The Epistle To The Hebrews: By William Kelly (Part 5 Chapters 5 and 6)
Hebrews 5-6
And now we enter upon the priesthood, for it is a priest we need-we who stand already accepted by sacrifice. Not a priest, but a sacrifice, is the foundation of all relationship with God; but we need along the way a living person who can deal both with God for us, and for God with us. Such a Great High Priest who passed through the heavens, yet able to sympathize with our infirmities, we have in Jesus the Son of God. How little these Jews, even when saints, knew the treasure of grace that God had given in Him whom the nation abhorred! As previously, the Apostle takes the proofs from their own oracles. It is not a question of revealing, but of rightly applying, by the Holy Ghost, the word they had in their hand.
"For every high priest taken from among men is established for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins." Men, confident in their own resources, have dared to apply this description of priesthood to Christ. They have failed to see that it is a distinct contrast with Christ, and not at all a picture of His priesthood. It is evidently general, and sets before us a human priest, not Jesus-God's High Priest. If there be analogy, there is certainly the strongest contrast here. An ordinary priest is able to exercise forbearance toward the ignorant and erring, since he himself is compassed with infirmity. "And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins." Did Christ need to suffer for Himself, yea, for sins? This blasphemy would follow if the foregoing words applied to Christ.
"And no one taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, even as Aaron. So also Christ glorified not Himself to be made an high priest." Now he teaches a point of contact, as the other was of contrast. All you can procure from among men is one that can feel, as being a man, for men after a human sort. Such is not the priest that God has given us, but one who, though man, feels for us after a divine sort. And so we are told that Christ, while He was and is this glorious Person in His nature and right, nevertheless as man did not glorify Himself to be made a high priest; "But He that said unto Him, Thou art My Son, to-day have I begotten Thee; as He saith also in another place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec."
The same God who owned Him as His Son, born of the virgin, owned Him also as Priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. And in this order too: first, Son (on earth); next, the true Melchisedec (in heaven, as we shall find). Albeit true God and Son of God, in everything He displays perfect lowliness among men, and absolute dependence on God; such also was His moral fitness for each office and function which God gave Him to discharge. Again, mark the skill with which all is gradually approached-how the inspired writer saps and mines their exorbitant (yet after all only earthly) pre tensions founded on the Aaronic priesthood. Such was the great boast of the Jews. And here we learn out of their own scriptures another order of priesthood reserved for the Messiah, which he knew right well could not but put the Aaronic priesthood completely in the shade. "Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec."
At the same time, it is plain that there is no forgetfulness of the suffering obedience of Christ's place here below; but He is presented in this glory before we are given to hear of the path of shame which ushered it in. "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared; though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him, called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec." The Apostle had much to say, but hard to be interpreted because they were dull of hearing. It is not that the Word of God in itself is obscure, but that men bring in their difficulties. Nor does His Word, as is often thought, need light to be thrown on it; rather it is light itself. By the Spirit's power it dispels the darkness of nature. Many obstacles there are to the entrance of light through the Word, but there is none more decided than the force of religious prejudice; and this would naturally operate most among the Hebrew saints. They clung too much to old things; they could not take in the new. We may see a similar hindrance every day. What Paul had to say of the Melchisedec priesthood was hard to explain to them, not because the things were in themselves unintelligible, but they were dull in hearing. "For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye again have need that one teach you the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God."
There is nothing, I repeat, which tends to make dullness in spiritual things so much as religious tradition. The next to it in dead weight, and in other respects more daringly dangerous, will be found to be philosophy. At any rate, it is remarkable that these are the two occasions of this reproach from the Apostle. So he wrote to the Corinthians, who generally admired rhetoric, and had no small confidence, like other Greeks, in their own wisdom. They did not consider Paul, either in style or topics, at all up to the requirements of the age-at least in their midst. How cutting to hear themselves counted babes, and incapable of meat for grown men, so that being carnal, they must have milk administered to them! The Apostle had to put them down, and tell them, with all their high-flown wisdom, they were such that he could not discourse to them about the deep things of God. This, no doubt, was a painful surprise for them. So here the same Apostle writing to the Hebrew believers treats them as babes, though from a different source. Thus we see two errors totally opposed in appearance, but leading to the same conclusion. Both unfit the soul for going on with God; and the reason why they so hinder is because they are precisely the things in which man lives. Whether it be the mind of man or his natural religiousness, either idolizes its own object; and consequently blindness to the glory of Christ ensues.
Hence the Apostle could not but feel himself arrested by their state. He shows also that this very state was not merely one of weakness, but exposed them to the greatest danger; and this is pursued not on the philosophical side so much as on that of religious forms. Both were at work in Colosse. But on the Hebrews he presses their excessive danger of abandoning Christ for religious traditions. First of all, these hinder progress; finally they draw the soul aside from grace and truth; and, if the mighty power of God does not interfere, they ruin. This had been the course of some; they had better be watchful that it be not their own case. He begins gently with their state of infantine feebleness; and then in the beginning of the following chapter he sets before them the awful picture of apostasy. "For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."
"Therefore" (adds he in chapter 6), "leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us go on to perfection." He proves that we cannot safely linger among the Jewish elements when we have heard and received Christian truth; that not merely blessing, not simply power and enjoyment, but the only place even of safety is in going on to this full growth. To stop short for them was to go back. Let those that had heard of Christ return to the forms of Judaism, and what would become of them?
Then he speaks of the various constituents that make up the word of the beginning of Christ (that is, Christ known short of death, resurrection, and ascension). He would have them advance, "not laying again a foundation of 'repentance from dead works and faith in God, of a teaching of washings and imposition of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment." Not that these were not true and important in their place-no one disputed them-but they were in no way the power, nor even characteristic, of Christianity. They go in pairs, and a mere Jew would hardly object; but what is all this for the Christian? Why live on such points? "And this" (that is, going on to full growth) "will we do if God permit. For it is impossible [as to] those once enlightened, and that tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and that tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and fell away, to renew [them] again to repentance, seeing they crucify for themselves and expose the Son of God."
It is a question of persons drawn into apostasy after having enjoyed every privilege and power of the gospel, short of a new nature and that indwelling of the Spirit which seals renewed souls till the day of redemption. For those who rejected the Messiah on earth under Judaism, God gave repentance and remission of sins; but if they gave up the risen and glorified Christ, there was no provision of grace, no third estate of Christ to meet the case. It is not the case of a person surprised into sin; no, not even the very awful case of one who may go on in sin, sorrowful to think that it may be so with one of whom we had hoped better things. But here there is another evil altogether. There are those who might be ever so correct, moral, religious, but who, having confessed Jesus as the Christ after the outpouring of the Spirit, had lapsed back into Jewish elements, counting it perhaps a wise and wholesome check on a too rapid advance, instead of seeing that in principle it was an abandonment of Christ altogether. The full case here supposed is a thorough renunciation of Christian truth.
The Apostle describes a confessor with all the crowning evidences of the gospel, but not a converted man. Not a word implies this either here or in 2 Peter. Short of this he uses uncommonly strong expressions, and purposely so; he sets forth the possession of the highest possible external privileges, and this in that abundant form and measure which God gave on the ascension of the Lord. He says it all, no doubt, about the baptized; but there is nothing about baptism as the ancients would have it, any more than, with some moderns, the progressive steps of the spiritual life. There is knowledge, joy, privilege, and power, but no spiritual life. Enlightenment is in no sense the new birth, nor does baptism in Scripture ever mean illumination. It is the effect of the gospel on the dark soul-the shining on the mind, of Him who is the only true light. But light is not life; and life is not predicated here.
Further, they had "tasted of the heavenly gift." It is not the Messiah as He was preached when the disciples went about here below, but Christ after He went on high—not Christ after the flesh, but Christ risen and glorified above.
But again, they were "made partakers of the Holy Ghost." Of Him everyone became a partaker, who confessed the Lord and entered into the house of God. There the Holy Ghost dwelt; and all who were there became partakers, after an outward sort, of Him who constituted the assembly of God's habitation and temple. He pervaded, as it were, the whole atmosphere of the house of God. It is not in the least a question of a person individually born of God, and so sealed by the Holy Spirit. There is not an allusion to either in this case, but to their taking a share in this immense privilege, the word not being that which speaks of a joint known portion, but only of getting a share.
Moreover, they "tasted the good word of God." Even an unconverted man might feel strong emotions, and feel enjoyment to a certain extent, more particularly those that had lain in Judaism, that dreary valley of dry bones. What fare was the gospel of grace! Certainly nothing could be more miserable than the scraps which the scribes and Pharisees put before the sheep of the house of Israel. There is nothing to forbid the natural mind from being attracted by the delightful sweetness of the glad tidings which Christianity proclaims.
Last, we hear of "the powers of the age to come." This seems more than a general share in the presence of the Holy Ghost who inhabited the house of God. They were positively endued with miraculous energies—samples of that which will characterize the reign of the Messiah. Thus we may fairly give the fullest force to every one of these expressions. Yet write them out ever so largely, they fall short both of the new birth and of sealing with the Holy Ghost. There is everything, one may say, save inward spiritual life in Christ, or the indwelling seal of it. That is to say, one may have the very highest endowments and privileges, in the way of meeting the mind and also of exterior power, and yet all may be given up, and the man become so much the keener enemy of Christ. Indeed, such is the natural result. It had been the mournful fact as to some. They had fallen away. Hence renewal to repentance is an impossibility, seeing they crucify for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame.
Why impossible? The case supposed is of persons, after the richest proof and privilege, turning aside, apostates from Christ in order to take up Judaism once more. As long as that course is pursued, there cannot be repentance. Supposing a man had been the adversary of Messiah here below; there was still the opening for him of grace from on high. It was possible that the very man that had slighted Christ, when He was here below, might have his eyes opened to see and receive Christ now above; but, this abandoned, there is no fresh condition in which He can be presented to men. Those who rejected Christ in all the fullness of His grace, and in the height of glory in which God had set Him as man before them—those that had rejected Him not merely on earth but in heaven-what was there to fall back on? what possible means to bring them to a repentance after that? There is none. What is there but Christ coming in judgment? Now apostasy, sooner or later, must fall under that judgment. Such is the force of the comparison. "For land which hath drunk in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: but that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is for burning."
"But we are persuaded better things of you, beloved." There might seem too much ground for fear, but of the two ends he was persuaded respecting them the better things, and akin to salvation, if even he thus spoke; for God was not unrighteous, and the Apostle too remembered the traits of love and devotedness which gave him this confidence about them. But, he says, "We earnestly desire that each of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: that ye be not slothful, but followers of those who through faith and longsuffering inherit the promises." Here is given a remarkable instance of the true character of the epistle; namely, the combination of two features peculiar to the Hebrews. On the one hand are the promises, the oath of God, taking up His ways with Abraham; and, on the other hand, the hope set before us, that enters into what is within the veil. We may account for the former, because the writer was not confining himself to that which fell within the proper sphere of his apostleship. But, again, had he been writing according to his ordinary place, nothing was more strictly his line of testimony than to have dwelt on our hope that enters within the veil. The peculiarity of the epistle to the Hebrews lies in combining the promises with Christ's heavenly glory. None but Paul, I believe, would have been suited to bring in the heavenly portion. At the same time, only in writing to the Hebrews could Paul have brought in the Old Testament hopes as he has done.
Another point of interest which may be remarked here is the intimation at the end compared with the beginning of the chapter. We have seen the highest external privileges -not only the mind of man, as far as it could, enjoying the truth, but the power of the Holy Ghost making the man, at any rate, an instrument of power, even though it be to his own shame and deeper condemnation afterward. In short, man may have the utmost conceivable advantage, and the greatest external power even of the Spirit of God Himself; and yet all comes to nothing. But the very same chapter which affirms and warns of the possible failure of every advantage, shows us the weakest faith that the whole New Testament describes corning into the secure possession of the best blessings of grace. Who but God could have dictated that this same chapter (Heb. 6) should depict the weakest faith that the New.
Testament ever acknowledges? What can look feebler, what more desperately pressed, than a man fleeing for refuge? It is not a soul as coming to Jesus; it is not as one whom the Lord meets and blesses on the spot; but here is a man hard pushed, fleeing for very life (evidently a figure drawn from the blood-stained person fleeing from the avenger of blood), yet eternally saved and blessed according to the acceptance of Christ on high.
There was no reality found to be in those so highly favored in the early verses; and therefore it was (as there was no conscience before God, no sense of sin, no cleaving to Christ) that everything came to naught; but here there is the fruit of faith, feeble indeed and sorely tried, but in the light that appreciates the judgment of God against sin. Hence, although it be only fleeing in an agony of soul to refuge, what is it that God gives to one in such a state? Strong consolation, and that which enters within the veil.
Impossible that the Son should be shaken from His place on the throne of God; so is it that the least believer should come to any hurt whatever. The weakest of saints is more than conqueror; and therefore the Apostle, having brought us to this glorious point of conclusion, as well as shown us the awful danger of men giving up such a Christ as that which we have presented to us in this epistle, now finds himself free to unfold the character of His priesthood, as well as the resulting position of the Christian. But on these I hope to enter, if the Lord will, on another occasion.