"Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the Ghost. And, behold, the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom." (Matt. 27:50,51.)
The rending of the vail was an event of the highest possible importance; having also the most obvious, and especially characteristic, meaning, Under the Jewish system, God had conferred benefits, given laws, sanctioned them by judgments; but man had been kept at a distance. God had never revealed Himself. He dwelt " in the thick darkness " (1 Kings 8:12; 2 Chron. 6:1); and if He condescended to dwell amongst men, He was within the vail, where none could approach—in a word, unseen. He governed from His throne; but direct approach was forbidden. The thick darkness and the barrier of Sinai, or the vail of an unlighted holy of holies, secluded Him from man. Had He shown Himself in light to a sinful world, it must have been utter condemnation. Darkness had no communion with light (see 2 Cor. 6:14). Unseen, He might in patient grace bear much which man's ignorance committed, and govern in mercy. But in due time, when man had been fully proved in all possible ways—without law, under law, under promise, prophecy, government, and even grace in the mission of God's own Son-and proved utterly bad, the time was come for God to show Himself in grace, such as He really was. Had He done so before, man could not have been properly put to the test. This he now has been; and then in infinite grace, when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ dies for the ungodly. Now if God came forth merely as light or holiness when man was wholly wicked and his will antagonistic, He must, in the nature of things, have driven man out of His presence, unless holiness' means allowing sin, whereas it means not allowing it. Yet God must be holy (that is, He cannot allow sin when He deals with it, or He would be morally like it, which would be a blasphemous denial of Him). How, then, does He act? In the death of Christ He manifests His holiness in the perfect taking away of sin, that His perfect love may flow out, never so shown to men as in this act. Now, God can fully reveal Himself without a vail. His holiness is perfect blessing, because shining out in absolute love, sin being put away. As a sign of this wonderful all-changing change, the vail which before hid Him is rent in twain from the top to the bottom, signifying Christ's death, according to the whole figurative arrangement employed to typify these things. And so the New Testament uses this event: " Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a [ the' ] new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the vail, that is to say his flesh.... let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith," etc. Again: " Into the second [that within the vail] went the high priest alone" once every year, not without blood... the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made Manifest, while as the first tabernacle moray yet standing: Which was a figure," etc. (Heb. 10:19-20; 9:7-9).
Now here we have the vail and its accompaniments declared to have precisely this force in the mind of the Holy Ghost. According to the whole system 'of Scripture, and that in its deepest moral elements, whether of man's relationship with God, or in reference to the peculiar position of Israel, which we know historically was then closing in, the rending of the vail had the most clear and weighty significancy. Nothing could have had so much. It was the central expression of the whole change of the divine way of dealing with man, and of man's relationship with God by the cross. The vail was a part, and a central part, of the system then established of God—nothing could have such a distinct signification as its rending. It signified, as has been said, the change of the whole relationship of God and man. In referring to a vail and its rending, one must consider' the meaning of its being there, to know the importance of its being rent. God's being concealed or revealed is not an unimportant idea; and the rending, at Christ's death, of the vail which concealed His throne and glory, is not difficult to understand. It is, a figure, of course, as all those parts of the tabernacle or temple were, but a figure of the most intelligible simplicity, and pregnant with meaning.