Beginning with chapter 10:19 we come to another beautiful part of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The general structure of the epistles is that the doctrinal truth comes first and then the moral application of it. Here, in verse 19, we are just entering on the practical application of what has gone before.
Constantly we have been looking up and seeing the full glories of the Lamb. Now we will see that in these “last days” God, who has set Christ on high in the midst of the glories, has set the poor believing sinner down here in the midst of glories.
We do not wait for the kingdom to see glories. Is it no glory for you to have a purged conscience? Is it no glory to be fully entitled to be in the presence of God without a blush? to call God, Father? to have Christ as your Forerunner in heavenly places? to enter into the holiest without a quiver of conscience? to be introduced into the secrets of God? If we can lift up our heart and say, “Abba, Father”; if we can lift up our heart and say, “Who shall condemn?” or “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”; if we can believe that we are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh and that we are part of Christ’s fullness, will anyone say there is no glory in all that? This epistle tells me to look up and see Christ adorning the throne, and look down and see the poor sinner shining on the footstool.
The world sees nothing of these glories. I look up and see the Lamb in acquired glories. I look down and see the saint in gifted glories. Now the moral application begins “having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.” There I look at myself, and will anyone say there is not glory in such a condition? That is my title. Now the exhortation is that you are to enjoy your title. To enjoy is to obey. The first duty you owe to God is to enjoy what He has made you and what He has given you. “Let us draw near.” Use your privilege, as we say. It is the first and grand duty of faith, and I am bold to say it is the most acceptable duty of faith.
How slow we are to enjoy these glories. If we say in the secret of our heart, with exultation of spirit, “I am a child of God,” and if we can say, “I am coheir with Christ,” that is the way to begin obedience. Here it is exactly that. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”
We should look at ourselves as the priesthood of God. The priests of old were washed when they were put in office and their feet were washed every day before they entered to serve in the tabernacle, so that the pavement of the presence of God was not stained by their foot. He went in, in a character worthy of the place. Are you occupying the presence of God all the day long in the consciousness that you are worthy of the place? How will you be presented before Him by and by? Jude tells you “faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” You ought to know that you are in His presence now faultless or without spot. We cannot put ourselves in the flesh too low, and we cannot put ourselves in Christ too high.
Now He tells me, having got into the presence of the holiest, what to do there. “Let us hold fast the profession of our [hope] without wavering” (as the word should be). We are to be there with boldness and to talk of our hope and of our charity, “to provoke unto love and to good works.” What exquisite service!
“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together... but exhorting one another.” This is what you are to be doing together when you get into the house. These are the activities of the house. We dwell together in one happy house, exhorting one another and so much the more as we point to the sky and say, “Look! the dawning of morning is near; the sky is breaking.” We want to exhort one another to know our dignity in Christ rather than to know our degradation in ourselves. Confession is very right, but to gird up the mind to the apprehension of our dignity is much more acceptable and priestly work than to be ever in the depths. “Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.” Here we see ourselves accepted and holding our hope without wavering.
Having conducted us to chapter 10:25, he brings in a solemn passage about willful sin. We read the counterpart of this in Numbers 15 where presumptuous sin is looked at. Under the law there were two characters of offense a man might find a thing that was his neighbor’s and deal falsely about it and there was a trespass offering. But when a man picked up sticks on the sabbath day he was to be stoned at once. There remained nothing for him but “a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.” This is the presumptuous sin of the New Testament. We are not to be careless about sin, but the thing contemplated here is a defection from Christianity.
In verse 32 he exhorts them to “call to remembrance the former days.” Most people know the moment of their illumination, and if there is a moment of moral energy in the history of the soul, it is the day of its quickening. Why do we not carry the strength of that moment with us? He is the same Jesus. I know that the day was when all was over between God and me concerning my flesh, and now the day has come when all is over between the world and me; that is practical Christianity. The day he called on them to remember was the day they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. Why was this? Their eye was on a better inheritance. Let me grasp the richer thing, and the poorer thing may pass away for aught I care.
We can account for victory over the world just as easily as we can account for access to God. That, let me say, is just the knot that this epistle ties. It puts you inside the veil, outside the camp. The lie of the serpent made Adam a stranger to God and at home in this polluted world inside the camp and outside the veil. Christianity alters that, and verse 35 of this chapter is the one verse in the epistle that knits these things together.
Hold fast your confidence and it will be the secret of strength to you. Where do we see victory over the world? In those who are happiest in Christ. Why are you and I so miserably down in the traffic of the world? Because we are not as happy in Christ as we ought to be. Give me a soul that has boldness and joy in God’s presence and I will show you one that has victory over the world.
Now the Apostle tells us that a life of patience intervenes between the day of illumination and the day of glorification. I am not to count on a path of pleasure or ease or prosperity. I am to count on a path of patience. And is there not glory in that because there is companionship with Christ? There is no greater glory than to be companion of your rejected Master. That is your path, and “if any man draw back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him.” He was not ashamed to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were strangers here. But if we become citizens here—strike an alliance with the world—He who could say, “I am the God of my strangers,” can say to the citizen of the world, I “have no pleasure in him.”
May you and I exhort one another to love and to good works, and, pointing to the eastern sky, say, The day is dawning. Amen.
J. G. Bellett (from The Opened Heavens)