When the will is engaged in any doctrine it leaves one but a faint hope of its being given up by him who holds it. Still, I would not abandon that hope, altogether, as regards the author of the “Remarks on the Intercession of Christ,” and at any rate the inquiry into the truth on the subject may be useful to many souls. I confess I have been surprised at the statements in the tract. If anything had been needed to convince me of the totally unscriptural and unfounded character of the doctrine, this tract would have supplied it. Scarcely a single principle or statement is scriptural or sound. But God's grace is almighty, and I can only heartily desire and pray for the clearing up the mind of one of whose Christianity I should not hear to doubt.
The theory is, that The Epistle to the Hebrews is for the remnant after the church is gone, not for us Christians. And that Christ's intercession is simply His presence before God for us in the worth of His work; nothing active. That there is no exercise of any priesthood after the pattern of Aaron's on the part of Christ. I could hardly have thought any one could have made such statements. But they are made. “The only priesthood of Christ is Melchisedec, and that is for blessing, not intercession. The intercession, as I have before said, is his maintaining us before God in all the value of His own person and work.” “Israel will be in the land of unbelief, keeping the commandments of Moses—this epistle takes them up on that ground and tells them Christ is the end of the law,” etc. “Christ is indeed on the right hand of God—He is there by right and title; but He is there also for us, and so He is there presenting Himself as the Head and the representative of the redeemed. It is His presence intercedes or avails for us.” “Some who would not say quite so much [that Christ had a double priesthood], yet say that though Christ is a priest after the order of Melchisedec only, yet He exercises it at present after the character of Aaron... Thus they make the word of God of none effect by their tradition.”
Referring to Christ's work and the Spirit's, the writer says, “Still, one is a finished work abiding before God in all its finished perfectness—the other is that which is carried on from age to age in the world; and from day to day in the heart of the believer; and the two works, for they are two, are effected by different persons and differ greatly in character; one is completed, the other not; and it is because one is completed, and not to be added to, and is ever in its completeness before God, that the other is being carried on by that other person.” “And certainly if we take the testimony of the book itself, it is clear that it is the world (or, habitable earth) to come whereof we speak, and that is assuredly connected with Israel, not the church being gathered.” Again, “Melchisedec priesthood is prominently presented, and from Psa. 110 we know that to be coincident with the rod of strength out of Zion.” And, quoting from me as to this priesthood, he says, “It is blessing and refreshment after and consequent upon the destruction of all enemies it is not that which Christ the Lord now exercises.” “And the way in which they [these matters] are here treated... shows that it is not the church as being gathered that is contemplated, but that which follows after the church is caught up to meet the Lord in the air.”
My purpose is to go through The Epistle to the Hebrews sufficiently to see what its true aim and bearing is, and then I will take up particular statements to show how utterly groundless they are. But before I do this I have one remark to make, and that is, that the notion that our church position as such is the whole or even the highest we have, is quite unfounded. Mistakes connected with this I will note in their place. I only notice the principle now. Our union with Christ casts its preciousness on every part of our blessings, and the last thing I should be inclined to do is to compare these where all is sovereign grace. But in itself this is not a relationship with the Father. With Him we are individuals, we are sons. Christ owns us as brethren, is the Firstborn among many brethren. Our union with Christ, though divine, is with Him as man, as made Head over all things. See Eph. 1:22, 2322And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Ephesians 1:22‑23), and so Eph. 2. And all our relationship with God and the Father is developed before that, and this in the epistle where church privileges are peculiarly taught, and many of the most precious exhortations to practice are on this ground. See chapter 5:1 for example.
We speak of what belongs to the church, according to the common use of language, when we really mean what belongs to those who compose it. And this has no great practical harm when it is not used to make the idea, exclusively as such, our only blessing. I might say, The corporation are very good men, when I mean the men that compose it. But when an idea newly acquired gets hold of the soul, men are apt to be exclusively full of it. It shuts out other important truths. If anyone has been filled with the sense of the importance of the doctrine of the church, I think I may say I have; but conscience is individual; justification is individual; sonship is individual; communion, in perhaps its most important and certainly necessary part, is individual. Take all the writings of the apostle John, and, unless one allusion to a local body, you would never know that a church existed. I never lose, or at any rate never should lose, the consciousness of being a member of Christ; as I have said, it throws, when have it, its light on all. I add the idea of unity in the body to union in the family. I am one with all those who are my brethren. But surely there is a vast flood of unspeakable blessing in John, in whose writings the thought or name of the church never comes. I speak of the gospel and epistles. All is individual there. Those who enjoy it belong to the church, and do not put themselves out of the church mentally in enjoying it; but it is not, for all that, the less individual.
This principle will be found to be of large application. Thus justification is not found in Ephesians. That speaks of the new creation according to God's counsels. The sinner has to be justified, not God's new creation. Yet every word blessedly confirms the doctrine of Romans—Galatians also; but the subject is taken up differently. Romans deals with man's responsibility, and the Ephesians with God's counsels. They meet in Christ and in the cross, and nothing can be more deeply instructive to heart and soul, but they are distinct.
But I turn to Hebrews. Now I fully admit, and have often stated, that the epistle has the Jews as a people in view, Christ having died for the nation; and it is interesting to inquire in its place as to the bearing of this on the remnant, after the church is gone. I will try and touch on it briefly; but our present inquiry is, Does the epistle apply to Christians?
The Epistle to the Hebrews at the time it was written was written to somebody? To whom? Either to Christians who at the same time were Jews, or to unbelieving Jews who rejected the Savior. The answer to this question is an answer to the whole theory. No doubt therefore interesting and important details to consider after it is answered. But if it was written to Christians the whole theory is proved false. I have not to inquire as to my use of it and to whom it may apply. I have learned to whom it did apply. To Christians, and though specially addressed to Jewish Christians, for such there were, Christians jealous of the law and frequenting the temple, and offering sacrifices, and adapted to their case; yet available for all Christians, in the doctrines by which it acts on these Jewish Christians, though not as to the circumstances in which they were found, for we are not in them. Though we may be in very similar ones, when the professing church has Judaized.
I repeat then my question: To whom was it addressed when written? Were the unbelieving Jews then “partakers of the heavenly calling"? If not, it applies to Christians. Had the unbelieving Jews taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had in heaven a better and enduring substance? Had they to consider the end of the conversation of their departed rulers whose faith they were to follow? Who had an altar which they had no right to eat of, who served the tabernacle? The unbelieving Jews? Why they are in express contrast. Christians, Christian Jews, were therefore to leave the system which they up to that time had been walking with. I ask any sober person to read chapter 13 through and say, Was the epistle addressed then to Christians or not? If it was addressed to Christians, as Christians, and because they were such, the question is answered and set at rest. Most interesting for Christians to inquire its import and value for themselves, but as belonging to themselves and addressed to themselves.
But I anticipate a little the details, and will inquire now regularly what proofs the epistle gives of being addressed to Christians, though not speaking of church privileges as such. The writer places himself amongst those he writes to. This is not denied, and is clear from the beginning of the second chapter. Was the writer among the unbelieving Jews? For it was addressed to some one then. Those addressed had received the teachings of the apostles. There was danger of letting them slip; but they had heard and received them. He speaks of the world to come, but was not in it, for Jesus was sitting at the right hand of God, all things being not yet under His feet. But he speaks for himself and those he writes to: “We see Jesus... crowned with glory and honor.” This last is an important point. Besides His divinity—it is that which the first chapter insists on—it is characteristic, specifically characteristic of the whole epistle. I mean that Jesus was sitting at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. Not after the destruction of His enemies a priesthood of blessing on His own throne. Thus, in the wonderful statement in chap. 1:3, the groundwork of the epistle, the place Christ is found in is, having “by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
The position which makes the basis of the whole epistle is Christ's present position, not his Melchisedec position, but a heavenly Christ sitting at the right hand of God on high. So when the writer has gone through his doctrine on this subject, he gives the summing up of it. “We have such an high priest who is set at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.” When His position is considered in reference to His manhood, as we have seen, all things are not put under His feet. He sits at the right hand of God till they are. We see Him crowned with glory and honor. He suffered being tempted here, that He may be able to succor those that are tempted. Neither the position nor the service has any possible application to a Melchisedec priesthood on earth. Temptation and conflict will not exist then. The Melchisedec priesthood, the writer agrees and insists on, is, in its exercise, after the destruction of all enemies. Satan will then he bound. Antichrist's time is not the time of Melchisedec's priesthood; and the exercise of Melchisedec's priesthood is not the time of temptation. Further, the object in view is bringing many sons to glory. The remnant are not the object of this purpose. The place of Christ, the service of Christ, and the object of God all refer to the saints at this present time, not, as such, to a Jewish remnant to be blessed on earth, or to a Melchisedec priesthood in its acknowledged exercise as such.
Does the third chapter teach us any other doctrine or the same founded on the same truth of Christ's heavenly present glory? Christ is as son over God's house. That is the position in which the epistle views Him, not in a Melchisedec one. And note here, He is the High Priest of our profession, compared to Moses and Aaron; that is, according to the doctrine of chaps. i. and ii. Whose profession? The unbelieving Jews'? An unbelieving remnant when the heavenly saints are gone? A Christian, more than a Christian, we are told, writes the epistle, and says, “our profession” —and that means unbelieving Jews, or an expectant remnant.
[J. N. D.]
(To be continued)