Hebrews 9

On any supposition, it is a most marvelous coincidence that, exactly at the period when Judaism must necessarily fall as a practicable system, there should happen to arise a new mode of interpretation by which a hidden significance was discovered in it, its great idea found and developed, its departure provided for—itself, as it were, immortalized by a divine apotheosis at the moment of its martyrdom, transformed from body to spirit, raised from earth to heaven, associated with the interests of the race—the highest interests of man as immortal, liberated from local and national limitations, and made large enough to embrace the world! T. B.

1. THEN verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle made; the first, wherein was the candlestick, and the table, and the shewbread; which is called the sanctuary. And after the second vail, the tabernacle, which is called the Holiest of all; which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; and over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercyseat; of which we cannot now speak particularly. Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God. But into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people: the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation. 11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15 And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover he sprinkled likewise with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year 26 with blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the 27 sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judg- 28 ment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

The pieces of prophecy respecting Messiah, when all are put together, compose a figure unique and mysterious. There is something about it not to be confined to the limits of a nation, nor connected with temporal sovereignty or secular successes; and yet there is the constant employment of language partial to the Hebrew people, and indicative of mundane magnificence! King, priest, prophet, martyr; conquest and defeat; triumph and tears; songs and sovereignty; stripes and blood—pieces thus cut, as it were, out of different figures, irreconcilable, as it would seem, in attributes and fortune, have to be gathered up and put together by the severely tasked pupil of the law. The enigma at length finds its solution, the strange, mysterious picture, its reality, in the Person of a suffering yet conquering Messiah, who redeems the soul from sin, beautifies the Church with salvation, defeats the spiritual adversary of the race, and opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers! who “is made of the seed of David according to the flesh, but declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”; who—exalted at length to “the right hand of God,” “angels, authorities, and powers being made subject to him”—lives and reigns, “from thenceforth expecting, till his enemies be made his footstool.” With new views of the central figure, the whole of the Levitical system undergoes a change. It comes to be looked at as constructed for a purpose, which gives to it a deeper and diviner significance than was at first suspected. Priest and sacrifice, altar and propitiation, cease to be realities; they are understood to be only shadows and signs of what was to be found, substantially, in the Person and work, the acts and offices, of “the great High Priest of our profession.” The Tabernacle and Temple seem to enlarge their proportions, as if to become a fitting sphere for the presentation of such a sacrifice, and the services of such a functionary, as are conceived of now. The earth is the court in which death is inflicted; the overhanging sky is the mysterious veil; and high heaven, the dwelling-place of God, is the holy of holies! The only sacrifice is understood to be that of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”! The pomp and splendor of the temple service fade away; its songs and anthems come to symbolize diviner joys than they ever could impart. The infliction of death on unconscious animals, with their throes and contortions under their sharp but transitory suffering, sink into something like fictitious agony, and have to give place to the terrible reality of His mighty and mysterious anguish whose “soul was made an offering for sin.” The purifications and washings, the cleansing of the body by water or blood, enjoined by the law, prepare the way for the evangelical announcements of the “fountain opened for uncleanness,” and of “the laver of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.” T. B.

In this chapter the old covenant and the new are laid side by side for comparison and contrast, to show that the former was designed to illustrate the latter, the former being the symbol and the latter the thing symbolized; the former being of little value in itself, and useful mainly as throwing light in advance upon the great purposes and work of the latter. H. C.

1-5. The outward impressiveness and material splendor of the ancient religion, “the ordinances of divine service and worldly sanctuary” of the “first covenant,” were in reality but indications of imperfection and weakness. The ceremonial plainness, the literal, unsymbolic character of the new economy, is the exponent of its true dignity and glory. Caird.

It is very easy to discern in the tabernacle service, first, a proximate or external and secular inintention, which reached its end in its immediate influence upon the people. But besides this, and compatibly therewith, the same worship held forth from age to age a mute prophecy of “good things to come”; that is to say, of the mediatorial scheme, afterward to be brought into effect and made known. Yet a third intention (as we suppose) ran through every article of the “worldly sanctuary,” adumbrating the unearthly and spiritual system. Thus, in the farthest recess of that sacred Pavilion of the God and King of Israel, was displayed the visible splendor of the Divine Presence; high above it, without and in view of all, towered the cloudy column, alternately dark and resplendent. Before the Shechinah crouched the cherubic symbols of the incessant adoration of the celestial orders. To this inner chamber the mediator alone had access; and there, by his intercession, maintained propitious intercourse between the Divine Majesty and the remoter worshipers. Without the veil were seen the seven lamps—the cheering radiance of spiritual illumination; and thence also went up the perpetual incense of prayer. Far spread around this “house not made with hands,” not raised by labor or of solid materials, were ranged the assembled thousands of Israel, in devout expectation, while they took part in the loud, responsive anthem of praise. I. T.

In the ordering of the temple worship, some line of the Messiah is graven on everything. From the door whereby you enter until you approach the Shechinah between the cherubim on the mercy-seat; from the blood of the victim to the flashing breast-plate on the high priest’s robe; from the daily offerings of the morning and evening sacrifice to the annual ceremony of atonement, every object and every rite foreshadows the great propitiation. T. D. A.

9. Were offered gifts and sacrifices. Sacrifice, in one or other of its many forms, was tuted the first class. They, or a part of them, were burned upon the altar, or table of God, and regarded as Jehovah’s portion. They typified Christ the God-

The Tabernacle, Altar of Sacrifice, Laver, and Inclosure.

man yielding to God the devotion of a pure heart and an unsullied life; meeting the requirements of the law in every particular; and so yielding to God that which humanity never yet had yielded—a perfect righteousness. No thought

The Holy Place, with Candlestick, Table of Shew-bread, and Altar of Incense; and (the veil removed) the Most Holy Place, with Ark, Cherubim, and Shechinah.

of sin enters here; it is humanity giving to God his portion and his due. The second class are the offerings not of sweet savor (of which the sin- and trespass - offerings are the two varieties). They were not offered for the acceptance of the worshiper, but for the expiation of his sin. Accordingly, the body of the victim was not burned upon the altar, but cast forth without the camp as an accursed thing, and there burned upon the great feature of the Jewish worship. There were two grand divisions of sacrifice, typifying different aspects of the work of Christ. The sweet-savor offerings (or offerings for acceptance) constithe earth. These emblematized Christ in his cross and passion—Christ the sin-bearer, identified for the time with sin, and enduring sin’s maledication—Christ the brazen serpent, identified for the time with the principle of evil, and therefore suspended upon the tree. The mere observation of this distinction supplies an easy answer to one of the weak cavils brought against the doctrine of the Atonement. E. M. G.

Could not make perfect. They sufficed to relieve him from the ritual disabilities growing out of ceremonial defilement; they gave him his place among the recognized people of God; but the deep and dreadful sense of guilt they could not allay; the burden of sin that would lie heavy on his soul they

Supposed Form of the Altar of Incense.

could in no wise remove. The voice of inspiration even then proclaimed: “Thou delightest not in sacrifice, else would I give it; thou hast no pleasure in burnt offerings, but the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.” H. C.

12. Jesus, the High Priest, goes before thee into the holiest of holies with his blood. Dost thou not believe that his intercession covers thee? Then I thought: It is for all except me. I have done too wickedly. I have sinned again, after having received grace and forgiveness. I dare not again approach the throne of grace; and yet—yet fain would I draw nigh! As my soul thus held converse with herself, Jesus the High Priest opened to me the door of his word, and I read there: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Through the open door of his word I beheld the spear-pierced side of my Priest and his sacrifice, and I believed, “for me.” As I this believed, I found myself within with the Father; my High Priest covered me with his intercession, and I was no longer afraid. From that moment I knew that Jesus Christ was my High Priest. A. C.

14. He offered himself.** They accounted it an ill-boding sign when the sacrifices came constrainedly to the altar and drew back; and, on the contrary, were glad in the hopes of success when they came cheerfully forward; but never sacrifice came so willingly all the way, and from the first step knew whither he was going. The beasts, if they came willingly, yet offered not themselves; but he offered up himself; and thus, not only by a willingness far above all those sacrifices of bullocks and goats, but by the eternal Spirit, he offered up himself. L.—To serve God. A consideration of what Christ’s death declares to us should have power to melt the hardest heart and to sober the lightest; when we think of Christ dying, dying for us, and so purchasing for us the forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life, such a love, and such a prospect of peace with God, and of glory, should in the highest degree soften and enkindle us; and from love for him, and confidence of hope through the prospect which he has given us, we should be able to overcome all temptations. T. A.—The blood of Christ, sprinkled upon our consciences, and purifying them from dead works, takes the sting out of sorrow, and brings a “peace which the world can neither give nor take away.” As there is peace in heaven, the peace that comes of purity, confidence, and love, so there is peace in us when our guilt is purged away, and confidence and love are springing up as the free breath of life from the dead. H. H.

15,16. For “the new testament,” read “a new covenant”; for “by means of death,” “death having taken place”; for “redemption,” “propitiation”; for “testament,” “covenant”; for “eternal,” “the eternal.” In verse 16, “testament” would better, perhaps, be “testamentary covenant.” It is the same Greek word as that rendered “covenant” before, but now signifying a testament of bequest. A.

22. It was ordained from the beginning that life must be paid for sin. This was the reason for appointing the blood of victims as the emblem of atonement. While there is no value in the blood of animals, as there is in their skins and flesh, the Scripture says, The life is in the blood, and the appointment of blood, therefore, to make atonement, signified that life must be paid for sin. N. A.—The honest heart cries out in its shame and fear: “Let me suffer for my sin.” Suffering for it there must be somewhere; transgression is a costly business; so it must always be and always look; right must stand at any rate; law must be sacred, or all is gone; and since nothing is so dear as life, and blood is the element of life, life itself must be surrendered, and “without the shedding of blood is no remission.” Just because this life is so dear, he who loves us infinitely, and to whom it is dearer than to us, will be willing to lay down for us his own. He will not even wait for our consent; but, in the abundance of that unspeakable compassion, in the irresistible freedom of that goodness, he will do it beforehand, only asking of us that we will be-

I have he has done it, and, accepting our pardon, be drawn by that faith into the same self-sacrificing spirit. Herein is love indeed. Suffering for our peace! Sacrifice not that our service may profit and pay him, but that our transgression of a perfect law may be pardoned, and the noble life of disinterested goodness may be begotten in ourselves. The atonement of Christ thus becomes the inmost and grandest power of the world. It is the one peculiar, characteristic, crowning, glorious truth of the gospel. F. D. H.

27,28. One more analogy completes this chapter of his argument. It falls to men to die once; after this, to go to the judgment. So it falls to Christ to die once for the sin of many, and to come a second time, for the final judgment. The more particular purpose of his second coming, as put here, has respect to the grand consummation of his redemptive work in behalf of his people. He appears for the final and complete salvation of those whose faith looks humbly to him for such salvation. This statement does not attempt to exhaust the objects and results of that great final judgment. It simply designates those particular results which were in point then for the consolation of his Christian readers. H. C.

27. Once.** Observing this word “once,” and reading it more exactly, “once for all,” we discover an aspect of finality in the declaration—implying, in fact, a fixed belief that our present probation, or state of trial, is to be both first and last, a trial once for all. Enough that there is no severity in having but a single trial, and that, if more than one were offered, we should do well to petition against it. Beyond a question, God, in giving us our one opportunity and no more, fixes this close limit because one will do more for us than many. A greater number—two, ten, twenty—we could not have without unspeakable damage and loss. H. B.—

Appointed to die. We must look higher than a natural agency for the account of the death of a single individual. Here, as in other departments of his administration, our Lord works by second causes. Disease, violence, and natural decay are his instrumentality. But who calls the instrumentality into play? who sets it at work? who first touches the hidden spring? Undoubtedly the great Redeemer. Death is a solemn thing, a thing of vast moment, and can not be decreed except immediately by him. The key is in his hand exclusively; the great summons goes forth from his presence, and is spoken by his lips. Death is the transaction of an Individual with an individual, of Christ the Lord with one single member of the human family. The span of each one is measured out by considerations purely personal to himself. E. M. G.

If, when the connection with matter is dissolved, an immediate consciousness is to be had of the Divine Presence, there can be no more room left for mixed or ambiguous moral sentiments. The spirit, quick throughout with the feeling of good and evil, is surrounded on every side with the GREAT OBJECT of all such feelings; even as the mote that swims in the brightness of the upper skies is encompassed with the effulgence of noon. To DIE is to burst upon the blaze of uncreated Light and to be sensitive to its beams—and to nothing else! I. T.—He who beholds Christ in death beholds with him also an infinite multitude of friends; the sky is as it were thick set with stars, one star differing from another star in glory, but all glorious; first the holy angels, then God’s earthly children, Christ’s redeemed who have gone before us. But, if the greater light be hidden, the lesser lights vanish also; and not the faintest glimmer of the smallest star relieves the infinite void. We need not carry forward our thoughts to the judgment; death itself with its awful darkness and loneliness is appalling enough to us, if we have not learned to fear Christ. But, fearing Him, we lack nothing, nothing in earth or heaven, in life or in death, in time or in eternity. Nothing shall in any wise hurt us; for we are then Christ’s. T. A.

After death the judgment. At death probation ceases and retribution begins; a retribution whose lines run on without a break or a bend. And yet the retribution must needs be incomplete. The disembodied soul is not the whole man. In order to perfect fullness of retribution our complex humanity must be reconstructed. The soul must be reembodied in order to encounter the completeness of its doom. Whatever there may be of heaven for the dying saint, or of hell for the dying sinner, the day of final reckoning will open and shut gates of glory and of gloom, through which only the reembodied can pass to the consummation of their weal or woe. It is this final goal of history toward which the finger of prophecy in the New Testament ever points. Paul, John, Peter, and our Lord himself are all agreed in this, that the great day for every single member of the human race, as for the race as a whole, is that solemn day when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise. It is then that the wicked are to “go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” R. D. H.

After the judgment an eternal too late to such as have not then employed aright the day of grace! Well may we, when images of terror such as these arise, with clasped hands implore beseechingly the thoughtless to awake at last out of their slumber, since the sun of their short day already stands high in the heavens; nay, it may be, sinks to the western horizon. Well may we, when on so many sides we hear around us the lullaby, “Never too late, there is

time to wait," ask ourselves, as in the presence of Omniscience, if we have yet accepted the offer of mercy, and where we should be found if suddenly the day of grace came to an end. Van O.