Hebrews 8

1. Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, 2 who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of 3 the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man. For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this 4 man have somewhat also to offer. For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing 5 that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law: who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed 6 to thee in the mount. But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for 8 the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: 9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my 10 covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be 11 to me a people: and they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I 13 remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

WITH respect to every one of these promised blessings, whether of divine renewal, divine relationship, or divine enlightening, God has said, I will do it for them, “for I will be merciful” to them. In other words, I will sanctify and bless them, for I will freely justify them. It is very important to begin in this matter where God begins; to know that the justification of a sinner, in the sight of God, is wholly independent of personal holiness as the procuring cause of it. He first “justifies the ungodly,” that he may sanctify; and thus justification, or that state of a sinner wherein God lays no sin to his charge, though it be so intimately connected with holiness that the one can not be without the other (for those whom God promises to justify he covenants also to sanctify), is yet wholly independent of it: the one is not the cause of the other; the finished work of Jesus, without holiness of any kind in the sinner, gives him perfect reconciliation and peace with God, when in a sense of his own ruin he goes to God and pleads it for acceptance. Many mistakenly regard acceptance with God as that of which they can not be sure, until they finish their course and get beyond the dangers of this scene of trial. This is to confound two things which we can not be too careful to distinguish—our justification and our sanctification: it makes the former to rest upon the latter. Complete justification is perfectly consistent with incomplete sanctification. The one rests on the simple acceptance of Christ’s work, finished and accepted of God for us; the other is a gradual work of the Spirit of Christ in us; sure indeed in its issue, but vehemently opposed by the devil and corrupt nature; and the sensible measure of it perpetually varying, in the daily conflict of the believer, while he is in the body. It is the great secret of the believer’s peace to know that his acceptance with God is not to be measured by his own experience, his spiritual comfort or dejection. The established Christian knows and blesses God that he has something quite distinct from his own experience, something that is incapable of change, wherein to glory. As a believer, being justified through the faith of Christ, he is always “accepted in the beloved.” The firm persuasion of this soul-supporting truth forms his great encouragement to persevere in his pursuit of holiness under all difficulties. If he be cast down in the deadly strife against corruption, in this strength of the Lord he is enabled to get up again. It is his privilege to know that “there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus”—a truth of which the believer, in his present condition, often needs the comfortable assurance. Goode.

1-4. Christianity recognized the Jewish religion as from God; and it was a ground of its rejection by the Jews that it destroyed their law or ritual. Hence it became necessary to show that it was in perfect harmony with the Jewish religion when rightly understood, and was indeed necessary to its completion. Did the Jews insist that Christianity had no priesthood? The apostle affirms that it had such a high priest as became us, “who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” Did the Jews affirm that Christianity had no tabernacle? The apostle asserts that Christ was the minister “of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man”; that he had “not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself.” Was it objected that Christianity had no altar and no sacrifice? The apostle affirms that “now, once in the end of the world, Christ had appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Thus did the apostle show that the Jewish religion, having dropped its swaddling-clothes of rites and ceremonies, was identical in spirit with Christianity. The same correspondence was either attempted to be shown or taken for granted by all the New Testament writers. M. H.

The knowledge of God enjoyed under the old dispensation will scarcely bear a moment’s comparison with that which shines forth under the gospel. All its institutions, its paschal lamb and other sacrifices, its meats and drinks and divers washings, its tabernacle or temple, with the holy of holies, and the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy-seat—all these were “patterns of things in the heavens,” types and symbols of divine mysteries, chiefly of the person and work of Christ. Believers under the gospel can see in these an exact and beautiful representation, given by the wisdom of God, of the good things that were to come. But, before the actual incarnation of the promised Messiah, they were a mystery, of the real meaning of which the best instructed among the Jews had but little accurate perception. Their knowledge was at the best but shadowy, ours real and substantial.

6. That active ministry, commenced with His incarnation, the apostle here declares to be “more excellent” than that of Aaron, above which it is one great object of this Epistle to exalt it. The main intention of this earthly ministry of Christ was to make atonement. And remission of sins being the foundation-stone upon which the whole covenant of grace rests, the blood of the surety was necessary to ratify it, and so confirm its blessings to the sinner. He appeared, therefore, upon earth in the double character of Offerer and Offering, Priest and Victim; and his infinite sufficiency for both these characters rests upon the union of the divine and human nature in the one person of Christ.

A better covenant. It must be carefully observed that the covenant to which this is here preferred is the national covenant made with Israel at Mount Sinai, the mediator of which was Moses, and the ministry of which, throughout the term of its continuance, was committed to the sons of Aaron. That this is the covenant referred to here is clear from verse 9 of this chapter, where God calls it “the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.” This covenant was faulty (v. 7), except as introductory to that which was to succeed it. It was partly a covenant of works, resting its blessings on Israel’s fulfillment of certain conditions (for instance, the possession of the promised land on their national adherence of the worship of the true God), and further, as reviving the moral law, in all the exactness of its requirements and the terrors of its curse. It is on this account chiefly, as having the original covenant of works incorporated in it, that the gospel covenant is here so greatly preferred to it. At the same time it differed from the original covenant of works, inasmuch as it had provisions of grace, ordinances typical of the mercy designed for men in the gospel, and ministering this grace and mercy, though by shadows only, to the people of God. It may thus be considered as a republication, for a particular temporary purpose, of the old covenant of works, with appendages intended to mark man’s need of some better way, and symbolizing that way. The new covenant, of which Christ is mediator, is that better way itself. “A better covenant, established upon better promises.” Goode.

7. If the first covenant—that of which the whole Mosaic system, the ritual, the priesthood, and the sacrifices, were the component parts—had been faultless, if it had done its work with entire success, leaving nothing more to be desired, then no place would have been sought for a second; there would have been no occasion to think of it, much less to provide it. But ages of experiment had shown the deficiencies of the first covenant. It had failed to regenerate Israel. Its priests and spiritual guides had become wofully corrupt; the people were fearfully far from God and righteousness—as their reception of Jesus in the flesh most conclusively proved. A better scheme was demanded. H. C.

8-12. This is quoted, with little variation, from the prophecy of Jeremiah (31 : 31-34), and relates primarily to the literal Israel, in whom, as a nation, it is to have a grand and ultimate accomplishment. Goode.

10. The faith which enables the soul to abide in Christ is nothing else than an assured trust and confidence on our part that, as he has already wrought out for us our acceptance with God, so he will work in us every gracious disposition (be it repentance, or faith itself, or humility, or hope, or love) which is necessary to qualify us for glory. It is not enough to supplicate these graces; we must lean upon him for them, and fix the eye of expectation upon the promise of his new covenant: “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts”; being well assured that he will fulfill to us the terms thereof. E. M. G.—The law is not given in this covenant, as at Mount Sinai, on tables of stone, but graven on “fleshly tables of the heart.” It is the creation of a new divine principle of holiness that is here promised, which shall rule in the soul, enlightening the understanding, and captivating the affections to willing obedience. Hence, while the believer is eternally delivered from the law as a covenant, in which respect it “gendereth to bondage,” while he receives the life he once sought to merit by it as a “free gift” of God in Christ, he yet “delights in this law of God after the inward man”; he walks conformably to it in love, “being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ.” God is himself the immediate agent in this mighty work of renewal. “I will put”—“I will write.”

Divine relationship, too, is renewed between God and the soul of man. “I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” The covenant founded on mercy to unrighteousness has in it the promise of restoration to the divine favor, and that to the largest possible extent. God says here, not only, “I will be to them a father,” or any such finite relation, but, to include these in a name which contains the sum of all that is glorious and gracious, “I,” saith he, “will be to them a God.”

11. All shall know me.** Under this “better covenant” we have the substance of the shadows, the reality of the types: Jesus Christ; “him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write,” “full of grace and truth.” The manifestation of the Father’s love. “The brightness of his glory, the express image of his person.” Moreover, the Spirit of God is himself the great teacher of his covenant people. There is now, therefore, an enlarged knowledge of God; such a knowledge of the mystery of his person as the Triune Jehovah, of his character and grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ, as “in former ages was not made known unto the sons of men.” Now, there is not one in covenant with God who has not his measure of this blessed knowledge; the least as well as the greatest is privileged to enjoy it; the babe in the school of Christ has a clear understanding of those things which the holiest of the Old Testament saints saw but darkly, if at all, under the law.

12. Three parts are distinguishable in the application of “mercy to unrighteousness” through Christ: The gift of faith, whereby the penitent sinner is brought to believe God’s record of his Son; to receive and rest in Christ and his righteousness, as the all-sufficient gift of God to men. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness so embraced. Faith takes it as given of God, in the gift of Christ; and thus it is called “the gift by grace,” “the gift of righteousness.” The man has it to present to God, and God therefore imputes it because he has it. Justification in virtue of that righteousness. God is “just in being the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus”; and that with regard to no other condition of the sinner that comes to him than that he does so come, believing God’s record of his Son, and thereby possessing that “righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.” The administration of the Christian covenant, with its free, full, sure, and everlasting grace, is in the hands of Christ as Mediator between God and man. It owes its gracious character to his engagements entered into from eternity; its establishment with man to his sacrifice, the blood of which ratified it; and its perpetual efficacy in the experience of elect sinners to his all-prevailing intercession. And the foundation-stone upon which all its blessings rest is unconditional mercy to sinners and everlasting oblivion of all possible offenses. Contemplate, then, this covenant, in the amazing freeness of its forgiving grace, in the exceeding fullness of its promised blessings (divine renewal, divine relationship, and divine illumination), in the absolute security given for their enjoyment by the pledge of God that he will and that man shall, and in the everlastingness of its continuance—and say if its treasures of goodness do not surpass all that heart of man could have conceived. Goode.

13. Is ready to vanish away.** It did vanish away. It became useless; it lost its significance; it was superseded and put aside as a thing that was “done with, that that which could not be shaken might remain.” Every attempt to make Christian ministers into priests; to give them a place between the people and Christ, as He stands between the people and God; to ascribe virtue to their acts, instead of attaching importance to instruction; everything like trying to address the eye instead of the understanding; the notion that holy Christian “mysteries” are things to be done, instead of things that are taught; attempts to lead the people to depend on what can be performed for them, or by them, instead of cultivating their reason and conscience, and raising them to the manly apprehension of the spiritual—all this is but the modern form of the Judaizing errors which the apostle met with his indignant condemnation.

TRUE or false, the Jewish and Christian religions are the most wonderful things of which there is any account in the records of the race. What an extraordinary people that Hebrew people must have been, who in the wilderness commenced, and in subsequent ages perfected, a ritual system embodying in its significance some of the profoundest truths afterward to be demonstrated by logicians and philosophers—and who did this by no divine or supernatural assistance, but simply from the impulses of their own inward religious life, which struggled to express itself, and which found utterance in this way! How wonderful that this rude people should go on, perfecting their ideas and multiplying their myths, till they took a new form in the history of Jesus, and in the spiritual or transcendental interpretation of the old ritual system which that introduced! What a marvel it is, too, that the whole thing should have been so constructed and so carried out as to seize on the human mind beyond Judea—to subdue the most cultivated portions of the race—to supersede all other myths, theologies, and philosophies with which it came in contact—and to be spreading in the world as a regal power to the present day!

The extraordinary nature of the Christian interpretation of the Hebrew ritual is itself worthy of specific remark. The idea of taking the tabernacle or temple, the altar and priesthood, with all the ac-

cessories of the ritual service, and giving them a significance—finding for them a design and a reality that should at once fill the earth and reach up to heaven! think of that. After the prophecies, or supposed prophecies, which for ages had stirred the national heart, filling it with splendid anticipations of a regal and conquering Messiah—after he was supposed to have come, and then to have departed, and to have so departed as to have disappointed the hopes cherished to the last by his immediate followers—after this, what an idea it was to turn the very fact which shattered their expectations into a fulcrum on which to fix an engine that should move the world! What an intrepid and sublime daring there is in the thought of Messiah the Priest being placed in the foreground of Messiah the King! the wide earth the place of sacrifice, the cross of ignominy the altar of propitiation, the upper world the holy of holies—the way into it being opened and

sanctified by the resuscitated Redeemer, who passes through the veil of the visible heavens as into the interior of a temple, “there to appear in the presence of God for us”—for us, for humanity, and for the accomplishment of those spiritual objects which humanity spiritually needs!