You are asked to read this article with your Bible before you, opened at the chapter above mentioned; and further to turn up any other passages to which reference may be made. Only thus are you likely to derive much profit.
Our space being so limited we do not feel justified in using it for the printing of lengthy quotations of Scripture, when our readers have the Scriptures themselves lying by their hands.
CHAPTER 7 having set before us in full detail the contrast between the temporary priesthood of Aaron and the abiding priesthood of Christ, chapter 8 opens with a summary of the whole matter. In this summary, occupying verse 1 and 2 There are four things which we shall do well to note.
Firstly, the Lord Jesus is “such an High Priest,” that is such an One as chapter 7 has shown Him to be. We need therefore to refresh our minds as to all those points of contrast which show forth the infinite superiority of Christ, as expounded in that chapter.
Secondly, being such He has taken His seat at the highest point of glory. The supreme Majesty has His throne in the heavens, and on the right hand of that throne He is seated — that is, in the place which signifies that all its executive functions are vested in Him. There is no weakness, no infirmity, in Him. The place He fills indicates that He wields all power. We learned that this exalted place is His when we had only read so far as verse 3 of chapter 1; but there we saw Him seated in glory as the answer to His finished work in the purging of sins. Here it is as the Priest that He is crowned with glory.
Thirdly, His priestly ministry concerns itself, not with the holy places on earth, constructed and pitched by Moses, which were the scenes of Aaron’s ministry, but with that real sanctuary and tabernacle which came from the hand of God. The real sanctuary is the heaven of God’s immediate presence: the true tabernacle is that mighty universe of created things, wherein the third heaven of God’s presence lies. Christ’s priestly service has to do with God and His presence, as its Center; whilst within its circumference it embraces the whole creation of God. What a stupendous thought is this! How paltry do Aaron’s glories look beside it!
Fourthly, such an High Priest as this is ours. “WE have such an High Priest”; while Israel had priests of Aaron’s order. This one fact, apart from all other considerations, indicates how far in advance of Judaism is Christianity. These Hebrews, as we have seen, were inclined to slackness; some of them showed signs of going back. Let them lay hold of this, and how it would encourage them to hold fast, and keep on in the path of faith. Let us lay hold of it and we too shall feel its encouraging power.
Our thoughts turn from the High Priest Himself to His service and ministry when we read verse 3 to 6. It is helpful to notice that verse 5 is really a parenthesis; the whole verse might well be printed with brackets. The sense follows straight on from verse 4 to verse 6.
Though the Lord Jesus is not a priest of Aaron’s order yet in many a way He exercises His ministry after the pattern set forth in Aaron. So it is necessary that He should have something to offer in the presence of God; and that something cannot be a gift of the kind that was customary in connection with the law, for had He been on earth He would have been no priest at all, for He did not spring out of Levi or Aaron. His priesthood is of an heavenly order. Only as risen and glorified has He formally assumed His priestly office.
What the Lord has to offer in His priestly capacity we are not told at this point; but we believe that the reference is not to the fact that He offered up Himself, as stated in verse 27 of the previous chapter, but to what we find when we reach the last chapter of the epistle, verse 15. It is “by Him” that we offer the praise of our lips to God. He it is, who offers up to God as the great High Priest all the praises springing from those who have been constituted priests by the grace of God. What we are told is that His ministry is more excellent than any that was entrusted to Aaron; and that its superiority is exactly proportioned to the superiority of the promises and the covenant of which He is the Mediator.
Before considering this, however, let us make note of two things. First, that the last clause of verse 4 shows us that this epistle was penned before Jerusalem was destroyed, when the Jewish offerings ceased. “There are priests,” it says, not, “there used to be.” This same fact confronts us when we come to the last chapter; and the importance of it is made manifest there.
In the second place notice that in the parenthesis (verse 5) it is made quite plain that the tabernacle and all its appointments were only a shadowy representation of heavenly things; and not the things themselves. This no doubt was a hard saying to a Jew, for he was very apt to think of these visible things in which he boasted as though they were the great end, beyond which nothing was needed. He should not have thought of them in this way, for from the outset they were declared to be but a representation of the things God had before Him. Moses was not to deviate one hair’s breadth from the pattern shown to him in the mount. Had he deviated he would have misrepresented instead of representing the great realities which had to be shadowed forth.
This fact being digested we at once see that the Old Testament types, connected with tabernacle and offerings, are worthy of our earnest consideration. The study of them is not, as some may think, an intellectual pastime giving scope to a lively imagination, but a pursuit in which there is much instruction and profit. They must be interpreted of course in the light of the heavenly things themselves, which are revealed in the New Testament.
The ministry of Christ as Priest, the new covenant, of which He is the Mediator, and the promises on which that covenant is founded, are all brought together in verse 6.
It could hardly be said that the old covenant of law was established upon promises at all, though there were certain promises connected with it. It was established rather upon a bargain, in which Israel undertook in all things to obey, and God guaranteed certain blessings conditional upon their obedience. The bargain was hardly concluded before it was broken by Israel making the golden calf. The fact that the new covenant is established upon promises, that those promises are God’s, and that they are better than anything prosed under the law, at once differentiates it sharply from the old. To gain some idea of these better promises you must read the latter part of our chapter, which is quoted from the passage in Jeremiah 31 — where the new covenant itself is promised — verse 31 to 34. God’s “I will,” is the characteristic feature of it. All is a question of what God is going to do, and of what consequently Israel, is going to be and have.
Now of this better covenant Christ is the Mediator. We might well ask, on what ground can God thus scatter blessings upon unworthy men without infringing the claims of righteousness? The only possible answer to this is found in the mediatorial work of Christ. As Mediator He has given Himself “a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:66Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. (1 Timothy 2:6)). As Mediator too He administers the covenant which has been established in His blood.
The Lord Jesus is presented to us in this epistle in a variety of characters. We sortie-times sing,
“How rich the character He hears,
And all the form of love He wears,
Exalted on the throne.”
but do we stop sufficiently to consider the richness of His character in all its variety? We have already had Him brought before us as Apostle, High Priest, Forerunner, Surety, Victim, and now as Mediator. All these offices He holds in connection with the new covenant and those who come into new covenant blessing. As Apostle He announces it. As Surety He assumes full responsibility for it. As Victim He shed the blood that ratifies it. As High Priest He sustains it. As Mediator He administers it. As Forerunner He guarantees the arrival in glory of all those blessed under it in the present dispensation.
What flaw can be discovered in this? None whatever! Where is the loophole through which evil or failure may creep? No such loophole exists! All new covenant blessing is rooted and grounded in the mighty Son of God and is as flawless and perfect as He. Is not this magnificent? Does it not fill our souls with assurance and triumph?
The first covenant of law was not faultless as verse 7 indicates. There was no fault in the law, but the covenant was faulty inasmuch as all, was conditioned upon faulty man. Hence it is set aside in favor of the second, which is based upon God’s purpose and God’s work. As the last verse of the chapter puts it, the very fact that He speaks of a new covenant shows that the first has grown old and is ready to disappear.
Jeremiah’s prophecy, which is quoted here, shows us that the new covenant is to be formally established with the house of Israel and the house of Judah; that is, with restored and reunited Israel. Under it they will enter upon the blessings of the millennial reign. By the new birth the law will be written on their hearts, so that it will be as natural to them to fulfill it as now it is natural to them to infringe it. Moreover their sins will be forgiven; they will have the knowledge of God, and be His people. But the gospel today brings us just these blessings upon an exactly similar basis.
The fact is that everyone converted today, no matter from what nation they come, is blessed upon new covenant principles, though as yet the new covenant is not formally established at all; and when it is established it will be with Israel, and not with the nations, nor even with the church. We have it, in the spirit of it, and thus we anticipate what is to come. At the same time we must carefully note that Christian blessings are by no means confined to those promised to Israel under the new covenant. On the contrary we enjoy blessings which go far beyond them. Such, for instance, are the blessings spoken of in the epistle to the Ephesians.
Chapter 8 ends with the ominous words, “ready to vanish away.” Thus it was that the Holy Spirit, who inspired these words, prepared the minds of the Jewish disciples for the disappearance of their venerated religious system, which came to pass within a very few years by the destruction of Jerusalem. The temple being destroyed, the priesthood slain, the sacrifices stopped, Judaism has become but the pale and bloodless shadow of its former self. And in itself, and at its best, it was only a shadow of good things to come.
Yet we must not underestimate the value of the shadows connected with the law. They had very great value until the moment came in which the realities typified were revealed; just as the moon is of much value until the sun rises. At the heart of this typical system lay the tabernacle and its furniture, and the first five verses of chapter 9 summarize the details connected with this. It was the sanctuary, where God placed the cloud which signifies His presence, but it was a worldly one. So also were all the ordinances of the divine service connected with it. Hence it was not the object of the writer to speak particularly of these details.
His object was rather to point out that the tabernacle was in two parts, the holy place, and then the holiest of all, and that while the priests of Aaron’s line had full liberty to enter the former the latter was forbidden to them; into it they had no admittance at all. When once the divine glory had taken possession of the holiest no human foot trod there, with one exception. One man alone might enter, and he only once every year, and that under one stringent condition; he must approach, “not without blood.” If we turn to Leviticus 16 and read it, we shall get all the details of that solemn occasion.
What did it all mean? It doubtless foreshadowed the fact that the blood of Christ is the only ground of approach to God, yet what the Holy Ghost was really saying in the whole arrangement was that in the old dispensation there was no real approach to God at all. The way in was not yet made manifest. We shall find the wonderful contrast to this when we reach the nineteenth verse of chapter 10. But as long as the first tabernacle had a standing before God the rule was no admittance.
We might say then that the law instituted the religion of the holy place, whereas the holiest of all characterizes Christianity. It was not that all Israelites had access to the holy place. We know they did not, as the sad case of Uzziah, king of Judah, recorded in 2 Chronicles 26, shows. But the priests, who were the representatives of all Israel, had free access there. Still, even so, the real value of the whole thing lay in its typical significance, as we have seen.
This fact is again emphasized in verse 9 and 10, where the tabernacle is “a figure for the time then present,” and the gifts and sacrifices are but meats and drinks and divers washings; all of which were but ordinances of a fleshly type as opposed to anything of a spiritual nature. Out of this there flow, as a result, two things.
The first thing is, that these sacrifices could not make perfect the one who approached by their means. Here again we meet with that word perfect; and this time not referring to Christ but to ourselves. The Jewish sacrifices, by reason of their very nature, could not make us perfect; and this fact we shall find repeated in the first verse of chapter 10 Then passing on to the fourteenth verse of that chapter we find stated, by way of contrast, the glorious fact that, “by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” The law not merely did not accomplish it but could not; whereas Christ has done it.
But what is this perfection which has to do with ourselves? That question is answered for us here. It is a remarkable fact that the first time the word is used in this connection it is carefully defined for us by the Holy Spirit. The perfection has to do with our consciences. As we read on into chapter 10 we shall see more clearly what this signifies. It means having the whole weight of sin as an accusing load completely lifted off, so that the conscience is perfectly cleared in the presence of God.
Now this was something quite unknown under the law. If a Jew sinned it was his duty to bring to the tabernacle the appropriate sacrifice; and having done so he was clearly entitled to enjoy the relief afforded by the words, “it shall be forgiven him” (Lev. 4:3131And he shall take away all the fat thereof, as the fat is taken away from off the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall burn it upon the altar for a sweet savor unto the Lord; and the priest shall make an atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven him. (Leviticus 4:31)). That one particular sin was forgiven when once the prescribed sacrifice was offered; but that was all. If he sinned again, again he had to bring a sacrifice: and so on and on, all through life. There was no such thought as a sacrifice being offered which could settle once and forever the whole question of sin, and so perfect the sinner’s conscience.
The second thing is that the law with all its ordinances was only imposed upon Israel “until the time of reformation,” that is, until the time of “setting things right.” The law was after all a provisional measure. It proved beyond dispute that things needed setting right, by proving how wrong they were: but it did not put them right. When presently God blesses Israel under the new covenant the time of setting things right will have arrived. Meanwhile, as we have just seen, we have been blessed upon new covenant principles, as the result of the sacrifice of Christ; and there is no setting things right upon any other basis than that.
Verse 11 to 14 furnish us with the contrast to that which we have in verse 6 to 10. If we analyze the verses with a little care we shall see how complete and far-reaching the contrast is.
In the first place CHRIST is set before us, in contrast to the high priest of Aaron’s order.
Then, the Aaronic priest just had to administer the things that existed under his hand. Christ is an High Priest of good things to come.
Christ has entered into the true holiest in the heavens, a greater and more perfect tabernacle than that made with hands in the wilderness; and He entered in once, instead of every year, as with the high priest of old.
Not by the blood of goats and calves, which can never really put away sins, did He enter; but by His own blood which obtains redemption.
The blood of the sacrificial animals did sanctify to the purifying of the flesh: the blood of Christ alone can purify the conscience.
The purifying of the flesh which was accomplished by the Jewish sacrifices was but temporal: the redemption obtained by Christ is eternal.
Notice, moreover, the majesty which characterizes the one offering of Christ. All three Persons of the Godhead stand related to it. The spotless Son of God offered Himself. It was to God that He offered Himself; and it was by the eternal Spirit He did it. No wonder that all sin comes within its scope, and that its results abide for eternity.
The immediate effect of it, as far as we are concerned, is the “purging” or “cleansing” of our consciences. By that cleansing they are perfected and we turn from the dead works of law — dead, because done with the object of getting life — to serve the living God. If our consciences need cleansing from dead works, how much more do they need cleansing from wicked works!
F. B. Hole.