Chapter 9 to chapter 10:18 is one argument. This is the last section of the doctrinal part of the epistle. Then to the close we get moral exhortations.
Have you ever considered the glories that belong to the Lord Jesus? There are three forms of glory that attach to Him: moral glory, personal glory and official glory. From the manger to the cross was the exhibition of His moral glories. In “these last days” the Lord is exhibiting some of His official glories, and by and by He will exhibit more of them, as in millennial times. His personal glory is the foundation of every one of the glories which should follow His sufferings.
All through life He was exhibiting His moral glories. The scene for these is past now, and He has taken His seat in heaven, but that has only given Him an opportunity to display others. The four gospels give me a view of His moral glories here. In the Epistle to the Hebrews I see Him seated in heaven now in a constellation of official glories. In other writings we get His coming glories.
In chapters 9 and 10 you get what He was doing on the cross, the foundation of every one of His present glories. In the first eight chapters we get a varied display of the conditions of the Lord Jesus now in heaven, and now, as the sustainment of all these, in chapters 9 and 10 we have an account of the perfection of the Lamb on the altar.
Why does the Spirit call the age through which we are passing the “last days”? He does so because God rests in what the Lord Jesus has accomplished as thoroughly as He rested at the close of creation in the perfection of His own work. It is not that in the unfolding of the economy of God we shall not have other ages; yet, in the face of that, the Spirit calls these the “last days.”
In all the Lord has done He has satisfied God. He perfects everything He touches and makes it eternal, and God does not look beyond it. Everything is set aside till Christ is brought in, but there is no looking beyond Him. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” The moment I get God resting in anything I get perfection, and the moment I get perfection I am in the last days. God has reached satisfaction, and so have I. Christ may be unfolded in millennial days, but it is the very same Christ that we have now. Christ being introduced to the thoughts of God, God rests in Him, and when you come to see where you are, you are in God’s second Sabbath. The rest of the Redeemer is a much more blessed thing than the rest of the Creator. In Christ you have perfection, the rest of God, and you are in the “last days.”
In chapters 9 and 10 we see Christ on the altar. The glories that surround Him now have been given to us one after another the priesthood, the Purger of our sins, the predestinated Heir of the world to come, the Apostle of salvation, the Dispenser of the covenant that never gathers age to itself and the Giver of eternal inheritance. In chapter 9:10 we see that the cross sustains them all.
How blessed to track from Matthew to John His moral beauty. Was the Lord Jesus in office here? No, He was in subjection. When I have looked at Him thus I am invited to look upwards. Now I see One who has been seated at the right hand of the Majesty in the very midst of glorious beauties One that the satisfied heart of God has seated there.
Then we come to the perfection of His work as Lamb of God, the grand foundation of all these glories. He would not have perfected His moral glories here nor would He have had His official glories in heaven if He had not gone to the cross and died there.
When the Lord Jesus was hanging as the Lamb of God on the accursed tree and over His bleeding brow was written the inscription, “This is the King of the Jews,” they sought to blot it out, but God would not have it blotted out. He would have the whole creation know that the cross was the title to the kingdom.
The cross sustains the glory, but what sustains the cross itself? The secret comes out in these chapters: as the cross sustains your hopes, it is the Person His personal glory that sustains the cross. If He were less than God manifest in the flesh, all He did was no more worth than water spilled on the ground. Of all the mighty mystery of official, millennial, eternal glories, the cross is the support and the Person is the support of the cross. He must sustain His own work and His work must sustain everything.
There was a veil hanging between the place where the priests ministered and the mystic dwelling-place of God. That veil was the expression that that age gave a sinner no access to God. Were there not sacrifices? Yes, and God’s altar was accepting them, but they were “gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience.” Then He comes beautifully to your heart and demands admiration: “For if the blood of bulls... sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
If we inspect the old tabernacle and see the beggarliness of all its elements that the blood of bulls could not bring you into the presence of God and from the beggarliness of all that look at the satisfyingness of the blood of Jesus, will you not say: “How much more shall it purge our consciences?” That is the way you are to come to the cross, laying doubtings and questionings aside and losing yourself in admiration. The thing the Spirit does is to take you gently by the hand and lead you up to the altar at Calvary and tell you who is the victim that is bleeding there. None but one who was personally free could say, “I come to do Thy will.” Have you any right to a will? Has Gabriel or Michael? To do God’s pleasure is their business, but here was One who could offer Himself without spot to God. “How much more,” then, shall such a sacrifice purge our consciences and introduce us at once to the living God? That is why I say that while we look at His glories His official glories we see that the cross is the sustainment of them all.
But if the soul does not know the personal glory of the Lord, it positively knows nothing. That is the secret you get here. He, for whom God prepared a body, through the eternal Spirit, satisfied the altar yes, satisfied the brazen altar before He went into the holy sanctuary to do the business of God’s priest. And atonement follows from satisfaction. If I find out that Christ’s sacrifice has answered the cravings of the brazen altar, I see that my reconciliation is sealed and settled for eternity.
The Epistle to the Ephesians tells you to stand upon this and to look round about you at the glories of your condition. The Epistle to the Hebrews shows you the glories of Christ’s condition in the compass of about three hundred verses. What a world of wonders is opened! You are sustained by what He has done, and what He has done is sustained by what He is.
J. G. Bellett (from The Opened Heavens)