Hebrews 10
How wonderful is the grace which we are now considering!
There are two things that present themselves to us in Christ. The attractions to our heart of His grace and goodness, and His work which brings our souls into the presence of God. It is with the latter • that the Holy Ghost here occupies us. There is not only the piety which grace produces: there is the efficacy of the work itself. What is this efficacy? What is the result, for us, of His work? Our presentation to God; in the light, without a veil, sin being entirely put away. Marvelous position for us! We have not to wait for a day of judgment (assuredly coming as it is), nor to seek for means of approach to God. We are in His presence. Christ appears in the presence of God for us. And not only this: He remains there ever; our position, therefore, never changes. It is true that we are called to walk according to that position; but this does not touch the fact that such is the position. And how came we into it; and in what condition? Sin entirely put away, perfectly put away; and once for all; the whole question settled forever before God, we are there because Christ has abolished it. So that there are the two things-this work accomplished, and this position taken in the presence of God.
We see the force of the contrast between this and Judaism. According to the latter, divine service, as we have seen, was performed outside the veil. The worshippers did not reach the presence of God. Thus they had always to begin again. The propitiatory sacrifice was renewed from year to year -a continually repeated testimony that sin was still there. Individually they obtained a temporary pardon for particular acts. It had constantly to be renewed. The conscience was never made perfect, the soul was not in the presence of God; this great question was never settled. (How many souls are even now in this condition!) The entrance of the high priest once a year, did but furnish a proof that the way was still barred, that God could not be approached, but that sin was still remembered.
But now, for believers, sin is put ‘away by a work done once for all; the conscience is made perfect; and, in. Christ, we are ever before God, in His presence. The high priest remains there. Thus, instead of having a memorial of sin re-iterated from year to year, perfect righteousness subsists ever for us in the presence of God. The position is entirely changed.
The lot of men (for this perfect work takes us out of Judaism) is death and judgment. But now our lot depends on Christ, not on Adam. Christ was offered to bear the sins of many -the work is complete, the sins blotted out, and to those who look for Him He will appear without having anything to do with sin, that question having been entirely settled at His first coming. In the death of Jesus, God dealt with the sins of those who look for Him; and He will appear, not to judge, but unto salvation; to deliver them finally from the position into which sin had brought them. This has its application to the Jewish remnant, according to the circumstances of their position; but in an absolute way it applies to the Christian who has Heaven for his portion.
The essential point established in the doctrine of the death of Christ is, that He offered Himself once for all. We must bear this in mind, in order to understand the full import of all that is here said. The tenth chapter is the development of this. In it the author recapitulates his doctrine on this point, and applies it to souls, confirming it by Scripture, and by considerations which are evident to every enlightened conscience.
1.-The law, with its sacrifices, did not make the worshippers perfect; for if they had been brought to perfection, the sacrifices would not have been offered afresh.
If they were offered again, it was because the worshippers were not perfect. On the contrary, the repetition of the sacrifice was a memorial of sin; it reminded the people that sin was still there, and that it was still before God. In effect, the law, although it was the shadow of things to come, was not their true image. There were sacrifices; but they were repeated, instead of there being one only sacrifice of eternal efficacy. There was a high priest, but he was mortal, and the priesthood transferable. He went into a "holiest of all," but only once a-year, the veil which concealed God being still there, and the high priest unable to remain in His presence, the work being not perfect. Thus, -there were, indeed, elements which plainly indicated the constituent parts, so to speak, of the priesthood of the good things to come; but the state of the worshippers was, in the one case, quite the opposite of that which it was in the other. In the first, every act showed that the work of reconciliation was not done; in the second, the position. of the high priest and of the worshippers is a testimony that this work was accomplished, and that the latter are perfected forever in the presence of God.
In chapter 10 this principle is applied to the sacrifice. Its repetition proved that sin was there. That the sacrifice of Christ was only offered once, was the demonstration of its eternal efficacy. Had the Jewish sacrifices rendered the worshippers permanently perfect, they would have ceased to be offered. The apostle is speaking (although the principle is general) of the yearly sacrifice on the Day of Atonement. For if, through the efficacy of the sacrifice, they had been permanently made perfect, they would have had no more conscience of sin, and could not have had the thought of renewing the sacrifice.
Observe here, that which is very important, that the conscience is cleansed, sin being expiated, the worshipper drawing nigh by virtue of the sacrifice. The meaning of the Jewish service was, that sin was not put away; that of the Christian, that it is. As to the former-precious as the type is-the reason is evident: the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin. Therefore, those sacrifices have been abolished, and a work of another character (although still a sacrifice), has been accomplished. A work which excludes all other, and all repetition of the same, because it consists of nothing less than the self-devotedness of the Son of God to accomplish all the will of God the Father: an act impossible to be repeated-for all His will cannot be accomplished twice.
This is what the Son of God says in this most solemn passage (5-9), in which we are admitted to know, according to the grace of God, that which passed between God the Father and Himself, when He undertook the fulfillment of the will of God, that which He said, and the eternal counsels of God which He carried into execution. He takes the place of submission and of obedience, of performing the will of another. God would no longer accept the sacrifices that were offered under the law (the four classes of which are here pointed out), He had no pleasure in them. In their stead, He had prepared a body for His son-vast and important truth-for the place of man is obedience. Thus in taking this place, the Son of God put Himself into the position to obey perfectly. In fact, He undertakes the duty of fulfilling all the will of God, be it what it may; a will which is ever "good, acceptable and perfect." The Psalm says in the Hebrew: “Thou hast digged my ears," translated by the Septuagint, "Thou hast prepared me a body;" words which, as they give the true meaning, are used by the Holy Ghost. For “the ear “is always employed as a sign of the reception of commandments, and the principle of obligation to obey, or the disposition to do so. He hath opened my ear morning by morning, (Is. e. has made me obedient to His will. The ear was bored or fastened with an awl to the door, in order to express that the Israelite was attached to the house, as a slave, to obey, forever. Now, in taking a body, the Lord took the form of a servant. Ears were digged for Him. That is to say, He placed Himself in a position in which He had to obey all His master’s will, whatever it might be. But it is the Lord Himself who speaks, in the passage before us; “Thou," He says, "hast prepared me a body."
Entering more into detail, He specifies burnt offerings and offerings for sin, sacrifices which had less of the character of communion, and had thus a deeper meaning; but God had no pleasure in them. In a word, the Jewish service was already declared by the Spirit to be unacceptable to God. It was all to cease, it was fruitless; no offering that formed part of it was acceptable. No, the counsels of God unfold themselves-but first of all, in the heart of the Word, the Son of God, who offers Himself to accomplish the will of God. "Then, said He, Lo I come-in the volume of the book it is written of me-to do Thy will O God." Nothing can be more solemn than thus to lift the veil from that which takes place in heaven between God and the Word who undertook to do His will. Observe, that before He was in the position of obedience, He offers Himself in order to accomplish the will of God; that is to say, of free love for the glory of God, of free will, as One who had the power, He offers Himself. He undertakes obedience, He undertakes to do whatsoever God wills. This is, indeed, to sacrifice all His own will, but freely and as the effect of His own purpose, although on the occasion of the will of His Father. He must needs be God, in order to do this, and to undertake the fulfillment of all that God could will.
We have here the great mystery of this divine intercourse, which remains ever surrounded with its solemn majesty, although it is communicated to us that we may know it. And we ought to know it; for it is thus that we understand the infinite grace and the glory of this work. Before He became man, in the place where only divinity is known, and its eternal counsels and thoughts are communicated between the Divine Persons, the Word -as He has declared it to us, in time, by the prophetic Spirit,-such being the will of God contained in the book of the eternal counsels, He who, was able to do it, offered Himself freely to accomplish that will. Submissive to this counsel, already arranged for Him, He yet offers Himself in perfect freedom to fulfill it. But in offering, He submits, yet at the same time undertakes to do all that God, as God, willed. But also in undertaking to do the will of God, it was by the way of obedience, of submission, and of devotedness. For I might undertake to do the will of another, as free and competent, because I willed the thing; but if I say "to do Thy will," this in itself is absolute and complete submission. And this it is which the Lord, the Word, did. He did it also, declaring that He came in order to do it. He took a position of obedience by accepting the body prepared for Him. He came to do the will of God.
This, of which we have been speaking, is continually manifested in the life of Jesus on earth. God shines through His position in the human body; for He was necessarily God in the act itself of His humiliation; and none but God could have undertaken and been found in it; yet He was always and entirely and perfectly obedient and dependent on God. That which revealed itself n His existence on earth, was the expression of that which was accomplished in the eternal abode, in His own nature. That is to say (and of which Psa. 40 speaks), hat which He declares, and that which He was here below, are the same thing; the one in reality in heaven, the other bodily on earth. That which He was here below, was but the expression, the living, real, bodily manifestation of those divine communications which have been revealed to us, and which were the reality of the position that He assumed.
And it is very important to see these things in the free offer made by divine competency, and that not only in their fulfillment in death. It gives quite a different character to the bodily work here below.
In reality, from chapter 1 of this epistle, the Holy Ghost always presents Christ in this way. But this revelation in the Psalm was requisite to explain how He became a servant, what the Messiah really was; and to us it opens an immense view of the ways of God; a view, the depths of which-clearly as it is revealed, and through the very clearness of the revelation-display to us things so divine and glorious, that we bow- the head and veil our faces, at having had part, as it were, in such communications, on account of the majesty of the persons whose acts and whose intimate relationships are revealed, It is not here the glory that dazzles us. But in this poor world there is nothing to which we are greater strangers than the intimacy of those who are, in their modes of life, much above ourselves. What then, when it is that of God! Blessed be His name! there is grace that brings us into it-and that has drawn nigh to us in our weakness. We are then admitted to know this precious truth, that the Lord Jesus undertook, of His own free will, the accomplishment of all the will of God, and that He was pleased to take the body prepared for Him, in order to accomplish it. The love, the devotedness to the glory of God, and the way in which He undertook to obey, are fully set forth. And this-the fruit of God’s eternal counsels-displaces (by its very nature) every provisional sign; and contains, in itself alone, the condition of all relationship with God, and the means by which He glorifies Himself.
The Word then assumes a body, in order to offer Himself as a sacrifice. Besides the revelation of this devotedness of the Word to accomplish the will of God, the effect of His sacrifice, according to the will of God, is also set before us.
He came to do the will of Jehovah. Now, it is by this will of God, (i.e. by His will who, according to His eternal wisdom prepared a body for His Son), that faith understands that those whom He has called unto Himself are saved, are set apart to God; in other words, are sanctified. It is by the will of God that we are set apart for Him (not by our own will), and that, by means of the sacrifice offered to God.
We shall observe, that the epistle does not here speak of the communication of life, nor of a practical sanctification wrought by the Holy Ghost: the subject is the person of Christ ascended on high, and the efficacy of his work. And this is important with regard to sanctification, because it shows that sanctification is a complete setting apart to God, as belonging to Him at the price of the offering of Jesus: a consecration to Him by means of that offering. God took the unclean Jews from among men and set them apart, consecrated them to Himself, by means of the offering of Jesus.
But there is another element, already pointed out, in this offering, the force of which the epistle here applies to believers, namely, that the offering is "once for all." It admits of no repetition. If we enjoy the effect of this offering, our sanctification is eternal in its nature. It does not fail. It is never repeated. We belong to God forever, according to the efficacy of this offering. Thus our sanctification, our being set apart to God, has-with regard to the work that accomplished it-all the stability of the will of God, and all the grace from which it sprang; it has, in its nature, the perfection of the work itself, by which it was accomplished, and the duration and the constant force of the efficacy of that work. But the effect of this offering is not limited to this setting apart for God. The point already treated contains our consecration by God Himself, through the perfectly efficacious offering of Christ, fulfilling His will. And now the position which Christ has taken, in consequence of His offering up of Himself, is employed, in order clearly to demonstrate the state it has brought us into before God.
The high-priest among the Jews-for this contrast is still carried on-stood before the altar continually, to repeat the same sacrifices which could never take away sins. But this man, when He had offered one sacrifice for sin, sat down forever at the right hand of God. There,-having finished for His own all that regards their presentation without spot to God,-He awaits the moment when His enemies shall be made His footstool, according to Psa. 110 “Sit Thou at my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." And the Spirit gives us the important reason so infinitely precious to us: "For He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."
Here (ver. 14) as in ver. 12, on which the latter depends, the word "forever" has the force of permanence, uninterrupted continuity. He is ever seated, we are ever perfected, by virtue of His work and according to the perfect righteousness in which, and conformably to which, He sits at the right hand of God upon His throne, according to that which He is personally there; His, acceptance on God’s part being proved by His session at His right hand. And He is there for us.
It is a righteousness suited to the throne of God, yea, the righteousness of the throne. It neither varies nor fails. He is seated there forever. If then we are sanctified, set apart to God, by this offering according to the will of God Himself, we are also made perfect for God by the same offering, as presented to Him in the person of Jesus.
We have seen that this position has its origin in the will, the good will of God (a will which combines the grace and the purpose of God), and that it has its foundation and present certainty in the accomplishment of the work of Christ, the perfection of which is demonstrated by the session at the right hand of God of Him who accomplished it. But the testimony,-for to enjoy this grace, we must know it with divine certainty; and the greater it is, the more would our hearts be led to doubt it,-the testimony upon which we believe it must be divine. And this it is. The Holy Ghost bears witness to us of it. The will of God is the source of the work; Christ, the Son of God, accomplished it; the Holy Ghost bears witness of it. And here the application to the people, called by grace and spared, is, in consequence, fully set forth; not merely the fulfillment of the work. The Holy Ghost bears us witness, “I will remember no more their sins and iniquities."
Blessed position! The certainty that God will never remember our sins and iniquities, is founded on the steadfast will of God, on the perfect offering of Christ, now, consequently, seated at the right hand of God, and on the sure testimony of the Holy Ghost. It is a matter of faith that God will never remember our sins.
We may remark here, the way in which the covenant is introduced; for although, as writing to “the holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling," he says "a witness to us," the form of his address is always that of an epistle to the Hebrews, (believers, of course, but Hebrews, still bearing the character of God’s people). He does not speak of the Covenant in a direct way, as a privilege in which Christians had a direct part. The Holy Ghost, he says, declares, “I will remember no more," &c. It is this which he quotes. He only alludes to the New Covenant; leaving it aside, consequently, as to all present application. For after having said, “This is the covenant," etc., the testimony is cited, as that of the Holy Ghost, to prove the capital point which he was treating, i.e., that God remembers our sins no more. But he alludes to the Covenant (already known to the Jews as declared before of God) which gave the authority of the Scriptures to this testimony that God remembered no more the sins of His people who are ‘sanctified and admitted into His favor, and which, at the same time, presented these two thoughts:-1St, that this complete pardon did not exist under the first covenant; and 2nd, that the door is left open for the blessing of the nation when the New Covenant shall be formally established.
Another practical consequence is drawn: sins being remitted, there is no more oblation for sin. The one sacrifice having obtained remission, no others can be offered in order to obtain it. Remembrance of this one sacrifice there may indeed be, whatever its character; but a sacrifice to take away the sin which is already taken away, there cannot be. We are, therefore, in reality on entirely new ground-on that of the fact, that by the sacrifice of Christ sin is altogether put away, and that for us who are sanctified and partakers of the heavenly calling, a perfect and everlastingly permanent cleansing has been made, remission granted, eternal redemption obtained. So that we are, in the eyes of God, without sin, on the ground of the perfection of the work of Christ who is seated at His right hand, who has entered into the true Holiest, into heaven itself, to sit there, because his work is accomplished.
Thus, all liberty is ours to enter into the Holy Place (all boldness) by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, i.e., His flesh, that veil rent for us, to admit us without spot into the presence of God Himself, who is there revealed. For that which rent the veil in order to admit us, has likewise put away the sin which shut us out.
We have also a great High Priest over the house of God, as we have seen, who represents us in the Holy Place.
On these truths are founded the exhortations • that follow. One word before we enter on them, as to the relation that exists between perfect righteousness and the priesthood. There are many souls who use the priesthood as the means of obtaining pardon when they have failed. They go to Christ as a Priest, that He may intercede for them and obtain the pardon which they desire, but for which they dare not ask God in a direct way. These souls-sincere as they are-have not liberty to enter into the Holy Place. They take refuge with Christ that they may afresh be brought into the presence of God. Their condition, practically, is that in which a pious Jew stood. They have lost, or rather they have never had by faith, the real consciousness of their position before God, in virtue of the sacrifice of Christ. I do not speak here of all the privileges of the Church: we have seen that the epistle does not speak of them. The position it makes for believers is this. They whom it addresses are not viewed as placed in heaven, although partakers of the heavenly calling; but a perfect redemption is accomplished, sin entirely put away, for the people of God, who remembers their sins no more. The conscience is made perfect: they have no more conscience of sin, by virtue of the work accomplished once for all. There is no more question of sin, i.e., of its imputation, of its being upon them before God, between them and God. It has been put away upon the Cross. Therefore the conscience is perfect; their Representative and High Priest is in heaven, a witness there to the work already accomplished for them.
Thus, although the epistle does not present them as in the Holiest, as sitting there,—like the epistle to the Ephesians-they have full liberty, entire boldness, to enter into it. The question of imputation no longer exists. Their sins have been imputed to Christ. But He is now in heaven-a proof that the sins are blotted out forever. Believers, therefore, ‘enter with entire liberty into the presence of God Himself, and that, always; having no more forever any conscience of sin.
For what purpose, then, is priesthood? What is to be done with respect to the sins we commit? They interrupt our communion; but they make no change in our position before God, nor in the testimony rendered by the presence of Christ at the right hand of God. Sin is measured by the conscience, according to our position. The priesthood of Christ, united to His perpetual presence at God’s right hand, has this two-fold effect for us. 1St. Righteousness always subsists. 2nd. We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. We draw nigh to God in the Holiest, according to that righteousness. But, by sin, communion is interrupted; our righteousness is not altered-for that is Christ Himself at God’s right hand, in virtue of His work-nor is grace changed; but the heart has got away from God, communion is interrupted. Under these circumstances grace acts, in virtue of perfect righteousness, and by the intercession of Christ, on behalf of him who has failed; and his soul is restored to communion. Not that we go to Jesus for this; He goes, even if we sin, to God for us. His presence there is the witness of an unchangeable righteousness which is ours; His intercession maintains or restores the communion which is founded on that righteousness. Our access to God is always open. Sin interrupts our enjoyment of it, the heart is not in communion; the intercession of Jesus is the means of rousing the conscience by the action of the Spirit and the Word, and we return (first humbling ourselves) into the presence of God Himself.
Exhortations follow. Having the right thus to approach God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. This is the only thing that honors the efficacy of Christ’s work, and the love which has thus brought us to enjoy God. In the words that follow, allusion is made to the consecration of the priests—natural allusion, as drawing near to God in the Holiest is the subject. They were sprinkled with blood and washed with water, and then they drew nigh to serve God. Still, although I doubt not of the allusion to the priests, it is quite natural that baptism should have given rise to it. The anointing is not spoken of here-it is the power or privilege of the moral right to draw nigh.
Again, we may notice that as to the foundation of the truth, this is the ground on which Israel will stand in the last days. In Christ, in heaven, will not be their place, nor the possession of the Holy Ghost as uniting the believer to Christ in heaven; but the blessing will be founded on water and on blood. God will remember their sins no more; and they will be washed in the clean water of the Word.
The second exhortation is to persevere in the profession of faith; without wavering. He who made the promises is faithful.
Not only should we have this confidence in God for ourselves, but we -are also to consider one another for mutual encouragement; and, at the same time, not to fail in the public and common profession of faith, pretending to maintain it while avoiding the open identification of oneself with the Lord’s people in the difficulties connected with the profession of this faith before the world. Besides, this public confession had a fresh motive in that the day drew nigh. We see that it is the judgment which is here presented as the thing looked for,-in order that it may act on the conscience, and guard Christians from turning back to the world, and from the influence of the fear of man,-rather than the Lord’s coming to take up His own people. Ver. 26 is connected with the preceding paragraph (23-25), the last words of which suggest the warning of ver. 26; which is founded, moreover, on the doctrine of these two chapters (9 and 10), with regard to the sacrifice. He insists on perseverance in a full confession of Christ, for His one Sacrifice once offered was the only one. If any one who had professed to know its value abandoned it, there was no other sacrifice to which he could have recourse; neither could it be ever repeated. There remained no more sacrifice for sin. All sin was pardoned by the efficacy of this sacrifice: but if, after having known the truth, they were to choose sin instead, there was no other sacrifice, by virtue even of the perfection of that of Christ. Nothing but judgment remained. Such a. professor, having had the knowledge of the truth and having abandoned it, would assume the character of an adversary.
The case, then, here supposed is the renunciation of the confession of Christ; deliberately preferring—after having known the truth—to walk according to one’s own will in sin. This is evident, both from that which precedes and from ver. 29.
Thus we have the two great privileges of Christianity, that which distinguishes it from Judaism, presented in order to warn those who made profession of the former, that the renunciation of the truth, after having enjoyed these advantages, was fatal; for if this means of salvation were renounced, there was no other. These privileges were the manifested presence and power of the Holy Ghost, and the Offering which, by its intrinsic and absolute value, left no place for any other. Both of these possessed a mighty efficacy which, while it gave divine spring and force, the manifestation of the presence of God on the one hand; made known on the other hand the eternal redemption and the perfection of the worshipper; leaving no means for repentance if any one abandoned the manifested and known power of that presence, no place for another sacrifice (which, moreover, would have denied the efficacy of the first), after the perfect work of God in salvation, perfect whether with regard to redemption or to the presence of God by the Spirit in the midst of His own. Nothing remained but judgment.
They who despised the law of Moses, died without mercy. What then would not those deserve at the hand of God, who trod under foot the Son of God, counted the blood of the Covenant by which they had been sanctified, as a common thing, and done despite to the Spirit of Grace. It was not disobedience; it was contempt of the grace of God, and of that which He had done, in the person of Jesus, in order to deliver us from the consequences of disobedience. On the one hand, what was there left, if-with the knowledge of what it was-they renounced this? On the other hand, how could they escape judgment; for they knew a God who had said that vengeance belonged unto Him, and that He would recompense? And again, the Lord would judge His people.
Observe here the way in which sanctification is attributed to the blood: and also, that professors are treated as belonging to the people. The Blood, received by faith, consecrates the soul to God; but it is here viewed also as an outward means for setting apart the people, as a people. Every individual who had owned Jesus to be the Messiah, and the blood to be the seal and foundation of an everlasting Covenant, available for eternal cleansing and redemption on the part of God, acknowledging himself to be set apart for God, by this means, as one of the people-every such individual would, if he renounced it, renounce it as snail; and there was no other way of sanctifying him. The former system had evidently lost its power for him, and the true one he had abandoned. This is the reason why it is said, "having received the knowledge of the truth."
Nevertheless, he hopes better things, reminding them how much they had really suffered for the truth, and that they had even received joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had a better and an abiding portion in heaven. Therefore they were not to cast away. their confidence, the reward of which would be great. For, in truth, they needed patience, in order that after having done the will of God they might receive the effect of the promise. And He who is to come, will come soon.
It is to this life of patience and perseverance that the chapter applies. But there is a principle which is the strength of this life, and which characterizes it. In the midst of the difficulties of the Christian walk, the just shall live by faith; and if any one draws back, God will have no pleasure in him. But, says the author, placing himself, as ever, in the midst of the believers, “We are not of them who draw back, but of them that believe unto the saving of the soul." Thereupon he describes the action of this faith, encouraging believers by the example of the elders who had acquired their renown by walking according to the same principle as that by which the faithful were now called to walk.
Hebrews 11
It is not a definition of this principle, that the epistle gives us at the commencement of chap. 11; but a declaration of its powers and action. Faith realizes (gives substance to) that which we hope for, and is a demonstration to the soul of that which we do not see.
There is much more order than is generally thought, in the series given here of examples of the action of faith; although this order is not the principal object. I will point out its leading features.
1St. With regard to creation. Lost in reasonings, and not knowing God, the human mind sought out endless solutions of existence. Those who have read the cosmogonies of the ancients, know how many different systems, each more absurd than the other, have been invented for that which the introduction of God, by faith, renders perfectly simple. Modern science, with a less active and more practical mind, stops at second causes, and is but little occupied with God. Geology has taken the place of the cosmogony of the Hindus, Egyptians, Orientals, and Philosophers. To the believer the thought is clear and simple; his mind is assured and intelligent by faith. God, by His Word, called all things into existence. The universe is not a ‘producing cause; it is itself a creature acting by a law imposed on it. It is one having authority who has spoken; His word has divine efficacy. He speaks-and the thing is. We feel that this is worthy of God. For when once God is brought in, all is simple. Shut Him out, and man is lost in the efforts of his own imagination, which can neither create nor arrive at the knowledge of a Creator, because it only works with the powers of a creature. Before, therefore, the details of the present form of creation are entered upon, the Word simply says, “In the beginning; God created the heavens and the earth:" Whatever may have taken place between that and Chaos, forms no part of revelation: It is distinct from the special action of the Deluge which is made known to us. The beginning of Genesis does not give a history of the details of creation itself, nor the history of the universe. It gives the fact that in the beginning God created: and afterward, the things that regard man on the earth. The angels, even, are not there. Of the stars it is only said, “He made the stars also." When, we are not told.
By faith, then, we believe that the worlds were created by the Word of God. But sin has come in: and righteousness has to be found for fallen man, in order that he may stand before God. God has given a Lamb for the sacrifice. But here we have set before us, not the gift on God’s part, but the soul drawing near to Him by faith.
By faith, then, Abel offers to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain-a sacrifice which (founded on the revelation already made by God) was offered in the intelligence which a conscience taught of God possessed, with regard to the position in which he who offered was standing. Death and judgment had come in by sin, to man insupportable, although he must undergo them. He must go, therefore, to God, confessing this; but he must go with a substitute, which grace has given. He must go with blood, the witness at the same time both of the judgment and of the perfect grace of God. Doing this, he was in the truth, and this truth was righteousness and grace. He approaches God, and puts the sacrifice between himself and God. He receives the testimony that he is righteous-righteous according to the righteousness of God. For the sacrifice was in connection with the righteousness that had condemned man. The testimony is to his offering; but Abel is righteous before God. Nothing can be more clear, more precious on this point. It is not only the sacrifice which is accepted, but Abel who comes with the sacrifice. He receives from God this testimony, that he is righteous. Sweet and blessed consolation! But the testimony is made to his gifts, so that he possesses all the certainty, of acceptance, all the value of the sacrifice offered. In going to God by the sacrifice of Jesus, not only am I righteous (I receive the testimony that I am righteous), but this testimony is made to my offering, and therefore my righteousness has the value and the perfection of the offering, i.e., of Christ offering Himself to God. The fact that we receive testimony on God’s part that we are righteous, and at the same time that the testimony is made to the gift which we offer (not to the condition in which we are) is of infinite value to us. We are now before God in the perfection of Christ. We walk with God thus.
By faith, death having been the means of my acceptance before God, all that belongs to the old man is
for faith; the power and the rights, of death are entirely destroyed-Christ has undergone them. Thus, if it please God, we go to heaven without even passing through death (compare 2 Cor. 5:1-41For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: 3If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 4For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. (2 Corinthians 5:1‑4)). God did this for Enoch, for Elijah, as a testimony. Not only is sin put away, and righteousness established by the work of Christ, but the rights and the power of him who has the power of death are entirely destroyed. Death may happen to us; we are by nature liable to it: but we possess a life which is outside its jurisdiction. Death, if it comes, is but gain to us; and although nothing but the power of God Himself can raise or transform the body, this power has been manifested in Jesus, and has already wrought in us by quickening us (comp. Eph. 1.19), and it works in us now in the power or deliverance from sin, from the law, and from the flesh. Death, as a power of the enemy, is conquered; it is become a "gain" to faith, instead of being a judgment on nature. Life, the power of God in life, works in holiness and in obedience here below, and declares itself in the resurrection or in the transformation of the body (it is a witness of power with regard. to Christ in Rom. 1:44And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: (Romans 1:4)).
But there is another very sweet consideration to be noticed here. Enoch received testimony that he pleased God, before he was translated. This is very important and very precious. If we walk with God, we have the testimony that we please Him, we have the sweetness of communion with God, the testimony of His Spirit, His intercourse with us in the sense of His presence, the consciousness of walking according to His Word, which we know to be approved by Him-in a word, a life which, spent with Him and before Him by faith, is spent in the light of His countenance and in the enjoyment of the communications of His grace and of a sure testimony coming from Himself, that we are pleasing to Him. A child who walks with a kind father and converses with him, his conscience reproaching him with nothing; does he not enjoy the sense of his parent’s favor?
In figure, Enoch here represents the Church. He is taken up to heaven by virtue of a complete victory over death. By the exercise of sovereign grace, he is outside the government and the ordinary deliverances of God. He bears testimony by the Spirit to the judgment of the world; but he does not go through it (Jude, 14, 15). A walk like that of Enoch has God for its object. His existence is realized-the great business of life, which in the world is spent as if man did everything-and the fact that He is interested in the walk of men, that He takes account of it, in order to reward those who have diligently sought Him.
Noah is found in the scene of the government of this-world. He does not, warn others of the coming judgments as one who is outside them, although he is a preacher of righteousness. He is warned himself and ‘for himself; he is in the circumstances to which the warning relates. It is the spirit of prophecy. He is moved by fear, and he builds an ark to the saving of his house. He thus condemned the world. Enoch had not to build an ark in order to pass safely through the flood. He was not in it: God translated him-exceptionally. Noah is preserved (heir of the righteousness which is by faith, for a future world. There is a general principle which accepts the testimony of God respecting the judgment that will fall upon men, and the means provided by God for escaping it: this belongs to every believer. But there is something more precise. Abel has the testimony that he is righteous; Enoch walks with God, pleases God, and is exempted from the common lot of humanity, proclaiming, as from above, the fate that awaits men, and the coming of Him who will execute the judgment. He goes forward to the accomplishment of the counsels of God. But neither Abel nor Enoch condemned the world as that in the midst of which they were journeying, receiving themselves the warning addressed to those who were dwellers therein. This was Noah’s case: the prophet, although delivered, is in the midst of the judged people. The Church is outside them. Noah’s ark condemned the world; the testimony of God was enough for faith, and he inherits a world that had been destroyed, and the inheritance of all believers, righteousness by faith, on which the new world, too, is founded. This is the case of the Jewish remnant in the last days. They pass through the judgments, out of which we, as not belonging to the world, have been taken. Warned themselves of God’s ways of government in the earth, they will be witnesses to the world of the coming judgments, and will be heirs to the righteousness which is by faith, and witnesses to it in a new world, wherein righteousness will he accomplished in judgment by Him who is to come and whose’ throne will uphold the world in which Noah himself failed: The words, "heir of the righteousness which is by faith," point out, I think, that this faith which bad governed a few was summed up in his person, and that the whole unbelieving world was condemned. The witness of this faith before judgment, Noah passes through it; and when the world is renewed, he is a public witness to the blessing of God that rests on faith, although outwardly all is changed. Thus Enoch represents the Church, in figure; Noah, the Jewish remnant.
The Spirit goes on (verse 8) to produce examples of. the Divine life in detail, always in connection with Jewish knowledge, with that which the heart of a Hebrew could not fail to own; and, at the same time, in connection with the object of the Epistle and with the wants of Christians among the Hebrews.
In the previous case, we have seen a faith which, after owning a Creator- God -recognizes the great principles of the relations of man with God, and that onwards to the end upon earth.
In that which follows, we have first the faith which takes the place of strangership on earth, and maintains it, because something better is desired; and which, in spite of weakness, finds the strength that is requisite, in order to the fulfillment of the promises. This is from 8 to 16. Its effect is entrance into the joy of a heavenly hope. Strangers in the land of promise, and not enjoying the fulfillment of the promises here below, they wait for more excellent things-things which God prepares on high for those who love Him. For such He has prepared a city. In unison with God as to His own thoughts, their desires (through grace) answering to the things in which He takes delight, they are the objects of His peculiar regard: He is not ashamed to be called their God. Abraham not only followed God into a land that He showed Him, but, a stranger there, and not possessing the land of promise, he is, by the mighty grace of God, exalted to the sphere of His thoughts; and, enjoying communion with God and the communications of His grace, he rests upon God for the time present, accepts his position of strangership on earth, and, as the portion of his faith, waits for the heavenly city, of which God is the builder and the founder. There was not, so to speak, an open revelation of this, as was the case when Abraham was called of God; but walking closely enough with God to know that which was enjoyed in His presence; and being conscious that he had not received the fulfillment of the promise, he lays hold of the better things, and waits for them, although only seeing them afar off, and remains a stranger upon earth, unmindful of the country whence he came out.
The special application of these first principles of faith to the case of the Christian Hebrews is evident. They are the normal life of faith for all.
The second character of faith here presented is an entire confidence in the fulfillment of the promises: a confidence maintained in spite of all that might tend to destroy it. This is from ver. 17 to 22. We next find that faith makes its way through all the difficulties that oppose its progress (ver. 23-27). From ver. 28 to 31 faith displays itself in a trust that reposes on God with regard to the use of the means which He sets before us, and of which nature cannot avail itself. Finally, there is the energy in general, of which faith is the source, and the sufferings that characterize the walk of faith.
This general character belongs to all the examples mentioned -namely, that they who have exercised faith have not received the fulfillment of the promise; the application of which to the state of the Hebrew Christians is evident. And these illustrious heroes of faith too, however honored they might be among the Jews, did not enjoy the privileges that Christians possessed; God, in His counsels, had reserved something better for us.
Let us notice some details. Abraham’s faith shows itself by a thorough trust in God. Called to leave his own people, breaking the ties of nature, he obeys. He knows not whither he is going: enough for him that God would show him the place. God having brought him thither, gives him nothing. He dwells-there con- tent, in perfect reliance on God. He was a gainer by it. He waited for a city that had foundations. He openly confesses that he is a stranger and a pilgrim on earth. Gen. 33:44And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept. (Genesis 33:4). Thus, in spirit, he draws nearer to God. Although he possesses nothing, his affections are engaged. He desires a better country, and attaches himself to God more immediately and entirely. He has no desire to return into his own country: he seeks a country. Such is the Christian. In offering up Isaac, there was that absolute confidence in God which, at His command, can renounce even God’s own promises as possessed after the flesh, sure that God will restore them through the exercise of His power, overcoming death and every obstacle.
It is thus that Christ renounced His rights as Messiah, and went even into death, committing Himself to the will of God and trusting in Him; and received everything in resurrection. And this the Hebrew Christians had to do with respect to the Messiah and the promises made to Israel.
Observe here that when trusting in God and giving up all for Him, we always gain, and we learn something more of the ways of His power: for in renouncing-according to His will—anything already received, we ought to expect from the power of God that He would bestow something else. Abraham renounces the promise after the flesh. He sees the city which has foundations; he can desire a heavenly country. He gives up Isaac, in whom were the promises; he learns resurrection, for God is infallibly faithful. The promises were in Isaac, therefore God must restore him to Abraham, and by resurrection, if he offered him in sacrifice.
In Isaac, faith distinguishes between the portion of God’s people according to his election, and that of man having birth-rights according to nature. This is the knowledge of the ways of God in blessing, and in judgment.
By faith, Jacob, a stranger and feeble, having nothing but the staff with which he had crossed the Jordan, worships God, and announces the double portion of the heir of Israel, of the one whom his brethren rejected—a type of the Lord, the heir of all things.
By faith, Joseph, a stranger, the representative here of Israel, far from his own country, reckons on the fulfillment of the earthly promises.
These are the expressions of faith in the faithfulness of God, in the future fulfillment of His promise. In that which follows we have the faith which surmounts every difficulty that arises in the path of the man of God, in the way that God marks out for him as he journeys on towards the enjoyment of the promises.
The faith of the parents of Moses makes them disregard the king’s cruel command, and they conceal their infant; whom God, in answer to their faith, preserved by extraordinary means when there was no other way to save it. Faith does not reason—it acts from its own point of view, and leaves the result to God.
But the means which God used for the preservation of Moses, placed him within a little of the highest position in the kingdom. He there came to be possessed of all the acquirements which that period could bestow on a’ man distinguished alike by his energy and his character. But faith does its work, and inspires divine affections which do not look to surrounding circumstances for a guide of action, even when those circumstances may have owed their origin to the most remarkable providences.
Faith has its own objects, supplied by God Himself, and governs the heart with a view to those objects. It gives us a place and relationships which rule the whole life, and leave no room for other motives and other spheres of affection which would divide the heart; for the motives and affections which govern faith are given by God, and given by Him in order to form and govern the heart.
Vers. 24-26, develop this point. It is a very important principle; for we often hear providence alleged as a reason for not walking by faith. Never was there a more remarkable providence than that which- placed Moses in the court of Pharaoh: and it gained its object. It would not have done so, if Moses had not abandoned the position into which that providence had brought him. But it was faith, that is to say, the divine affections which God had created in his heart, and not providence as a rule and motive, which produced the effect for which providence had reserved and prepared him. Providence, thanks be to God! governs circumstances. Faith governs the heart and the conduct.
The reward which God has promised comes in here as an avowed object in the sphere of faith. It is not the motive power; but it sustains and encourages the heart that is acting by faith, in view of the object which God presents to our affections. It thus takes the heart away from the present, from the influence of the things that surround us (whether they are things that attract or that tend to intimidate us), and elevates the heart and character of him who walks by faith, and confirms him in a path of devotedness which will lead him to the end: at which he aims.
A motive outside that which is present to us, is the secret of stability and of true greatness. We may have.-an object with regard to which we act; but we need a motive outside that object-a divine motive—to enable us to act in a godly way respecting it.
Faith realizes also (ver. 27) the intervention of God without seeing Him; and thus delivers from all fear of the power of man, the enemy of His people. But the thought of God’s intervention brings the heart into a greater difficulty than even the fear of man. If His people are to be delivered, God must intervene, and that in judgment. But they, as well as their enemies, are sinners; and the consciousness of sin and of deserving judgment necessarily destroys confidence in Him who is the Judge. Dare they see Him come to manifest His power in judgment (for this it is, in fact, which must take place for the deliverance of His people). Is God for us the heart asks this God who is coming in judgment? But God has provided the means of securing safety in the presence of judgment (ver. 28), a means apparently contemptible and useless; yet which in reality is the only one that, by glorifying Him with regard to the evil of which we are guilty, has power to afford shelter from the judgment that He executes.
Faith recognized the testimony of God by trusting to the efficacy of the blood sprinkled on the door, and could, in all security, let God come in judgment- God who, seeing the blood, would pass over His believing people. By faith Moses kept the Passover. Observe here, that by the act of putting the blood on the door, the people acknowledged that they were as much the objects of the just judgment of God as the Egyptians. God had given them that which preserved them from it: but it was because they were guilty, and deserved it. No one can stand before God.
Ver. 29. But the power of God is manifested, and manifested in judgment. Nature, the enemies of God’s people, think to pass through this judgment dry-shod, like those who are sheltered from the righteous vengeance of God. But the judgment swallows them up in the very same place in which the people find deliverance. A principle of marvelous import. There, where the judgment of God is, even there is the deliverance. Believers have truly experienced this in Christ. The Cross is death and judgment, the two terrible consequences of sin, the lot of sinful man. To us, they are the deliverance provided of God. By and in them we are delivered, and (in Christ) we pass through, and are out of their reach. Christ died and is risen; and faith brings us, by means of that which should have been our eternal ruin, into a place where death and judgment are left behind, and where our enemies can no longer reach us. We go through, without their touching us. Death and judgment shield us from the enemy. They are our security. But we enter into a new sphere. We live by the effect not only of Christ’s death but of His resurrection.
Those who, in the mere power of nature, think to pass through (they who speak of death and judgment and Christ, taking the Christian position, and thinking to pass through, although the power of God in redemption is not with them) are swallowed, up.
With respect to the Jews, this event will have an earthly antitype; for in fact the day of God’s judgment on earth will be the deliverance of Israel, who will have been brought to repentance.
This deliverance at the Red Sea, goes beyond the protection of the blood in Egypt. There, God coming in the expression of His holiness, executing judgment upon evil, what they needed was to be sheltered from that judgment, to be protected from the righteous judgment of God Himself. And, by the blood, God, thus coming to execute judgment, was shut out, and the people were placed in safety before the Judge. This judgment had the character of the eternal judgment.
At the Red Sea, it was not merely deliverance from judgment hanging over them; but God was for the people, active in love and in power for them. The deliverance was an actual deliverance, they came out of one condition to enter into another; God’s own power bringing them, unhurt, through that which, must otherwise, have been their destruction. Thus, in our case, it is death and resurrection, in which we participate, in Christ, the redemption which He therein accomplished, which introduces us into an entirely new condition, altogether outside that of nature.
In principle, the earthly deliverance of the Jewish nation (the Jewish remnant) will be the same. Founded on the power of the risen Christ, and on the propitiation wrought out by His death, that deliverance will be accomplished by God who will intervene on behalf of those that turn to Him by faith; at the same time that His adversaries (who are those also of His people) shall be destroyed by the very judgment which is the safeguard of the people whom they have oppressed.
Ver. 30. Yet all difficulties were not overcome because redemption was accomplished, deliverance effected. But the God of deliverance was with them; difficulties disappear before Him. That which is a difficulty to man, is none to Him. Faith trusts in Him, and uses means which only serve to express that trust. The walls of Jericho fall down at the sound of trumpets made of rams’ horns, after Israel had compassed the city seven days, sounding these trumpets seven times.
Rahab, in presence of all the as yet unimpaired strength of the enemies of God and His people, identifies herself with the latter before they had gained one victory; because she felt that God was with them. A stranger to them, (as to the flesh) she, by faith, escaped the judgment which God executed upon her people.
Ver. 32. Details are now no longer carried on. Israel (although individuals had still to act by faith) being established in the land of promise, furnished less occasion to develop examples of the principles on which faith acted. The Spirit speaks in a general way of these examples in which faith re-appeared under various characters of energy and patience, and sustained souls under all kinds of suffering. Their glory was with God, the world was not worthy of them. Nevertheless they had received nothing of the fulfillment of the promises; they had to live by faith, as well as the Hebrews, to whom the epistle was addressed. The latter, however, had privileges which were in no wise possessed by believers of former days. Neither the one nor the other was brought to perfection, i.e., to the heavenly glory, unto which God has called us, and in which they are to participate. Abraham, and others, waited for this glory; they never possessed it; God would not give it them without us. But He has not called us by only the same revelations as those which He made to them. For the days of the rejected Messiah, He had reserved some better thing. Heavenly things have become things of the present time things actually possessed, by the union of the church of Christ, and present access into the Holiest, through the blood of Christ. We have not to do with a promise and a distant view of a place approached from without, entrance to which was not yet granted, so that relationship with God would not be founded on entrance; within the veil, entrance into His own presence. We now go in with boldness. We belong to heaven; our citizenship is there; we are at home there. Heavenly glory is our present portion, Christ, our head, having gone in as our forerunner. We have, in Heaven, a Christ who is man glorified. This, Abraham had not. He walked on earth with a heavenly mind, waiting for a city, feeling that nothing else would satisfy the desires which God had awakened in his heart; but he could not be connected with heaven by means of a Christ actually sitting there in, glory. This is our present portion. We can even say that we are united to Him there. The Christian’s position is quite different from that of Abraham’s.
The Spirit does not here develop the whole extent of this "better thing," because the church is not His subject.
He presents the general thought to the Hebrews, that believers of the present day have special privileges which they enjoy by faith, but which did not belong even to the faith of believers in former days.
We shall all be perfected, that is to say, glorified, together in resurrection; but there is a special portion which belongs to the church, and which did not belong to the patriarchs. The fact, that Christ, as man, is in heaven, after having accomplished redemption; and that the Holy Ghost, by whom we are united to Christ, is on earth, makes this superiority granted to Christians easily understood. Accordingly, even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than the greatest of those who preceded it.
Hebrews 12
The epistle now enters on the practical exhortations that flow from its doctrinal instruction; with reference to the dangers peculiar to the Hebrew Christians-instruction suited, throughout, to inspire them with courage. Surrounded with a cloud of witnesses like these of chap. xi., who all declared the advantages of a life of faith in promises still unfulfilled, they ought to feel themselves impelled to follow their steps, running with patience the race set before them, and above all looking to Jesus, who had run the whole career of faith, sustained by the joy that was set before Him, and having reached the goal had taken His seat in glory at the right-hand of God.
This passage presents the Lord, not as He Who bestows faith-, but as He who has Himself run the whole career of faith. Others had traveled a part of the road, had surmounted some difficulties; the obedience and the perseverance of the Lord had been subjected to every trial of which human nature is susceptible,-men, the adversary, the being forsaken of God,-everything was against Him. His disciples flee when He is in danger, His intimate friend betrays Him, He looks for some one to have compassion on Him and finds no one. The fathers (of whom we read in the previous chapter) trusted in God and were delivered, but as for Jesus, He was a worm, and no man; His throat was dry with crying. His love for us, His obedience to His father, surmounted all. He carries off the victory by submission, and takes His seat in a glory, exalted in proportion to the greatness of His abasement and obedience; the only just reward for having perfectly glorified God where He had been dishonored by sin. The joy and the rewards that are set before us, are never the motives of the walk of faith-we know this well with regard to Christ, but it is not the less true in our own case-they are the encouragement of those who walk in it.
Jesus then, who has attained the glory due to Him, becomes an example to us, in the sufferings through which He passed in attaining it; therefore we are neither to lose courage nor to grow weary. We have not yet, like Him, lost our lives in order to glorify God and to serve Him. The way in which the apostle engages them to disentangle themselves from every hindrance, whether sin or difficulty, is remarkable; as though they had nothing to do but to cast them off as useless weights. And, in fact, when we look at Jesus, nothing is easier; when we are not looking at Him, nothing more impossible.
There are two things to be cast off, every weight, and the sin that would entangle our feet (for he speaks of one who is running in the race). The flesh, the human heart, is occupied with cares and difficulties; and the more we think of them the more we are burdened by them; it is enticed by the object of its desires, it does not set itself free from them; the conflict is with a heart that loves the thing against which we strive; we do not separate ourselves from it. When looking at Jesus, the new man is active; there is a new object, which unburdens and detaches us from every other by means of a new affection which has its place in a new nature; and in Jesus Himself, to whom we look, there is a positive power which sets us free.
It is by casting it all off in an absolute way that the thing is easy-by looking at that which fills the heart with other things, and occupies it in a different sphere, Where a new object and a new nature act upon each other; and in that object there is a positive power which absorbs the heart and shuts out all objects that act merely on the old nature. What is felt to be a weight is easily cast off. But we must look to Jesus. Only in Him can we cast off every hindrance easily and without reservation. We cannot combat sin by the flesh.
But there is another class of trials that come from without; they are not to be cast off, they must be borne. Christ,, as we have seen, went through them. We have not, like Him, resisted even to the shedding of our blood, rather than fail in faithfulness and obedience. Now, God acts in these trials, as a Father. He chastises us: They come perhaps, as in the case of Job, from the enemy, but the hand and the wisdom of God are in them. He chastises those whom He loves. We must, therefore neither despise the chastisement nor be discouraged by it, We must not despise it, for He does not chastise without a motive or a cause; moreover it is God who does it; nor must we be discouraged, for He does it in love.
If we lose our life for the testimony of the Lord and in resisting sin; the warfare is ended; and this is not chastisement, but the glory of suffering with Christ. Death, in this case, is the negation of sin. He who has died is free from sin; he who has suffered in the flesh has done with sin. But, up to that point, the flesh, in the practical sense (for we have a right to reckon ourselves dead), is not yet destroyed; and God knows how to unite the manifestation of the faithfulness of the new man who suffers for the Lord with the discipline by which the flesh is mortified. For example, Paul’s thorn in the flesh united these two things. It was painful to him in the exercise of his ministry; for it was something that tended to make him contemptible when preaching; and this he endured for the Lord’s sake; but at the same time it kept his flesh in check.
Ver. 9; Now we are subject to our natural parents who discipline us after their own will, how much more then to the Father of Spirits who Makes us partakers of His own holiness. Observe here, the grace that is appealed to.’ We have seen how much the Hebrews needed warning; their tendency to fail in the career of faith; the means of preventing this is, doubtless, not to spare the warning, but yet to bring the soul fully into connection with grace.
We are not come to Mount Sinai, to the law which makes demands on us, but to Zion, where God manifested His power in re-establishing Israel, by His grace, in the person of the elect king, when-as to the responsibility of the people-all was entirely lost, all relationship with God impossible on that footing; for the ark was lost, there was no longer a mercy-seat, no longer a throne of God among the people. Ichabod was written on Israel.
Therefore, in speaking of holiness he says, God is active in love towards you, even in your very sufferings. It is He who has not only given free access to Himself by the blood, and by the presence of Christ in heaven for us; but who is continually occupied with all the details. of your life, whose hand is in all your trials, who thinks unceasingly about you, in, order to make you partakers of His holiness. This is not to require holiness on our part-necessary as it must ever be-it is in order to make us. partakers of his own holiness. What immense and perfect grace! What a means!—it is the means by which to enjoy God Himself perfectly.
Ver. 11. God does not expect us to find these exercises of soul pleasant at the moment; they would not produce their effect if they were so: but afterward, the will being broken, they produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness. The pride of man is brought down, when he is obliged to submit to that which is contrary to: his will. God also takes a larger (ever precious) place in his thoughts and in ‘his life.
Ver. 12. On the principle, then, of grace, the Hebrews are exhorted to encourage themselves in the path of faith, and to watch against the buddings of sin among them, whether in yielding to the desires of the flesh, or in giving up Christian privileges for something of the world. They were to watch so courageously that their evident joy and blessing (which is always a distinct testimony and one that triumphs over the enemy) should make the weak feel that it was their own assured portion also; and thus strength and healing would be ministered to them instead of discouragement. The path of godliness as to circumstances was thus made easy, a beaten path to weak and lame souls, and they would feel more than stronger souls the comfort and value of such a path.
Grace, we have already said, is the motive given for this walk; but grace is here presented in a form that requires to be considered a little in detail.
We are not come, it says, to Mount Sinai. There the terrors of the majesty of God kept man at a distance. No one was to approach Him. Even Moses feared and trembled at the presence of Jehovah. This is not where the Christian is brought. But, in contrast with such relationships as these with God, the whole millennium state in all its parts is developed; according, however, to the way in which these different parts are now known as things hoped for. We belong to it all; but evidently these things are not yet established. Let us name them: Sion; the heavenly Jerusalem; the angels and general assembly; the Church of the first-born, whose names are inscribed in heaven; God the Judge of all; the spirits of the just made perfect; Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant; and, finally, the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel.
Sion we have spoken of as a principle. It is the intervention of sovereign grace (in the king) after the ruin, and in the midst of the ruin, of Israel, re-establishing the people, according to the counsels of God in glory, and their relationships with God Himself. It is the rest of God on the earth, the seat of the Messiah’s royal power. But, as we know, the extent of the earth is far from being the limit of the Lord’s inheritance. Sion on earth is Jehovah’s rest; it is not the city of the living God; the heavenly. Jerusalem is that the heavenly capital, so to speak, of His kingdom, the city that has foundations, whose founder and builder is God Himself.
Having named Sion below, the author turns naturally to Jerusalem above; but this carries him into heaven and he finds himself with all the people of God, in the midst of a multitude of angels; the great universal assembly of the invisible world. There is, however, one peculiar object on which his eye rests in this marvelous and heavenly scene. It is the church of the first-born whose names are inscribed in heaven. They were not born there, not indigenous like the angels, whom God preserved from falling. They are the objects of the counsels of God-it is not merely that they reach Heaven, they are the glorious heirs and first-born of God, according to His eternal counsels, in accordance with which they are registered in heaven. The church, the assembly of the objects of grace, belongs to heaven by grace. They are not the objects of the promises-who, not having received the fulfillment of the promises on earth, do not fail to enjoy it in heaven. They have the anticipation of no other country or citizenship than heaven. The promises were not addressed to them. They have no place on earth. Heaven is prepared for them by God Himself. Their names are inscribed there by Him. It is the highest place in heaven: above the dealings of God in. government, promise, and law, on the earth. This leads the picture of glory on to God Himself, but, (having reached the highest point, that which is most excellent in grace) He is seen under another character, namely, as the Judge of all, as looking down from on high to judge all that is below. This introduces another class of these blessed inhabitants of the heavenly glory: those whom the righteous Judge owned as His, before the Church was revealed-the spirits of the just, arrived at perfection. They had finished their course, they had overcome in conflict, they were waiting only for glory. They had been connected with the dealings of God on the earth, but-faithful before the time for its blessing was come-they had their rest and their portion in heaven.
It was the purpose of God, nevertheless, to bless the earth. He could not do so according to man’s responsibility-His people even were but as grass. He would therefore establish a new covenant with Israel, a covenant of pardon, and according to which He would write the law in the hearts of His people. The Mediator of this covenant had already appeared and had done all that was required for its establishment. The saints among the Hebrews were come to the Mediator of the new covenant, blessing was thus prepared for the earths and secured to it.
Finally, the blood of Christ had been shed on earth, as that of Abel by Cain; but instead of crying from the earth for vengeance, so that Cain became a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, (a striking type of the Jew, guilty of the death of Christ), it is grace that speaks, and the shed blood cries to obtain pardon and peace for those who shed it.
It will be observed, that although speaking of the different parts of Millennial blessing, with its foundations, all is given according to the present condition of things, before the coming of that time of blessing from God. We are in it, as to our relationships; but the spirits of the just men of the Old Testament only are here spoken of, and only the Mediator of this new covenant; the covenant itself is not established. The blood cries, but the answer in earthly blessing has not yet come. This is easily understood: it is exactly according to the existing state of things, and even throws considerable light on the position of the Hebrew Christians, and on the doctrine of the epistle. The important thing for them was, that they should not turn away from Him who spoke from heaven. It was with Him they had to do. We have seen them connected with all that went before, with the Lord’s testimony on earth; but, in fact, they had to do, at that time, with the Lord Himself as speaking from heaven. His voice then shook the earth; -but now,- speaking with the-authority of grace and from heaven, He announced the dissolution of everything which the flesh could lean upon, or on which the creature could rest its hopes.
All that could be shaken should be dissolved. How much more fatal to turn away [from Him that speaketh] now, than from the commandments even of Sinai. This shaking of all things (whether here or in the analogous passage in Peter ii.) evidently goes beyond Judaism, but has a peculiar application to it. Judaism was the system and the frame of the relationships of God with men on earth, according to the principle of responsibility on their part. All this was of the first creation, but its springs were poisoned; heaven, the seat of the enemy’s power, power, perverted and corrupted. The heart of man on earth was corrupt and rebellious. God will shake and change all things. The result will be a new creation, in which righteousness shall dwell.
Meanwhile, the first fruits of this new creation were being formed; and, in Christianity, God was forming the heavenly part of the kingdom that cannot be moved; and Judaism-the center of the earthly system and of human responsibility-was passing away. The apostle, therefore, announces the shaking of all things, that everything which exists as the present creation shall be set aside. With regard to the present fact, he says only “we receive a kingdom that cannot be moved; "and calls us to serve God with true piety, because our God is a consuming fire. Not-as people say-God out of Christ: but our God. This is His character in holy majesty and in righteous judgment of evil.
Hebrews 13
In the next chapter, there is more than one truth-important to notice. The exhortations are as simple as they are weighty, and require but few remarks. They rest in the sphere in which the whole of the epistle does; what relates to the Christian’s path as walking here, not what flows from union with Christ-in heavenly places. Brotherly love, hospitality, care for those in bonds, the strict maintenance of the marriage-tie and personal purity, the avoiding of covetousness; such are the subjects of exhortation, all important and connected With the gracious walk of a Christian, but not drawn from the higher and more heavenly sources and principles of the Christian life as we see in Ephesians and Colossians. Nor even though there be more analogy -for the epistle to the Romans, rests in general, in resurrection, and does not go on to the ascension -are the exhortations such as in this latter epistle. Those which follow connect themselves with the circumstances in which the Hebrews found themselves, and rest on the approaching abolition and judgment of Judaism, from which they had now definitely to separate themselves.
In exhorting them (ver. 7) to remember those who. have guided the flock, he speaks of those already departed, in contrast with those still living (ver. 17). The issue of their faith might well encourage others to follow their steps, to walk by those principles of faith which had led them to so noble a result.
Moreover, Christ never changed; He was the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Let them abide in the simplicity and integrity of faith. Nothing is a plainer proof that the heart is not practically in possession of that which gives rest in Christ, that it does not realize what Christ is, than the restless search after something new, divers and strange doctrines." To grow in the knowledge of Christ is our life and our privilege. The search after novelties which are foreign to Him, is a proof of not being satisfied with Him, But He who is not satisfied with Jesus, does not know Him; or, at least, has forgotten Him. It is impossible to enjoy Him and not to feel that He is everything, that is to say, that He satisfies us, and that, by the nature of what He is, He shuts out everything else.
Now with regard to Judaism, in which the Hebrews were naturally inclined to seek satisfaction for the flesh, the apostle goes farther. They were no longer Jews in the possession of the true worship of God, a privileged worship in which others had no right to participate. The altar of God belonged now to the Christians. Christians only had a right to it. An earthly worship, in which there was no entering within the veil into God’s own presence in the sanctuary, could no longer subsist-, a worship that had its worldly glory, that belonged to the elements of this world and had its place there. Now, it is either heaven or the cross and shame. The great sacrifice for sin has been offered; but, by its efficacy, it brings us into the sanctuary, into heaven itself, where the blood has been carried in; and, on the other hand, it takes us outside the camp into shame and rejection on earth. This is the portion of Christ. In heaven He is; accepted, He has gone in with His own blood. On earth cast out and despised.
A worldly religion, which forms a system in which. the world can walk, and in which the religious element is adapted to man on the earth, is the denial of Christianity.
Here we have no continuing city, we seek the one 4; which is to come. By Christ we offer our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. By sharing also our goods with others, by doing good in every way, we offer sacrifices with which God is well pleased. (17.) He then exhorts them to obey those who, as responsible to God, watch over souls, and who go before the saints in order to lead them on. It is a proof of that humble spirit of grace which seeks only to please the Lord.
The sense of this responsibility makes Paul ask the saints to pray for him-but with the declaration that he had assuredly a good conscience. We serve God, we act for Him, when He is not obliged to be acting on us. That is to say, the Spirit of God acts by our means when He has not to occupy us with ourselves. When the latter is the case, one could not ask for the prayers of saints as a laborer. While the Spirit is exercising us in our conscience, we cannot call ourselves laborers for God. When this conscience is good we can ask, unreservedly for the prayers of the saints. The apostles, so much the more, asked for them because he hoped to see them again.
Finally, he invokes blessing upon them, giving God the title he so often ascribes to Him-"the God of peace." In the midst of exercise of heart with regard to the Hebrews, of arguments to preserve their love from growing cold, in the midst of the moral unsteadiness that enfeebled the walk of these Christians, this title has a peculiarly precious character.
The Spirit sets them also in the presence of a risen Christ, of a God who had founded and secured peace by the death of Christ and had given a proof of it in His resurrection. He had brought Christ again from the dead, according to the power of the blood of the everlasting covenant. On this blood, the believing people might build a hope that nothing could shake. For it was not, as at Sinai, promises founded on the condition of the people’s obedience, but on the ransom which had been paid and the perfect expiation of their disobedience. The blessing was, therefore, unchangeable. He prays that the God who had wrought it would work in them to grant them full power and energy for the accomplishment of His will, working Himself in them that which was well-pleasing in His sight.
He exhorts them to give heed to exhortation-he had only sent them a few words.
He who wrote the letter desires they should know that Timothy had been set at liberty. He himself was so already. He was in Italy. Circumstances which tend to confirm the idea that it was Paul who wrote this letter-a very interesting point, although in nowise affecting its authority.
It is the Spirit of God who everywhere gives His own authority to the Word.
(Continued from, Vol. XI. p. 400).