IN each era of the Church of God, some particular truth of the Scriptures has been specially the object of the Enemy's attack. In our own day and land, the glory of Christ as Sacrifice and Priest is assailed, and very many, who call themselves Protestants, are gradually returning to those principles of religion, which deny the Scripture teaching respecting both the sacrifice and priesthood of the Lord. In the presence of this evil, how thankful should be the devout believer in the absolute authority of the Bible, for the Epistle to the Hebrews For therein, in the plainest manner, is to be found the antidote to the poison which so many now regard as life-giving food.
In the olden days, when the Jews still had the Temple, with its ceremony and ritual, God the Spirit gave to the Church the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therein He first of all sets forth the excellent glories of the Son of God, so that the Church should revere and extol Him, and regard in the light of the glory of His Person, ceremony and ritual, sacrifices and priests. In this spirit we purpose devoting part of our pages this year to the glories and honors of our Lord, and we can do no better than by spending the present occasion over the first chapters of the Epistle we have named.
The Spokesman.
God speaks; will men hearken? His Word is absolute authority; shall we not humbly bow to it? In the old Jewish days His words reached His professing people on the earth through the voices of inspired men. He spake in times past to the fathers by the Prophets, but the mass of Israel refused the words of Jehovah, they rejected the spokesmen of God; then, at the end of those old days, one more voice was heard in Judea—it was the voice of Jesus. God spake to His people in His Son. He Himself in His Son was spokesman.
It seems as if God the Holy Ghost would fix our minds first of all in this Epistle on the solemnity, yet blessedness, of being addressed by God in the person of His Son. May none of us fall under the sentence of making light of His words, lest the warnings of the Epistle be fulfilled in ourselves! "For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast . . . how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord?" (ch. 2:1-4).
Now He in whom God has spoken is here no longer, He is in heaven. He is there because His blood was shed on earth, because of His cross, and this fact gives additional solemnity to the words of the spokesman, "For if they escaped not, who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven " (12:25-29).
The Glorious Person of Christ.
The majesty of Christ is presented to us, so that we may rightly revere Him, who is our Sacrifice and Priest. He is the Last and the First-the Heir of all things, the Maker of all worlds.
Moreover, only in Him is God seen. The sun is the light of our world, yet we see not the sun but its enveloping radiance, thus does the sun teach us of Christ, for " No man hath seen God at any time; the only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him "(John 1:1818No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)). He is the outshining, the brightness of divine glory. Further, He is the exact image of God; to have seen Him is to have seen the Father; to know Him is to know God. In Christ, the Son, we understand who and what God is.
Again, He upholds all things by the word of His power, His “I will" sustains the universe; His word is the cause of the laws of nature. By that same word the frail thread of our lives is unbreakable, and by that word it yields, and we die.
The Purger of Sins.
By such thoughts of the Person of Christ does the blessed Spirit of God lead on our minds to the greatness of His work, who," when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." "He...by Himself;" has effected the purification, the purging away of sins ; the glory of this work is His alone, none divides the honor with the Lord, and in virtue of the work being perfectly done, the mighty Worker has taken His rightful place upon the throne of God.
What a sight is thus presented to a child of ceremonial, weeping before a crucifix, seeking rest through a sacrament, and hoping for forgiveness by the aid of prayers and penances! The Purger of Sins is not nailed to the cross; power, not weakness, is His; the willing weakness whereby He was crucified is passed; the Sufferer is All-glorious; the Purger of Sins is throned upon the seat of divine Majesty.
Thus does God the Holy Ghost present the Son to our hearts. What a Savior is ours! Having Him we need none other, and knowing we have Him for Sacrifice and Priest we can tolerate none other. All others are usurpers of men's hearts, rebels against His power and glory. Sins have been purged by Christ Himself; through His own blood, and since the work is “finished," He sits enthroned a Savior for us in glory. If the Christian Hebrew, in the presence of the Temple, its divinely-ordained sacrifices and priests, needed to be exhorted to consider Christ, the ceremonial Christian requires the same teaching. And the children of the protesters against false sacrifices and priests, the Protestants of our day, urgently need to have these truths living in their hearts.
Christ All Glorious Above All Angels.
To the Hebrews, angels held a high place of reverence, and Christians should regard these holy beings with veneration, and their ministry with gratitude, but never should angels be exalted in the mind beyond the position assigned to them by God. “Worshipping of angels" (Col. 2:1818Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, (Colossians 2:18)) is a sign of dishonor done to Christ. Personally, Christ is the eternal Son of God, and as Man His position is the throne of God ; He called the angel hosts into being, but in due time He humbled Himself to a lower place than theirs, He became a man, and now He sits, as Man, upon the throne of God. When our faith sees Him thus, the system of angel homage, which prevails over so large a part of Christendom, by which the servants of the Son are elevated to honors which belong exclusively to the Son, is to us an impossibility. We should beware lest any man spoil us by sentiment, and reject, as unchristian, any appeal to angels to take us under their care and as a step towards the downward road of angel-worship. “Let all the angels of God worship Him." (Heb. 1:66And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. (Hebrews 1:6).) Christ is all-glorious; let us hold Him before our hearts.
Christ is the Son of God, the Only Begotten—the object of the worship of all the holy angels (ver. 6).
Christ is God, His throne everlasting, and His scepter just (ver. 8).
Christ is Man, perfect in His ways on earth, and therefore by the divine will, the chiefest in joy of all the children of men (ver. 9).
Christ is Jehovah, the Creator, the Disposer of the earth and the heavens; amid a creation which grows old and serves its end in time, the Eternal, the Unchangeable (vers. 10-12).
Christ is the Man seated on God's right hand, waiting God's time, for His universal crown, waiting until God shall make godless men and fallen angels His footstool. (ver. 13).
As we consider Christ, as God the Holy Ghost thus presents Him to us, Christ supremely glorious, we become steadied in spirit in the midst of the many new voices of this present day which call to us to adopt religious views, which make little of Christ.