THE HIGHER RESPONSIBILITIES OF HIGHER REVELATIONS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
THE rhetorical character of the epistle is indicated in the hortatory passages that are so freely inserted. The exhortation here, Hebrews 2:1-4, introduces the reason for the peril of apostasy. It was the temporary humiliation of the Son which, unless its purpose was clearly understood, might so easily be misapprehended, and lead to a denial of His pre-eminence and Divine dignity. This brings the writer again to his argument. The humiliation of the Son was a necessity for the carrying through and perfecting of His high-priestly work.
Hebrews 2:1. Therefore.—Because such superiority belongs to Christ as the Author and Head of the new dispensation. It is an Eastern idea to honour an invited guest by sending a servant of the highest rank to call him to the feast. Meeting this idea, the writer sets forth the supreme dignity of Christ as giving special claim to the invitation He brings. More earnest heed.—Scripture conceives of attention as an effort of will, with a view to the active obedience of what is heard. Diligent application of the mind. Intelligent understanding is the proper basis of faith. We have heard.—Distinct reference to the gospel as the Divine revelation made to us. Slip.—R.V. “lest haply we drift away from them.” The word παραρρυῶμεν has two meanings:
(1) to fall, stumble, perish;
(2) to suffer to flow from memory, to forget. The Greek usage, as collected by Wetstein, is, “to flow as liquids.” Best translation is, “lest we should glide by them.” Not “run out as leaky vessels,” a rendering first given in the Genevan Testament, 1557 A.D. “Unless the mind be held closely to the words that God has spoken, it must drift away from them, and from the salvation which they promise.”
Hebrews 2:2. Word.—Reference is to the law given on Sinai, and said to have been given by “the disposition of angels.” See Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:10; Deuteronomy 33:2. Was stedfast.—Proved steadfast, its sanctions being fully upheld. Transgression.—The figure in this word is lost in the English translation. It is “walking alongside of,” and so, not walking in the path. The reference is to positive, intentional sin. Disobedience.—The figure in this word is “hearing”: “to hear beside”; so “to hear by stealth,” or inaccurately. Moral heedlessness. The reference is to negative sin, or neglect. Recompence of reward.—Pay for conduct. Reward of retributive justice, including punishments. A wide use of the term “reward.”
Hebrews 2:3. We escape.—We to whom the revelation ministered by the Son has come. Escape the judgment that must fall on those more highly privileged. Great salvation.—Proper word for the mission of the Son. The Jewish revelation may be called a “government,” or a “regulation”; it was not evidently a salvation. The greatness is especially seen in its having a Divine Administrator. By the Lord.—Jesus Himself. Compare directly in the Son, and indirectly by the medium of angels and Moses. Confirmed.—Ratified. Them that heard.—Apostles and first disciples, of whom the writer of this epistle was not one. The more unquestionable the gospel message was, the greater was the responsibility of those to whom it came.
Hebrews 2:4. Signs.—Tokens or indications of the near presence of God; a seal of power put on the person who accomplishes the miracle. Wonders.—Astonishing events, which the beholder can reduce to no law with which he is acquainted. Christ’s miracles are never called “wonders” only. Divers miracles.—Or manifold powers. Principal reference is intended to the miracles and spiritual endowments of the early Church. “Wonders,” indicating the effect on bystanders; “signs,” indicating that they had a moral purpose; “miracles,” or proofs of the presence and working of a Divine power; “gifts,” endowments for use, such as tongues, and power to interpret. The word “gifts” should be “distributions.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 2:1-4
Three Great Things.—A remarkable feature of this epistle is the frequent introduction of hortatory passages, which remind us of the preacher rather than of the letter-writer. Those passages reveal the distinctly practical object of the writer. He is concerned with doctrine for the sake of its practical applications to life and conduct, rather than for the sake of its theological interests. Ever before his mind is the danger of the Jewish Christians relapsing from their Christian profession into their old and formal Judaism. And in dealing with them he does not wholly trust to argument as an appeal to mind; he uses urgent persuasions—the personal force—as an appeal to heart. “Out of the heart are the issues of life.” But it should be borne in mind that the appeals are made to persons with Jewish feelings and associations, and are precisely adapted to them.
1. “How shall we escape?” implies recognised peril. In the writer’s mind are the judgments which came on the unfaithful under the old covenant. These are representative of the judgments which come on those who are unfaithful to God’s covenant with man. To that covenant all of us are found unfaithful, and all of us stand exposed to judgment.
2. Neglect implies that a way of rescue has been provided. What was the way under the old covenant? Illustrated by the arrangement of cities of refuge. The way of bringing sacrifice; sin, trespass, burnt offerings. These foreshadow and represent the spiritual sacrifice which Christ offered, and which we offer—“our bodies a living sacrifice.”
3. Neglect further implies some preoccupation hindering attention. The preoccupation of some mistaken views. What would lead an old Jew to neglect sacrificing?
4. The greatness of the salvation implies a serious increase of peril for the negligent. That older salvation from ceremonial penalty was a great salvation. It was God’s own intervention. Now the salvation is from sins, and involves the sacrifice of God’s own Song of Song of Solomon 5. The tone of the question “How escape?” implies the hopelessness of finding any other rescue. As addressed to the Jewish Christians, it pleads in this way: You cannot fall back on the old, now you know its essentially preparatory character, and its limited, ceremonial range. And certainly you cannot fall away to idolatrous schemes, seeing that your old religion was so decided an advance upon them. Once advance, you can never go back.
I. The great salvation.—A Divine intervention for man’s relief and help. God’s constant work is redeeming; that work, at its highest level, is redemption from sin. Think of the greatness of this salvation.
1. In its sphere—sin’s penalty and power.
2. In its range—all humanity.
3. In its agency—personal surrender and self-sacrifice. These are not, however, immediately present to the writer’s mind. He sees the greatness of the salvation
(1) in the Agent working it out;
(2) in the agents conveying the report of it;
(3) in the miracles supporting the agents.
II. The great responsibility.—“How shall we escape?” The plea is based on the universally working law that “privilege brings responsibility.” This is one of the truths of fact that were prominent in our Lord’s teaching. But it is very easy for men to say, “Then we are better off without the privilege, and may envy the heathen who have none.” We must not think thus, because our glory and our joy lie in advance, in progress. Animals make no progress. Birds build their nests to-day just as they built them in the trees of Paradise. For a man to hear the gospel is for him to become another man. He can never be the same again. He has stepped up into privilege. He must be judged in the light of the new knowledge.
III. The great condemnation.—“If we neglect.” Apply to the Jewish Christians, who were not rejecting, only neglecting. In some audiences it might be necessary to plead that Christ was being rejected. In ordinary congregations the danger is not rejection, but neglect. There is:
1. The neglect of indifference.
2. The neglect of preoccupation.
3. The neglect of shaken confidence. Rejection may be the sin of the one here and there. Neglect is the sin of the many. But is it reasonable to make so much depend on simple neglect? It is, if you recognise what moral character is shown in rejection, and what in neglect. Neglect is more hopeless than rejection. Those who reject may think again. Those who neglect let the opportunity slip by. For those who neglect there is the misery of having missed eternal life because they would make no effort.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 2:1. “Let slip.”—You know how it is when water is poured into a leaky bucket: it runs out quickly; it is very soon all gone. When we have bad memories, our minds are such a leaky vessel; the things that we are taught run away from us as water runs through a sieve. And so this lesson about holding fast is a very important one; it is the same duty that the angel in the Apocalypse urges on the Christians of the “seven Churches.”—R. Newton.
Drifting.—Drifting! drifting! that is the precise word. The boat is unanchored. It is at the moment in a quiet place; but by-and-by the tide ebbs and bears it in its bosom on to the middle of the current, and then it is carried out and away, and perhaps, if no one has observed its motions, irrecoverably lost.—Dr. Tayler.
Drifting from Christ.—“Lest haply we drift away.” Those who deliberately renounce their Divine hope are few; those who make shipwreck of faith by imperceptibly getting further and further away are many. This drifting away is possible:
1. Because we are not always moored to Christ when we are brought to Him.
2. Because there are powerful adverse currents which tend to carry us from the Saviour.
3. Our departure from Christ may be for some time imperceptible. To drift from Christ is to drift to ruin.
(1) It is to forsake the only refuge for sinful men.
(2) It is to disregard the supreme claims of Christ.
(3) It is to resist the grace that has brought us close to Him. Conclusion:
1. If we are moored to Christ, our blessedness consists in the maintenance of close fellowship with Him.
2. Though we are close to Christ, we are in great peril until we are anchored there.
3. If we are drifting away from Christ, everything depends on our returning before we get further off.—Charles New.
Drawn on to the Coral Reefs.—In the Southern Seas sailing vessels, when there is no wind, dare not approach the islands nearer than two or even three miles. Currents constantly flow towards the land, and they insensibly act upon the vessels, so that they drift to destruction on the coral reefs.
Drifting from the Truth.—The idea is, that these Jewish Christians, to whom the epistle was addressed, were in danger of being carried away from the gospel of Christ, just as a vessel will be drifted down the stream unless it is held firmly to its anchorage, or unless there is constant exertion on the part of those who are on board to resist the current. There was a strong tide running, and unless they gave earnest heed to the gospel they would be swept away into their old Jewish life.—R. W. Dale.
Hebrews 2:3. Great Salvation because Great Saviour.—On the intrinsic greatness of the salvation the writer does not dwell. It is implied in the unique dignity and commission of Him through whom it is given. To the Jewish Christians the message of the salvation came:
1. Direct from Christ.
2. Then from those who actually knew Christ.
3. And their testimony was sealed by the miracles of healing and blessing which they wrought.
No escaping if there is neglecting.—Consider the argument of this epistle. It is an argument against apostasy. These Hebrew Christians were in danger of going back to an effete Judaism; but “the Old Testament dispensation, with its prophets and priests and Temple and sacrifices, was only a type of Christ, and was to disappear when Christ Himself had come.” The revelation of God in His Son is the culminating revelation. That having been made, that which has led to it and introduced it is no longer necessary, and to cling to it is to cling to superfluity. The man who trusts in Jesus is safe whether the Temple fall or stand, whether he worship within its precincts or be thrust out of them. Then the epistle goes on to substantiate this truth by various argumentation. Angels, the messengers of God, had to do with the introduction of the old economy; but Christ, the Founder of the new economy, is superior to angels. His title is superior. He is called the Son of God. No angel was ever called the son of God in such terms as would involve sameness of nature with God; but Christ is. Therefore He is superior; but angels are required to worship Christ. Therefore, again, He is superior. Then, again, the angels are called winds and lightning—names implying servitude; but Christ is He at whose behests the angels go forth as winds and as lightnings; and so, as King over them, Christ is their superior. And therefore, since Christ is thus the superior of angels, the dispensation which He Himself personally introduced must be higher in authority, and more enduring in existence. This, then, is the first argument in substantiation of the theme of the epistle. But the Bible is the most practical of books. Let a truth but be established, and at once it springs to press that truth in application. So before another argument is introduced to substantiate further the mighty theme of the epistle, the discussion tarries for pressing the truth it has carried home. If, though this preparatory dispensation was less in authority and grandeur, yet if even this lower and lesser word spoken by angels and delivered to men by Moses was nevertheless a word most firm; if disobedience even to that lower and lesser word was always followed with its threatened penalty,—then how shall we escape if we neglect this so great salvation; this word, the highest and most precious possible, which the Son of God Himself has come to tell us? Such is the setting of the inspired argument. A most pertinent question, How shall we escape if we neglect?
1. There can be no further and other Divine revelation as to salvation from sin. In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Ephesians 2:9). God cannot speak more plainly than He has spoken by His Song of Song of Solomon 2. There can be no other and further Divine sacrifice for sin. God has nothing more to give than He has already given. Even infinity does not possess a preciousness beyond that of the only begotten Song of Song of Solomon 3. Our own good works cannot possibly match or go beyond the efficacy residing in the finished work of Christ. To trust in them, rather than in what He has done, is not only folly—it is sacrilege.
4. No sacramental rite administered by man can possibly equal the completed atonement wrought by Christ and ministered by the Holy Spirit to the believing soul.
5. In every sense this salvation is a salvation utmost. In no way can we touch or pass beyond that limit. How, then, can we escape if we neglect?
6. And to neglect it is to refuse it.
Responding to our Privileges.—Perhaps you have not noticed the force of the text as it stands in its connection. It really is a very serious warning to converted people; the neglect referred to is the sort of neglect to which professing Christians are tempted. It sets us upon the inquiry, “How may you and I, who have so long borne the Christian name, be found to-day neglecting the responsibilities, claims, and duties of the ‘great salvation’?” The epistle to the Hebrews is distinctly addressed to Hebrew Christians, to Christians who had been Jews, and for the most part devout and zealous Jews. From the tone of the epistle we gather, that these Judaic Christians were placed under some special perils and temptations. There was evidently some grave danger of their returning upon the formalities of that Mosaic system out of which they had come. The writer seems deeply impressed with the peril, the disgrace, the hopelessness, of apostasy. The danger of those Hebrew Christians recurs in every age. It is ours to-day as truly as it was theirs yesterday. Those who have gained a spiritual religion are exposed to the temptation to pass back upon a sensuous religion. The religion of the surrendered will and the heart’s love is difficult to maintain; easily we come to substitute for it a religion of attending services, observing sacraments, and pressing conduct into moulds. The Christian Jews addressed in this epistle had stepped up out of formal Judaism into spiritual Christianity. They had served the law written upon tablets of stone; now they had learned to serve the law written on the mind and heart. They had been religious by following and obeying rules; they had become religious by responding to Divine inward inspirations. They had been associated with a material Temple; they had now discovered that man can be the “temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Spirit of God can dwell in him.” They had lived by the letter; they now lived in the Spirit. But it was only with extreme difficulty that they could keep up in that high, spiritual atmosphere. We can quite understand their difficulty. The interests of the old Mosaic system clung to them. They had been the associations of their earliest years. Judaism was the religion of their childhood and youth. Every sentiment of reverence and affection gathered round the old system. No man ever yet found it easy to grow out of his youth-time associations. Some of us to-day can scarcely say that we have quite outgrown that hard, unloving Calvinism which was the atmosphere of our boyhood. It is stern work this growing in spiritual things. And formal religion, which gives us something for the eyes to look on, for the hands to handle, and for the knees to do, always has a strange fascination for sense-bound man. Formal religion, that requires routine, but asks for no mind and no feeling, always has been attractive, and it always will be. The many will always find a sort of contentment in that lower stage. Enough for them to ask, “What good thing can I do to inherit eternal life?” The sad thing is, that the religion of forms and ceremonies should even keep its fascination for those to whom the glories of spiritual religion have once been unfolded. Well may the apostle exclaim, in a passion of indignation, “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.” And we must take into due account another fact. The advocates of the Mosaic system, who resisted the claims of Christianity, were intensely active in demanding continued obedience to the Jewish laws and rules. What are called “Judaising teachers” followed Paul everywhere, and persisted in claiming that every Christian convert should keep Mosaic rules; should be circumcised, should make vows, should observe rites, and should bring sacrifices, just as if he were a Jew. They declared that the formal religion could never be superseded, could never rise into anything higher or more spiritual. The New Testament tells us of the peril of falling back on formal Judaism from spiritual Christianity. The history of the first three centuries of the Church shows us the peril of falling back on paganism from spiritual Christianity. It is a sad story. The Gentile converts brought in Gentile ways, and soon Christianity became the old paganism, with new associations. The Church ritual that is so fascinating to men to-day, is, in almost every detail, old pagan ritual carried in to the ruinous overlaying of spiritual Christianity. It is of course possible, in a spirit of self-complacency, for us to say that all this concerns the apostolic Christians and the early Church Christians, and it is very sad, but then it has nothing whatever to do with us. I want to show you that, in forms and ways suitable to our own cases, this danger of falling from spiritual religion back upon formal religion is precisely the danger to which you and I are exposed to-day. We need the warning, lest we too should be found “neglecting the great salvation.” Our own religion begins in formality and routine. Mother makes us say our prayers, and sees that we say them regularly; and it is only saying prayers. Mother takes us to the services, and sees that we behave suitably. For long years every child’s, every boy’s, religion is in the Judaic stage. It consists in doing things that ought to be done. Then may come the experience which we call “conversion”; the soul’s awakening to personal relation with Divine and eternal things. We rise, in that hour of personal decision, to spiritual religion. But it is as hard for us to keep up there, in that spiritual region, as it was for the converted Jew to keep up in the refined atmosphere of spiritual Christianity. You and I are always ready to fall back on our old boy-religion of ordered prayers, attended services, and shaped conduct. We have no harder task than that of keeping ourselves right up in that spiritual realm, which, in the power of God’s Spirit, we have entered. You can easily become a formal Christian. It will cost you much and constant watchfulness and endeavour if you keep a spiritual Christian. The tendency is an ever-enduring and universal one. It belongs to biassed and deteriorated human nature; and the epistle to the Hebrews has always been wanted, and will always be wanted, because it deals with this tendency. It does so partly by a series of arguments, and partly by a series of persuasions. These are blended in a very striking way throughout the epistle, each branch of the argument being followed by a characteristic warning or persuasion. The argument is mainly a rhetorical comparison between the agents and mediators employed in connection with the two dispensations—the Jewish and the Christian—and between the sacrifices required in the two dispensations. We only now take the first of these comparisons. What has to be compared is the two Divine dispensations, the two great religious systems established by the Divine revelation—the formal system of Judaism, the spiritual system of Christianity. It must first of all be made perfectly clear that these systems were not antagonistic. They are related to each other; they are in no sense opposed to each other. They may be helpfully compared; they may never be contrasted. They stand in an order of time. That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is carnal, and afterward that which is spiritual. The one is the preparation for the other, the necessary preparation; it is the schoolmaster that trains for the life in Christ. The earlier unfolds into the later, and it may pass away when it has done its preparation work. The seed we sow in the ground is preserved by the husk, and the germ of the future plant is fed by the starch stored in the seed. But when the germ bursts forth into leaf, the flour and the husk may die. They have done their work, and passed into the plant that is to be. The spring bud is encased in a sheath, and protected while it is maturing; but when the flower opens, the sheath may fade and drop off. It has done its work, and really lives still in the beauty of the summer flower. The children’s scrap-books and picture-books are put away on the shelf—every home has a big pile of them: they seem to be useless; nay, they live on in the cultured power to read which they have quickened and trained. The apostle Paul puts the matter in a clever and suggestive sentence: “When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Ceremonial Judaism is as the toys in the cupboard, and as the picture-books on the shelf. They have had their day, and done their work, but we do not want them now. Somehow we never quite lose our interest in the toys and the books; and some never lose interest in formal Judaism. But the Spirit of the Lord has come, and “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.”
I. In the passage from which the text is taken the agents of the two dispensations are compared. It was the received opinion of the Jews that their law was given on Mount Sinai “by the disposition of angels.” That was thought to declare the supreme grandeur of the revelation, of the law-giving. Angels! But what are angels? What are angels more than we? Are they not all ministering spirits? Created dependent servants, executing their Lord’s bidding, even as we are? The spiritual revelation and law given from Mount Sion came by Jesus Christ, God’s only-begotten and well-beloved Son, who is the “heir of all things, and by whom God made the world; who is the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of His person; who upholds all things by His own power.” The applications and enforcements of the Mosaic law were made by a series of prophets, among whom were many great, many extraordinary men. “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.” The applications and enforcements of spiritual Christianity are made by the apostles of Jesus. The word at first was “spoken by the Lord,” but “it was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him.” On the face of it, therefore, this new revelation of God’s will to men is altogether higher and nobler: it brings to us higher privileges; it involves us in heavier responsibilities; it can crush us with heavier penalties. This is the argument, and this is its attendant persuasion: “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” It is suggestive that the old dispensation and the new one should both be called a “salvation.” It is evidently named from its initial incident. Its true beginning was the great and glorious redemption of Israel from the Egyptian bondage, when Pharaoh’s chariots and host were cast into the sea, and Israel walked a wondrous way, and began their national life from those farther shores as a delivered, redeemed people. They sang in their song of triumph, “The Lord is become my salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare Him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.” But that “salvation” brought Israel under the claim to serve Jehovah, and Jehovah only. They were bound to receive, and to obey strictly and carefully, all the law that Jehovah might be pleased to declare to them; and seeing that they were a nation in its child-stage, Jehovah graciously adapted His revelation and His law to them, gave the knowledge of His will through elaborate pictures of rites, and ceremonials, and observances, and ruled conduct by precise laws covering all their daily life and relations—“a people saved by the Lord.” They knew their Lord’s will; and “every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward.” And so the new dispensation is called a “salvation,” “so great salvation,” because it too began with a great and glorious redemption—the redemption wrought in the ministry and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that redemption brings us under claim to serve Jehovah Christ. We are bound to receive and obey His law in everything. And that law, in its most searching spiritual way, takes motive, principle, feeling, enriches them with new force, and so affects all our conduct from within. The ransomed of the Lord ought to respond to all the claims and responsibilities involved in so “great salvation.”
II. The penalties of the two dispensations are compared.—There is an appearance of severity in the Mosaic sanctions. But we need not misunderstand it or exaggerate it. All first education is necessarily precise and severe. It ought to be. Parents and school-teachers properly begin by requiring exact obedience on penalty of punishments and deprivations. Joubert finely says that the universal law of training is “force till right is ready.” There is a severe side to Christianity, though it does not show as plain as the severe side of Judaism. It is severer: its demands are more comprehensive and searching; they concern motive and feeling. Its penalties are severer: they come upon the soul; they break off its relations with God; they involve “the second death.” “Of how much sorer punishment are they worthy” whose neglect of the great salvation may be figuratively described as “trampling underfoot the Son of God, counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and doing despite unto the Spirit of grace.” That severer side of spiritual Christianity directly concerns you and me. With what condition of religious life may we think the warnings deal?
1. Penalties hang over all who pass back upon formality. “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect in the flesh.” I beseech you, search and see whether formalism has crept into any of the features of your religious life. Once your soul shaped all your doings and relations. Is it now thus with you? The routine is kept up, the order is gone through; but there is no soul inspiring it now. You say your prayers; you do not pray. You attend the services; you do not worship. You observe sacraments; you do not feed with ever-fresh appetite upon the Bread of Life. There is a terrible disease from which men suffer, often for a long time without knowing it. The very substance of the heart actually hardens. There is a strange dropping-well at Knaresborough, Eng. As the water falls on living substances it encrusts them with stone. That “disease” has its religious counterpart; that “well” has its religious antitype. Scripture describes the man who has fallen back from spiritual upon formal religion: He is “dead while he liveth.” The penalty of formal religion, what is it? To be dead, soul-dead. What more awful penalty can you possibly think of?
2. Penalties hang over all who shrink from gospel responsibilities. Neglecting the salvation is neglecting the things the salvation involves. These I will only state in two forms:
(1) We are put into the school of Christ. It is perilous work to show ourselves unwilling to learn of Him.
(2) We are put into the rule of Christ. And it is perilous work to shrink from any form of the obedience to which He calls us. What hope of escape, in the great testing day, can the unspiritual Christian have? What hope of escape can the disobedient Christian have? What hope of escape can the negligent, unfaithful Christian have? “Every man’s work shall be tried of what sort it is.” Are you neglecting any of the claims, responsibilities, duties, of this great, this spiritual salvation? What—say what is your hope of escape in the testing day of God?
Hebrews 2:4. Spiritual Gifts witnessing to the Salvation.—“Gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will.” The writer has evidently in mind the extraordinary gifts which were bestowed on the early Church. The disciples were bidden by their ascending Lord to “tarry in Jerusalem, until they were endued with power from on high.” What that power was, and what were the outward signs of its coming, we learn at the Day of Pentecost. What the power developed into, and how it differentiated, so as to gain adaptation to every necessity of the Church, St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:8-11; and he most carefully associates the gift or power with the presence of the indwelling Spirit. “For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: to another faith, in the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healings, in the one Spirit; and to another workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits: to another divers kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as He will.” In the possession of these gifts the Church has one of its best evidences of the “great salvation.” The bestowment of the gift is God’s direct witness to the “salvation.”
I. Gifts are special enduements of power.—The man who has the gift has something which he had not before. It might or it might not bear relation to some natural faculty. But it was something new.
II. Every person regenerate in Christ had some special gift.—This truth has not been fully apprehended; and so the gift of each disciple has neither been looked for by himself nor by others; and consequently the Church is full of men with unused, and so virtually lost gifts.
III. The gifts are the sign of the presence and the inworking of the Divine and indwelling Spirit.—This is their deepest significance. We have them only because we have the Spirit. The Spirit comes to us before the gifts.
IV. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the seal of our personal salvation.—And so the gifts which declare that we have the Spirit witness that we are the saved ones on whom the Lord has “set His mark.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Hebrews 2:3. Perils of simply neglecting.—Simply neglect the great salvation, and you will make your everlasting ruin sure. Many foolish, faithless parents have killed their child, not by administering slow poison, or striking an assassin-knife through its young heart, but by the simple neglect of the first laws of health. Many parents, too, have wrung their hands in agony over a ruined son, fallen into disgrace, not because they have led that son into ruin, but because they had let him alone, and left him to rush into the cause of his misery unrestrained. Neglect was the boy’s ruin. There is no need for a man to row towards Niagara’s cataract—resting on his oars is quite enough to send him over the awful verge into eternal ruin.—T. L. Cuyler.
The Insult of neglecting Religion.—I can understand that man who says, “I have examined all the evidence, I have weighed and tested every argument, and I have come to the conclusion that the Bible is a fable, Christianity is a romance, and all that it says of eternity, death, and judgment the visions of a mere baseless dream.” I pity and deplore his conclusions; but there is a consistency about it. I very much doubt if it be not a greater insult to God to neglect religion, which is altogether inexcusable, than it is to reject it.—Dr. Cumming.
How escape?—The question “How shall we escape?” implies
(1) peril;
(2) provided rescue;
(3) neglect of provision;
(4) consequent increase of peril; and
(5) hopelessness of finding any other rescue.
Hebrews 2:4. The Temporary Mission of Miracles.—A gardener, when he transplanteth a tree out of one ground into another, before the tree takes root, sets stays to it, and poureth water at the root of it daily; but when it once taketh root he ceaseth to water it any more, and putteth away the stays that he set to uphold it, and suffereth it to grow with the order and influences of the heavens. So the Lord, in planting of religion. He put miracles as helps to stay it; but when it was once confirmed and fastened, and had taken deep rooting, He took away such helps; so that, as St. Augustine hath it, He that looketh for a miracle is a miracle himself; for if the death of Christ will not work faith, all the miracles in the world will not do it.—Spencer.
Cycles of Miracles.—The power and acceptableness of the evidence afforded by miracles is relative to the age to which they are given. Therefore it will be found that they have always come in cycles, and only in cycles.