LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK
62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1909
The Bible is the Sky in which
God has set Christ the Sun.
John Ker, D.D.
First Edition May 1909
Second Impression July 1909
The following chapters are the work of intervals of leisure scattered over a long time. The exposition had advanced some way when an unexpected call to new and exacting duties compelled me to put it aside for several years. Accordingly a certain difference of treatment in the later chapters as compared with the earlier will probably be seen by the reader, particularly a rather fuller detail in the exposition. But purpose and plan are essentially the same throughout.
No attempt whatever is made, here or in the
course of the work, to deal with those literary
and historical problems which so conspicuously
attach themselves to this Epistle. Who the
"Hebrews" were is nowhere discussed. Nor is
any positive answer offered to a question to
which assuredly no such answer can be given,
the question, namely, of the authorship. In
my opinion, in face of all that I have read
In any case the author, if not an apostle, was a prophet. And he carries to us a prophet's "burthen" of unspeakable import, and in words to which all through the Christian ages the soul has responded as to the words of the Holy Spirit.
HANDLEY DUNELM.
Easter, 1909.
CONSIDER HIM
Heb. i.-ii.
Let us open the Epistle to the Hebrews, with an aim simple and altogether practical for heart and for life. Let us take it just as it stands, and somewhat as a whole. We will not discuss its authorship, interesting and extensive as that problem is. We will not attempt, within the compass of a few short chapters, to expound continuously its wonderful text. Rather, we will gather up from it some of its large and conspicuous spiritual messages, taken as messages of the Word of God "which liveth and abideth for ever."
No part of Holy Scripture is ever really out
The Epistle to the Hebrews is in some remarkable
respects a book timely for our day. It
invites to itself, if I read it aright, the renewed
attention of the thoughtful Christian, and not
least of the thoughtful Christian of the English
Church, as it brings him messages singularly in
point to some of the main present needs of his
spiritual life and its surroundings. It was
written manifestly in the first instance to meet
special and pressing current trials; it bears the
impress of a time of severe sifting, a time when
foundations were challenged, and individual faith
put to even agonizing proofs, and the community
threatened with an almost dissolution. Such a
writing must have a voice articulate and sympathetic
for a period like ours.
We will take into our hands then, portion by portion, this wonderful "open letter," and listen through it to some of the things which "the Spirit saith" to the saints and to the Church.
We now contemplate in this sense the first two chapters. We put quite aside a host of points of profound interest in detail, and ask ourselves only what is the broad surface, the drift and total, of the message here. As to its climax, it is Jesus Christ, our "merciful and faithful High Priest" (ii. 17). As to the steps that lead up to the climax, they are a presentation of the personal glory of Jesus Christ, as God the Son of God, as Man the Son of Man, who for us men and our salvation came, suffered, and prevailed.
Who that reads the Bible with the least care
has not often noted this in the first passages of
the Hebrews, and could not at once so state the
matter? What is the great truth of
Thus the Epistle, on its way to recall its
readers, at a crisis of confusion and temptation,
Am I not right in saying that here is a
message straight to the restless heart of our
time, and not least to the special conditions of
Christian life just now in our well-beloved
Church? We must, of course we must, think
about a hundred problems presented by the
circumference of the life of the Christian and
the life of the Church. At all times such
problems, asking for attention and solution,
emerge to every thoughtful disciple's sight. In
our own time they seem to multiply upon one
Well, for these very reasons let us make here first this brief appeal, prompted by the opening paragraphs of the great Epistle. If you would deal aright with the circumference, earnest Christian of the English Church, live at the Centre. "Dwell deep." From the Church come back evermore to Jesus Christ, that from Jesus Christ you may the better go back to the Church, bearing the peace and the power of the Lord Himself upon you.
There is nothing that can serve as a substitute
for this. The "consideration" of our blessed
Redeemer and King is not merely good for us;
it is vital. To "behold His glory," deliberately,
with worship, with worshipping love, and seen
by direct attention to the mirror of His Word,
can and must secure for us blessings which we
shall otherwise infallibly lose. This, and this
alone, amidst the strife of tongues and all the
perplexities of life, can develope in us at once
the humblest reverence and the noblest liberty,
A HEART OF FAITH
Heb. iii.
We have just endeavoured to find a message, "godly and wholesome, and necessary for these times," in the opening paragraphs in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We come now to interrogate our oracle again, and we open the third chapter as we do so.
Here again we find the Epistle full, first, of
"Jesus Christ Himself." He is "the Apostle
and the High Priest of our profession" (ver. 1),
or let us read rather, "our confession," the
"confession" of us who are loyal to His Name
as His disciples. We are expressly called here
to do what the first two chapters implied that
we must do—to "consider Him" (ver. 1), to
bend upon His Person, character, and work the
attention of the whole heart and mind. We are
pointed to His holy fidelity to His mission (ver. 2)
in words which equally remind us of His subordination
to the Father's will and of His
Thus the blessed Lord is before us here again,
filling our sphere of thought and contemplation.
It is here just as it is in the Epistle to the
Colossians. There, as here, errors and confusions
In this Epistle as in that we have the same
phenomenon, deeply suggestive and seasonable
for our life to-day. In both cases, not only for
individuals but for the Church, there was mental
and spiritual trouble. Alike in Phrygian Colossæ
and wherever the "Hebrews" lived there was an
invasion of church difficulties and confusion. A
certain affinity in detail links the two cases
together. Colossian Christians and Hebrew
Christians, under widely different circumstances,
and no doubt in very different tones, persuasive
in one case, threatening in the other, were pressed
to retrograde from the sublime simplicity and
fulness of the truth. Their danger was what
I may venture to call a certain medievalism.
Deeply significant it is that in both cases we
have the danger met thus—by the presentation
of the Incarnate Redeemer Himself, in His personal
and official glory, to the most immediate
possible view of every disciple, "nothing between."
The Epistles, both of them, have much to say on
deep general principles. But all this they say
in vital connexion with Jesus Christ; and about
Him they say most of all. He is the supreme
Antidote. He, "considered," considered fully, is
But the message of our chapter has not yet been fully heard. It has spoken to us of Christ Jesus, and of the "consideration" of Him to which we are called. At its close it speaks to us of faith: "Take heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God" (ver. 12). "To whom sware He that they should not enter into His rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief" (verses 18, 19).
That is to say, our "consideration" of Jesus
Christ must not be all our action towards Him,
if we would be sure, and safe, and strong. It
must be but the preliminary to a "heart of
faith." That is to say again, we must personally
and practically take Him at His word, and rely
upon Him, committing our souls and our all to
Him, to Him directly, to Him solely. We must,
in the exercise of this reliance, use Him evermore
as our Prophet, Priest, and King. We
must venture upon His promises, just as Israel
ought to have ventured upon the promises of
Him who had redeemed them, although He
tried their will and power to do so by the
Thus to rely is faith; for faith is personal confidence in the Lord in His promise. And such faith is not only, as it is, the empty hand which receives Divine blessings in detail. It is the empty arms which clasp always that comprehensive blessing, the presence of "the living God" in Christ, so making sure of a secret of peace, of rest, of decision, of strength, of deep-sighted and tranquil thought upon "things which differ," which is of infinite importance at a time of confusion and debate in the Christian Church.
Therefore, alike for our safety and for our usefulness, let us first afresh "consider Him." And then let us afresh "take heed" that with "a good heart of faith" we draw to and abide in union with the "considered" Christ, in whom we know and possess the living God.
UNTO PERFECTION
Heb. iv.-vi.
Our study of the great Epistle takes here another step, covering three short but pregnant chapters. So pregnant are they that it would be altogether vain to attempt to deal with them thus briefly were we not mindful of our special point of view. We are pondering the Epistle not for all that it has to say, but for what it has to say of special moment and application for certain needs of our own time.
The outline of the portion before us must accordingly be traced. In detail it presents many questions of connexion and argument, for, particularly in chapter iv., the apostolic thought takes occasionally a parenthetical flight of large circuit. But in outline the progression may be traced without serious difficulty.
We have first the appeal to exercise the
promptitude and decision of faith, in view of
the magnificent promise of a Canaan of sacred
That "Word" is piercing as a sword in its
convictions, for it is the vehicle of His mind
and His holiness "with whom is concerned our
discourse" (iv. 13); while yet it is, on its other
side, a "Gospel" indeed (iv. 2), the message of
supreme good, if only it is met with faith by
the convicted soul. Yes, it is a message which
tells of a land of "rest," near and open, fairer
far than the Canaan on which Caleb reported
and from which he and his fellows brought the
great clusters of its golden vines. Passage after
passage of the old Scriptures (iv. 3-9) shows
that that Canaan was no finality, no true terminus
of the purpose of God; another "rest,"
another "day" of entrance and blessing, was
intimated all along. Unbelief forfeited the true
fruition of even the old Canaan for the old
Israel. And now out of that evil has sprung
the glorious good of a more articulate promise
of the new Canaan, the inheritance of rest in
Then, at iv. 14, the appeal takes us in
beautiful order more directly to Him who is
at once the Leader and the Promised Land.
And again He stands before us as a "great High
Priest." Our Moses, our Joshua, is also our
more than Aaron, combining in Himself every
possible qualification to be our guide and preserver
as we enter in. He stands before us
in all the alluring and endearing character of
mingled majesty and mercy; a High Priest, a
great High Priest, immeasurably great; He has
"passed through the heavens" (iv. 14) to the
Holiest, to the throne, the celestial mercy-seat
(iv. 16) "within the veil" (vi. 19); He is the
Son (v. 5); He is the Priest-King, the true
Such is the "Leader of our faith," so great, so glorious, so perfect, so tender, so deep in fellowship with us. Shall we not follow Him into "the rest," though a "Jordan rolls between" and though cities of giants seem to frown upon us even on the other side? Shall we not dare thither to follow Him out of the desert of our "own works"?
Much, says the Epistle (v. 11, etc.), is to be
said about Him; the theme is deep, it is inexhaustible,
for He is God and Man, one Christ.
And the Hebrew believers (and is it not the
In order that full blessing may thus be theirs,
let them look for it in the only possible direction.
Let them take again to their souls the mighty
promise of eternal benediction (vi. 14), sealed
and crowned with the Promiser's gracious oath
in His own Name, binding Himself to fidelity
under the bond of His own majesty (vi. 13).
Aye, and then let them again "consider" Him
in whom promise and oath are embodied and
vivified for ever; in whom rests—nay, in whom
consists—our anchor of an eternal hope (vi. 19);
Jesus, our Man of men, our High Priest of the
everlasting order, now entered "within the veil,"
Our review of the passage is thus in some sort over. Confessedly it is an outline; but I do not think that any vital element in the matter has been overlooked. Much of the message we are seeking has been inevitably given us by the way; we may be content now to gather up and summarize the main result.
The "Hebrews," then, and their special circumstances of difficulty, are here in view, as everywhere else in the Epistle. Tempted to "fall away," to give up the "hope set before them," to relapse to legalism, to bondage, to the desert, to a famine of the soul, to barrenness and death—here they are dealt with, in order to the more than prevention of the evil. And here, as ever, the remedy propounded is our Lord Jesus Christ, in His personal glory, in His majestic offices, in His unfathomable human sympathy, seen in perfect harmony of light with His eternal greatness.
The remedy is Christ; a deeper, fuller, always
maturing sight of Christ. The urgent necessity
is first promptitude and then progress in respect
of knowing Him.
At the risk of a charge of iteration and
monotony, I reaffirm that here is the great
antidote for the many kindred difficulties of our
troubled time. From how many sides comes the
strain! Sometimes from that of an open
naturalism; sometimes from that of a partial
yet far-reaching "naturalism under a veil"
which some recent teachings on "The Being of
Christianity" may exemplify, with principles and
presuppositions which largely underlie the
extremer forms, certainly, of the modern critique
of Scripture; sometimes from the opposite
quarter of an ecclesiasticism which more or less
exaggerates or distorts the great ideas of
corporate life and sacramental operation. It
would be idle to ignore the subtle nuances of
difference between mind and mind, and the
resultant varying incidence in detail of great
and many-sided truths. But is it not fair and
true to say that, on the whole, the supreme
personal glory of Christ, as presented direct to
the human soul in its august and ineffable
loveliness, in its infinite lovableness, is what
alike the naturalistic and the ultra-ecclesiastic
theories of religion tend to becloud? On the
other side, accordingly, it is in the "consideration"
of that glory, in acquaintance with
that wonderful Christ, that we shall find the
glow which can melt and overcome the cloud.
OUR GREAT MELCHIZEDEK
Heb. vii.
There is a symmetrical dignity all its own
in the seventh chapter of the Hebrews. I
recollect listening, now many years ago, to a
characteristic exposition of it by the late beloved
and venerated Edward Hoare, in a well-known
drawing-room at Cromer—a "Bible Reading"
full alike of mental stimulus and spiritual force.
He remarked, among many other things, that
the chapter might be described as a sermon,
divided under three headings, on the text of
Then (verses 23-28) the discourse passes into
what we may call its epilogue. The thought
recurs to the sublime contrast between the
pathetic numerousness of the successors of Aaron,
"not suffered to continue by reason of death," and
the singleness, the "unsuccessional" identity for
ever, of the true Melchizedek, who abides eternally.
And then, moving to its end, the argument
glows and brightens into an "application"
to the human heart. We have in Jesus (the
Name has now already been pronounced, ver. 22)
a Friend, an Intercessor, infinitely and for ever
competent to save us, His true Israel. We
Such on the whole, as I recall it, was the exposition of my venerable friend, in 1887. Each new reading of the chapter seems to me to bear out the substantial accuracy of it; indeed the symmetry and order of the chapter make it almost inevitable that some such line should be taken by the explanation. Thus then it lies before us. It is filled in all its parts with Jesus Christ, in His character of the true Melchizedek, our final, everlasting, perfect, supreme, Divine High Priest.
This simple treatise is not the place for
critical discussions. I do not attempt a formal
vindication of the mystical and Messianic reference
of
So thinking, I take His exposition of
But now, what "message" has our chapter for us, in view of the needs of our own time?
First, as to its sacerdotal doctrine. It throws
a broad illumination on the grand finality and
uniqueness of the mediatorial priesthood of our
Lord, the Son of God. It puts into the most
vivid possible contrast the age of "the law" and
that of Christ as to the priestly conception and
institution. Somehow, under the law, there was
a need for priests who were "men, having infirmity."
For certain grave purposes (not for
all, by any means, even in that legal period) it
In the age of Christ, no office can for one
moment put one "man having infirmity" nearer
to God than another, if this chapter means what
Then further, the chapter, far from giving us merely the cold gift (as it would be if this were all) of a negative certainty against unlawful human claims, gives us, as its true, its inmost message, a glorious positive. It gives us the certainty that, for every human heart which asks for God, this wonderful Christ, personal, eternal, human, Divine, is quite immediately accessible. The hands of need and trust have but to be lifted, and they hold Him. And He is the Son. In Him we have the Father. We do indeed "draw nigh to God through Him."
Therefore we will do it. The thousand confusions of our time shall only make this Divine simplicity the more precious to us. We will at once and continually take Jesus Christ for granted in all the fulness and splendour of His High-priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. That Priesthood is for ever what it is; it is as new and young to-day in its virtue as if the oath had but to-day been spoken, and He had but to-day sat down at the right hand.
Happy we if we use Him thus. He blesses
THE BETTER COVENANT
Heb. viii.
The Person and greatness of our High Priest are now full before the readers of the Epistle. The paragraph we enter next, after one more deliberate contemplation of His dignity and His qualifications, proceeds to expound His relation to the better and eternal Covenant. We shall find here also messages appropriate to our time.
The first step then is a review, a summing up,
a "look again" upon the true King of Righteousness
and peace (verses 1, 2). "Such a
High Priest we have." It is a wonderful affirmation,
not only of His existence but of His
relation to "us," His people. "We have" Him.
He has taken His seat indeed "at the right
hand of the throne of the majesty in the
heavens." But this great exaltation has not
removed Him for a moment out of our possession;
we have Him. He is now the great
The words invite us to a new and deliberate look upward, and then to a recollection deeper than ever that He is held spiritually in our very hands; that He is a possession, nearer to us than any other.
Then (verses 3 and following) the thought
moves towards the sacrificial and offertorial
qualifications of this great and most sacred
Person. He is what He is, our High Priest,
our Minister of the sanctuary above, on perfectly
valid grounds. For He is, what every sacerdotal
minister must be, an Offerer. And He is this
in a sense, in a way, congruous to His heavenly
position. He has no blood of goats and
calves to present, like the priests on earth.
Indeed, were He "on earth" (ver. 4), this
greatest of all High Priests "would not even be
a priest" (οὐδ ἂν ἦν ἱερεύς), an ordinary priest.
For that function, says the Writer, is already filled,
It may be well to pause here, and to ask
whether this passage reveals that our Lord
Jesus Christ is at this moment "offering" for us,
in His heavenly life. We are all aware that
this has been widely held and earnestly pressed,
sometimes into inferences which, as far as I can
see, cannot at all be borne even by the doctrine
that He is offering for us now. In particular it
is said that, if He in glory is offering for His
Church, then His Church must, in some sense, as
in a counterpart, be offering here on earth, in union
with Him. In short, there must still be priests
on earth who are ministers of "the example
But then further, does this passage really intimate at all that He is offering now? The thought appears to be decisively negatived by the grandeur of the terms of the first verse of this chapter. Where, in the heavenly sanctuary, is our High Priest now? He has "taken His seat on the right hand of the throne of the majesty." But enthronement is a thought out of line with the act and attitude of oblation. The offerer stands before the Power he approaches. Our Priest is seated—where Deity alone can sit.
Does not this tell us that the words (ver. 3),
"It is necessary that He too should have something
to offer," are to be explained not of a
continuous historical procedure (to which idea,
by the way, the aorist verb προσενέγκῃ would
hardly be appropriate), but as the statement of a
Only thus viewed, I venture to say, can this phrase be read in its full harmony with the whole Epistle. "He hath somewhat to offer," in the sense that He has for ever the grand sacerdotal qualification of being an Offerer who, having executed that function, now bears to all eternity its character. But He is not therefore always executing the function. Otherwise He must descend from His throne. But His enthronement, His session, is a fact of His present position as important and characteristic as possible in this whole Epistle.
Aaron was not always offering. But he was
always an offerer. On the morrow of the
Atonement Day he was as much an offerer
Then the chapter moves forward (verses 6 and following) to consider the relation between our High Priest and the Covenant of which He is the Mediator. Here begins one of the great themes of the Epistle. It will recur again and again, till at last we read (xiii. 20) of "the blood of the Covenant eternal."
This pregnant subject is introduced by a solemn
reference to the "promises upon which has
been legislated," legally instituted, νενομοθετήται,
this new compact between God and man. The
reference is to the thirtieth chapter of Jeremiah,
from which an extract is here made at length.
There the prophet, in the name of his God, explicitly
foretells the advent of what we may
This is the new, the better, the everlasting
Covenant. It is placed here in the largest and
most decisive contrast over against the old
covenant, the compact of Sinai, "written and
engraven in stones" (
What the prophet foretold was claimed by
the Lord Christ Himself, as fulfilled in His
Person and His work, when He took the cup of
blessing, at the feast of the new Passover of the
new Israel, and said, "This cup is the new
covenant in my blood." And what He so
claimed His great apostle rejoiced in, when he
wrote to Corinth (2 iii. 6, etc.) of the "ministry
of the new covenant," the covenant of the Spirit,
of life, of glory. And here the same truth is
Here is a message for our times, in a sense
which seems to me special, pressing, and deeply
beneficent. For the terms of that new covenant
are nothing less than the glorious essence, the
Divine peculiarity, of the Gospel of the grace of
God. This forgiveness, this most sincere and
entirely unearned amnesty, this oblivion of the
sins of the people of God—do we hear very
much about it now, even where by tradition it
might be most expected? But do we not need
it now? Was there ever a time when human
hearts would be more settled and more energized
than now, amidst their moral restlessness, by a
wise, thoughtful, but perfectly unmistakable reaffirmation
of the sublime fulness of Divine
forgiveness in Christ? Men may think that
they can do without that message. They may
bid us throw the whole weight of preaching upon
self-sacrifice, upon social service, upon conduct at
Let us return upon the rich treasures of this great Compact of God in Christ. The Covenant is ever new, for it is eternal. And it lies safe in the ministering hands of Him who died to inaugurate it and make it good, and who lives to shower its blessings down. He is on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. And "we have" Him.
SANCTUARY AND SACRIFICE
Heb. ix.
The Epistle has exhibited to us the glory of the eternal Priest and the wealth and grandeur of the new Covenant. It advances now towards the Sanctuary and the Sacrifice wherein we see that covenant sanctified and sealed, under the auspices of our great "Priest upon His throne."
The Teacher first dilates to the Hebrews
upon the outstanding features of the type. He
enumerates the main features of that "sanctuary,
adapted to this (visible) world" (τὸ ἅγιον,
κοσμικόν), which was attached to the first
covenant (ver. 1).
Such was the sanctuary, as depicted to the
mind of the believing Hebrew in the books
which he almost worshipped as the oracles of
God. That tabernacle he had never seen; that
ark he knew had long vanished out of sight.
The temple of Herod, with its vacant Holiest,
was the sanctuary of his generation. But the
Mosaic picture of the Tent and of the Ark was
for him the abiding standard, the Divine ideal,
the pattern of the realities in the heavens; and to
it accordingly the Epistle directs his thought, as it
prepares to display those realities before him.
Then it proceeds to a similar presentation of one great feature in the ritual, the "praxis," connected with this Tent of Sanctuaries. It takes the reader to his Book of Leviticus, and to its order of Atonement. There (ch. xvi.) a profound emphasis is laid upon both the secluded sanctity of the inner shrine, the place of the Presence, and the sacrificial process by which alone the rare privilege of entrance into it could be obtained. The outer chamber was the daily scene of priestly ministration. But the inner was, officially at least, entered once only in the year, and by the High Priest alone, in the solitary dignity of his office. And even he went in there only as bearing in his very hands the blood of immolated victims, blood which he offered, presented, in the Holiest, with an express view to the Divine amnesty for another year's tale of "ignorances" (ἀγνοήματα, ver. 7), his own and the people's.
Such was the sanctuary, such the atoning
ritual, attached to the first covenant. All was
"mysteriously meant," with a significance in
But the Teacher has not yet done with the
wealth of the Mosaic types of our full salvation.
He has more to say about the profound truth
that the New Covenant needed for its Mediator, its
Herald, its Guarantor and Conveyer of blessing,
not a Moses but a Messiah, who could both die
and reign, could at once be Sacrifice and Priest.
Covenants, in the normal order of God's will in
Scripture, demanded death for their ratification.
"Where covenant is, there must be brought in
the death of the covenant-victim."
The messages of this chapter for our time
are equally manifest and weighty. It closes
with the assertion of a principle which should
be for all time decisive against all sorts and
Are these the characteristic accents of the voice of the modern Church? Have we not need to listen again, reverent and believing, to the ninth chapter of the Hebrews, as it discourses about sanctuary, and sacrifice, and offering, and peace?
FULL, PERFECT, AND SUFFICIENT
Heb. x.
The heaven-taught Teacher has led us now
along the avenue of the Levitical fore-shadowings,
through the prophetic symbolism of
the old high-priesthood, through the holy place and
the holiest. The pathway, marked by the blood
of animal sacrifices, hallowing the awful terms
of the covenant of works, has brought us to the
true Tabernacle and true Sacrifice, to the better
and final Covenant, to the supreme High Priest.
The teaching has left us, as the ninth chapter
closes, "looking up steadfastly into heaven," recollecting
where the Lord is and why He is there;
thinking how we, His Israel, "have Him" for our
Representative and Mediator as He "appears in
the presence of God for us," and expecting the
hour of joy and glory when He will put aside
the curtains of that tabernacle, and come forth to
crown us with the final benediction, receiving us
"unto the salvation" of eternity (ix. 27, 28).
It is a solemn but a happy attitude. It can be taken by those only who have "fled for refuge to the hope set before them." But they are to take it, as those who feel beneath their feet the rock of an assured salvation and know their open way to the heart of God.
The argument now proceeds in living continuity. Its business now is to accentuate and develope the supremacy, the ultimacy—if the word may be allowed—of the finished work of the true High Priest, in contrast to the provisional and preparatory "law." The Writer has said much to us in this way before, particularly in the preceding three chapters of the Epistle. But he must emphasize it again, for it is the inmost purport of his whole discourse. And he must do it now with the urgency of one who has in view a real peril of apostasy. His readers are hard pressed, by persuasions and by terrors, to turn back from Christ to the Judaistic travesty of the message of the Law. He must tell them not only of the splendour of Messiah's work but of the absolute finality of it for man's salvation. To forsake it is to "forsake their own mercy," to "turn back into perdition."
So he begins with a reminder of the incapacity
of the Law to save, by pointing to the ceaseless
repetition of the sacrificial acts. Year by year,
on one Atonement Day after another, the blood
We believe—nay, with the Psalms in our
hands, such Psalms as xxiii., and xxxii., and
ciii., we know—that for the really contrite and
loyal heart, even under the Law, there were
large experiences of peace and joy. But these
blessings were not due to the sacrifices of the
tabernacle or the temple, however divinely
ordered. They were due to revelations from
many quarters of the character of the Lord
Jehovah, and not least, assuredly, to the conviction—how
could the more deeply taught
souls have helped it?—that this vast and
death-dealing ceremonial had a goal which alone
could explain it, in some transcendent climax of
remission. But in itself the ritual emphasized
not gladness but judgment, not love but the
dread fact of guilt. And the blood of goats
could not for a moment be thought of (ver. 4)
as by itself able to make peace with God. At
The priests daily (ver. 11), the high priest
yearly, as they slew and burnt the victims, and
sprinkled blood, and wafted incense, in view of
Israel's tale of offences against his King, were
all, by their every action, prophets of that
mysterious something yet to come. They
"made remembrance of sins" (ver. 3), writing
always anew upon the conscience of the
worshipper the certainty that sin, in its form
of guilt, is a tremendous reality in the court
of God, that it calls importunately for propitiation,
while yet animal propitiations can never,
by their very nature, be really propitiatory of
themselves. Yet the God of Israel had commanded
them; they could not be mere forms
therefore. What could they be then but types
and suggestions of a reality which should at
last justify the symbolism by a victorious fulfilment?
Thus was an oracle like
If this is at all the course of the Writer's exposition,
there is nothing arbitrary in the sequel
to it. He explains the enigmatic Psalm by
finding in it the crucified and self-offering
High Priest of our profession. Of Him "the
roll of the book" had spoken, as the supreme
doer and bearer for us of the will of God.
His sacred Body was the Thing indicated by
the prophetic altars of Aaron. When He
"offered" it, presenting it to the eternal
Holiness on our behalf, when He let it be
done to death because we had sinned, so that
we might be accepted because it, because He,
had suffered—then did He "fill" the types
Yes, that work was now for ever closed by the attainment of its goal. Moreover, His work of sacrifice and of offering, of suffering and of presentation, was for ever finished also. This is the burthen and message of the whole passage (verses 11-18). "Once for all" (ἐφάπαξ), "once for ever," the holy Body has been offered (ver. 10). "He offered one sacrifice for sins in perpetuity," εἰς τὸ διηνεκές (ver. 12). And therefore, not only for the priests of the old rite but for the High Priest of the heavenly order, "there is no more offering for sin" (ver. 18).
And why? Because, for the new Israel, for
the chosen people of faith (ver. 39), the supreme
sacrifice and offering has done its work. It has
"sanctified" them (verses 10, 29); that is to
say, it has hallowed them into God's accepted
possession by its reconciling and redeeming
efficacy. For its virtue does much more than
rescue; it annexes and appropriates what it
saves. It has "perfected" them (ver. 14); that
is to say, it has placed them effectually in that
position of complete "peace with God" which
guilt while still unsettled makes impossible. It
has "put them among the children," within the
home circle of Divine love. It has done this "in
The great closing paragraphs of the chapter
(verses 19-39) are one long application of this
Then, further, the new Israelite is to cherish
the grace of godly fear. The "boldness" of the
loyal child is to go along with the clear recollection
that outside the holy home there lies only
"a wilderness of woe." To leave it, to turn back
from it, to be a renegade from covenant joys,
With tender urgency he pleads for fresh
memories and fresh resolves (verses 32-35).
He recalls to them days, not long ago, when
they had borne shame and loss, "a conflict of
sufferings," fellowship with outcast and imprisoned
saints, spoiling of their own possessions—all
made more than bearable by the joy of
their wonderful "enlightenment" (ver. 32). Let
them do so still, in full view of the coming
crown. Let them grasp afresh the glorious
privilege of "boldness" (ver. 35), reaffirming to
themselves with strong assurance that they are
"sanctified," "perfected," at home with God in
Christ. Let them rise up and go on in that
noble "patience" (ver. 36) which "suffers and
is strong." It is only "a very little while"
before the High Priest will reappear. And the
"faith" which takes Him at His word will, as
the prophet witnesses (
Now, as then, the tenth chapter of the Hebrews
points with a golden rod to the one path of life, and
peace, and perseverance to the end. "Rejoice in
the Lord; for you it is safe" (
FAITH AND ITS POWER
Heb. xi. (I.)
The eleventh chapter of the Hebrews is a
pre-eminent Scripture. With the fullest
recognition of the Divine greatness of the whole
Bible, never forgetting that "every scripture
hath in it the Spirit of God" (
It is impressive by the majestic singleness of
its theme; Faith, from first to last, is its matter
and its burthen. Further, it carries one long
appeal to the heart by its method; almost from
the exordium to the very close it deals with its
theme not by abstract reasoning, nor even by a
Or take that great scene in Marmion, where the spectral summons is pealed from Edinburgh Cross:
And the consummate prose of this our chapter
moves us with the like rhythmical power upon
So we approach the chapter, familiar as it is (and it is so familiar because it is so great), with a peculiar and reverent expectation. We look forward to another visit to this great gallery of "the portraits of the family of God" with a pleasure as natural as it is reverent and believing. True to our plan in these expositions, however, we shall not attempt to comment upon it in the least degree fully or in detail. Our aim will be rather to collect and focus together some main elements of its teaching, particularly in regard of their applicability to our own days.
The first question suggested as we read is,
what is the connexion of the chapter? Why
does the Writer spend all this wealth of example
and application upon the one word Faith?
The reason is not far to seek. The tenth chapter closes with that word, or rather with that truth: "My righteous man shall live by faith"; "we are of them that have faith, unto the saving of the soul." And this close is only the issue of a strain of previous teachings, going far back towards the opening of the Epistle. "The evil heart of unbelief," of "unfaith," if the word may be used, is the theme of warning in iii. 12: "They could not enter in because of unbelief" (iii. 19). "The word of hearing did not profit them" because of their lack of faith (iv. 2). It is "we who have believed" who "enter into God's rest" (iv. 3). Looking to our great High Priest and His finished work, we are to "draw near with a true heart, in fulness of faith" (x. 22), for the all-sufficient reason that such trust meets and appropriates eternal truth: "He is faithful that promised" (x. 23).
These explicit occasional mentions of faith are,
however, as we might expect, only a part of the
phenomenon of the great place which the idea of
faith holds in the Epistle. When we come to
reflect upon it, the precise position of the Hebrew
Christians was that of men seriously, even tremendously,
tempted to walk by sight, not by faith.
The Gospel called them to venture their all, for
time and eternity, upon an invisible Person, an invisible
order, a mediation carried on above the
It demands an effort—and it well deserves an
effort—to realize in some measure what the
trial must have been for the sensitive mind of
many a Jewish convert to look thus from the
Gospel to the Law as both shewed themselves to
him then. Even now the earnest and religious
Jew, invited to accept the faith of Jesus, has his
tremendous difficulties of thought, as we well
know, although for so many ages Jerusalem has
been "trodden down," and the priesthood and
sacrifices have become very ancient history.
But when our Epistle was written it was far
otherwise. True, the great ruin of the old order
was very near at hand, but not to the common
eye and mind. It may be—for all things are
possible—that the Papal system may be near
its period; but certainly there is little look of it
to the traveller who visits Rome and contemplates
St. Peter's and the Vatican. As little did
the end of the Mosaic age present itself as
probable, judging by externals, to the pilgrim to
Jerusalem then, when, for example, the innumerable
hosts of Passover-keepers filled the whole
environs of the city, and moved incessantly
through the vast courts around the sacred space
where the great altar sent up its smoke morning
and evening, and where the wonderful House
stood intact, "a mountain of snow pinnacled
with gold."
Think of the contrast between such historic invitations to "walk by sight" towards the bosom of Abraham, and the call to "come out and be separate" in some Christian upper-room, devoid of every semblance of decorative art and dignified proportion, only to listen to the Word, to pray and praise in the name of the Crucified, and to eat and drink at the simple Eucharist, the rite of Thanksgiving for—the Master's awful death!
Recollecting these facts of the position, it is no wonder that the Writer emphasizes the greatness and glory of faith, and that now he devotes this whole noble and extended chapter to illustrate that glory.
We come thus to the opening words of the passage, and listen to him as he takes the word "faith" up, and sets it apart, to look afresh at its significance and to describe its potency, before he proceeds, with the tact and skill of sympathy, to illustrate his account of it from the history so deeply sacred to the tried Hebrew Christian's heart.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped
for, the proving of things not seen." So the
Revisers translate the first verse. They place in
their margin, as an alternative, a rendering which
makes faith to be "the giving substance to things
hoped for, the test of things not seen." I pre
In the light of what we have recalled regarding
the position of the first readers of the words,
we have only to render them thus to see their
perfect appropriateness, their adjustment to an
"exceeding need." The Gospel led its disciple
supremely and ultimately always towards the
hoped-for and the unseen. True, it had a
reference of untold value and power to the seen
and present. There was then, as there is in
In our next chapter we will consider both the account of faith here given and some main points in the illustration of it by examples.
FAITH AND ITS ANNALS
Heb. xi. (II.)
We considered in the last chapter the account of Faith with which the apostolic Writer opens this great recital of the "life, work, and triumph of faith" in holy human lives. His words, as we found, lend themselves to some variety of explanation in detail: the term ὑπόστασις alone may be interpreted in at least three ways. But I do not think that this need disturb us as to the essential meaning of the description. Each and all of the renderings leave us with the thought that faith has a power in it to make the thing hoped-for act upon us as if it were attained, and the invisible as if it were before our eyes.
We may pause so far further over the
description of faith here as to point out that it
is precisely this, a description, not a definition.
To quote
What is a definition? A precise and exclusive
statement of the essentials of a thing, such
that it will fit no other thing. A description
may be something altogether different from this.
It may so handle the object that the terms are
not exclusive at all, but are equally applicable
to something else; as here for example, where
the phraseology would equally well describe
imagination in its more vivid forms—a thing as
different as possible from faith. To be quite
practical, we have here, if we read this first
Here we have precisely that last application of the verb substantive, only in an exact and most noble antithesis. "Seeing is believing," says the familiar proverb. "Believing is seeing," says the Divine word here. That is to say, when the human soul so relies upon God that His word is absolute and sufficient for its certainties, this reliance, this faith, has in it the potency of sight. It is as sure of the promised blessing as if it were a present possession. It is as ready to act upon "the things not seen as yet," the laws, powers, hopes beyond the veil, as if all was in open view to the eyes of the body.
The whole course of the chapter, when it
comes down to particulars and persons, bears
this out. From first to last the message carried
to us by the lives and actions of the faithful is
this, that they took their Lord at His word,
simply as His word, and in the power of that
reliance found themselves able to act as if the
unseen were seen and the hoped-for were present.
"The elders" (ver. 2) are in view from the first—that
is to say, the pre-Christian saints, who
were in that sense distinctively men who proved
the power of faith, that they all lived and died
before the visible fulfilment of the great promise
of salvation. To them, to be sure, or rather to
many of them, not to all, merciful helps were
These "elders" were men called to live, in
an eminent and most trying degree, not by
sight but by faith, by mere reliance upon a
Promiser. Therefore their living witness to
the capacity of faith to make the unseen visible
and the hoped-for present is the more precious
to us. We, with the Christ of God manifested
to us, displayed in history, experienced in the
heart—what are not we to find the power of
faith to be in our lives, having, for our supreme
seal upon faith, the promise fulfilled, the Image
One partial exception, and only one, to this great ruling lesson of the chapter is to be noted; it occurs in the second verse. There "by faith we perceive that the worlds," the æons, the dispensations and evolutions of created being, "have been framed," perfected, adjusted to one another, "by the Word of God, so that not from things which appear has that which is seen originated." These words appear to be inserted where they stand in order, so to speak, to carry the sequence of the references to the Old Testament down from its very first page. The work of faith has exercise in face of the mysterious narrative of Creation, and in this one instance the exercise is quoted as what concerns us now quite as much as "the elders." They like us, we like them, get our guarantee as to the facts of the primal past not by sight but by faith, by taking God at His word. He, in His revelation, tells us that "in the beginning"—the beginning of whatever existence is other than eternal—"God created." Things finite, things visible, came into original being not as evolved from previous similar material, but as of His will.
But when that pregnant side-word has once
been said, the argument settles itself forthwith
And now they are parts and members of the "great cloud" who watch us in our turn—us, with things unseen and hoped-for still in front, but with Jesus at our side.
FOLLOWERS OF THEM
Heb. xii. 1-14
The Epistle approaches its close. The Writer has much yet to say to the disciples upon many things, all connected with that main interest of their lives, a resolute fidelity to the Lord, to the Gospel, and to one another. But he has not yet quite done with that side of their "exceeding need" to which the antidote is the faith which can deal with the future as the present, with the unseen as the seen. Upon this theme, from one aspect or another, is spent the passage now before us.
First, the appeal is to the recollection that
the combat, the race, the victory of faith, as it
was for the Hebrew believers, "the contest set
before us" (ver. 1), not only had been fought
and won before them by the saints of the old
time, but that those saints were now, from
their blessed rest, as "spirits of the just made
perfect" (ver. 23), watchers and witnesses of
I thus explain the "witnesses" to mean
spectators, watchers, not testifiers. The con
The conception runs off of course into
mystery, as every possible conception about the
unseen does, even when Scripture is most
explicit about unseen facts. We ask, and ask
in vain, what is the medium through which
these observers watch us, the air and light, as it
were, in which their vision acts; what is their
proximity to us all the while; to what extent
In that rich treasury of sacred song, Hymns
from the Land of Luther, is included the translation
of a noble hymn by Simon Dach, O wie
selig seid ihr doch, ihr Frommen, "O how happy
are ye, saints forgiven." That hymn beautifully
illustrates this verse. It is written responsively
all through. One stanza, sung upward, is the
utterance from below of the pilgrim Church,
longing for her rest. The next, sung from
above, is the answer of the Blessed, telling of
their love and sympathy, taught them by their
own similar sufferings, of their bright foreview
of the celestial crown reserved for their still
toiling brethren. So the two choirs answer each
other, turn by turn, till at last both join in a
glorious concert of blended song, a closing strain
But the holy Writer has more to say yet
about the motives to faith. He points the
weary saints upward, even beyond the "cloud,"
to a Form radiant and supreme. They are to
run, conscious of the witnesses, but yet more
intently "looking off (ἀφορῶντες) unto Jesus,
the supreme Leader (ἀρχηγόν) and Perfecter of
faith"; that is to say, the Lord of the whole
host of the believing, and Himself the consummate
Worker in the field of faith, who, for a
joy promised but not seen, "endured the Cross,"
when its immediate aspect was an inexpressible
outrage and disgrace; reaching the throne of
all existence, as Son of Man, in spite of every
possible appearance to the contrary (ver. 2).
Yes, and not only was that final victory thus won
by Him, but He arrived at it by a path full of
the conflicts which threaten faith. He "endured
the contradiction of sinners against Himself"
(ver. 3). Year by year, day by day, from the
Pharisee, from the worldling, from the leaders
of religion, from the inconstant crowd, He had
"contradiction" to endure—sometimes even from
"the men of His own household." He was
challenged to prove His claims; He was insulted
over His assertion of them, or over His silence
about them. In every way, at every turn, they
Let us not think that all this put no strain,
even in the King Messiah, upon faith. It may
seem scarcely reverent (I know devout and
thoughtful Christians who have felt it to be
so) to speak of our blessed Lord as exercising
faith, as being the supreme Believer. But we
need not shrink from the thought. It is no more
irreverent, surely, than to accept the evidence
of the Gospels to His perfect human capacity
to be weary, to be surprised, to be specially
moved to compassion by the sight of suffering.
In His sinless conformity "in all things to His
brethren" there was never for one moment
room in Him—of this we may be amply sure—for
error of thought or of word, as He acted
as the supreme and absolute Prophet of His
Church. But there was room, so we are expressly
told, on one tremendous occasion at
least (
And may we not be sure that on many a previous occasion of minor and yet bitter trial, when evil men gathered round Him with cynical objections and ruthless denials of His claims, the victory was akin to the victory of Gethsemane? Often, surely, a strange "bewilderment" must have beset the Redeemer's soul, of which the external token was the sigh, the groan, the tears, which shewed Him to be so truly Man.
We all hold, in full doctrinal orthodoxy, that
the Lord's sufferings, both of soul and body, were
no "docetic" semblance but a deep and infinitely
pathetic reality. But we need at times to think
somewhat deliberately in order to receive the
full impression of that truth upon the heart.
And then surely we are constrained to see in
Him, who thus really suffered and really "endured,"
the supreme Exemplar of the victory
of faith, the perfect Sympathizer with the tried
believer.
From this pregnant thought, of the faith
exercised by Jesus, the disciple is directly led
in the remainder of our passage to the practical
inferences for himself. The days, for those first
readers of the Epistle, were indeed evil. Though
not yet called to martyrdom (ver. 4), they were
hard beset, not only by importunate reasonings
and appeals which, as we have seen all along,
were straining their spiritual allegiance, but by
actual outrages (see e.g. x. 34), by the "scourging"
(ver. 6) of bitter social persecution. Well,
"looking off unto" Him who had so greatly
endured, they were, in these things also, to see
the unseen and to presentiate the future. From
the Proverbs (iii. 11, 12), that book where the
apostolic insight so often finds the purest
spiritual messages,
Beautiful is the sympathy of this appeal to
live, by faith, the life of victorious patience.
"All chastening, for the present, seems not to
belong to joy but grief" (ver. 11). Yes, the
immediate pain is here fully recognized, not
ignored. It is not spoken of as if, in view of its
sequel, it did not matter. "It belongs to grief."
Scripture is full of this tender insight into the
bitterness of even our salutary sorrows, and its
appeals to patience are all the more potent for
that insight. "Nevertheless, afterward, it produces
the peace-bringing fruit of righteousness,"
the sense of a profound inward rest, found in
conformity to the "sweet, beloved will of God,"
in living correspondence to the Father's rule,
"for those who have been exercised, as in a
spiritual gymnasium (γεγυμνασμένοις), thereby."
That "exercise" was to tell at once, as they
surrendered their wills to it in faith, in a present
sense of the certainty of future blessing. "Brace
the slack hands" to toil, "and the unstrung
knees" to march (ver. 12), "and make straight
paths for your feet," using your will, faith-strengthened,
to choose the line of the will of
God, and that alone. So should "the lame
thing" be "healed" rather than "turned aside."
The walk, feeble and halting always when the
will is divided, should be restored to firmness
and certainty again.
"Nevertheless, afterward." That is the watchword of the whole pregnant passage. Nature, shortsighted and impatient, can deal with the seen and the present only. Grace, in its victorious form of patient faith, already takes hold upon the "afterward," and works on, and walks on, "as seeing Him that is invisible."
With the thought of the witness-cloud around us, and "looking off" to the Prince of Faith, ascended, yet present with us, and sure of the ultimate and eternal "fruit of righteousness" which lies hidden in the chastening of the Father of our spirits—we too will live by faith, taking God at His word, and saying Amen to His will, even to the end.
SINAI AND SION
Heb. xii. 14-28
The paragraph before us is largely concerned
with the inner life of the believing community,
its cohesion member with member, and
the call to each member and to all to "walk
warily in dangerous days," in the path of evangelical
holiness. The Writer lays it upon them
(ver. 14) to "pursue peace with all," such peace
as always tends, even in bad times, to reward
the "sons of peace," while they so behave
themselves as never on their own part to contribute
a factor to avoidable strife, and while the
influence of their meek consistency leavens in
some measure the mass around them. With
equal and concurrent care they are to "pursue
sanctification." It is to be their strong ambition
to develope and deepen incessantly that dedication
of themselves to the Holy One which will
give them at once the standard and the secret
of holiness, by bringing them into immediate
Then follows (verses 18-24) that sublime
antithesis of Sinai and Sion which forms one of
the greatest examples of rhythmical, of almost
lyrical, eloquence in the whole New Testament.
On the one hand looms on the view the Thing,
It is a wonderful picture, the hill of the awful
Law confronted by the "hill whence cometh our
help." And we ask ourselves why, just here in
the Epistle, it is painted for us and left upon
our spirit's eyes for ever. Surely it is that the
Hebrew disciple (and we in our turn to-day)
may be quickened in watching and in walking
alike by an immense encouragement and a
warning of corresponding power. The call has
just been made, all through the twelfth chapter
Then, as the great paragraph approaches its
climax, the note of warning sounds again
(ver. 25). The convert, fresh from the reminder
of the "voice" of the sprinkled blood of the
better covenant, is cautioned not to "refuse" it,
not to "decline" it (μὴ παραιτήσησθε). The
primary reference is manifestly to that perpetual
danger of the Hebrews, the temptation to turn
back from the Gospel, with its spiritual order and
its hopes of things not yet seen, to the outworn
Dispensation, with its externally majestic circumstances
of glorious ritual and imposing shows of
polity and power. They would need again and
again to open the soul's ears and eyes, and steadfastly
to recollect, against all appearances, that we
"are come unto the Mount Sion," if they were to
resist the magnetic forces which drew them back
towards Sinai—and towards death. So they were
to hear the sweet voices of heavenly love, and
festal life, and blood-bought covenanted peace,
sounding from the true Sion, with joy indeed but
also with holy dread. They were to fear lest
they should "decline" them, lest sense should
conquer faith and the soul be lost under the
mountain of condemnation after all. "For if
So let the disciples clasp their sublime
privileges, and greatly rejoice—and also
greatly fear to "decline" them, to surrender
them, to treat them lightly. They "are in
receipt (παραλαμβάνουτες) of a kingdom unshakable,"
for they have become the willing
vassals of the eternal David of the true Israel, in
whose kingship they too are kings, reigning over
"all the power of the enemy." But, for the
very reason that they hold a royalty, and such a
royalty, let them address themselves to a life of
adoration, and reverence, and awe, deep as that
of the holy ones who, close to the throne above,
veil their faces and their feet evermore with
their wings, not in terror but in a joy full of
wonder and of worship. "Let us have grace,"
let us take and use the grace which in the
covenant is ours,
Thus the great concatenated passage concludes with one of the most formidable of Scripture utterances. But let us boldly gather peace and hope even from this word of fire. For what is the true message of the verses we have traversed, when we look back and sum them up? It is the glory, the fulness, the living richness, the abundant lovingkindness, the supreme and absolute finality, of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is our Lord Himself, the perfect and ultimate revelation of the grace and peace of God. And the fiery jealousy of the close, the warning that we shall lose our souls if we "decline" the blessed Son, what does it mean as to His Father's heart? That He so loves the Son, and so loves us, that He adjures us by all His terrors as well as all His mercies never to turn for refuge for one hour away from the all-perfect Christ.
APPEALS AND INSTRUCTIONS
Heb. xiii. 1-14
The last chapter of the Epistle has a character
quite of its own. Unlike many of those
often arbitrary divisions of the New Testament
books which we know as chapters, it is a
naturally separate section. The long and
sustained arguments are over. The Writer's
thoughts, gravitating to a close, and occupied
naturally as they do so with the personal conditions
of his Hebrew brethren, attach themselves
now to one now to another side of their
duties, their difficulties, their more particular and
detailed needs, practical and spiritual. As he
touches upon these, sentence by sentence, we
often see at a glance the probable occasion of the
words, but often again we are left in the dark
about it. Who shall say precisely why he
insists (ver. 2) upon the exercise of hospitality?
or who were "the prisoners" (ver. 3) whom he
bids them remember? Who shall tell what in
All we can say of these opening topics of
the chapter is that, whatever the occasions were,
the words occasioned are for us inestimably
precious. Dear to the heart of the believing
Church for ages have been these precepts to love
the brethren (φιλαδελφία), to love the stranger
(φιλοξενία), to remember Abraham at Mamre
and Gideon at Ophrah with their angel-guests,
and to see a possible angel-visitor in every
needing stranger at the door. The call (ver. 2)
to remember the captive, and the sufferer of
every sort, comes with solemn power from this
paragraph, as it presses home the law of
sympathetic fellowship, and in one passing
phrase ("as being in the body") reminds us that,
for the Christian, all sufferings, all burthens of
pain and care, cease for ever when once he is
"out of the body." Sacred is the witness borne
here to the pure dignity of wedlock (ver. 4):
Then comes the passage where the departed
"guides" are commemorated. Whoever they
were, were they a Stephen and a James, or
saints utterly unknown to us, that passage is
precious in its principles, true for all time, of
remembrance and appeal. It consecrates the
fidelity of the Christian memory. It assures us
that to cherish the names, the words, the conduct,
the holy lives, the blessed deaths, of our
teachers of days long done is no mere indulgence
of unfruitful sentiment. It is natural to the
Gospel, which, just because it is the message
of an unspeakably happy future, also sanctifies
the past which is the living antecedent to it.
Just because we look with the love of hope towards
"our gathering together unto Him," we are to
turn with the love of memory towards all the
gifts of God given to us through the holy ones
with whom we look to be "gathered together."
"The exit of their walk of life" (ver. 7) is to
be our study, our meditation. We are to "look
it up and down" (ἀναθεωροῦντες) as we would
some great monument of victory, and from that
contemplation we are to go back into life, to
"imitate their faith," to do just what they did,
treating (xi. 1) the unseen as visible, the hoped
But now comes in a passage of the chapter
which more obviously tells its own story of
occasion and aim. The Writer recurs to the
supreme theme of the Epistle, the antithesis
between the Lord Jesus, with His finished work
and absolute permanence, and the transitory
antecedents of the older dispensation. Once
more the Hebrews are to remember His eternity,
His eternal personal identity, unbeginning and
without end (ver. 8); He is "the same, yesterday,
and to-day, and unto the ages." Before
all types and preparations, before law, and ritual,
and prophecy, He is. When, having done their
long work, they cease, He still is. Over the
glory of His being and character passes no
"shadow of turning." Never to the endless
ages shall He need to be other than He is,
or to be succeeded by a greater. "Jesus,
Messiah"; He is Alpha; He is also Omega.
In contrast to Him, thus unchangeably Himself, place the "teachings variegated and alien" (ver. 9) which would draw you from beside Him (παραφέρεσθε) back to an outworn ceremonial distorted from its true purpose. "Looking unto Jesus," stay still and be at rest in Him. The ritual law of "food" (βρώματα) had its perfectly befitting place in the age of elementary preparation. But to make it now a rival to the message of that "grace" which means a life lived by faith in the Son of God, is to defraud "the heart" of that which alone can "establish" it in peace, holiness, and hope. To walk in Him is to go from strength to strength. To "walk in them" (οἱ περιπατοῦντες) is to miss the very "benefit" you seek. It is to move away from the light, backward, into spiritual death.
Here follows in close sequence a passage of
pregnant significance. It begins with ver. 10,
and the connexion is not finally broken till
ver. 16. The Writer, prompted perhaps by
the allusion to a ceremonial law of "meats,"
turns abruptly to the still existing ritual of
the Law, familiar to his Hebrew readers as to
himself. From it he leads their thoughts once
more to the profound import and ultimate
On a careful review of the words before us
(verses 10-16), we are justified in the conclusion
that the reference is, not to a Christian
institution at all but precisely to the Hebrew
ritual, in which Writer and readers still had part
as members of the nation. The thing in view is
an altar whose law was such that the sacerdotal
"ministers (οἱ λατρεύοντες) of the Tabernacle"
might not use its sacrifices for food. But why?
It is possible, within the lines of the Levitical
ritual, to interpret in more ways than one the
"altar" in question. It may be the great altar,
regarded in its special use on the Atonement
Day (Lev. xvi); not another structure than
that used for other sacrifices, but that same
altar regarded, for the moment, as if separated
and alone, because of the awful speciality of the
stern while merciful ritual of that great day.
Or again, as it has been argued with learning
and force
So the whole thought centres itself in the supreme Sacrifice, as Antitype answering to type. Jesus is our holocaust, wholly sacrificed for our sins. His sacrifice involved in its awful ritual the shame and agony of rejection by His own, excommunication from "the camp" of the chosen. Then let the Hebrew believer, "receiving that inestimable benefit," be ready also to follow his Redeemer's steps in rejection and in shame. Let him also be prepared for casting out by priest and scribe. Let his yearning heart, with whatever anguish, inure itself to the thought that the beloved "city of his solemnities" is not the final and enduring Jerusalem. Let his "thoughts to heaven the steadier rise," as he looks, like Abraham before him, to "God's great town in the unknown land," where sits on high the Mediator of the New Covenant, the "Priest upon His throne."
LAST WORDS
Heb. xiii. 15-25
The connexion of ver. 15 with the antecedent
context is suggestive. We have been led
to a contemplation of the Lord Jesus in His
character as Antitype and Fulfilment of the
holocaust of the Levitical atonement. Even as
the chief animal victim of the old covenant,
the symbolical bearer of the sins of Israel, was
carried "outside the camp" to be consumed, so
our Victim was led "outside the gate" of the city
to His death, that there, by His blood-shedding,
by His absolute and perfect self-immolation in
our stead, He might "hallow His people," bringing
them forgiven and welcomed back to God. The
point of the dread ritual of Calvary here specially
emphasized is just this, that He "suffered outside
the gate." The old Israel, guiltily unknowing,
fulfilled the type in the Antitype by refusing
Him place even to die within the sacred city.
He, in His love for the new Israel, that He
From this the apostolic Writer draws two
messages for his readers. First (ver. 13) they
are to follow the Lord outside, willing to be
rejected like Him and because of Him. They
are to be patient, for His sake, when they are
"put out of the synagogues" and reproached
as traitors to Moses. They are by faith to
conquer the cry of their human hearts as they
crave perpetuity for the beloved past; they are
to remember (ver. 14), as they issue from the
old covenant's gate into what seems the wild,
that "Jerusalem that now is" was built for time
only, and that they belong to the city of eternity,
where their High Priest sits on His throne to
bless them now and welcome them hereafter.
Then, secondly and therefore (ver. 15), they
are to use Him now and for ever as their one
sacerdotal Mediator. By Him, not by the
Aaronic ministry, they are to bring their sacrifices
to God. They are to accept exclusion
and to turn it into inclusion, into a shutting-up
of all their hopes and all their worship into
their glorious Christ. And what now is their
altar-ritual to be? It is to be twofold; the
offering of praise, "the fruit of lips that confess"
the glory of "His Name," and then the sacrifice
Such, if we are right, is the connexion. The Lord, rejected, that He might die for us after a manner faithful to the prophetic type, is to be the Hebrew disciple's example of patience when he too is rejected. Such rejection is only to unite him the more closely to the Christ as his way to God, his Mediator for all the praise and all the unselfish service which is to fill his dedicated life.
The lesson was special for the believing
Hebrew then. But it has its meaning for all
time. In one way or another the true follower
of the crucified and rejected Redeemer must
stand ready for cross and for exclusion, so far
as he is called upon by his faith to break with
all ultimate and absolute allegiance save to
"Jesus Christ and Him crucified." He has to
recollect, on one account or another, that he
too belongs to the invisible order, to the "citizenship
that is in heaven," and not to any visible
polity as if it were final, as if it were his spirit's
goal. But then he too is to make this detachment
and separation only a fresh means to unite
him to his great High Priest for a self-sacrificial
life in Him. He is to be no frowning sectary,
Following these appeals, in a connexion which we can trace, the thought passes (ver. 17) to the Christian Ministry. "Outside the gate" of the old order, the disciple finds himself at once not an isolated unit but included in a new order. He is one of a spiritual community, which has of course its system, for it has to cohere and to operate. It has amidst it its "leaders," its ἡγούμενοι, its pastoral guides and watchmen, a recognized institution, which always as such (though always the more as it is more true to its ideal) claims the obedience, the loyalty, the subordination, of the multitude who are not "leaders." These "leaders" are set before us as bearing a Divine commission, for we read that they "must give account." So qualified, not as assertors of themselves but as servants and agents of God, they watch for souls, with a vigilance loving and tender, asking for response.
Such an ideal of the Christian Ministry is as
remote as possible from that of a sacerdotal caste,
or indeed of anything that has to do with a harsh
and perfunctory officialism. Its position is totally
different from that of an agency of mediation
between man and God, between the Church and
Yet on the other hand this passage is one of
the many which set the Christian Ministry before
us as a vital factor in the life of the Church, an
institution which has its life from above, not
from the will of the community but from the
gift of God. In their anxiety to avoid distortions
and exaggerations of the ministerial idea
many Christians have failed to give adequate
place in thought to its essentially Divine origin
and commission. A passage like this should
correct such a reaction. There is in the Church,
by the will of God, a "leadership," recognizable,
authentic, not arbitrary yet authoritative, not
mediatorial yet pastoral. It is never designed
indeed to come really between the believing soul
and the ever-present Lord. Yet it is appointed
as the norm a human agency by which He works
for the soul, not only in the solemn ministration
of His great ordinances of blessing but in
spiritual assistance and guidance as well. It
The closing sentences of the great Letter
(ver. 18 and onwards) call for little detailed
explanation, with one great exception. The
He has "used brevity" (διὰ βραχέων) in
writing; he might have expanded the vast theme
indefinitely; he has only given them its essentials.
Then he makes his one personal reference,
abruptly, as if speaking about well-known
circumstances; Timotheus (ver. 23) has been
released from prison, and is on his way to join
the Writer, and the two may hope to visit the
Hebrews together again. Then follows the
greeting to the pastors through the Church; and
then a message of love sent by "those from Italy,"
that is to say, as the familiar idiom suggests,
brethren resident in Italy who send their
greeting from it; an allusion over which endless
conjectures may gather but which must always
remain uncertain. The last word is the blessing
We have thus followed this final passage to its end, but making, as the reader will have seen, one great omission. The twentieth and twenty-first verses stand by themselves, with such an elevation of their own, with such a tranquil majesty of diction, with such a pregnant depth of import, that I could not but reserve my brief comment on them to the very last in these attempts to carry "Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews."
"Now the God of peace, who hath brought again from the dead the Shepherd of the sheep, that great Shepherd, with blood of covenant eternal, even our Lord Jesus—may He perfect you in all good unto the doing of His will, doing in you that which is acceptable before Him, by means of Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory to the ages of the ages. Amen."
Here is one of the greatest, if not the greatest,
of the benedictory prayers of the Bible. At
every turn it sets before us truths of the first
order, woven into one wonderful texture. It
presents to us our God as "the God of peace,"
the God who has welcomed us to reconciliation
and is now and for ever reconciled; at peace
One closing word remains. Observe this
designation just here applied to the Lord Jesus
Christ; "the Shepherd, the great Shepherd, of
the sheep." It is noteworthy, because in our
Epistle it stands here quite alone. We have
had the Christ of God presented to us throughout
under the totally different character of the
High Priest, the great Self-Immolator of the
Cross, now exalted in the glory of His High
Priesthood to be the Giver of blessing from the
Throne. To Him in that sublime aspect the
thought of the Hebrew believer, so sorely tempted
to look away from Him, to look backward to
the old and ended order, has been steadily
directed, for spiritual rest of conscience and for
loyalty of will. But here, true to that habit
of the Bible, if the word may be used, with
which it accumulates on Him the most diverse
Not without purpose surely was the Lord left pictured thus in the view of His tried and tempted followers. In the region of conviction and contemplation He was to shine always before them as the High Priest upon His throne, the more than fulfilment of every type and shadow, the goal of Prophecy, "the end of the Law." But He was to be all this as being also, close beside them, their Shepherd, great and good. He was to be with them in the pasture, and in the desert, and in the valley of the shadow of death. They had followed Him indeed as their Sacrifice without the gate. But precisely there He took to Himself His resurrection-life, to be their Companion and their Watcher for evermore. The Lord was their Shepherd, and He is ours; they should not, and we shall not, want.
ii iii iv v vi vii 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120