What is meant by reconciling sins? Is not John 17 in character the High Priest’s prayer?
A. To me a very blessed aspect of the Epistle to the Hebrews is, that it is the complement, in a certain sense, of that to the Romans. The latter sets the believer “in Christ” before God in divine righteousness, recognizing an unchanged evil nature, a carnal mind; but also a new nature, the spiritual mind (ch. 8:1-11). The former shows us the divine provision of grace to maintain us there by the priesthood of Christ. This is alluded to in Rom. 5:1010For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10); reconciled by His death, we shall be saved by His life, i.e., His priestly intercession on high. So in chap. 8:34, who also maketh intercession for us.” Then in Heb. 7:2626For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; (Hebrews 7:26), we read (as putting both thoughts together), “He ever liveth to make intercession for them.”
But all this supposes Him to stand in the capacity of High Priest, between a reconciled people and God; and to this Heb. 8:44For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law: (Hebrews 8:4) refers. He exercised no true priestly service then, until He ascended to glory.
But still there was something which He did as a priest before He went on high. Just as the High Priest on the great day of atonement of old was making good the claims of God, and putting the sins of the people on the head of the scapegoat, while after all he was not in his normal place as between a reconciled people and God, so the Lord Jesus, ere He entered on the normal exercise of His priesthood, as a priest He did the work of the cross; both actively as offering Himself, and passively as the victim offered, in making atonement for the sins of the people. This is what is referred to in Heb. 2:1717Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17), where the word is incorrectly translated “reconciliation.” There is no meaning in reconciling sins; there would be in reconciling people It should be “to make propitiation (ιλάσκεσθαι) for the sins of the people.”
John 17 is wrongly taken as an intercessional or priestly prayer. Now, the Lord is there as Son, not priest or advocate, and He is occupied in putting His disciples into His own place on earth before the Father and before the world, with an allusion in the end to their place in the Father’s house by and by. He looks to the Father to keep them where He had kept them while with them.
Priesthood is for mercy and grace for help in time of need, to a feeble people who have to cry to God, in a place of danger and liability to fall and start aside from Christ.
Q. Why was the Lord Jesus called the “Word?”
A. He is called the “Word,” as the Person who is the impersonation of the mind of God in the abstract. Eternal in His being. “In the beginning was the Word;” having a personal existence. “The Word was with God;” His deity expressed in the words “And the Word was God;” His eternal personality in the words, “The same was in the beginning with God.” The Word then, was, before all creation, eternal; in nature divine; in person distinct, and in personality eternal: the expression of the whole mind that subsists in God.
W. S. It is commonly held that the Body of Christ is also the Bride. Can you prove me this from Scripture, &c.?
A. There is no doubt that the Body of Christ and His Bride are both names used for the Church. At the same time it is to be understood that there is an earthly Bride of the Canticles—the Jewish remnant of the last days. In Eph. 5, while Paul is exhorting husband and wives, his mind cannot pass on without thinking of Christ and the Church. He quotes the passage (Gen. 2:23, 2423And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:23‑24)) referring to Adam in Paradise, and Eve taken out of the man—bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh—while he slept, and then the statement, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh,” used in Eph. 5 to convey the union of Christ—the second Adam—and the Church; the Eve, so to speak, for the Paradise of God. “We are members of his body; we are of his flesh, and of his bones.”
There is no allusion in Rom. 7 as to union with Christ, or to the Church at all. It refers to the law and a risen Christ, and the impossibility of having rightly to do with both together, as for a woman rightly to have two husbands. The word “married” is not in the original at all (Rom. 7:44Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. (Romans 7:4)).
In Rev. 21:9-27; 22:149And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. 10And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, 11Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; 12And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: 13On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. 14And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 15And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. 16And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. 17And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. 18And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. 19And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; 20The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. 21And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. 22And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 23And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 24And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. 25And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. 26And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. 27And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Revelation 21:9‑27)
14Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. (Revelation 22:14), the Church is distinctly named the “Bride; the Lamb’s wife.” Babylon, the whore, said she sat as a queen, and was also described under the figure of a city, or polity; so is the Bride. She is looked at here as a polity or center of administration of the kingdom in heavenly glory. It is not the Father’s house, but the, displayed glory, in the light of which the saved nations walk (v. 24).
There is an earthly Bride, of which the Song of Songs speaks—the elect remnant of the Jews.