The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews Part 8

[126] Chap. vii. 16.

[127] ???t?s??, _a setting aside_ (chap. vii. 18).

[128] ??de? ?te?e??se? (vii. 19).

[129] ?pe?sa????.

[130] Chap. vii. 2022.

[131] ??????.

[132] ?es?te?se? (vi. 17)

[133] Chap. vii. 2325.

[134] Chap. vii. 25.

[135] d??ata?, the emphatic word in the pa.s.sage.

[136] Chap. vii. 26.

[137] ?s???.

[138] ??a???.

[139] ??a?t??.

[140] Chap. vii. 27.

[141] Chap. vii. 28.

CHAPTER VIII.

_THE NEW COVENANT._

"Now in the things which we are saying the chief point _is this_: We have such a High-priest, Who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. For every high-priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is necessary that this _High-priest_ also have somewhat to offer. Now if He were on earth, He would not be a Priest at all, seeing there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law; who serve _that which is_ a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, even as Moses is warned _of G.o.d_ when he is about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith He, that thou make all things according to the pattern that was showed thee in the mount. But now hath He obtained a ministry the more excellent, by how much also He is the Mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon better promises."-HEB. viii. 16 (R.V.).

The Apostle has interpreted the beautiful story of Melchizedek with wonderful felicity and force. The point of the whole Epistle, he now tells us, lies there. He has brought forth the headstone of the corner, the keystone of the arch.[142] It is, in short, that we have such a High-priest. Country, holy city, ark of the covenant, all are lost. But if we have the High-priest, all are restored to us in a better and more enduring form. Jesus is the High-priest and King. He has taken His seat once for all, as King, on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty, and, as Priest, is also Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle. The indefinite and somewhat unusual term "minister" or "public servant"[143] is intentionally chosen, partly to emphasise the contrast between Christ's kingly dignity and His priestly service, partly because the author wishes to explain at greater length in what Christ's actual work as High-priest in heaven consists. For Christ's heavenly glory is a life of service, not of selfish gratification. Every high-priest serves.[144] He is appointed for no other purpose than to offer gifts and sacrifices. The Apostle's readers admitted that Christ was High-priest. But they were forgetting that, as such, He too must necessarily minister and have something which He can offer. Our theology is still in like danger. We are sometimes p.r.o.ne to regard Christ's life in heaven as only a state of exaltation and power, and, consequently, to speak more of the saints' happiness than of their service. It is the natural result of superficial theories of the Atonement that little practical use is made by many Christians of the truth of Christ's priestly intercession. The debt has been paid, the debtor discharged, and the transaction ended. Christ's present activity towards G.o.d is acknowledged and-neglected. Protestants are confirmed in this baneful worldliness of conception by their just desire to keep at a safe distance from the error in the opposite extreme: that Christ presents to G.o.d the Church's sacrifices of the ma.s.s.

The truth lies midway between two errors. On the one hand, Christ's intercession is not itself the making or const.i.tuting of a sacrifice; on the other, it is not mere pleading and prayer. The sacrifice was made and completed on the Cross, as the victims were slain in the outer court. But it was through the blood of those victims the high-priest had authority to enter the holiest place; and when he had entered, he must sprinkle the warm blood, and so present the sacrifice to G.o.d. Similarly Christ must enter a sanctuary in order to present the sacrifice slain on Calvary. The words of the Apostle John, "We have an Advocate with the Father," express only one side of the truth. But he adds the other side of the conception in the same verse, "And He is the propitiation," which is a very different thing from saying, "His death was the propitiation."

But what sanctuary shall He enter? He could not approach the holiest place in the earthly temple. For if He were on earth, He would not be a Priest at all, seeing there are men ordained by the Law to offer the appointed gifts on earth.[145] The Jewish priests have satisfied and exhausted the idea of an earthly priesthood. Even Melchizedek could not found an order. If he may be regarded as an attempt to acclimatise on earth the priesthood of personal greatness, the attempt was a failure.

It always fails, though it is always renewed. On earth there can be no order of goodness. When a great saint appears among men, he is but a bird of pa.s.sage, and is not to be found, because G.o.d has translated him.

If it is so of His saints, what of Christ? Christ on earth through the ages? Impossible! And what is impossible to-day will be equally inconceivable at any point of time in the future. A correct conception of Christ's priestly intercession is inconsistent with the dream of a reign of Christ on earth. It may, or may not, be consistent with His kingly office. But His priesthood forbids. We infer that Christ has transformed the heaven of glory into the holiest place of a temple, and the throne of G.o.d into a shrine before which He, as High-priest, presents His sacrifice.

The Jewish priesthood itself teaches the existence of a heavenly sanctuary.[146] All the arrangements of tabernacle and ritual were made after a pattern shown to Moses on Mount Sinai. The priests, in the tabernacle and through their ritual, ministered to the holiest place, as the visible image and outline of the real holiest place-that is, heaven-which the Lord pitched, not man.

Now Christ's more excellent ministry as High-priest in heaven carries in its bosom all that the Apostle contends for,-the establishment of a new covenant which has set aside for ever the covenant of the Law. "He has obtained a ministry the more excellent by how much He is the Mediator of a better covenant."[147] These words contain in a nutsh.e.l.l the entire argument, or series of arguments, that extends from the sixth verse of the eighth chapter to the eighteenth verse of the tenth. The course of thought may be divided as follows:-

1. That the Lord intends to establish a new covenant is first of all shown by a citation from the prophet Jeremiah (viii. 713).

2. A description of the tabernacle and of the entrance of the priests and high-priests into it teaches that the way into the holiest place was not yet open to men. This is contrasted with the entering of Christ into heaven through His own blood, which proves that He has obtained for us an eternal redemption and is Mediator of a new covenant, founded on His death (ix. 118).

3. The frequent entering of the high-priest into the holiest place is contrasted with the one death of Christ and His entering heaven once.

This proves the power of His sacrifice and intercession to bring in the better covenant and set aside the former one (ix. 25x. 18).

I. A NEW COVENANT PROMISED THROUGH JEREMIAH.

"For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, He saith,

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, That I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers In the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt; For they continued not in My covenant, And I regarded them not, saith the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those days, saith the Lord; I will put My laws into their mind, And on their heart also will I write them: And I will be to them a G.o.d, And they shall be to Me a people: And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen, And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: For all shall know Me, From the least to the greatest of them.

For I will be merciful to their iniquities, And their sins will I remember no more.

In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old. But that which is becoming old and waxeth aged is nigh unto vanishing away."-HEB. viii. 713 (R.V.).

The more spiritual men under the dispensation of law antic.i.p.ated a new and better era. The Psalmist had spoken of another day, and prophesied of the appearance of a Priest after the order of Melchizedek and a Son of David Who would also be David's Lord. But Jeremiah is very bold, and says[148] that the covenant itself on which the hope of his nation hangs will pa.s.s away, and his dream of a more spiritual covenant, established on better promises, will at some distant day come true. It is well to bear in mind that this discontent with the present order lodged in the hearts, not of the worst, but of the best and greatest, sons of Judaism.

It was the salt of their character, the life of their inspiration, the message of their prophecy. In days of national distress and despair, this star shone the brighter for the darkness. The terrible shame of the Captivity and the profound agony that followed it were lit up with the glorious vision of a better future in store for the people of G.o.d. On the quivering lips of the prophet that "sat weeping," as he is described in the Septuagint,[149] this strong hope found utterance. He had washed the dust of worldliness from his eyes with tears, and, therefore, saw more clearly than the men of his time the threatened downfall of Judah and the bright dawn beyond. In reading his prophecy of the new covenant we almost cease to wonder that some persons thought Jesus was Jeremiah risen from the dead. The prophet's words have the same ring of undaunted cheerfulness, of intense compa.s.sion, of prophetic faith; and Christ, as well as the Apostle, cites His prediction that all shall be taught of G.o.d.[150]

Jeremiah blames the people.[151] But the Apostle infers that the covenant itself was not faultless, inasmuch as the prophet seeks, in his censure of the people, to make room for another covenant. We have already been told that there was on earth no room for the priesthood of Christ.[152] Similarly, in the sphere of earthly nationality, there was no room for a covenant other than that which G.o.d had made with His people Israel when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. But the earthly priesthood could not give efficacy to its ministering, and thus room is found for a heavenly priesthood. So also, the covenant on which the earthly priesthood rested being inadequate, the prophet makes room for the introduction of a new and better covenant.

Now the peculiar character of the old covenant was that it dealt with men in the aggregate which we call the nation. Nationalism is the distinctive feature of the old world, within the precincts of Judaism and among the peoples of heathendom. Even the prophets could not see the spiritual truth, which they themselves foretold, except through the medium of nationality. The Messiah was the national king idealised, even when He was a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. In the pa.s.sage before us the prophet Jeremiah speaks of G.o.d's promise to write His law on the heart as made to the house of Judah and the house of Israel, as if he were not aware that, in so speaking, he was really contradicting himself. For the blessing promised was a spiritual and, consequently, personal one, with which nationality cannot possibly have any sort of connection. It is a matter of profound joy to every lover of his people to witness and share in the uprising of a national consciousness. Some among us are beginning to know now for the first time that a national ideal is possible in thought, and sentiment, and life. But there must not, cannot, be a nationality in religion. A moral law in the heart does not recognise the quality of the blood that circulates through. This truth the prophets strove to utter, often in vain. Yet the breaking up of the nation into Judah and Israel helped to dispel the illusion. The loss of national independence prepared for the universalism of Jesus Christ and St. Paul. Now also, when an epistle is written to the Hebrew Christians, the threatened extinction of nationality drives men to seek the bond of union in a more stable covenant, which will save them, if anything can, from the utter collapse of all religious fellowship and civil society. It is the glory of Christianity that it creates the individual and at the same moment keeps perfectly clear of individualism. Its blessings are personal, but they imply a covenant. If nationalism has been dethroned, individualism has not climbed to the vacant seat. How it achieves this great result will be understood from an examination of Jeremiah's prophecy.

The new covenant deals with the same fundamental conceptions which dominated the former one. These are the moral law, knowledge of G.o.d, and forgiveness of sin. So far the two dispensations are one. Because these great conceptions lie at the root of all human goodness, religion is essentially the same thing under both covenants. There is a sense in which St. Augustine was right in speaking of the saints under the old Testament as "Christians before Christ." Judaism and Christianity stand shoulder to shoulder over against the religious ideas and practices of all the heathen nations of the world. But in Judaism these sublime conceptions are undeveloped. Nationalism dwarfs their growth. They are like seeds falling on the thorns, and the thorns grow up and choke them.

G.o.d, therefore, spoke unto the Jews in parables, in types and shadows.

Seeing, they saw not; and hearing, they heard not, neither did they understand.

Because the former covenant was a national one, the conceptions of the moral law, of G.o.d, of sin and its forgiveness, would be narrow and external. The moral law would be embedded in the national code. G.o.d would be revealed in the history of the nation. Sin would consist either in faults of ignorance and inadvertence or in national apostasy from the theocratic King. In these three respects the new covenant excels,-in respect, that is, of the moral law, knowledge of G.o.d, and forgiveness of sin, which yet may be justly regarded as the three sides of the revelation given under the former covenant.

1. The moral law will either forget its own holiness, righteousness, and goodness, and degenerate into national rules of conduct, or else, by the innate force of its spirituality, create in men a consciousness of sin and a strong desire for reconciliation with G.o.d. Men will resist, and, when resistance is vain, will chafe against its terrible strength. "The Law came in beside, that the trespa.s.s might abound."[153] But it often happens that guilt of conscience is the alarum that awakens moral self-consciousness out of sleep, never to fall asleep again when holiness has found entrance into the soul. Beyond this the old covenant advanced not a step. The promise of the new covenant is to put the Law into the mind, not in an ark of s.h.i.ttim wood, and to write it in the heart, not on tables of stone. The Law was given on Sinai as an external commandment; it is put into the mind as a knowledge of moral truth. It was written on the two tables in the weakness of the letter; on the heart it is written as a principle and a power of obedience. The power of G.o.d to command becomes the strength of man to obey. In this way the new covenant realises what the former covenant demanded. The new covenant is the old covenant transformed, made spiritual. G.o.d is become the G.o.d of His people; and this was the promise of the former covenant.

They are no more children, as they were when G.o.d took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt. Instead of the external guidance, they have the unction within, and know all things. Renewed in the spirit of their mind, they put on the new man, which after G.o.d is created in righteousness and the holiness of truth.

2. So also of knowing G.o.d. The moral attributes of the Most High are revealed under the former covenant, and the G.o.d of the Old Testament is the G.o.d of the New. Abraham knows Him as the everlasting G.o.d. Elisha understands that there is no darkness or shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. Balaam declares that G.o.d is not a man that He should lie. The Psalmist confesses to G.o.d that he cannot flee from His presence. The father of believers fears not to ask, "Shall not the Judge of the earth do right?" Moses recognises that the Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression.

Isaiah hears the seraphim crying one to another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." But nationalism distorted the image. The conception of G.o.d's Fatherhood is most indistinct. When, however, Christ taught His disciples to say in prayer, "Our Father," He could then at once add the words "Who art in heaven." The spirit of man rose immediately with a mighty upheaval above the narrow bounds of nationalism. The attributes of G.o.d became more lofty as well as more amiable to the eyes of His children. The G.o.d of a nation is not great enough to be our Father. The G.o.d Who is our Father is G.o.d in heaven.

Not only are G.o.d's attributes revealed, but the faculty to know Him is also bestowed. The moral law and a heart to love it are the two elements of a knowledge of G.o.d's nature. For G.o.d Himself is holiness and love. In vain will men cry one to another, saying, "Know the Lord." As well might they bid the blind behold the light, or the wicked love purity.

Knowledge of nature can be taught. It can be parcelled in propositions, carried about, and handed to others. But the character of G.o.d is not a notion, and cannot be taught as a lesson or in a creed, however true the creed may be. The two opposite ends of all our knowledge are our sensations and G.o.d. In one respect the two are alike. Knowledge of them cannot be conveyed in words.

3. The only thing concerning G.o.d that can be known by a man who is not holy himself is that He will punish the impenitent, and can forgive.

These are objective facts. They may be announced to the world, and believed. In the history of all holy men, under the Old Testament as well as under the New, they are their first lesson in spiritual theology. To say that penitent sinners under the Law could not be absolved from guilt or taste the sweetness of G.o.d's forgiving grace must be false. St. Paul himself, who describes the Law as a covenant that "gendereth to bondage," cites the words of the Psalmist, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered," to prove that G.o.d imputes righteousness without works.[154] When the Apostle Peter was declaring that all the prophets witness to Jesus Christ, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins, the Holy Ghost fell on all who heard the word. The very promise which Jeremiah says will be fulfilled under the future covenant Isaiah claims for his own days: "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins."[155]

On the other hand, it is equally plain that St. Paul and the author of this Epistle agree in teaching that the sacrifices of the old covenant had in them no virtue to remove guilt. They cannot take away sin, and they cannot remove the consciousness of sin.[156] The writer evidently considers it sufficient to state the impossibility, without labouring to prove it. His readers' consciences would bear him out in the a.s.sertion that it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

It remains-and it is the only supposition left to us-that peace of conscience must have been the result of another revelation, simultaneous with the covenant of the Law, but differing from it in purpose and instruments. Such a revelation would be given through the prophets, who stood apart as a distinct order from the priesthood. They were the preachers. They quickened conscience, and spoke of G.o.d's hatred of sin and willingness to forgive. Every advance in the revelation came through the prophets, not through the priests. The latter represent the stationary side of the covenant, but the prophets hold before the eyes of men the idea of progress. What, then, was the weakness of prophecy in reference to forgiveness of sin when compared with the new covenant? The prophets predicted a future redemption. This was their strength. It was also their weakness. For that future was not balanced by an equally great past. However glorious the history of the nation had been, it was not strong enough to bear the weight of so transcendent a future. Every nation that believes in the greatness of its own future already possesses a great past. If not, it creates one. Mythology and hero-worship are the attempt of a people to erect their future on a sufficient foundation. But men had not experienced anything great enough to inspire them with a living faith in the reality of the promises which the prophets announced. Sin had not been atoned for. The Christian preacher can point to the wonderful but well-a.s.sured facts of the life and death of Jesus Christ. If he could not do this, or if he neglects to do it, feeble and unreal will sound his proclamation of the terrors and joys of the world to come. The Gospel has for one of its primary objects to appease the guilty conscience. How it achieves this purpose our author will tell us in another chapter. For the present all we learn is that knowledge of G.o.d is knowledge of His moral nature, and that this knowledge belongs to the man whose moral consciousness has been quickened. The evangelical doctrine that the source of holiness is thankfulness was well meant, as an antidote to legalism on the one hand and to Antinomianism on the other. The sinner, we were told, once redeemed from the curse of the Law and delivered from the danger of perdition, begins to love the Christ Who redeemed and saved him. The doctrine contains a truth, and is applicable to this extent; that he to whom much is forgiven loveth much. But it would not be true to say that all good men have sought G.o.d's forgiveness because they feared h.e.l.l torments. To some their guilt is their h.e.l.l. Fear is too narrow a foundation of holiness. We cannot explain saintliness by mere grat.i.tude.