25 - Heb_10:1-7
CHAPTER X X V.
"LO, I COME."
Hebrews 10:1-7. THE apostle has contrasted the high priest of the Levitical dispensation with our Lord. The one entered into the earthly, Christ into the heavenly sanctuary; the one with sacrifices which could not purge the conscience, Christ with His own blood, by which we are sanctified; the one entered every year, Christ once for all. From this sublime contrast the apostle now argues that the law itself, the whole Levitical dispensation, was not able to give perfect peace to the conscience, and access into the presence of God; for it is evident from the constantly-repeated sacrifices and offerings that the worshippers had never attained to the condition of true acceptance and sanctification - that they had never reached a point where further sacrifice was not needed. Hence the apostle says: "For" (referring to his demonstration of the perfection of the one offering, Hebrews 9:24-28), "the law having a shadow* (only) of good things to come, that is, of the then future salvation, blessing and inheritance, and not the express image of the things (as we have now in Christ, who is the manifestation and the fulfillment, or body), can never with the same yearly sacrifices, which they offer regularly, make the comers there unto perfect" (*Shadow (
He who was offered, offered Himself; in His sufferings He showed the greatest strength and most concentrated activity of self-surrender; and because thus He fulfilled the eternal will of God concerning salvation, He has perfected forever by one offering them that are sanctified. And thus we are led back to the fundamental and central truth: Jesus is the Son of God. Obedience belongs to a servant; concurrence and co-operation are the characteristics of a son. When we think of the eternal glory of the Only-begotten, and the sufferings and obedience of Jesus, it is the divine Sonship on which our minds rest, and in which we see the sacred identity of the Lord and the servant unbroken.
It is a characteristic feature of this epistle, that it shows forth most clearly and fully the glory of Jesus exalted at the right hand of God, while at the same time it enters more deeply than most portions of the inspired record into the consoling truth of our Lord’s true humanity, of the reality of His temptations and struggles, of His faith, prayers, and tears, and of His perfect sympathy with us, whom He is not ashamed to call brethren. Nowhere in Scripture do we meet with a representation of Jesus the Messiah in which His divine majesty, and His human compassion and sympathy, are so distinctly and yet harmoniously brought before us. It is for this reason, though there be many things hard to be understood in this epistle, it has always exerted a most powerful and consoling influence on the Christian, whose joy it is to confess with adoring love that Jesus is Lord, and to rest with peaceful assurance in the marvellous truth that the Lord, unto whom all power is given in heaven and earth, is the man Christ Jesus; "this same Jesus" of the peaceful gospels,* that in the midst of the throne is the Lamb as it had been slain. (*Acts 1:11.)
Jesus, the Messiah, the Son, by whom all worlds were made, and who is appointed Heir of all things, is now exalted high above all angels and powers; He who humbled Himself, and was obedient unto death, is for this very obedience enthroned at the right hand of God; in His humanity He has received a name above every name; angels and men adore Him, and in the heavenly sanctuary He is our royal Priest; He is the Son who abideth for ever, the Lord over His own house, the chosen people of God. It is on the divinity of our Lord that our faith and hope rest; on this rock ("thou art the Son of the living God") the Church is built. The apostle brings before us the divine glory of the exalted Messiah, asserting it in a tone of joyous triumph, and illustrating it by the most varied and abundant testimony of the ancient Scripture; he reviews all previous revelations and ordinances to exalt the Saviour; above all prophets He is the Son, the only adequate, comprehensive, and ultimate Revelation of God; above Moses, the servant, He is the Lord, the mediator of a better covenant; above Joshua, He is the only true and everlasting rest of God, in whom we also have rest here and a perfect Sabbatism hereafter; above Aaron, the true and royal priest, who after the power of an endless life is our Mediator in the heavenly sanctuary. In Him alone, and that because He is God, are all promises fulfilled, all types summed up, and all symbols substantiated. Nay, He excels them all; for His divine fullness could only be shadowed forth imperfectly even by God-appointed symbols, and by inspired prophecies. And beyond the territory of man Jesus is represented as the Mediator, by whom all worlds were created, and by whom they are still upheld; in Him, whom angels worship, both before the throne and in ministering unto the heirs of salvation, the counsels of God and the whole universe find their center.*(*The original (Heb. 1) implies that the angels ministry to us is an act of worship unto God.)
If this view of Christ’s glory, like the appearance of the exalted Saviour in the opening scene of the Apocalypse, is so bright and dazzling that it overwhelms even loving and trustful disciples, so that their souls fall prostrate before the Son of God, the same epistle unfolds to us the humanity of the Lord, and gives to us a picture so vivid and touching of His brotherhood, that not even the gospel of Luke leads us into so profound and consoling knowledge of the Son of man, the Friend of sinners, the Physician full of pity and tenderness. And while we see Jesus here taking upon Him our flesh and blood, enduring temptation, entering into all our difficulties, struggles, and sorrows; while here we have explained to us the reality of Christ’s human nature, of His faith in God and dependence on Him, of His tears and conflict in Gethsemane, we are taught that He went through all these experiences in order that in His glory He may sympathize with us and succour us in all our trials; that as Man He regards now with an infinite compassion and tenderness all His disciples on earth; and that therefore, though with awe and trembling, because He is God, yet with perfect liberty and enlarged confidence, we may draw near the throne of grace, where Jesus, the God-man, is still our Brother as well as our Lord.
These two aspects, so marvellously and inseparably united, must always co-exist, if we are to have access unto God and communion with Him. The neglect of the doctrine of either the divinity or the humanity of the Lord Jesus is the source of all heresies, maladies, and infirmities which afflict Christendom. Unless Jesus is God, we have not seen the Father, we have not been reconciled to Him, we have not been brought nigh as His redeemed and accepted children. Nor can a soul-renewing influence be exercised except by the divine Lord, who can pour out the Holy Ghost. If Jesus is the Son of God, nothing need or can be added to His sacrifice, to His intercession, to His soul-transforming and sanctifying power. And as the Hebrew believers, if they rightly understood Christ’s divinity, were thereby emancipated from all the shadows and types of the Levitical dispensation, so the subsequent introduction of human and angelic intercessors, of a so-called repetition of the sacrifice, of priestly mediation, of supplemental merits, is rooted in a defective view of the divine glory of Christ’s person and all-sufficient, because infinite, value of His work. But equally essential is it to hold fast our faith in His true humanity. Emphasizing not too strongly, but in a one sided and untrue manner, the divinity of Jesus, men fancied that His perfection, His spotless purity, His majestic holiness, stood in the way of our coming to Him with confidence, and with that free and unrestrained trust fullness which alone enables us to pour out our whole heart, Jesus seemed so majestic and glorious, so high exalted above the heavens, so holy and spotless, that men forgot His infinite mercy and tenderness, and the inexhaustible fullness of His human sympathy, and imagined that some human sinful being, better than themselves, yet imperfect, ought to intervene as mediator between themselves and Jesus; that they fancied especially to find such a mediator in the Virgin Mary, whose womanly gentleness and compassion made it easier for them to approach in their weakness and sinfulness. Oh, how little do such thoughts harmonize with the blessed gospel! How dishonouring are they both to the divinity and humanity of our Lord! This is the great mystery of godliness, that our Mediator is God, of infinite love and mercy; that He is man, perfect in His sympathy and tenderness. As if imperfect and sinful men, or any created and therefore limited angels, could ever fully know the human heart; as if finite compassion and love could ever fully fathom and heal our sorrow; as if anyone but Jesus could unite perfect sympathy with the sinner, and the perfect aim and power to bring us into fellowship and harmony with God. Between Jesus, the Bridegroom of the Church, and the soul none can intervene. He alone knows what is in man; He alone loves us perfectly; He alone has the way to the heart, and power to say, "Let not your heart be troubled." Our sorrow, our sin, our need, lie too deep for human ministry.
Once, when He was still on earth, His mother Mary, whom we also in common with all generations of believers call blessed, ventured to interfere on behalf of the guests, and said, "They have no wine." But the same Lord, who as a child was subject unto Mary His mother, and as a son remembering her with gratitude and affection even on the cross, commended her to the beloved disciple, recognizes here no mediatorial position or special claim on His affection and help. Here He does not call her mother. He does not acknowledge her maternal authority. The tone of His reply appears strange and severe: "Woman, what have I to do with thee? " The evangelist John, who records this incident, was especially near the blessed virgin, and regarded her with peculiar veneration and affection. She had been committed to his care by his beloved Lord. What is the meaning of Christ’s words, recorded by John? He who, even as a child, had said to Mary and to Joseph, " Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? " and had thereby revealed to them His divine sonship and His exalted position above all men, returned with them to Nazareth, and in humility was subject to His parents, thus obeying the commandment of the Father who had sent Him. In Nazareth, as a child and youth, He doubtless always called Mary " mother," and always obeyed and honoured her. But now He had entered on His work. He had commenced His ministry, being filled with the Holy Ghost. At the marriage of Cana, Jesus appears as the Lord, as the true Bridegroom of the Church. Here He manifests His glory; here Jesus knows none but the Father, and the children whom God has given Him. "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? He who doeth the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." The Lord shrinks back from Mary, because she brings her maternal authority and influence into a region to which it does not belong; she attempts to put herself by His side in the kingdom, where He is the only monarch. Jesus is Lord, and there is none in heaven or earth to share in any way or to any extent His mediatorial throne.
How plainly does this incident teach us that, highly favoured as Mary was in the kingdom of Christ, she is only one among myriads, a disciple of Jesus. Thus we find her mentioned in the Acts as one of the believers who united in prayer for the promised descent of the Spirit. In none of the epistles does she occur again. While we hear constantly of our Lord’s ascension and exaltation, is there the slightest reference to her ascension? In the visions of the heavenly glory vouchsafed unto John, do we ever read of Mary as enthroned with or near the Lord - as holding any peculiar position among the angels and glorified saints? We read of angels and living beings, and elders and martyrs, and multitudes with white robes; but where do we read of the Virgin Mary, of a queen of heaven, of a merciful and indulgent intercessor, appealing to the filial affection of her son? No; Jesus said unto her, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" How much more now in His exaltation is He the one and only Lord who alone is the searcher of hearts, the consolation of Israel, the healer of the wounded spirit, the Head, from whom all blessings descend to His members. It is He who gives us the oil of gladness and strengthens us with the true wine. Mary recedes from her position as mother, and from the false attitude she had assumed; her sensitive heart understands Jesus immediately; she points as a true disciple to the one Lord and Saviour, and directing all eyes and hearts exclusively to Him, utters the great word, "Whatsoever He commandeth you, do." I think we honour and revere and love the Virgin Mary more than the Romanists in their false and un-scriptural devotion. Her word, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it," reveals to us her true greatness, her humility, her faith; her soul again magnified the Lord, and rejoiced in her Saviour. She points the whole Church away from herself to the Lord Jesus. She acknowledges Him to be the only Master. And so we rejoice in Him, the only Mediator, who is infinitely holy, infinitely merciful; of whose love all fatherly forethought and strength, all motherly tenderness, minuteness, inventive quickness, and persevering patience, all brotherly faithfulness and sympathy, are but feeble images; the man Christ Jesus, in whom is all manly and womanly perfection, the Lord who is from above, omniscient, omnipotent, all-good; we have, we need no other mediator than Christ Jesus. But in our passage the apostle brings before us another aspect of Christ’s person and work. We are reminded of the truth that Jesus is the self- subsistent and eternal Word and Son of God. We need always to go back to that fundamental and most comforting truth of the divinity of our Lord. Only the Father which is in heaven can so reveal this mystery to our minds and hearts, that with adoring love and trust we look unto Jesus. We do not worship a deified man, but God incarnate; not a perfect man, who by reason of His complete and holy humanity was exalted into a heavenly position, but the Son of God, who came down from heaven, and returned into the glory which He had before the foundations of the world were laid. Jesus, who was born of the Virgin Mary, who lived in obedience to the Father, who suffered and died, and is now at the right hand of the Majesty on high, came into the world, not merely sent by the Father, but by His free concurrence, accordance, and co-operation. In Bethlehem’s manger the child born unto us is The Wonderful, The mighty God, The everlasting Father. The prophet of Galilee declares to his contemporaries, "Before Abraham was I am." The grace which appeared in His death had its fountain in the everlasting love which the eternal Wisdom had to the sons of men.* He is the Son of God from all eternity, and in that mysterious eternity before the creation of the world, in His pre-mundane glory, this mind was in the Son, that He would humble Himself, and take upon Himself the form of a servant, and obey the whole counsel of God concerning the redemption of fallen man. His whole life on earth, embracing His obedience and His death, His substitution for sinners, was His own voluntary resolve and act. (*Prov. 8)
True, the Father sent Him; but such is the unity and harmony of the blessed Trinity, that it is equally true to say, the Son came. The love of Jesus, the sacrifice of Himself in our stead, the unspeakable humiliation of the Son of God, have their origin not in time but eternity, in the infinite, self-subsistent, co-equal Son of the Father. He took on Him our nature. By His own will He was made flesh. From all eternity He offered Himself to accomplish the divine will concerning our salvation, He must needs be God, to have the power of freely offering Himself; He must needs take upon Him our nature to fulfill that sacrifice. Only the Son of God could undertake the work of our redemption; only as man could He accomplish it.
It is for this reason that Scripture unveils to us the great mystery of the eternal covenant. It is not to gratify an unhallowed desire to look into things too lofty for our vision, but to show unto us the marvellous love of the eternal Son, and the true character and infinite merit of His obedience and death. The counsel between the Father and the Son must ever remain a mystery of solemn and awful majesty. We think of eternity before creation, of that silent eternity before the word was uttered, "Let there be light;" before the angels sang together, and the morning stars shouted for joy, and faith hears even then the uncreated Word, which was with God, and was God, the voice of the Only-begotten responding to the Father’s purpose, and saying, "Lo, I come." In this eternal region is the only sunshine, which is never clouded; here alone the foundation, which can never be moved. "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hands." "Therefore doth my Father love Me, because I lay down My life for the sheep." "Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me." "None shall pluck them out of My hand. I and the Father are one." What are all these consoling and precious assurances but declarations of that eternal concord between the Father and the Son, in which the Son under took to do the salvation-will of God, comprising His incarnation, obedience, and death, on the one hand, and the Father exalting and crowning and enriching Him as the Head of the Church, and the Heir of all things. Now Jesus sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied; and we also rejoice; Christ’s joy remains in us, and our joy is full.
Three most practical truths follow from this revelation.
1. None but the Son of God could offer unto the Father a sacrifice to please Him, and to reconcile us unto Him in a perfect manner. The burnt-offerings and sin-offerings were ordained merely as shadows and temporary types of that one offering, the self-devotedness of the Son of God to accomplish all the will of God, the counsel of salvation. It is the divine and eternal offering of Himself unto the Father, in which the incarnation and death of the Lord Jesus are rooted; it is the voluntary character of His advent and passion, and it is the divine dignity of the Mediator which render His work perfect - absolutely unique, with which nothing can be compared, and a repetition of which is impossible. Hence it is impossible to sever the doctrine of the divinity of Christ from the doctrine of His expiatory sacrifice. The character of Christ’s sufferings must be utterly misunderstood, when we do not acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, who came to lay down His life. In the death of our Lord, the Father was pleased; this sin-offering was also a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour Here was not merely punishment endured, but the doing of "God’s will," the fulfillment of His eternal counsel, righteousness exalted, and divine love manifested in sufferings of infinite depth, and in the strength of perfect faith.
2. Rise from the river to its source, from the rays of light and love to the eternal origin and fount. You know the grace of the Lord Jesus, how He was poor on earth, and had not where to lay His head. Remember He who was poor had of His own free will become poor, though He was rich, the Lord of heaven and earth. You know the grace of the Lord Jesus, that He was born of a woman, and made under the law. Remember that it was Himself, of His own free will, and by His infinite power of love, who laid aside His glory, and emptied Himself. You remember His gentleness and meekness, His labour and toil, His unwearied zeal, and His undisturbed patience. He learned obedience; but remember it was the Son, co-equal with the Father, who of His own choice learned obedience. You see Him rejected and reviled, buffeted, smitten, spit upon, scourged, nailed to the cross. You say a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; remember also to say, strong and glorious Son of God, whom all the hosts of angels "obey; who of thine own divine will and power bearest the sin of the world, and offerest thyself by the eternal Spirit a ransom for thy brethren. See in the life, the obedience, the agony of Jesus, the expression of that free surrender of Himself and espousal of your cause, which was accomplished in eternity in His own all-glorious and infinite divinity. Beware lest you see in Him only the faith and obedience, the sufferings and death of the Son of man; see His eternal divinity shining through and sustaining all His humanity Because His blood is the blood of the Son of God, shed freely according to the everlasting covenant, it cleanseth from all sin. Who can fathom the depth of such love, of such grace, of such sacrifice? And lastly, this truth is revealed to us, not merely to establish our hearts in peace, and to fill us with adoring gratitude and joy, but here, marvellous to say, is held out to us a model which we are to imitate, a principle of life which we are to adopt. So wondrously are high mysteries and deep doctrines intertwined with daily duties and the transformation of our character, that the apostle Paul, when exhorting the Philippians to avoid strife and vainglory, and to brotherly love and helpfulness, ascends from our lowly earthly path unto this highest region of the eternal covenant: "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." Then he proceeds in a sublime and profound transition: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (from all eternity): "who, being in the form of God, . . . . made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Blessed apostle, who was always beholding in fervent adoration and love the image of that Lord Jesus, who appeared unto him as the Lord of glory and the Saviour of the lost. Paul found it easy to serve, to stoop, to suffer, to endure reproach and mockery, to be beaten and scourged, to be hated of his brethren, and to be suspected by his fellow-disciples, to bear the burden of all the churches, and the more vehemently he loved, to be repulsed with enmity, because he remembered that the Son of God loved him before the foundations of the world were laid. Remembering the dark origin of selfishness, of disobedience, of ambition, of pride, let us rise to the celestial and eternal foundation of humility, obedience, love, self-denial, to Christ; and as we owe all to Him who loved us and washed us from our sin in His own blood, let us be not merely debtors, but also followers of Him who came, not to do His own will and to be ministered unto, who came to love and to serve, to give and to bless, to suffer and to die. He loved me! Oh, what a contrast! Let us then receive the love of Christ, and love with His love. One with Christ, let us present ourselves a living sacrifice unto the Father - I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God!