel needful for the making of the incense-cloud which should veil the glory, and, above all, the Ark of that first covenant of which so much has now been said. There it lay, with the manna and the budding rod, symbols of Mosaic and Aaronic power and function; and the tablets of that law which was written not on the heart but on the stone; and the mercy-seat above them, and the cherubic bearers of the Shechinah above the mercy-seat; symbols of a reconciliation and an access yet to be revealed (verses 2-5).

[F] a.s.suredly we must delete [Greek: skene] from the text in this verse, and understand [Greek: diatheke] (see viii. 13) after [Greek: he prote].

Such was the sanctuary, as depicted to the mind of the believing Hebrew in the books which he almost worshipped as the oracles of G.o.d. That tabernacle he had never seen; that ark he knew had long vanished out of sight. The temple of Herod, with its vacant Holiest, was the sanctuary of his generation. But the Mosaic picture of the Tent and of the Ark was for him the abiding standard, the Divine ideal, the pattern of the realities in the heavens; and to it accordingly the Epistle directs his thought, as it prepares to display those realities before him.[G]

[G] I do not attempt in these papers to do more than allude to the controversy of our time over the historical character of the Mosaic books. But I must allude in pa.s.sing to a noteworthy German critique of the Wellhausen theory, "by a former adherent," W. Moller: _Bedenken gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese, von einem fruheren Anhanger_ (Gutersloh, 1899). The writer, a young and vigorous student and thinker, explains with remarkable force the immense difficulties from the purely critical point of view in the way of the theory that the account of the Tabernacle was invented by "Levitistic" leaders of the time of the Captivity. The work has been translated into English, and published by the Religious Tract Society "_Are the Critics right?_"

Then it proceeds to a similar presentation of one great feature in the ritual, the "praxis," connected with this Tent of Sanctuaries. It takes the reader to his Book of Leviticus, and to its order of Atonement.

There (ch. xvi.) a profound emphasis is laid upon both the secluded sanct.i.ty of the inner shrine, the place of the Presence, and the sacrificial process by which alone the rare privilege of entrance into it could be obtained. The outer chamber was the daily scene of priestly ministration. But the inner was, officially at least, entered once only in the year, and by the High Priest alone, in the solitary dignity of his office. And even he went in there only as bearing in his very hands the blood of immolated victims, blood which he offered, presented, in the Holiest, with an express view to the Divine amnesty for another year's tale of "ignorances" ([Greek: agnoemata], ver. 7), his own and the people's.

Such was the sanctuary, such the atoning ritual, attached to the first covenant. All was "mysteriously meant," with a significance infinitely deeper than what any thought of Moses, or of Ezra, could of itself have given it. "The Holy Ghost intimated" (ver. 8), through that guarded shrine and those solitary, seldom-granted, death-conditioned entrances into it, things of uttermost moment for the soul of man. There stood the Tent, there went in the lonely Priest, with the blood of bull and goat, as "a parable for the period now present,"[H] the time of the Writer and his readers, in which a ritual of offering was still maintained whose annual recurrence proved its inadequacy, its non-finality. Yes, this majestic but sombre system pictured a state of jealous reserve between the worshippers and their G.o.d. Its propitiations were of a kind which, in the nature of things, could not properly and in the way of virtual force set the conscience free from the sense of guilt, "perfecting the worshipper conscience-wise." They could only "sanctify with a view to the purity of the flesh" (ver. 13), satisfying the conditions of a national and temporal acceptance. Its holiest place was indeed approachable, once annually, by one representative person; enough to ill.u.s.trate and to seal a hope; but otherwise, and far more deeply, the conditions symbolized separation and a Divine reserve. But "the good things to come"[I] were in the Divine view all along. The "time of reformation" (ver. 10), of the rectification of the failures suffered under the first covenant, drew near. Behold Messiah steps upon the scene, the true High Priest (ver. 11). Victim and Sacrificer at once, He sheds His own sacrificial blood (ver. 12) on the altar of Golgotha, to be His means ([Greek: dia] _c. gen._) of acceptable approach. And then He pa.s.ses, through the avenue of a sanctuary "not made with hands" (ver.

11), even the heavenly world itself (cp. [Greek: dielelythota tous ouranous], iv. 14), into the Holiest Place of the eternal Presence on the throne. He goes in thither, there to be, and there to do, all that we know of from the long context previous to this chapter, even to sit down accepted at the right hand of the majesty on high, King of Righteousness and Peace. And this action and entrance is, in its very nature, a thing done once and for ever. The true High Priest, being what He is, doing what He has done, has indeed "found _eternal_ redemption for us" (ver. 12). It is infinitely unnecessary now to imagine a _repet.i.tion_ of sacrifice, entrance, offering, acceptance, for Him, and for us in Him. Such an Oblation, the self-offering of the Incarnate Son in the power of the Eternal Spirit (ver. 14), what can it not do for the believing worshipper's welcome in, and his perfect peace in the a.s.surance of the covenanted love of G.o.d? Is it not adequate to "purge the conscience from dead works," to lift from it, that is to say, the death-load of unforgiven transgressions, and to lead the Christian in, as one with his atoning Lord, "to serve a living G.o.d," with the happy service of a worshipper ([Greek: latreuein]) who need "go no more out"

from the Holy Place of peace?

[H] I think the Revisers are right in giving "_now_ present" instead of "_then_ present" as the rendering for [Greek: ton enestekota] (ver. 9).

The Epistle alludes, so I should conjecture, to the period of its writing as a time when the sacrifices were still going on, albeit on the eve of cessation.--It seems best to read [Greek: kath' hen], not [Greek: kath' hon], in ver. 9; "in accordance with which _parable_."

[I] Possibly we should read [Greek: ton genomenon agathon], "the good things that are come" (R.V. marg.). But the practical difference is not great.

But the Teacher has not yet done with the wealth of the Mosaic types of our full salvation. He has more to say about the profound truth that the New Covenant needed for its Mediator, its Herald, its Guarantor and Conveyer of blessing, not a Moses but a Messiah, who could both die and reign, could at once be Sacrifice and Priest. Covenants, in the normal order of G.o.d's will in Scripture, demanded death for their ratification.

"Where covenant is, there must be brought in the death of the covenant-victim."[J] So it was with the old covenant (verses 18-21) in the narrative of Exodus xxiv. So, throughout the Mosaic rules, we find "remission," practically always, conditioned by "blood-shedding" (ver.

22). Peace with violated holiness was to be attained only by means of sacrificial death. The terrestrial sanctuary, viewed as polluted by the transgressions of the worshippers who sought its benefits, required sacrificial death, the blood of bulls and goats, so to "cleanse" it that G.o.d could meet Israel there in peace (ver. 23). Even so, only after a higher and holier order, must it be with the better covenant and that invisible sanctuary where a reconciled G.o.d may for ever meet in peace His spiritual Israel. There must be priestly immolation and an offered sacrifice; there must be peace conditioned by life-blood shed. And such is the work of our Messiah-Priest. He has "borne the sins of many" (ver.

28). Presenting Himself (ver. 6) as the Atonement Victim, in the heavenly Holiest, He has thereby "borne," uplifted ([Greek: anenenkein]), in that Presence, for pardon and peace, the sins of the new Israel. And so "the heavenly things" are, relatively to that Israel, "cleansed"; their G.o.d can meet them in that sanctuary with an intimacy and access free and perfect, because their High Priest and Mediator has done His work for them. For ever and ever now they need no new _sacrifice_; His blood, once shed, is eternally sufficient. Aye, and they need now for ever no repeated _offering_ (ver. 25) of sacrifice, no new _presentation_ of His blood before the throne, since once He has taken His place upon it. To offer again He must suffer again (ver. 26).

For it is the law of His office first to offer--_and then to take His place at the right hand_. He must leave that place, He must descend again to a cross, if He is to take again the att.i.tude of presentation.

"Henceforth" He sits, "expecting" (see below, x. 13), "till His enemies be made His footstool." And His Israel on their part wait (ver. 28), "expecting," till in that bright promised day "He appears, the second time, without sin," unenc.u.mbered by the burthen He once carried for them, "unto salvation," the salvation which means the final glory.

"Once, only once"--this is the sublime law of that Sacrifice and that Offering. As death for us men comes "once," and then there follows "judgment," so the death of Christ, the "offering" of Christ, comes "once," and then comes, in a wonderful paradox, not judgment but "salvation," for them that are found in Him.

[J] So, with the late Professor Scholefield (_Hints on a New Translation_) I venture to render [Greek: tou diathemenou]. I am convinced that this rendering, though it has the serious difficulty of lacking any clear parallel to certify the application of [Greek: diathemenou], is necessitated by the connexion.

The messages of this chapter for our time are equally manifest and weighty. It closes with the a.s.sertion of a principle which should be for all time decisive against all sorts and forms of "re-presentation" of the Lord our Sacrifice. He has "offered" Himself once and for ever, and is now, on our behalf, not in the Presence only but upon the Throne. Yet more urgent, more vital, if possible, is the affirmation here of the need and of the virtue of His vicarious death. The chapter puts His blood-shedding before us in a way as remote as possible from a mere example, or from a suffering meant to do its work mainly by a mysterious impartation to us of the power to suffer. He dies "for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant"--in other words, for the welcome back to G.o.d of those who had sinned against His awful Law. He dies that we, "the called," "might receive the promise of an eternal inheritance." He dies, He offers, that we, wholly and solely because He has done so, may find the heavenly, invisible, spiritual Holiest a place of perfect peace with G.o.d, dwelling in it as in our spirits' home.

Are these the characteristic accents of the voice of the modern Church?

Have we not need to listen again, reverent and believing, to the ninth chapter of the Hebrews, as it discourses about sanctuary, and sacrifice, and offering, and peace?

CHAPTER VII

FULL, PERFECT, AND SUFFICIENT

HEB. x.

The heaven-taught Teacher has led us now along the avenue of the Levitical fore-shadowings, through the prophetic symbolism of the old high-priesthood, through the holy place and the holiest. The pathway, marked by the blood of animal sacrifices, hallowing the awful terms of the covenant of works, has brought us to the true Tabernacle and true Sacrifice, to the better and final Covenant, to the supreme High Priest.

The teaching has left us, as the ninth chapter closes, "looking up steadfastly into heaven," recollecting where the Lord is and why He is there; thinking how we, His Israel, "have Him" for our Representative and Mediator as He "appears in the presence of G.o.d for us," and expecting the hour of joy and glory when He will put aside the curtains of that tabernacle, and come forth to crown us with the final benediction, receiving us "unto the salvation" of eternity (ix. 27, 28).

It is a solemn but a happy att.i.tude. It can be taken by those only who have "fled for refuge to the hope set before them." But they are to take it, as those who feel beneath their feet the rock of an a.s.sured salvation and know their open way to the heart of G.o.d.

The argument now proceeds in living continuity. Its business now is to accentuate and develope the supremacy, the ultimacy--if the word may be allowed--of the finished work of the true High Priest, in contrast to the provisional and preparatory "law." The Writer has said much to us in this way before, particularly in the preceding three chapters of the Epistle. But he must emphasize it again, for it is the inmost purport of his whole discourse. And he must do it now with the urgency of one who has in view a real peril of apostasy. His readers are hard pressed, by persuasions and by terrors, to turn back from Christ to the Judaistic travesty of the message of the Law. He must tell them not only of the splendour of Messiah's work but of the absolute finality of it for man's salvation. To forsake it is to "forsake their own mercy," to "turn back into perdition."

So he begins with a reminder of the incapacity of the Law to save, by pointing to the ceaseless _repet.i.tion_ of the sacrificial acts. Year by year, on one Atonement Day after another, the blood-shedding, the blood-sprinkling, the propitiation, had to be done again. Year by year accordingly the worshippers were treated as "not perfect" (ver. 1); that is to say, in the clear light of the context, they were not perfect as to reconciliation, they were loaded still with the burthen of guilt. The "conscience of sins" (ver. 2) haunted them still, that is to say, the weary sense of an unsettled score of offences, a position precarious and una.s.sured before the Judge.

We believe--nay, with the Psalms in our hands, such Psalms as xxiii., and x.x.xii., and ciii., we know--that for the really contrite and loyal heart, even under the Law, there were large experiences of peace and joy. But these blessings were not due to the sacrifices of the tabernacle or the temple, however divinely ordered. They were due to revelations from many quarters of the character of the Lord Jehovah, and not least, a.s.suredly, to the conviction--how could the more deeply taught souls have helped it?--that this vast and death-dealing ceremonial had _a goal_ which alone could explain it, in some transcendent climax of remission. But in itself the ritual emphasized not gladness but judgment, not love but the dread fact of guilt. And the blood of goats could not for a moment be thought of (ver. 4) as _by itself_ able to make peace with G.o.d. At best it laid stress on the need of something which, while a.n.a.logous to it on one side, should be transcendently different and greater on the other.

The priests daily (ver. 11), the high priest yearly, as they slew and burnt the victims, and sprinkled blood, and wafted incense, in view of Israel's tale of offences against his King, were all, by their every action, prophets of that mysterious something yet to come. They "made remembrance of sins" (ver. 3), writing always anew upon the conscience of the worshipper the certainty that sin, in its form of guilt, is a tremendous reality in the court of G.o.d, that it calls importunately for propitiation, while yet animal propitiations can never, by their very nature, be really propitiatory of themselves. Yet the G.o.d of Israel had commanded them; they could not be _mere_ forms therefore. What could they be then but types and suggestions of a reality which should at last justify the symbolism by a victorious fulfilment? Thus was an oracle like Isa. liii. made possible. And thus, as we are taught expressly here (verses 5-7), the oracle of Psalm xl. was made possible, in which "sacrifices and offerings," though prescribed to Israel by his King, were not "delighted in" by Him, not "willed" by Him for their own sake at all, but in which One speaks to the Eternal about another and supreme immolation, for which He who speaks "has come" to present HIMSELF. "Ears hast Thou opened for me," runs the Hebrew (Ps. xl. 6). "A body hast Thou adjusted for me," was the Greek paraphrase of the Seventy, followed by the holy Writer here. It was as if the paraphrasts, looking onward to the Hope of Israel, would interpret and expand the thought of an uttermost _obedience_, signified by the _ear_, into the completer thought of the _body_ of which the listening ear was part, and which should be given up wholly in sacrifice to G.o.d.[K]

[K] So Kay, on this pa.s.sage, in the _Speaker's Commentary_.

If this is at all the course of the Writer's exposition, there is nothing arbitrary in the sequel to it. He explains the enigmatic Psalm by finding in it the crucified and self-offering High Priest of our profession. Of Him "the roll of the book" had spoken, as the supreme doer and bearer for us of the will of G.o.d. His sacred Body was the Thing indicated by the prophetic altars of Aaron. When He "offered" it, presenting it to the eternal Holiness on our behalf, when He let it be done to death because we had sinned, so that we might be accepted because it, because He, had suffered--then did He "fill" the types "full" of their true meaning, and so close their work for ever.

Yes, that work was now _for ever_ closed by the attainment of its goal.

Moreover, _His_ work of sacrifice and of offering, of suffering and of presentation, was for ever finished also. This is the burthen and message of the whole pa.s.sage (verses 11-18). "Once for all" ([Greek: ephapax]), "once for ever," the holy Body has been offered (ver. 10).

"He offered one sacrifice for sins in perpetuity," [Greek: eis to dienekes] (ver. 12). And therefore, not only for the priests of the old rite but for the High Priest of the heavenly order, "there is no more offering for sin" (ver. 18).