A dissent from a view expressed by me on a portion of this epistle (chap. 7) has induced me to go over it again with the caution I had gained. I did not, as I. believe God would bear me witness, seek new truth, there is no new truth, but believing, to those who acknowledge the Lord, that He will, by the Spirit, do as He did when on earth, enlighten those who are subject to and love Him; and that the promise to guide into the whole of truth will not fail.
We have no reason to avoid truth, but I would wait on Him, not in the spirit of saying, Let it come near to me that I may know it, but looking to Him to impart it, to my need and that of others, as truth to serve in the way of our salvation. It is exceedingly needful to wait on God's time to make truth plain. He certainly will not fail those who build themselves on their most holy faith; who own the SON and gather round Him as having the words of eternal life. We are out of all fold, and it is His voice and His obedience that is our guide and bond. There are those who build themselves on their most holy faith, who do not wait God's time. They press forward untimely, and get off the track that leads the farthest and surest.
If they fulfilled all they knew, God would reveal all the rest to them according to His good pleasure, even to the highest steps and helps of His calling. Every bias in apprehension of the word springs from this act of the flesh, not waiting, upon God.
It had been long evident to me that the Spirit had two special objects in the Epistle to the Hebrews, one of these has become much more salient to my mind in recurrence at this time to the bearing of this. Epistle. One object was to prevent. Hebrews who had received the truth from relapsing back into the dead and rejected
ordinances of Judaism; the second, which for long had been indistinct to my mind, was to advance those who being the Lord's had not advanced beyond Hebrew Christianity. The force of the word "we" is also materially engaged in these questions. The passing from one position to another, of those addressed, requires a finer insight than any other portion of Scriptures and to us bringing the most important elucidation. I confine myself to the two first mentioned broad distinctions as a help to the intelligence of the church.
The channel of the Old and New Revelations is first touched on. We learn (in Acts, chap. 7) that the law was given by the disposition of angels, as here the communications were by the prophets. They are now by SON, a peculiarity of expression noted in the margin of the common version. This gives a key to the whole depth of the Epistle. The opening of it marks out the structure of it throughout. Side by side from first to last in succession is what Was in Judaism, and what by Christ. It might appear disconnected in the succession of subjects; but the links are also manifest.
In the first two chapters, is pursued the difference between the angels and SON. At the end of the first chapter, the angels take the place of servants (in externals), who before ministered as superiors in charge of the external things of God; in connection with His ancient people. In the second chapter, with a "wherefore" come the results of the difference of standing of the saints towards God. It rises in character as it goes on in the eleventh verse, the sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one (e eves) and the adoption is comforted by the fellow-feeling of Him who suffered to be exalted.
In the third, comes the difference of the calling, opening with the words, "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling." The calling in the wilderness is set before us, and the grievousness of unbelief to the failure of coming through; and this applied to those of the superior calling, to wit, heavenly In the seconds it was only the greater grievousness of trespass against a better grace. Moses is shown as faithful in God's house. "Christ as SON over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and boasting of our hope firm unto the end." I find Christians marvelously afraid of an "if"; but here it is, and is to be found elsewhere, as in Col. 1:2323If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister; (Colossians 1:23). This is not any "if" in the fullness of the work of Christ, or in the peace of His blood, but in the abiding in the calling to which the hope of the Gospel, i.e., the hope of the Gospel of Glory, is attached. It is emphatically repeated in the fourteenth verse of the chapter we are considering.
In the fourth, comes the "rest to the children of God"; after showing how room was left for the introduction of this rest after others had been fulfilled. It is the "rest with us," spoken of in 2 Thessalonians. Let us labor to enter into this rest. " He died for our sins, to deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of God and our Father." We have to pass through the wilderness as belonging to God. Separated to God as sons in the midst of an evil age, we have this rest set before us-we rest in the atmosphere of death when we rest anywhere here. At the end of the chapter we are considering, a compassionate priest fitted to help us through our trial in the desolateness of the way. We are now introduced to the considerations we have entered upon. Enough has been said to show the structure of the book in respect of the comparison carried on. After the comparison of the priesthood, which we now enter upon, we have, at the beginning of the eighth chapter, the difference of the value of the blood of the offerings and covenant, and the full consequences repeated of turning aside and falling into this sin against God, namely, of falling away from the better ordinance of God in Christ. The eleventh requires no elucidation. It is the nature of faith. The twelfth shows the difference of the place from whence the call corneth. He will call again from earth. The thirteenth turns on a remarkable fitness of the blood, carried into the holiest to the defiled condition of the sinner before God; being the blood of the victim that was burned without the gate, carrying the application much farther than in chaps. viii., ix., x. In the thirteenth, it is not merely trespass, it is the body of sin, the defilement of the whole being, " He became sin for us"; and we are again manifestly on the high ground, and with the saints of the high places, who are called to come out of the camp and suffer with Him in following Him out of it, or addressed to those who are to advance to this point. We cannot give the whole of the Epistle to the Hebrews to the future relationship of the earthly people to the Lord.
The fifth chapter begins with the mention of a priest, taken from among men. The end of the former chapter should be read with the beginning of this. The neglect of the distinction made in the words, " taken from among men," has been the means of displacing the Son of God, and lowering his nature, for some have not come short of making that which attaches to one taken from among men, to attach to the Son of the living God.
The likeness between Aaron and Christ is the calling of God, not his being taken from among men, and then to offer for his own sins, and that (observe) not offering of himself for himself, a condition which destroys with it capacity of atonement. Being encompassed with infirmity for the competency to the office of compassion as a faithful high-priest, is no part of his vicarious sacrifice. How blessed to be clear in what we are suffering for, unmixedly for His name and gospel! How sure the comfort of this comparison! At the end of the chapter he turns distinctly to the Hebrews; though how true it may be of any! They were unskillful in the word of righteousness. The meat of the advanced is strong meat. And what good and evil are the senses of such exercised in, but the good and evil according to the hope of the calling now proposed to them?
We now come, in the next chapter, to the manifest proof of this in finding a list of things on which Hebraizing Christians rest to this day. But those whom He addressed were to advance. Those that now Hebraize are going back with little hope of repentance, save when the Joy of the Lord had once been present enough to make it necessary in extremity. And observe the case in
this chapter; they must go on or they will fall back. Christ had offered up Himself to purge their conscience from every obligation to dead works, and had entered into the Holiest, having been made a high-priest, after the order of Melchizedek, our forerunner into the HEAVENLIES.
Now, beloved brethren, who have added nothing to me, I beg you to consider the place to which the Lord is here brought, and then what He has to do there; He will be as Melchizedek to those who in that day have the law written in their hearts, and will come forth thence as such, though that statement does not enter here. But as SON-SON as risen and perfected evermore-. entered there, He shall not merely come forth as priest after the order of Melchizedek. It is as entering there, not as coming forth thence, that He is here presented to us; He whose genealogy is not counted from Abraham nor to Abraham as after the flesh, is our priest.
The dignity of priesthood is marvelously set forth in this chapter. God knew the need of those who had to walk before Him. He is therefore in the presence of God for us. There must be a mediator, through whom those may be lifted up who fall, and to give effect to the relationship which God grants to man by Him in the heavenly places. This dignity is distinctly set forth in verse 11. On the strength of (or a sense in this direction, and not under as given in the English version επι and not υπο) the priesthood the law was given; and the priesthood is not changed because the law was changed; but the law is changed (not written on hearts instead of stone), of necessity changed because the priesthood is changed. The law failed-the introduction is of a Getter hope. We have no law to sin against, but the law of risen SONS. The law was made for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers; but he that walketh in the Spirit is not under the law. The action of the priesthood of Aaron could apply only to the infraction of the law for which he had been made a priest. " This man also hath somewhat to offer."_ God's purpose now is that in union with Christ risen, His life should be our existence, and as to our walk on earth the rule of it, as belonging where our life is. We are called up. The prize is to be there, and the presence of Christ is there, and we are called up thither of God. We are Christ's house if we hold fast to the mark. A risen and glorified SON, at the right-hand of God, is our priest, and Himself the offering, a priest forever. The word of the oath, which was after the law, appointed SON perfected for evermore.
If we die with Him we shall live with Him; if we suffer with Him we shall be glorified with Him, and the blessing of the compassion of this our priest is wanted. It is true, that as Melchizedek-priest he is become surety of the new and better covenant to Israel; we are not deprived of Him because of this. By Him we draw nearer than they. His place to them is one of His glories in which we rejoice.