From the absence of an address it has been doubted whether this is an epistle. The closing chapter however, with not a few confirmations less marked throughout, is proof positive that it has a real epistolary nature, though, like the letter to the saints in Rome, somewhat of a treatise also. Its contents demonstrate beyond just question that the Epistle before us was directed to Jews professing the name of the Lord Jesus. For all would be truly applicable if not a Gentile were called at this time to believe. Beyond all other books of the New Testament it is as to every point of doctrine and even exhortation based on the ancient scriptures familiar only to the people chosen of old.
This stamps it with a character different, whoever the writer might be, from every other. It appeals to the Old Testament from first to last as no other Epistle does. Yet the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, are made to speak as it were with new tongues. They all render a distinct, united, and glorious testimony, once earthly in the letter, now heavenly in spirit, to the Lord seated at God's right hand, His proper position for the Christian. To lead on the believing Jew to know and enjoy Christ where He is, to worship and walk in this faith, is the prime object of the bright, glowing, deeply interesting and instructive Epistle that claims our attention.
It is therefore the inspired exercise of the teacher's gift rather than of the apostle and prophet announcing absolutely new revelations. There is no such language here as “I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery,” as in Rom. 11:25. There is not a word about his apostleship here, as in the two Epistles to the Corinthians; of the mystery of Christ, as to the Ephesians and the Colossians; nor even “this we say unto you by the word of the Lord,” as to the Thessalonians. The writer speaks of others as “those that heard” the Lord; he himself is here a “teacher of” Israelites “in faith and verity.” He simply cites and reasons on the ancient oracles as well as histories; he applies prophecies and expounds the types of the law; but rarely if ever does he unveil the magnificent scenes of the latter day, when Israel shall be blessed, under Messiah and the new covenant, and the nations also in a circle concentric indeed but not so close. He writes with the utmost fullness of Christ's exaltation on high in view of the heavenly calling and those who now partake of it before that day.
Christ is never spoken of as the Head, nor consequently is the one body wherein the old differences vanish, nor that new man where is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and in all. The nearest approach to unity is that the Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one. The assembly is of the firstborn ones, viewed as an aggregate of individuals and not as the body of Christ. Those who composed it were heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; but joined to the Lord as one spirit is not said here.
This may be conceived by some as implying another hand rather than Paul's. But the inference is baseless. For though he alone develops the mystery concerning Christ and concerning the church, it is only in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, with the First to the Corinthians practically and in that to the Romans allusively. In the rest of his Epistles we find “the body” no more than in that to the Hebrews; and this as distinctly in the ordering of the Holy Spirit, as in those which contain it fully. Our individual relationships are no less important than our corporate. The divine design regulates the topics introduced, as much as their appropriate handling. Each Epistle or other book of Scripture is perfect for the purpose God had in view when He inspired each writer. As the main object in that to the Hebrews is Christ's priesthood with its necessary basis, due adjuncts, and suited results, and as this is for the saints individually, the one body of Christ could not fittingly fall within its scope, if it were a divinely inspired composition, whether by Paul or by any other. Its central doctrine is, not we one with Him as members of His body, but He appearing before the face of God for us. Abiding forever, having His priesthood unchangeable, He is able to save to the uttermost those that by Himself approach God, as He al ways lives to intercede for them. The same persons compose the body of Christ; but the associations are wholly distinct and only compatible through the fullness of Christ.
Some have wondered why Paul, if the writer, should not have given his name at the beginning. The peculiarity is at least equally true of any writer. It would in fact be more strange in one who had written no other Epistle. If the great apostle wrote, its analogue is in the First Epistle of John, who does not prefix his name there, though in the two lesser he addresses himself “as elder” in a style unmistakably his own. In the Revelation, where the difference of the subject matter calls for a manner of writing wholly distinct from either his Gospel or his Epistles, his name appears alike in the preface as in the conclusion. Is not this self-evidently as it should be?
Now supposing Paul to have written the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is not difficult to suggest weighty motives for his putting forward, not his own name and apostolic authority, but such a treatment of the Old Testament scriptures as must carry divine light and firm conviction to all who weigh them before God. That the Hebrew Christians were prejudiced and disputations even in early days is a fact beyond question, for one who reads Acts 11; 15; 21, to cite nothing else. They could not but feel that the doctrine of the apostle had a depth, and height, and comprehensiveness which made it a strain for those so long swathed in Jewish bands to follow him. He was apostle of the uncircumcision, in itself no small trial to ordinary minds of their mold, as we may assuredly conclude even from the Apostles Peter and Barnabas, favored as they had personally been of God toward Gentiles. Therefore does the writer, supposing him to be Paul, approach them with the most consummate delicacy and tact, as his burning love for his brethren—doubly brethren, both after the flesh and now after the Spirit—would dictate. He becomes as a Jew that he might gain the Jews; to them that were under the law, as under law, though being himself not under law, that he might gain those under law. The omission of his name had thus at the starting-point a special propriety in his case beyond that of other man.
Another ground for that omission is plain from the unusual task before him. The force of the appeal lay in its coming from the first and throughout with the authority of God; and to Jewish Christians this could be effected in no way so telling as that here employed. “By many measures and in many manners God, having spoken of old to the fathers in prophets, spoke to us in [the] Son Whom He appointed Heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds” (Heb. 1:1, 2). How enfeebling would have been the apostle's introduction of himself in such a connection! Even we who were of the Gentiles, and who are of the church, would feel it in either way out of place, aesthetically in the one instance, spiritually in the other. For the Hebrew Christian no method so impressive, welcome, and authoritative. It was the true end of controversy. Impossible to evade or to gainsay that which carried in itself the evidence of God's mind revealed in His word—at least to a believer.
Hence all flows on the ground of what is confessedly divine; and any living man's authority, however truly conferred of God and admitted by believers, would be felt rather to interfere than to be seasonable. Therefore we hear in chap. 2. of the word which, having had its commencement in being spoken “by the Lord,” was confirmed to as by those that heard, even thus God also bearing witness both by signs and wonders, and manifold powers and distributions of the Holy Ghost according to His own will. In like beautiful accordance Jesus is shown in chap. 3. to be the Apostle, as well as High Priest, of our confession. Clearly therefore it is superficial in the extreme to reason on 2:3, 4, as evidence against Paul's authorship. Those who were designated apostles by the Lord on earth are merely “those that heard “; and as Saul then was but an unbeliever of Israel like the mass, he graciously sinks himself among the rest as “to us.” Just thus, long after he was an apostle by call, he could say on meet occasion, “I am a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia,” and even “I am a Pharisee, son of Pharisees,” and “according to the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.” It would have been self-importance, not gracious wisdom, to have asserted his apostleship in this place, writing as he was by the will and inspiration of God, but evidently outside his special field of the nations, as laid down in Gal. 2:7-9 and elsewhere. It was a final warning to the Christian Jews; and who so fitted in love no less than in everything else as one who had ere this testified to the Roman Christians that he loved the ancient people as much as Moses, when he asked Jehovah to blot him out of His book if He would not forgive their sin? As the apostle of the circumcision had been employed, and not Paul, to open the kingdom of heaven to the Gentiles (Acts 10), so did the only wise God use the apostle of the uncircumcision, and not Peter, to summon for the last time the Hebrew Christians, whose attachment to the old and earthly system He had so long borne with.
No doubt there were not a few who had learned better than the amalgam which had hitherto prevailed in Jerusalem among the baptized. But the time was come, and the most suited instrument ever raised up on earth, to bring to a close a state of things abnormal to the spiritual eye, and dangerous for the carnal: who, even if they love the Lord at bottom, are apt to fluctuate and more prone to palliate and foster natural and educational inclinations than to judge them by the word. Jerusalem was about to pass visibly away with the temple, ritual, and priesthood. It was of moment that, before the external blow of judgment fell, the faithful in Palestine should learn what they had been too slow to apprehend. Jesus is not only the Savior and the Lord, but the great High Priest Who has passed through the heavens, and to this end both Son of God in the supreme sense, owned as God and as Jehovah by Him Who is God and Jehovah, and thus as both divine and human in One Person seated at God's right hand on His throne where no creature ever did or can sit.
Hence the Epistle starts with Christ in that glorious condition; and we know who it was that saw this great sight to his conversion from Judaism as well as sin—who it is that above every other even of inspired men was given to seize and preach and write down permanently the great truth of a Christ known no longer after the flesh, but dead, risen and exalted in heaven; who accordingly writes death on all that flesh and even religions flesh gloried in, that he and we might find life and righteousness, wisdom, sanctification, redemption, in a word all we and all that God wills us to possess, in Christ at His right hand. We are thus heavenly, as is the Heavenly; and with the assurance of safe keeping and ultimate triumph over every foe; for as we have borne the image of the earthy (Adam's) we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly (Christ's).
This was the apostle's great ministry of the church, and thus he was enabled by the Holy Spirit to fill up the word of God, even that blank which was left for the revelation of the mystery that had been hid from all ages and generations. Here it is circumscribed no doubt, as was necessary because of the infantine state of the believing Jews, who little suspected that their adhesion to the old things, and mingling them with the new, hindered progress more than aught else could. Hence the aim of the Epistle is to show the substance, force, and perfection, of all the ancient forms in the truth of Christ's person, and office, work and position, thus raising the Jews who believed to heaven in faith, affection, worship, service and hope, and making it easy and even happy for them to see the old covenant passing away, the Aaronic priesthood giving place to a better, and earthly sacrifices of no account, yea of exceeding peril if they became rivals of that finished work by which the faithful have been and are sanctified, and perfected in perpetuity, as surely as Christ sat down in perpetuity at God's right hand. Thus “the camp,” once the place so favored of God's people, is a place for the Christian Jew to leave. For the blood of atonement has been carried into the holiest for us, and He Who shed it suffered without the gate. Our place therefore is now within the holiest before God, and without the camp before man; for it is effectively and ought to be only with Christ in both. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness for entering into the holies by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a High 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” (Heb. 10:19-22). But let us not forget the other side and present duty: “Let us go forth to Him without the camp bearing His reproach; for we have not here an abiding city but we seek that which is to come” (Heb. 13:13, 14).
It is impossible to conceive anything equal to this Epistle, whether in the most winning approach to the Jewish Christians where they were, or in the no less admirable deliverance from the ritual yoke by the proof from God's word that Christianity alone yields the true and intended and complete meaning of all they had been well nigh idolizing in the letter.
It ought not to surprise any that Scripture has settled the authorship of the Epistle; and this not by men reasoning on the reference to imprisonment and release in Italy, with relationship to Timothy, but by a sufficiently determining statement of Peter in his Second Epistle, addressed as we know it is to the elect Jews of the dispersion (cf. 1 Peter 1; 2 and 2 Peter 3:1), as the Epistle to the Hebrews contemplates those in the land. In either case believing Jews are contemplated. What then can be plainer than the apostle Peter's word? “Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you; as also in all Epistles speaking in them of these things” (2 Peter 3:15, 16). Now this Epistle repeatedly speaks of the day of the Lord, with some things as usual hard, especially for Jewish minds to understand, as in 9., 10., 12. Thus it is certain that Paul as well as Peter wrote to the Hebrew Christians; and that these are spoken of as “scriptures” by implication in the words that follow. Either then the Epistle to the Hebrews is what Paul wrote to them; or that portion of the “scriptures” is lost. It has been shown already that the scope of truth is eminently that of Paul; and the peculiarity of his task to any reflecting mind would readily account for an elaborate handling of types, most desirable for Jews, but out of place in his writing to Gentile saints.
The contents and connection of the Epistle are plainly defined, which from its nature is less colored with feeling than the other letters of the writer. The personal glory of the Lord Jesus is the basis of all, chap. 1. Son of God, chap. 2. Son of man. Thence follows in chap. 3. the superiority of the Apostle and High Priest of the Christian confession to Moses and Aaron. He was the divine Builder of all, Son over His house, Moses being but a ministering servant, though faithful. And this introduces the wilderness as the scene through which we are tried, with promise of entering into God's rest—glory at Christ's return. Hence not only is God's word needed by us but a High Priest able to sympathize with our infirmities, as in chap. 4. This leads in chap. 5. to the contrast of Christ's priesthood, God's Son according to the order of Melchisedec, with that of Aaron taken from among men, and able to exercise forbearance toward the ignorant and erring, since he himself was clothed with infirmity, and was bound to offer for sins, as for the people, so also for himself.
But here the apostle turns aside, as his manner is, to lay bare the hindrance through Jewish elements, still pertinaciously clung to, yet incompatible with the everlasting and heavenly things which suit our relation to that great High Priest Who has passed through the heavens and set Himself in a seat so glorious. The word of the beginning of Christ, however good, is quite insufficient; and the Christian must go on to full growth (chap. 6.); for as it is expressed elsewhere, we are no longer under the law, suited and given to man in the flesh, but under grace, as should be self-evident. How else could we be heavenly, as is the Heavenly? Sovereign grace, reigning through righteousness, alone accounts for it. And hence the danger of going back from the heavenly privileges now revealed to those elements which are nailed to the cross and vanished away to faith in the light of Christ on high: a danger to which none were so exposed as Hebrews. He therefore desires that each might show diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end, having God's oath as well as word with a forerunner in Christ within the veil.
Chap. 7. proves how immeasurably and in all respects the priesthood of Jesus, the Son of God, surpasses that of Aaron, bound up as it was with the law which made nothing perfect. The ancient oracles which fully prepare for it intimate also a new and better covenant (chap. 8.), before which the first grows old and ready to vanish away, instead of possessing that immutability with which Rabbinical pride and imagination clothed it. And this leads to the great truth of sacrifice according to God's mind and will (chap. 9. 10.), which has found alone its adequate force in the blood of Christ Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself spotless to God. Therefore its unity is insisted on, as its completeness is attested by His sitting in perpetuity on God's right hand, the work finished, and those that are sanctified perfected forever by that one offering. Here too the warning of abandoning for sin such a sacrifice is solemnly rendered, while it is allowed that we have need of patience in faith, till Jesus come.
This is followed (chap, 11.) by the striking roll of God's worthies, all being testified of for their faith, before the law and during it, culminating in Jesus the Leader and Completer of faith, Who, infinitely above all in person, suffered immeasurably more and differently, and is alone now in commensurate glory at the right hand of the throne of God (chap. 12.). And here is beautifully shown that for believers suffering flows from His love as the Father of spirits, and not now of a nation. Our standing is in His grace, not the law of Sinai; and we are come in faith to the glorious results anticipated for heaven and earth, as the kingdom will display when at His appearing He will cause not earth only but the heaven to tremble.
Brotherly love, hospitality, and compassion are urged, with the sanctity of marriage, and freedom from avarice through trust in the Lord (chap.13.) Departed leaders are to be remembered, as living ones to be obeyed. Jesus abides the same. Serving the tabernacle has no more value: all is found in Him, His work, and His offices. “Let us therefore go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.” Such is Christianity as here shown from divinely handled Jewish types and O.T. teaching. Prayer for the writer and those with him is asked, as he beseeches of the Lord peace for them, saluting all their leaders and all the saints.