Hebrews 5

Hebrews 5:11-6

Section 2. (Hebrews 5:11-14; Hebrews 6:1-20.)The rejection of rejectors, and the confirmation of faith. The second section is, as has been already said, a parenthesis to meet the unbelief of the Jews upon a matter so vital to Christianity and so affecting the whole system of Judaism as the replacing of the Levitical by the Melchisedec priesthood. Even to the Jewish Christians, these things were hard sayings; and it may be they had caused, in measure at least, the defection from the faith to which the apostle presently refers. The two parts of his address to them here, however, are very different, and the first part only is warning; the second is pure encouragement -two things that are never far separated in the gracious ways of God. He is the God of all encouragement; and all warnings are but, in effect, to draw us from every false ground of hope, that we may find in Him the fulness of unfailing blessing.

1. The first subsection characterizes Judaism from its divine side, only to insist the more on its essentially introductory nature. It was “the word of the beginning of Christ,” very wrongly rendered in the text of both the common and the revised versions as “first principles of the doctrine of Christ.” “The first principles of Christ” assuredly we are never called to leave. It is Judaism, which was thus only suited to the state of nonage now passed, and which they must leave to go on to the perfection, or “maturity,” of Christianity. (1) The Hebrew Christians were, in fact, not going on; at least, many were not. For the time they had been learning, they ought to have been able to teach others; but instead of that, they still needed themselves to be taught, and taught the very elements. They still needed milk, and could not digest “solid food.” It is not “strong meat,” an expression which has been very much abused, as if it were something requiring extra spiritual power to digest it. It is simply that which is suited for people accustomed to be exercised indeed in spiritual things, and thus educated so as to discern between good and evil. How much of right knowledge lies for us in this kind of discernment! “The man has become as one of us, to discern good and evil.” To innocence we cannot go back; and though we have got into our present condition by a fall from God, He, in grace, would turn even this into blessing. The world, such as it is, is a place well fitted to produce and to cultivate such moral discernment. If it does not do this, however, it dulls and hardens the soul; and as the Word is that which God would use to form us after His mind, the not going on with it at once tends to increase in us this dullness of soul. Judaism in some form has been that by which the enemy has sought to corrupt and oppose Christianity from the beginning; and it has, in fact, largely done so. It was a religion given of God, and owned, therefore, by Him at one time; and this can always be pleaded in its behalf by those who have never understood, or cared to understand, its true nature. The law, which God took up because it was already in man’s heart, and to work out his thought to its proper end, to show him the evil and impracticability of it, -this man pleads as God’s revelation! Did not even Christ say: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments”? He did, as He permits souls even now thus to put themselves under the law, in order that they may find by practical experience what they would not learn with God simply by His teaching. We only need to be true ourselves to realize the truth here, and that we are only bidden to put up our ladder to reach heaven with, that we may realize how far above us the stars shine down. So when He gave “carnal ordinances,” with plenty of signs to show their incapacity (for He never left Himself without witness in this way), and that they were only fingers pointing on to that which was to come, there was always opportunity for men to say, “These are the very things themselves.” And this is the enormous evil of ritualism in all its forms today, -that it takes these Jewish forms to clothe them in the dress of Christian realities, to which they only pointed, and make that which only sanctified to the purifying of the flesh (as in the case of baptismal water) to cleanse the soul, as water never did, against the standing ordinance of God the Creator. Thus the word of God itself may be abused to seal up men in delusion, and people say, See how Scripture may mislead! But Scripture is given “that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished,” and it gives no security to any other than the man of God. (2) “The word of the beginning of Christ” is now given us in brief in the six doctrines stated, which, if they were the Christian “foundation,” would be a Christianity without Christ. The apostle says: “Not laying again a foundation,” because he has in view Jews who had accepted the Christian one, and who, if they went back to Judaism, would be laying again what they had given up. But nothing here is distinctly Christian. It is not a question as to the truth or necessity of what is spoken of, but of its being the Christian foundation. Two things come first, which are in fact fundamental: “repentance from dead works and faith in God,” but note that it does not say here, in the Lord Jesus. Two doctrines come last, which concern the future: “resurrection of the dead,” -not “resurrection from the dead,” which is the Christian truth, but simply resurrection of the dead, “and eternal judgment.” Between these two pairs we have what may be more questioned, but what goes to the heart of the matter as characterizing Judaism, -“a teaching of baptisms and of laying on of hands.” These have been claimed as Christian baptism and confirmation, (something of which Scripture knows nothing whatever) or else baptism and ordination, -almost equally strange associates as a foundation.

The truth is of nearer connection with the subject before us than such things would imply. In the first place, it is not baptism, but “baptisms;” and the baptism of the Spirit would surely never be associated with the baptism of water in such a manner. Moreover, Christian baptism is always baptisma, while this is baptismos, -a difference of form which is no doubt connected with the application in each case. Baptismos is the word used for the Jewish purifications, as, plainly, in the case of “divers baptisms” (not “washings”) in the ninth chapter of this epistle, verse ten. Moreover, these are really what is referred to, or mainly referred to, here, though we must anticipate somewhat the doctrine of that chapter to make this plain. The great failure in Judaism, as the apostle shows us there, was its failure really to purify the conscience, so as to set the soul at rest in the presence of God. In the tabernacle of old he says were offered “both gifts and sacrifices, which could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience.” Why? Because they consisted only in “meats and drinks and divers baptisms,” or purifications, “carnal ordinances,” that is, ordinances which could not in their very nature affect the condition of the soul, but the flesh only. He contrasts them then with that which does purify. “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer, purifying the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh” (here are the divers baptisms, namely of blood and of ashes, ordinances of flesh, purifying only the flesh), “how much rather 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?” Thus the sacrificial baptisms were evidently an important part of the Jewish service; while, in connection with these, the laying on of hands would be naturally that which in Israel identified the offerer with the victim, his sacrifice. The two things would thus go together as teaching a most fundamental point for every conscience wounded with the sharp edge of the law, and which would yet convict any earnest soul of the folly of turning back to it as a foundation. In this way, a teaching (not “doctrine”) of baptisms is significant. “Doctrine” will not do here, for that would speak rather of what the baptisms themselves would teach; while the point in this case is that what was taught was rather a ritual than a doctrine, (the blood of bulls and goats was sprinkled, the truth as to that in which the real efficacy was unpreached,) and the conscience was not purged. And yet striking it is to see that just here, for faith indeed, under what was ceremonial, God did hide that which He would fain have the soul discover, -the true way by which the conscience could be purged. But as a ritual, on that very account, it failed altogether, because He would not have any one rest in a ritual; and indeed rest would be impossible in this way before God. Thus we can see clearly where “the word of the beginning of Christ” failed, and that it is of Judaism the apostle is speaking. In it, while sin and judgment were plain things, the remedy for sin was hid under a veil, with all the glory in Moses’ face. Faith might gather comfort, so far as it could penetrate the veil, but could not yet stand in the power of the unveiled truth itself. The apostle goes on now to show the terrible condition of those who went back to this Jewish system out of the light and blessing of Christianity. It was vain for them to think that they could replace themselves where the saints of old had been. Judaism had passed away for God, and those who went back there would find that they had left the only ground of peace and salvation. It would be even “impossible to renew again to repentance those who, having been once enlightened, and having tasted of the heavenly gift, and been made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and having tasted the good word of God and the powers [or miracles] of the world to come, had fallen away.” In the Israelitish cities of refuge those who had slain another without intending murder might take refuge from the avenger of blood, and Christ Himself was the true City of Refuge for those who had been partakers in the common guilt of the nation in His death. For such He Himself had pleaded at the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;” and Peter, by the Holy Spirit, had, in view of that ignorance, preached repentance to them; but those who now went back open-eyed among His rejecters could no longer plead this. They were crucifying for themselves the Son of God afresh, and there was no city of refuge to open its doors to such. Christ could not be a refuge, as is plain, for those who rejected Him. The warning here has been a sore perplexity to many who are as far as possible from the condition which is here contemplated. The description of these apostates, solemn as it is, does not speak of them as children of God, as justified by faith, or in any way which would imply such things as these; and the apostle, after describing them, immediately adds, as to those whom he is addressing: “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, even things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.” This is the most distinct assurance that he had no thought of one who had known salvation incurring the doom of an apostate. What he says of them is, first of all, that they had been enlightened: they could plead ignorance, therefore, no longer. Secondly, they had “tasted”; but one may taste and, after all, refuse. Thirdly, they had been “partakers.” The word does not mean, necessarily, more than external participation. It is the same word as “companions” or “fellows,” which we have had before, -“partakers,” or “companions,” of the Holy Ghost. That is, they had been brought into that in which the Spirit of God bore witness to Christ and the fruit of His work, and thus had been associated with Him in this witness. “The powers of the age to come” are miracles, the mighty works by which the consequences of sin and the destructive power of Satan will be banished from the earth in the millennial reign. Such power was already being manifested in connection with the testimony of Christ in Israel; but all this goodness of God had been, to those of whom he is speaking, like rain which brought from the ground of their hearts only thorns and briars, thus manifesting it to be worthless and nigh to cursing. Christ having been rejected, God’s last, best gift had only been found in vain. 2. The apostle goes on, however, now, as we have seen, to comfort and encourage those he is addressing. Notice, he is assured of “better things” as to them, -love to Christ’s name proved practically and continuously in ministrations to His saints. God would not be unrighteous, so as to forget these fruits of His grace. Instead of discouraging them, He would have them give diligence so that hope might be in full assurance with them, imitating those “who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Abraham, “the father of all them that believe,” the one in whom faith as the way of blessing has been openly inaugurated and proclaimed, naturally becomes here a most instructive example. God’s word was pledged to him in the fullest way, but he had to have long patience.

He saw little fulfilment on earth of that which God had promised, for not elsewhere than in God Himself does faith find its true strength and support. Here, indeed, He gave all that could be desired, not His word merely, but His oath -precious and wonderful condescension to human weakness. God will give as ample security Himself as we exact from one another. While faith must be faith, and therefore only in God, yet how tender He is! How well we may trust Him! Our hope, however, has security of another kind than verbal. It is anchored “within the veil,” in heaven itself, into which our Forerunner has entered, Jesus, “made a High Priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.” The mention of the veil here is supposed by some to contradict the thought of a rent veil in Hebrews; but the veil is never stated to be taken away, for the veil is the flesh of Christ; and the only possibility for such a mistake is in confounding it with the veil of which the apostle speaks in the second epistle to the Corinthians, -that veil which was over the face of Moses, and which is not over the face of Christ. That veil, indeed, has been taken away; but the veil through which we enter into the Holiest has not been taken away, but a way made through it, “a new and living way,” as we shall presently more particularly see.