Now, mark the contrast to all this. “But Christ, being come a High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, He entered in ONCE into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption.”
The Holy Ghost evidently delights to glorify the Lord Jesus. Others might have been anointed, but He is THE Christ—the Anointed One. That appellation belongs to the Son, as it belongs to no other. It is “Christ,” then, who is now present in his own place of ministry, as, “the High Priest of good things to come.” To enter into His place of ministry, He has passed through a far greater and more perfect tabernacle than that through which Aaron passed into his peculiar place of service. Christ has passed through the heavens. Man's hands were not employed to make these; they are the handy-work of God Himself. Christ is gone into heaven itself; there, in the immediate presence of God, He appears for us. On earth He was not a priest; no tabernacle ever existed on earth suited to so great a High Priest as Jesus the Son of God. Man's hands may not rear a place of ministry for this High Priest. His person and His sacrifice demand a sphere of ministry suited to their value, and hence His tabernacle is “not of this creation.” The attempt to honor Him with costly things made with hands is to forget the dignity of our High Priest, and the heavenly order of His priesthood.
Let us remember that He has passed through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not in His own individual right as divine and as perfect, but as a priest in connection with others. Had He entered simply in His own right, He might have demanded entrance, saying, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.” But He entered by His own blood, for He passed through as a priest. Aaron, on the great day of atonement, passed through the court and the holy place into the holiest with the basin of blood in his hands: this was the title on which he entered there—even the blood of the sin-offering. Aaron was taught that in this blood there was atonement for the sins of the people for the past year. Now Christ also entered through blood into the true tabernacle; but what says the Holy Ghost of Him whom He delights to honor? “Neither by the blood of bulls and goats, but by His own blood.” The blood of balls was suited to the tabernacle “of this building;” but such blood never could give title to worship in the tabernacle “not made with hands:” the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God, is required for that, and He himself also, as high priest, to carry it in. How constantly do we find that our highest blessings rest on the simplest truths! Our happy liberty of worship as saints, and our nearness unto God forever, hinge on the value before God of the blood of His Son. If we keep at a distance from God, if our consciences are unpurged in His presence, it is because we underrate the value of that blood, or forget what its once-offering has accomplished.
It is not to be wondered at that men should be ready to turn back to sanctification by ordinances; the flesh would, as it were, naturally cling to any order of things which seemed in any wise to sanction and to sanctify it. A system for the purification of the flesh would be tenaciously retained by the flesh. But God has no such system now. He has tried man under it, and, his utter ruin having been there proved, He has forever set the flesh aside. Its claims and efforts spring therefore from its ignorance of itself, and of God's ways concerning it. God now has provided not for the flesh but for the conscience. He has no ordinance now by which the flesh may draw, in any degree, nigh: all these ordinances are gone forever; but He has given His own Son to bring in eternal redemption, and to give present peace and confidence in His presence. Hence God's grand object now is to glorify Jesus. He presents Him to us as the One in whom we shall find everything we need. And hence Christ must be all or nothing. He must be exalted, and man abased; for if man is set up, Christ has died in vain.
There is not only great power, but also great comprehensiveness in that word ONCE. It shows us that the offering of Jesus once comprised the fulfillment of all the typical sacrifices. Not only that His one sacrifice does this; but that the once offering of that one sacrifice did it. This is often forgotten, and hence many souls lack peace. They trust only the one sacrifice, and so have salvation; but they do not clearly see the effectual power its once offering had to “perfect forever them that are sanctified,” and so have not peace. It is very humbling and very sorrowful that it should be so, because this is the especial testimony of God concerning that once-offered sacrifice; but so it is, nevertheless. Gradual declension in the church opened the door for this practical unbelief, and bad teaching perpetuates it.
But let the saints of God remember, that as surely as there is but one Lamb of God, so surely the Lamb can be but once offered; and that, this one sacrifice having been once offered, “there remaineth no more offering for sin.”
Aaron, then, had to make many offerings; but Christ, by His once offering of Himself, has put away sin. He has consequently no more priestly work to do as the offerer of sacrifice for sin. To say that He has is to say that He has the cross to go through again as the victim, and that He has again to enter into the holiest by His own blood. And this would instantly nullify God's testimony as to the preciousness of that blood, and the work it has already done. For, I must repeat, His testimony is not merely that Christ's blood alone cleanses from sin, but that the once shedding of that blood has so entirely put away sin, that God now says to all who believe therein, “your sins and iniquities I will remember no more.”
That the one and once-offered sacrifice of Christ did, because of the preciousness of His blood, fulfill all the typical sacrifices, is indeed plainly seen in verse 14 of this chapter; for we here have that He is set as the fulfillment, not only of the type of the blood offered on the day of atonement, but also as the fulfillment of the ashes of the red heifer. The law had its numberless forms of purification of the flesh, but all these combine to enhance the value of Christ's blood as once shed and once carried in by Him to God. By that one shedding, and one presentation, we have had accomplished for our consciences forever, what any or all the shadows effected for the flesh for a time. “If,” says the Holy Ghost, “the blood of bulls, and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, Who, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
What a ransom, then, has Christ found! By that blood which He once shed on the cross, He has put away sin: that blood He has once, and once for all, carried into the true holiest. And must He repeat His work, as did Aaron, as though that blood had, after a little while, lost its efficacy? No. When He comes out again, it will not be to continue or repeat any work for sin, but “unto salvation.” He has found eternal redemption, and has entered into the presence of God as a consequence of His having done so. What a blessed alteration in the statute! What Aaron did every year for Israel, and yet never did effectually, Christ has done once for all for us. The saints of God, therefore, stand on the ground of accomplished purification. Just as truly as the ordinances of old did bring a people in the flesh into a certain kind of purification before God, so truly, yea, “much more” so, has that one sacrifice of Christ brought all who believe into the unspeakable and eternal blessing of having “no more conscience of sins.” They may realize this, or they may not; but this is what Christ has obtained for them by His one offering.
And just, therefore, as it would have been sinful unbelief for an Israelite of old who had touched a dead body, to doubt that the uncleanness was gone when the ordinance of the sprinkled ashes had been observed by him, so is it nothing else than sinful unbelief, for one of God's children now to doubt, that all his sin and guilt has been forever atoned for and put away by the once offered sacrifice of Christ. Full faith in that sacrifice banishes conscience of sins. God delights in having provided this for us. He would have us serve Him in freedom, not in bondage. He never took pleasure in any sacrifice for sins until one was offered which put sins away forever, and gave to the consciences of His worshippers peace in His presence.
In that holy presence, therefore, we stand realizing the everlasting results of Christ's great day of atonement. The question of sin has been met by Him on our behalf—met and settled forever; and, having put it away, He is now unto us the blessed minister of unmingled and eternal blessing. Christ's present position, and our present blessings, are thus alike the consequences of our sins having been purged. Can anything be more blessed than this! That we should, through faith, have already entered on our everlasting nearness to God, and are now privileged to know the peace proper to the heavenly sanctuary! The true tabernacle is free to us—as free now as it will be when we stand personally amidst its glories. We belong to that priestly family anointed for its holies; not limited to a holy place, nor serving before a veiled mercy-seat, nor having brief access into the holiest, but made meet for heaven itself, and worshipping with pare consciences in the immediate presence of God!
And do we prize as we should this blessing of a purged conscience? Do we discern the peculiar grace marking its bestowment? It was entirely unknown to worshippers under the law; not only unknown to the congregation who worshipped without, but equally so to the priests who served within. That first tabernacle must ever have been a house of bondage to conscience. Conscience can never be purged by what fails to bring nigh unto God. As long as full reconciliation was not known—as long as sin was found more effectual to exclude from God, than sacrifice for sin was to bring nigh to God—so long conscience could have known no purification. And not only people but priests, yea, not only priests but even the high priest, must have had sin, not salvation, brought to remembrance by their constantly recurring sacrifices. Expiation, full and entire expiation, there was not; for had there been, the demand for expiation would have ceased. This thought must have continually forced itself on all worshipping under the shadows; and in proportion as conscience was tender and exercised, so would it be sensible of its unpurgedness. Such might fully understand that the flesh was purified for admission into that tabernacle by the appointed blood of bulls and of goats, while at the same time their consciences might be carrying a load of guilt, for which, in such blood, they found no remedy. But now it is not merely the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A purged conscience is, therefore, the distinctive blessing of the saints in this dispensation. A saint who has it not has forgotten, or (it may be through carelessness) has lost what became his, when, by faith, he passed beneath the blood-sprinkled lintel. “No more conscience of sins” is one of the very first good things bestowed on us by our blessed High Priest; and God has provided through Him for its maintenance; for if that be not maintained, God well knows that we cannot worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is the everlasting efficacy of Christ's own blood, once carried in by Himself unto God, which secures this. All we need in order to its constant enjoyment is simple faith in that presented blood.
But though all we need in order to a purged conscience is simple faith in what Christ's blood has effected, we are to exercise ourselves to maintain a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man; and the saint of God, who, walking in the Spirit, seeks to maintain this good conscience, will be the most sensible of his many defects and failures, and so will most realize the blessedness of the purged conscience provided for him by the blood of Jesus. Such a saint will be quick of sense to detect defilement; he will feel a soil that others are insensible to. Everything around us is tainted with death. Nature itself is defiled. The very charities of life have power to defile and deaden the soul. And to all this the Holy Ghost, Who dwelleth in us, seeks to make us sensitive. If, therefore, there was not this ever effective provision for purgedness of conscience, the saint walking most in the Spirit would be bowing his head like a bulrush, and in terror before God, because conscious of so many defilements; though to others all would appear so fair and so devoted. Blessed indeed, therefore, to such is the High Priest of good things to come. Blessed lessons, both concerning holiness and concerning sin, does His work for them enable them to learn; for all that they are learning of the purity of God, and of the more subtle and refined deceitfulness of their own hearts, only serves to prove to them the necessity, and to confirm to them the value, of that blood by which they are redeemed and sanctified unto God. These are lessons of which the careless or unexercised soul is ignorant.
Let it be remembered, therefore, that every type of cleansing finds its fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Christ. It is not the work of the Spirit to purify, but to testify to the blood of Christ as purifying. The Holy Ghost comes to the saints as the witness of their cleanness, not as the producer of it. That Christ has already and forever effected that, is the burden of the Spirit's testimony to conscience: in this the Holy Ghost delights to declare the honor of Jesus. Just, therefore, as we simply receive His testimony, will our consciences be really purged.
I would add that it is not to the great and blessed doctrines of election and the like, or to the unfailingness of God's purposes, that the Holy Ghost specifically points the conscience in order to its purging, but expressly to God's estimate of the blood of Christ. For other precious purposes He does discourse to the saints on those blessed doctrines; but for the especial purpose of giving and of maintaining a purged conscience, He invariably directs the soul to Christ's blood, as provided by God's infinite love for that very end.
The present portion, therefore, of the saints is to be ever in the true tabernacle, and to be there with a purged conscience. He is never an outside worshipper, nor an uncleansed one. Man's best efforts at worship only keep him at a distance from the living God: ordinances, however precious in their place, have the like tendency, just as they are, used to bring nigh. This accounts for the ceaseless and restless labor of those who trust to them; for they heap burdens on conscience in the vain effort to relieve it, and entangle themselves but the more in the trammels from which they straggle to be free. It is the blood of Christ alone which frees from every fetter, and gives, at the same moment, liberty and an everlasting home in the happy presence of God.
Here, then, we have two marvelous blessings connected with the priesthood of Christ: the first, access into the true holies, and abiding there as our ordinary place of worship; the other, perpetual purification of conscience through the blood of Jesus, even on the mercy-seat itself. It is on these two established privileges of the household of faith that our worship depends.
But there are other of the good things to come, made present to us through the priesthood of Jesus, mentioned in this chapter. For example: we have a house of worship everlastingly purified. Atonement was made of old for the holy sanctuary, and for the tabernacle of the congregation, as well as for the priests; and we are here told that, as it was necessary that those patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with the then appointed sacrifice, so was it necessary that the heavenly things themselves should be purified with better sacrifices than those; “for Christ is not entered into holies made with hand, which are figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”
Now it is His having gone to appear for us there, which has rendered this purification of the heavenlies necessary. God is not only jealous of His own personal holiness, and so provides for the personal cleanness of those whom He brings into His presence; but He is also jealous of the purity of heaven, His dwelling place; and hence heaven also is purified by blood, that the entrance of sinners into it may in no wise defile it. And it greatly assures the priestly worshippers to find that they themselves are purified by that same blood, which thus preserves the purity of God's own dwelling-place and throne. One purification avails for all—God's throne, God's temple, God's High Priest, and God's priests! For can we really think of heaven itself being our proper place of worship, without fearing that we may carry defilement into it? Do we not feel that we should tarnish and soil those pure and heavenly courts? Well, God has met this fear too': the true holies cannot be defiled, for they have been purified forever by the blood of Jesus. Thus has God prepared us for His presence, and His presence for us. All is done. Every plea that unbelief can put forth, for shrinking into the darkness which it loves, is disposed of forever by this all-effectual blood!
“Having therefore, brethren, liberty to enter into the holies by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He dedicated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and (having) a great 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!” J. L. H.
(Concluded from page 95.)