26 - Heb_10:7-10
CHAPTER X X V I.
"ACCORDING TO THE GOOD PLEASURE OF HIS WILL."
ALTHOUGH man is a finite and limited creature, yet eternity alone can satisfy his heart. We are not able to conceive of eternity, either that endless existence, which lies before us, or - to use language which, inadequate and almost self-contradictory as it is, is the only one at our command - the eternity which preceded time. And yet the human heart can only rest in the eternal love of God; in a love without beginning, which has its source not in time, and which shall endure for evermore; an ocean without shore, a fullness which cannot be exhausted. I must know, not merely that God loves me now, but that He will love me forever; and not merely that the future is boundless, but that the divine love is from all eternity, its own cause and origin. In Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of God, beheld by the Father as the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, God has chosen us unto eternal life and glory. In Him we behold and possess the mercy which is from everlasting to everlasting; in Him we have the assurance that God loves us with an eternal love. *(*1 Peter 1:20;Ephesians 1:4;Psalms 103:17:Jeremiah 31:3.) This eternal character of the love of God in Christ Jesus is unfolded to us, especially in the writings of the apostles John and Paul, from different points of view, the one confirming and supplementing the other. The beloved disciple, brought up in the school of John the Baptist, who led him to the Saviour, seems, without any severe struggle or abrupt transition, to have found in Jesus the promised Messiah, and drawn by the gentle yet irresistible, the calm but heart-deep attraction of the Son of man, he leaned on His bosom: nearest to Him in human friendship and affection, he beheld with most solemn awe the glory of the Only-begotten. In his writings John, like an eagle soaring in loftiest and most radiant heights, looks down on the world, and presents to us truth in its divine and eternal aspect. Hence, he dwells on the contrast between the world and the Church, the world and the men out of the world, whom the Father gives unto the Son, the people who believe not, because they are not Christ’s sheep, and the souls who, drawn by the Father, hear the Shepherd’s voice; the contrast between the world, which lieth in the wicked one, the realm of darkness, and the believers, who overcome the world, and finally reign with Christ over a subdued and renewed earth. In no other portion of Scripture is the contrast described, and traced to its ultimate reason as well as to its final issue with such stern distinctness. We have on the one hand God, Christ, they who are of God, who are born of Him, who have the divine seed remaining in them, who are not of the world, who are Christ’s sheep, for whom He prays, for whom He dies, who shall walk with Him in white, and inherit all things. On the other the world, men who are not of God, who are of their father the devil, and whose end is, that they are cast into the lake of fire. It is as if to him the history of the world, the process of development had ceased, he ascends to the ultimate manifestation of the essence of things, and to the primary origin in the counsel of God.*(*John is pre-eminently, as the ancient Church discerned, the theologian; he views all things theologically; that is, from the divine and eternal point. It is strange how an insipid latitudinarianism has pretended to have a special congeniality with this son of thunder.) The apostle Paul, in analogy with his own mental history, begins with man and ascends upwards. While John shows how the life which was with God from all eternity was made manifest, Paul describes how a sinful, guilty, condemned, yet self-righteous man is brought by grace to find in Jehovah righteousness and life. He ascends from earth to heaven. Hence as a guide, especially for those who are seeking the way of acceptance and life, the apostle Paul is more helpful; he enters, with the sympathy and lucidity of a most intense personal experience, into the difficulties and struggles of our hearts. Now let us see how from the experimental point of view the apostle Paul arrives at the eternal character of the gospel.
Jesus appeared to him, and what the law could not give him - righteousness in which to stand before God, life wherewith to serve and enjoy God - he received as a free gift in Jesus. Old things thus passed away, and the covenant, the method, the dispensation in which he now stood, was new - new as contrasted with the law of Moses, the Levitical dispensation, the covenant of works made on mount Sinai. Yet on reflecting, it became obvious that this change, this setting aside of the old, this introduction of another and brighter light, before which the former faded; of another and substantial mediation, which caused the symbolical and typical to vanish, was no after-thought of God. It was new only in the sense that the law had come first; in reality it was the original, the primary thought, and the law came in only for a time, and to prepare, announce, and symbolize the gospel. The law is old, because it came first in point of time; the gospel is new, because it came second in point of time: but the law passes away, because its origin is in time; whereas the gospel abideth, because its origin is not in time, but in eternity. This thought is most frequently and fondly expressed by the apostle. He shows that the promise given to Abraham was before the giving of the law; the covenant of grace preceded the covenant of works. But this priority again is based upon the essential and eternal priority of the dispensation or method of grace. The original and eternal plan of God is now manifested in the preaching of the gospel. The Scripture, as Paul personifies it, never meant anything but the gospel.* It always had its eye fixed on the eternal, free, and all-comprehensive grace of God through Christ Jesus. The law was given only as a temporary and parenthetic dispensation; the new covenant is the eternal covenant - eternal in every sense of the word. It is ultimate; it can never become old or antiquated. It possesses a vitality which must endure forever. Nothing more new can supersede it. But the covenant of grace is eternal in another and more mysterious sense. (*Galatians 3:8.) The apostle naturally contrasted the old dispensation and the new method of salvation by grace in Christ Jesus. The transition from Moses to Abraham showed him at once the temporary character of the law. The unity of Scripture history, and of Scripture itself, revealed that the gospel was God’s thought even from the very beginning. But his mind and our mind cannot stop there. All prophecy points to Messiah, to God becoming our Saviour, our Righteousness. This then was God’s original and eternal thought, and thus prophecy and the fulfillment of prophecy are traced to the purpose of God, His eternal will and counsel. I remind you of such passages as these: "God hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself. . . . The mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself." "The hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour.*(*Ephesians 1:4-9;Titus 1:2;2 Timothy 1:9-10.) As the advent and work of Jesus Christ, salvation by grace, irrespective of works and merit, our adoption and glorification are rooted in the eternal counsel of God, so His own personal experience, both in his conversion and his subsequent life, force him in like manner into the region and atmosphere of eternity. He who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious, obtained mercy. True, he had done it ignorantly in unbelief. But not merely was his ignorance willful, and his unbelief culpable, but only the sovereign, free, and unmerited grace enlightened the ignorance and dispelled the unbelief; for, as he himself explains it, "the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." That is, faith and love were given and implanted by the Lord Himself. By grace was he saved through faith, and that faith not of himself, it was the gift of God. While this was to him a matter of experience and consciousness, the grace which thus visited him led still further to its origin. When the Lord called him, He said that Paul was a chosen vessel unto him; and so the apostle, looking back on this momentous crisis of his life, writes: "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me." Hence he traces his conversion to the electing love of God, even as salvation is a free and perfect gift of divine righteousness and life. Thus he writes also to the Thessalonians, "Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God. For our gospel came unto you not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance." But look to the subsequent life of the new born soul. In the manifold trials and sufferings, in the fluctuating and distressing conditions of our spiritual life, in the fierce and subtle temptations of pride and of despondency, what is the consolation, the encouragement, the cordial of the Christian? Is it not this: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose"? And again, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?" And again, "He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." And again, "The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom." Is not the election of God that ocean of love which surrounds our earthly Christian life as an island, and which we can never lose out of sight for any length of time? Is it not our ultimate refuge in our weakness, in our afflictions, in our trials? Thus we ascend to the eternal counsel of God, whether we consider the character of the gospel dispensation in its relation to the law, or the divine righteousness and life through faith in the crucified Saviour, or the work of grace in conversion, or the spiritual experience of the believer. All things are of God. Infinite love from all eternity purposed to clothe us with divine and perfect righteousness, to renew us unto an incorruptible inheritance, and this through the gift and the self-devotedness of the Son. Of the eternal counsel of God, Jesus crucified is the center and manifestation. For, "Lo, I come," was the voice of the Son of God from all eternity. As the apostle had been speaking of Christ in this whole section, it cannot surprise us that he introduces (Hebrews 10:7) Christ speaking, without specially saying so; nor can we wonder that a word of David is quoted as the word and self-testimony of the Lord; for in this whole epistle the fundamental and all-comprehensive meaning of the Holy Ghost in the prophetic word is everywhere referred to, without dwelling on the mediating person and circumstances, in connection with which the passage originally occurs. Hence the mind with which the son of Jesse, anointed by God to be king, enters on his royal calling, and which finds its expression in the 40th Psalm, is viewed here as the expression of the eternal mind of David’s Lord, with which He entered into the world. He came to offer unto God that which sacrifice and burnt-offering could only shadow forth. In the sin-offering, death, due to the offerer, was transferred to the sacrifice; in the burnt-offering, one already accepted expressed his will to offer himself wholly unto the will of God. How perfectly, and above all finite conception, was this twofold sacrifice fulfilled in Christ. The obedience which He rendered unto God was perfect; for it was the obedience of the Son of God, commencing in His eternal purpose, to do the salvation-will of the Father; the atonement, which He brought, was of infinite value and delight to the Father, for He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit The contrast is between the sacrifices and a person. These typical sacrifices the Psalmist, or rather Messiah, declares that God would not have; now He offers Himself. This is the one offering which is perfect, and in which God is pleased. The Father prepared a body for Him. All creation and providence centre in Christ.* The election of the Jewish nation and their whole history may be viewed as the body, the channel prepared by God, that through it Christ should come. But the chief meaning is, that the humanity of Christ was prepared of the Father, even as it was called into existence by the Holy Ghost and assumed by Himself. The original expression of the Psalmist, " Mine ears hast Thou bored," refers to the symbolical act by which a slave, who offered himself of his own accord to belong to his master, was set apart to willing obedience of his freely-chosen lord. (*On the translation of the LXX., "A body hast Thou prepared me," for the original, "Mine ears hast Thou digged or bored for me," A. Pridham remarks: "The ancient translators, justly appreciating the expression as a metaphor of personal devotedness (compareExodus 21:1-6), unwittingly furnished, in their very free version of this passage, the exactest expression of a truth far hidden from their sight. The Holy Ghost accordingly adopts it here as a just interpretation of His own prophetic words.")
It points out the same fact, of which the prophets so frequently speak, that the Lord would come, the Divine One, sent by God, the perfect Servant of God; one whose ear the Lord had opened, who knew and loved and accomplished the will of God, though it implied sorrow, shame, agony, and death.1 When the insufficiency of all sacrifices had been proved, when the powerlessness of the law had been made manifest, in the fullness of time the Sent One came to fulfill that eternal counsel of which the volume of the book - that is, the Scripture - had written. The original reference is doubtless to the Pentateuch, the roll of the law. Of this fundamental portion of Scripture it can be said emphatically, "In the roll of the book it is written of Me." It is with peculiar significance that Jesus said unto the Jews, "If ye believe not Moses writings, how shall ye believe my words? Moses wrote of Me."2 In these books of Scripture, containing the basis on which the whole subsequent superstructure rests, we have unfolded to us the plan of salvation, beginning with the most comprehensive and far-reaching promise of the Seed of the woman. Here we read of the Seed of Abraham, in whom all nations shall be blessed; the Shiloh, unto whom shall be the gathering of the nations; the Star of Jacob, whose shall be the dominion. In the books of Moses we have many types of Christ’s sufferings and mediation. And as the books of Moses are evidently the commencement of a series of records of divine dealings with Israel, the volume of the book has a more extended meaning, and refers to the whole Scripture. The written Word of God is thus connected with God’s eternal counsel, and the authority and inspiration of Scripture inseparably linked with the most hallowed and tender associations. Jesus, in all His acts and steps, in all His struggles and sufferings, not merely fulfilled the Scriptures, but, continually pondering them in His heart as the revealed counsel of His heavenly Father, and as the infallible testimony concerning Himself, His great purpose was to fulfill them. See how, after His resurrection, Jesus connects the counsel of God, the written Word, and the actual accomplishment.3(1Isaiah 41 - 53.2
"In the volume of the Book it is written of Christ;" because Christ was set up from everlasting in the counsel of the ever-blessed Godhead. When we think of this, we see the connection between our salvation and the eternal purpose of God, the manifestation of God’s glory, the Father’s good pleasure, and the Saviour’s reward and crown. We then begin to feel how much is implied in the simple truth that God is well pleased with the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. From all eternity God, according to His good pleasure which He had purposed in Himself, chose us in Christ, that we should be to the praise of His glory.* Notice the expression, "good pleasure." It was God’s eternal delight, this purpose of self-manifestation in grace; His counsel and election centre in the Son of His love, in the Only-begotten. When, according to this eternal counsel, and the Father’s good pleasure, the Word was made flesh, the whole life of Jesus on earth was the manifestation of the eternal counsel, the expression of the Father’s will, and of the Son’s free concurrence, and therefore the object of Jehovah’s infinite delight. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," said the voice from the highest glory of the man Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word; and again, on the mount of transfiguration, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him." (*Ephesians 1:3-10, especially 5 and 9.) In this elect servant the Father had His delight, even as it was the meat of Jesus to do the will; that is, to carry out the salvation-purpose of the Father. Knowing the will of God, He delighted in it. He never hesitated, He never swerved. Perfect was His love, His gentleness, His patience, His alacrity; perfect was His manifestation of the divine purpose of love. He went on from strength to strength. His was the path which shined more and more unto the perfect day - yes, day; for that was the perfect day of light inextinguishable, of love invincible, of holiness unsullied, when the Father hid His countenance from Jesus, and He, deserted of God, continued to love the Father that sent Him.
It is a merciful arrangement of the divine benevolence that we do not see and know our sufferings before they come, and that we are distracted from the anticipation of sorrow and pain by the varied duties, cares, and joyous gleams of our lives. But our blessed Lord knew from the commencement of His earthly ministry the sufferings that awaited Him. Never for a moment did He lose sight of the cup, the sword, the cross. Every source of agony was present to His mind. The enmity of the Pharisees, the ingratitude of His nation, the weakness of His disciples, the betrayal of Judas, were foreseen by Him from the beginning. He foretold not merely His rejection, but all the detail of His last days; all the fearful features of Israel’s ingratitude, hate, cruelty, and contempt. Yet He continued faithful to the Father’s will; He abode in the love which had chosen sinners to be redeemed; He who was holy, harmless, and separate from sinners, was willing to lay down His life as a ransom for them; He who was higher than the heavens, and needed no sacrifice for Himself, was willing to enter through His blood into the holy of holies. Perfect is the offering, because Christ’s humanity is perfect, because in perfect liberty He laid down His life for the sheep. When Jesus offered Himself unto the Father, and as our Substitute bore our sins in His own body (that same body which the Father had prepared for Him, as the channel of obedience), Jesus, although made a curse for us, was unto God a sweet-smelling savour, He who in the mysterious hour of darkness had cried, "My God," returns again to the full consciousness and enjoyment of that word "Father," which, in its eternal and infinite depth, belongs only to the Son. Knowing that the Father was pleased, and that the full love of the Father was resting on Him because He laid down His life for the sheep, Jesus gave up the Ghost. Then God raised and exalted Him, for it pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell in Christ. Now it is according to this same good pleasure, to this same eternal, free, infinite delight, that God calls and converts souls through the foolishness of preaching; that He gives unto us the adoption of children, and the forgiveness of sins: it is the Father’s good pleasure to keep the little flock, and afterwards to give them the kingdom and the glory, together with Jesus. It is all in Jesus, for Jesus sake, through Jesus; it is all a most joyous, free, loving gift, flowing out of the innermost eternal depths of the Godhead; and therefore God says so emphatically, "I, even I, am He that forgiveth thine iniquities; I, even I, am thy God." God is pleased (that is, in the Scripture sense of the word), God is infinitely delighted with Christ, as the incarnate Son and as the Saviour of believers. Here only is perfect peace. It is not merely that we are forgiven, but that for Christ’s sake we are forgiven, through the God-pleasing obedience; it is not merely that we are acquitted and declared just, but that God has brought near His own righteousness, and clothed us with Christ Himself; it is not merely that we are renewed, but that we who died together with Christ, are co-risen with Him, and that the God and Father of Jesus is in Him our God and our Father.
How marvellous and heavenly is this salvation by grace through faith! Here all is gold, that is divine. We are found in Christ, and where is Christ found? Where else but in the bosom of the Father? We have nothing but what is divine, the righteousness, which is by faith in Christ and which is of God, and the life which Christ the risen Saviour has breathed into our hearts. And all this, and we in all this, are a joy to God. Lo, I come! was the voice of eternal filial love and obedience. How precious are we to the Father - the fruit of Christ’s obedience, of that which forever is most precious and fragrant unto the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is there any believer who has received the pardon of sin in Christ, and who yet goes doubting, mourning with a dull conscience, and with a heart that is not filled with the sweetness of God’s peace? You cannot forgive yourself; you cannot forget your past; you cannot overlook your constant sins and failures, or cease to mourn over your indwelling corruption? By a strange duality there is in your soul an elder son, who does not understand why the prodigal should be arrayed with the best robe, and that now only the voice of melody and rejoicing should be heard? Do you not know that your frequent failures and falls do not hinder His love, that His peace is ever in you, though you are not always consciously in His peace? In Him as your representative and head the Father is pleased. God calls you no longer forsaken and desolate, but Hephzi-bah and Beulah. And when you behold this eternal, never-varying love of God which is in Christ Jesus; that love which was before time; that love which gave up the Son; that love which shall keep you forever; when you behold the love of Jesus, combining all that is shadowed forth in the love of friend, of brother, of mother, of husband; that love which bore your sin on the cross, which bears you now on His High-priestly heart in heaven, which looks on you with sweet faithfulness and pity after you denied Him, then, though sin appear more loath some and bitter, rest and rejoice in Christ, abide in the sanctuary, whither you have boldness to enter by the blood of Jesus. He is ever the same. There, where we doubt Him most, He is, if I may so say, strongest. "We doubt not His all-wisdom or His all-might. That He is all-love is difficult to believe when we feel our grievous sin." Yet is this His great (I had well-nigh said His only) grief with us, that we do not always run to Him with our burden, our unbelief, our many stains and falls. The only punishment Jesus imposeth upon sinning believers is, that they humble themselves to receive His love, and to be beautified with His salvation; He is not willing that they should remain in the gloomy night, but should return to the light of His countenance. Let all who mourn in Zion, turn constantly from the misery they feel, to the blessedness they trust in; from the sight of self, fragmentary and sinful, to the sight of Jesus, in whom we are holy and complete. While you say, I am vile, and abhor myself, say in meekness and faith, God delights in Jesus; God delights in me.