CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 7:24. Continueth ever.—A firm assertion of the present living priesthood of Christ. Unchangeable.—R.V. margin, “hath a priesthood that doth not pass to another.” Vulgate, sempiternum. Stuart, “without succession.” Moulton, “Since His life is indissoluble, none can trespass on His right and invade His priesthood.”
Hebrews 7:25. Save.—To be understood here as embracing the various services to men that are represented in the work of the high priest. Uttermost.—Or “consummate end.” Completely deal with even their highest, most spiritual needs. Judaism could not “save to the uttermost,” because its range was confined to ceremonial offences. Make intercession.—Lit. to interpose on their behalf who employ him as their High Priest.
Hebrews 7:26. Became us.—Was necessary for us, who are conscious of these higher, spiritual needs. That which is precisely “befitting” may be spoken of as necessary. Holy.—Internal. Harmless.—External. One who does no evil. Undefiled.—This is the opposite to the “unclean” of Judaism. Free from ceremonial charge. Separate from sinners.—Diverse from them; unlike them; having no sort of fellowship with them. Made higher than the heavens.—Exalted above the heavens. Compare Hebrews 1:3. For this idea of Christ’s exaltation in acknowledgment of the perfect fulfilment of His mission, see Philippians 2:9; Colossians 1:8; Hebrews 2:9; Hebrews 8:1; Revelation 5:12; Matthew 25:31.
Hebrews 7:27. Daily.—The high priest officiated every day, as well as on the Day of Atonement (Hebrews 6:19-20; Numbers 28:3-4). His own sins.—See the order of ceremonies on the Day of Atonement. Offered up Himself.—Surrendered Himself in life and death obedience; this was the one sacrifice.
Hebrews 7:28. Infirmity.—Here moral infirmity, which involved the need of their offering sacrifices for themselves. Since the law.—And therefore a later and fuller manifestation of the will of God. Consecrated.—As High Priest for a perpetual service to sinful men. Stuart renders, “the Son, who is for ever exalted to glory.” R.V. reads, “a Son perfected for evermore.” Whose unchangeable, untransmissible, ever-living priesthood is our ground of hope.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 7:23-28
Our Priestly Saviour.—The main purpose of this epistle is the exaltation of the person, the offices, and the work of the Lord Jesus, by comparing, and in some ways contrasting, Him with the most honoured persons associated with the older history and dispensation—with angels, with the patriarch Abraham, with Moses, with the high priest. The text stands nearly at the height of the comparisons of the person and office, and introduces the comparison of His work.
I. The nature of Christ’s office.—He is the “living Intercessor.” It is anxiously set before us that our Lord actually holds present office. The idea that His work was completed while He was here on earth is only true when it is precisely and carefully stated, and with due qualifications. The work of Christ is both present and past. The past explains the efficiency of the present; the present guarantees the acceptableness of the past. The present work is essentially the same, but not formally, or to outward seeming, the same that He carried through in the past: He is in the office, and does the precise work now for which the earth experience has fitted Him. It is therefore better for us to say of Christ, not “He has redeemed,” but “He can redeem, and does.” Describe the office of intercessor, as illustrated in Moses, in the Jewish high priest, and in the Scripture figure of the “Angel of the covenant.” Observe that the work of our Lord’s present office is stated in the passage to be, not only mediating for Christians in the supplying of Christian needs, but also an actual present saving of men. “Save to the uttermost all coming to God by Him.” Christ is set now in the office of dispenser of the salvation that He has won for men. Man, as a moral being, is to be saved, not by a salvation, but by a Saviour, through the agency of a salvation. The familiar words, “Simply to thy cross I cling,” are a poetical figure, which, stated in a plain, prosaic way, would be, “Simply to Thyself I cling.” In unfolding our Redeemer’s particular office as priestly Saviour, show—
1. Its sphere. Heaven as the symbol of the spiritual. The souls of men. The presence of the eternal Father.
2. Show its work. Saving, in the large and comprehensive sense of effecting all deliverances from all moral evils, and from all their consequences.
3. And show the ways in which He has won the fitness, and the ability, to be this living Saviour. “Therefore God also hath highly exalted Him.”
(1) By the faithful execution of a particular work entrusted to Him, He has proved Himself worthy of a higher trust. According to His own principle, embodied in the parables of the “talents” and the “pounds.”
(2) By the intimacy, variety, and completeness of His human experience, He has become precisely fitted for the sympathetic application of the saving power.
II. The extent of the power which belongs to Christ’s present office.—“To the uttermost.” This expression comprehends—
1. Power to meet the precise case of every one. And salvation is not quite the same thing for every man. It must be adapted to individuality.
2. Power to completely satisfy the needs of each one. Here Christ’s power is contrasted with that of Jewish high priests, who could not touch soul-sin. The infinite ability of Christ is our encouragement in the committal of our entire saving and sanctifying to Him.
III. The persons for whom especially the power is exercised.—Does the expression of Hebrews 7:25 mean “everybody”? And if not, what are its suggested limitations? Those who come into the saving power are those—
1. Who spiritually turn towards God. There must be some opening of the soul to God.
2. Those who, in thus turning, seek the help of Christ. To these, and under these conditions, He becomes an all-sufficient and almighty Saviour. Or we may say, that the condition of getting the exercise of this saving power is, that a man fully trusts his case to Christ. But nobody ever does that until he has ceased to feel that he can very well manage it himself. These considerations reaffirm the two essential things in every coming to God through Christ—penitence and faith. Reimpress the important truth, that the intercession of our Divine Lord is founded on His voluntary offering of Himself without spot to God.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 7:22. Christ as Surety of a Covenant.—Dr. Moulton’s note on the word “covenant” may be found specially helpful: “This is the first occurrence in this epistle of a very interesting word (διαθήκη), which hereafter will occupy an important place in the argument. Throughout the Greek translation of the Old Testament it is used to represent a Hebrew word which is (more than two hundred times) rightly rendered ‘covenant’ in our version; and, like the Hebrew word, it is applied both to mutual agreements between man and man, and to ‘covenants’ or engagements into which God enters in regard to man. In classical writers διαθήκη commonly denotes a “testament”; and hence in the old Latin translation of the Scriptures testamentum became the common rendering of the word. As, however, this rendering is very often found where it is impossible to think of such a meaning as will (e.g. in Psalms 83:5, where no one will suppose the psalmist to say that the enemies of God ‘have arranged a testament against Him’), it is plain that the Latin testamentum was used with an extended meaning, answering to the wide application of the Greek word. St. Paul’s designation of the Jewish Scriptures as the ‘old covenant’ (2 Corinthians 3:14) thus became familiarly known as ‘the Old Testament.’ … Here only is Jesus spoken of as a Surety, elsewhere as Mediator (chaps. Hebrews 8:6, Hebrews 9:15, Hebrews 12:24). As through the Son of man the covenant becomes established, so in Him it remains secure; the words addressed by God to Him as Priest and King contain the pledge of its validity and permanence.” Ἔγγυος means sponsor, pledge, surety. In a covenant each party may be represented by some one who will guarantee their good faith. The case is conceivable in which the same person may guarantee the good faith of both parties; and then such a person would stand as a living pledge of the fulfilment of the terms of the covenant on both sides. That conceivable thing is actually realised in the case of Jesus Christ, and in relation to the new Christian covenant. He stands for God, and pledges His good faith. He stands for man, and pledges his good faith. And so long as Jesus lives we have the assurance that God will keep His word; and God has the assurance that we will keep ours. Christ pledges us both.
Hebrews 7:23-28. Uttermost Salvation.—We are taught here—
I. The perfection of Christ’s priesthood.—He is lifted above all other priests—
1. By the immortality of His nature (Hebrews 7:24). He only hath immortality.
2. By the perfection of His character (Hebrews 7:26). Glorious in holiness.
3. By the efficacy of His sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27). So rich and prevalent that offering of the cross.
II. The consequent perfection of Christ’s saving power (Hebrews 7:25).—Christ is able to save in every way, in all respects, “unto the uttermost,” so that every want and need, in all its breadth and depth, is utterly done away.
1. His salvation extends to the worst. Such is the greatness of Christ’s sympathy and power, that He reaches down to the lowest, and can lift the lowest to heights of purity and glory.
2. His salvation comprehends all. In this sense He saves to the uttermost. Philanthropists usually select some particular class of sinners or sufferers as their sphere of beneficence—one cares for the slave, another for the prisoner, a third for the orphan; but Christ is “the Saviour of all men.” There is a Rabbinical legend to the effect that, when the law was given at Sinai, all the yet unborn souls of the Jewish nation were assembled to hear it. Certainly, when Christ died on Calvary, He saw around Him the spirits of all flesh, and bare in His body the iniquities of them all.
3. His salvation is complete. “Uttermost” signifies completeness; it forms an antithesis here to Hebrews 7:19, where it is stated “the law made nothing perfect.” Christ shall fully restore our nature to purity, to beauty, to joy. There is such a thing as being saved from fire, and yet the nerves to be shattered, and the flesh scarred; such a thing as being saved from shipwreck, and yet to stand bleeding and beggared on the shore; such a thing as being saved in the day of battle, and yet to have lost a limb. Not with such a salvation does Christ save His people.
4. His saving power continues undiminished by lapse of time. The power of Christ is as fresh and full to-day as it ever was; so it will continue to the latest age.
5. His salvation confers eternal security and joy. He ever liveth to continue the fellowship between His saints and God So all-comprehending is the salvation of Jesus Christ, He saves from deepest depths, to ends of the earth, to end of time: He saves thoroughly; He saves with the power of an endless life.
III. The subjects of Christ’s saving grace.—Them that come unto God by Him, come penitently, come boldly, come now.—W. L. Watkinson.
Hebrews 7:24. No Change in Christ’s Priestly Relations conceivable.—If the relations were material and temporal, change in them would be quite possible, and might indeed reasonably be expected. Those relations are spiritual and eternal, and they are therefore permanent and unchangeable. Or we may say, that the priestly relations of Christ do not concern the merely accidental conditions of men, but the essential and universal conditions; and so the adaptations of His priestly ministry can never pass or change. The thought of the writer may not, however, be so comprehensive and so philosophical as this. The point immediately before him is the limited time in which a Mosaic high priest served his office, and the unlimited time that Christ, as our spiritual High Priest, serves His. This was suggested by the prominent fact concerning Melchizedek, that there was no fixed beginning to his office, and no fixed termination. If an office is put into the hands of a succession of men, it is manifestly entrusted to a variety of men; and many men have many ways. The methods of carrying out the duties of the office must, of necessity, vary. Each man will put his own impress upon it. But if an office could be held by one person throughout all generations, and that one person had the power of precisely adapting his principles and his methods to each generation, he would virtually hold an unchangeable office. And that is precisely what we are to understand concerning Christ. He is the one and only spiritual High Priest of humanity. There was no time, since humanity has existed, in which He was not its High Priest. He was spiritual High Priest when there were formal high priests according to the law. And there will be no time, while humanity exists, in which He will not be High Priest. If we do but grip the idea that He is spiritual High Priest to spiritual humanity—and that alone is humanity—we shall easily see that change in the principles and methods of His priesthood cannot be, for the very simple reason that the conditions and needs of spiritual humanity—of the souls which men are—never do change, and so there can be no call for any change to meet their new needs.
Hebrews 7:25. The Eternal Saviour.—Happily we are not dependent on this or any other single passage of Scripture for our belief in the doctrine that Christ’s power to save is practically unlimited. We are not certain that the word rendered “to the uttermost” has more than a temporal significance. Probably it has. But if the text does not positively affirm, it supports and suggests the truth, left beyond all doubt elsewhere, that the power of Christ to save—
I. Is unconditioned by the character of the case.—However complicated or aggravated that may be, no fear or doubt need be entertained for a moment. Men may, and they sometimes do, think that their sin is unpardonable, or that their true manhood cannot be restored, that no human or Divine power can raise and renew them. But Scripture and experience alike prove that they are wrong. There is no depth of iniquity to which man can descend from which the power of Christ cannot lift him up. There are no crimes against heaven and earth which the mercy of God in Jesus Christ will not cover. He saves to the uttermost.
II. Extends through the whole of our human life.—We may have to change priests or pastors, and we may be troubled by the fact. We have not to change one Saviour for another. The thought is too familiar to affect us, but it is a very precious truth, that all our life through we have to do with an unchanging Lord and Friend. It means—
1. That Christ is ours through all the successive periods of our life, each one of which has its own dangers and difficulties, and demands special grace and power. Of Him do we all receive “grace upon grace,” one kindness after another, varying according to the stage we have reached, and to the peculiar need of the passing hour (see John 1:16).
2. That in any great sorrow or emergency that may overtake us we are sure to have our Divine Friend to whom we can resort, and on whose sympathy and succour we can rely.
3. That in the great, continuous work of spiritual culture we may count on His help. We are in some serious danger of supposing that there are faults in our character, and blemishes in our behaviour, which are irremovable, and must be accepted as an inevitable detraction from our worth and influence. But by what right do we accept these as permanent and incurable? With an ever-living Saviour, a helpful High Priest, “ever living to make intercession,” able to save His people to the uttermost from all their sin and shortcoming, we ought to be striving for and expecting a full deliverance, a complete salvation, through sanctity of spirit and excellency of life. We have no leave to settle down into a complacent tolerance of any evil thing in temper or in spirit, in speech or in conduct.
III. Will continue through all generations.—Many systems have had a brief day of power and have passed away. They have had adventitious or spasmodic advantages, and have done great things for a little while. Then testing time has come, and they have waned and disappeared. Jesus Christ has not lost one jot or tittle of His power to save and heal. Where His truth has been corrupted it has been enfeebled, as we can well understand it must be; but where it has been cleansed of its accretions, and has been presented in its purity, it has proved “the power of God unto salvation.” This it is proving now. At home and abroad it is found to be the one sovereign power that transforms the base, that uplifts the degraded, that arouses the sluggish, that calls the worldly to the service of God, that makes the selfish to be concerned for the welfare of their kind, that comforts the sorrowful, that cheers the lonely, that gives peace in strife, and hope in death. It shows no signs of age, no symptoms of decay. There is nothing ready to supply its place. Eighteen centuries of physical research and philosophic inquiry have not provided any substitute for Christian truth. It is Christ alone who can speak to us with authority upon God, upon sin, upon human life, upon the future; it is He alone that can give rest to heavy-laden souls. Christ is proving to be the eternal Saviour to whom mankind in every age can turn with trustful and thankful heart. To whom, if not to Him, shall we go? He only has the words of eternal life on His lips, and the gift of eternal life in His hand. But if we would find we must seek. It is “they who draw near to God through Him” that are saved. We must—
1. Gladly and gratefully receive the great truth of God’s Fatherhood as taught by Jesus Christ.
2. Confidently approach our heavenly Father through His mediation.
3. Eagerly accept the grace of God unto eternal life for His sake.—Selected.
Salvation to the Uttermost.—The writer is dealing with that continuous work of saving which was the ministry entrusted to the old Jewish priests, and is, in the highest senses, the ministry entrusted to our great High Priest. It needs to be well kept in mind, that the old priests did not merely do one great saving work for the people, they stood in constant saving relations with them. Every year, nay, every day, they were executing some saving ministry for them; and the very essence of their saving work consisted in this—they were the mediums through whom any one who wanted to come to God with a petition, or an act of devotion, found access to Him, and acceptance with Him. To express the work of the old priests in the language of this text, “they were able, in limited measures, to save those who came to God through them, seeing that they were the appointed persons for making intercession.” When this is clearly seen, the contrast between the limitations of the old priestly ministries, and the perfections of the ministries of Jesus, our great High Priest, comes to view with a singular and surprising force. “Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” “Wherefore” is the usual term for introducing the conclusion of an argument. And it is necessary to understand what the writer has been presenting, from which he draws this conclusion. He is writing to professing Christians about themselves. He knows the perils and temptations to which they are exposed, but he has every confidence in the sincerity and earnestness of their Christian life. He wants to help them to enter fully into all their Christian privileges. In this part of his epistle he is trying to show these Christian Jews that Christ, in His sublime spiritual work, as High Priest of the new and spiritual dispensation, must be in every respect superior to the old temporal high priests of the old formal and typical dispensation. In the verses immediately preceding this text the argument is brought to one point. These old Jewish priests were necessarily insufficient, because they could not continue in their office by reason of death. “The vacancies caused in their number by the ravages of death required to be constantly replenished.” They cannot be thought of as altogether efficient when they entered on their office. They gained efficiency by practice and experience. But as they could not continue by reason of death, their practised efficiency could only reach a certain point, and then it was broken off. The dying priest could not transmit his efficiency to the new priest who took his office; the new man had to gain his efficiency in precisely the same way, and then to die as soon as he had gained it. But see how this affected the people, who sought the priest’s sympathy and help in their “drawing near to God.” They would get to know and love the priest; they would find one especially sympathetic and helpful, in dealing with their weaknesses and difficulties. But he would die, and they would feel quite at sea with the new man, who would surely be of another temperament, and would surely adopt new methods. It would be a long time before they would quite fit to the new man and the new regime. I think it was in the Catholic Cathedral at Arundel that this came home to me with singular power. On one side of the nave there are recesses, partitioned off, with the partitions pierced by small grated windows. These are the confessional chambers, where souls confidentially seek the aid of a priest in securing their access to God, and confirming their relations with Him. Outside each recess is a card, with the name of the priest who could be consulted there. On one of the cards had been put the word “dead”; and I thought of the poor souls who had found him their spiritual helper coming to seek him in vain, and broken-heartedly trying to get another priest to understand and sympathise with them, as their old, and perhaps life-long, friend had done. It brought up vividly the insufficiency of the old priesthood, by reason of its limitations. It helped to the realisation of the infinite and unchangeable efficiency of our great High Priest, who is our Priest in the “power of an endless life.” Christ continueth ever, and His priesthood continues with Him. He gains an efficiency of service to us which never breaks off, is never interrupted, and never stops. Of this we may be absolutely assured: we shall never be shifted off to another priest; we shall never be compelled to try and fit ourselves to another. He abideth our Priest continually, here and now, yonder and by-and-by. We need never think of our life under any conditions in which we shall not have Jesus as our Priest. We get full trust in Him, and that trust never will be broken off. See then why the Levitical priesthood, and every other human priesthood, must be considered as far inferior to that of Jesus. “As men in a frail and dying state are constituted priests, the consequence is, that the priesthood is liable to continual change, and must necessarily pass from the hands of one to another, in a short time. Not so in the case of Christ, who, being exalted above the heavens, and constituted High Priest in the temple not made with hands, hath an immutable priesthood, subject to no succession.” Christ’s endless life involves the continuity of His office, and this involves His ability to save His saved ones to the uttermost. Consider—
I. Christ’s continuous work of saving the saved.—Scripture does not speak of a man’s salvation as a thing completed at a given time, or in any single act. It is a Divine process in souls which has a beginning, but is of no value unless it is continued. Scripture speaks of “full salvation,” of salvation in advance, “ready to be revealed.” The term “saving” covers all that God does in the spiritual recovery and culture of men. It is true that we are saved. It is more true that we are being saved, that we are put into Christ’s power for saving, and that He is now doing that saving work. When is a man saved? When the whole work of grace entrusted to the ministry of the great High Priest is fully wrought out in him. Then, and not till then. It is the hope of our life, it is the inspiration of all high endeavour, that we saved ones are being saved. And does not this way of stating truth come close home to us? Is not this just what we feel can alone satisfy us? We cannot be satisfied with that salvation which began our relations with Christ. In our best moments we want to know this—Is He following up His saving work? In a Christmas sermon by George Macdonald, the continued saving work that Jesus has to do in us is suggested in His inimitable way. “It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need. My son, My daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a child again, with My Son, this blessed birth-time. You are growing old and selfish; you must become a child. You are growing old and careful; you must become a child. You are growing old and distrustful; you must become a child. You are growing old, and petty, and weak, and foolish; you must become a child—My child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith, and hope, and love, lying in his mother’s arms in the stable.” What is that but saying in a poetic way that Christ’s continuous work is “saving the saved.” In the text, however, the comprehensive word “save” is put into one particular relation, but it is the all-inclusive relation. Christ is saving us by helping us to “come to God,” to “draw near to God,” to keep in right and close relations with God, and to bring all our ever-varying and ever-multiplied needs and wants to Him. All the saving work will go on, if only we keep constantly “coming boldly to the throne of the heavenly grace.” Our Priest keeps up the relations, is our constant medium; and so we go on towards the “full salvation.”
II. The ground of His ability to save the saved.—It rests upon this, “He ever liveth.” He has the power which belongs to an endless and indissoluble life. He is a priest for ever. There can be no question of His power to carry through what He has undertaken. Man’s work never can be guaranteed as complete. Death comes to men at all times, and stops their work; and whenever he comes, he compels a man to cry out and say, “My purposes are broken off.” The symbol of man’s incomplete life undertakings is the broken pillar over the graves in the cemetery. Christ’s work can be absolutely guaranteed as complete, for death can never arrest Him, can never pluck His priesthood away, and give it to another. It continues to the very uttermost of human need. It is unchangeable, since it keeps ever in the same all-wise, all-loving, and all-sympathetic hands. The ground of Christ’s ability to save the saved is that experience of the needs of the saved which He gained by His own life among men. He can be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God. It is that trust of the high-priestly office which God has made to Him, as the recognition of His infinite acceptableness and efficiency. Able—His ability is Divinely recognised in His trust. But what we need more especially to see is, that the adequate impression of His ability is made upon our hearts by the assurance that “He ever liveth.” If death cannot touch Him, then we know that nothing else can. If death cannot put limits on His priesthood, nothing else can. The ability is unchangeable. He will never be other to us than we have proved Him to be, and He can save us to our “uttermost.”
III. The method of His work in saving the saved.—“To make intercession for them.” Sometimes we see that work as what the living Lord Jesus does, by His Spirit, in His people; and then we call it His sanctifying work. But here the writer dwells on another method in which the saving work is carried out. He secures the supply of all the need which the saved ones ever recognise, and want to carry to God, seeking its supply. No matter when or where, or for what, the saved one wants to draw near to God, to come to the throne of the heavenly grace, there is his High Priest, ready to take his prayer, to present it perfumed with the ever-acceptable incense of His own merit, and to guarantee him answers of blessing and of peace. “He ever liveth to make intercession for us”; and by that method of helping us He is ever carrying out His work of saving the saved. Our relations with God are never broken; our communications with God, our communications from God, are never stopped, and we are sure they never will be stopped, for our High Priest, our Intercessor, is there, and always will be there.
IV. The limit of His efficiency in saving the saved.—“Unto the uttermost.” It is not possible even to suggest all the difficulties and anxieties and distresses into which Christ’s people may get; they never get into any which put them beyond the high-priestly power of Christ. We may have proved His power to strange and exceeding limits, but we have never gone beyond Him, and we never shall. He can save His saved ones to the uttermost. Think again of the poor souls that in their thousand-fold distresses go seeking the sympathy and help of some human priest. What a wealth of woe has been poured into the ears of father-confessors through all the long ages! But how often, oh how painfully often, the priest is helpless, agonisingly helpless! The suppliant goes utterly beyond him with his great cry for help. No saved one ever yet got beyond the great High Priest with the cry of his need. He has always been able to save the saved ones to the uttermost. And He always will be: for He ever lives. What He was yesterday, He is to-day, and He will be for ever; and never shall the hour come round when we may not draw near with our burdened hearts, and find Him there—there ready—there as He has ever been: “able to save unto the uttermost all that would draw near unto God, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.”
A Living Saviour, therefore a Complete Salvation.—The saint learns that salvation must be continuous, that he can no more keep than redeem himself, and that he needs a Saviour, not for once, but for always, not in the first stages of redemption only, but every step of the way—in a word, what we have in the text, One who is “able to save to the uttermost.” And this His ability is because “He ever liveth to make intercession.” Salvation will be to us what it might be in proportion as we look for it, not to the cross, but to Him who, once crucified, is now living—living for evermore, to continue in heaven the work begun on earth.
I. The text reveals our Lord as living to save.—The Atonement does not include the whole work of salvation. As Saviour Christ never rests. He ascended to carry on His work to further developments.
1. Nothing less than this reaches the perfection of grace.
2. Without this His work on earth were unavailing.
3. Only this explains our continued spiritual enrichment.
II. The method by which our Lord carries on His saving work in heaven is that of ceaseless intercession.—
1. This intercession is for those that come unto God by Him.
2. It secures for them everything they ask.
3. And it includes all possible good.
III. This intercession enables Him to save to the uttermost.—
1. To the uttermost depth of depravity.
2. To the uttermost limit of time.
3. To the uttermost measure of perfection.—Charles New.
Hebrews 7:26. Christ as Separate from the World.—With us of to-day it is the commendation of Jesus that He is so profoundly humbled, identified so affectingly with our human state. But the power He had with the men of His time moved in exactly the opposite direction, being the impression He made of His remoteness and separateness from men, when He was, in fact, only a man as they supposed, under all human conditions. The contrast, however, between their position and ours is not so complete as may at first seem to us, for that which makes their impression makes, after all, a good part of ours. The present subject is—The separateness of Jesus from men; the immense power it had, and must ever have, on their feeling and character. Christ was not separated as being at all withdrawn, but only that, in drawing Himself most closely to them, He was felt by them never as being on their level of life and character, but as being parted from them by an immense chasm of distance. His disciples had no definite ideas as to His being a higher nature incarnate. His miracles, and the expectation of Messiah, may have had something to do with their impressions. But there was nothing that should separate Him specially from mankind as being a more than humanly superlative character.
I. Notice how the persons most remote and opposite, even they that finally conspired His death, were impressed or affected by Him.—Spite of their treatment of Him, we can easily see that there is growing up, in their minds, a most peculiar awe of His person. And it appears to be excited more by His manners and doctrine, and a certain indescribable originality and sanctity in both, than by anything else. The public mind became gradually saturated with a kind of awe of His person, as if He might be some higher, finer nature come into the world. It grew until it became a general superstition. The problem with the officials was, not how to arrest any common man, or sinner of mankind, but a superior, mysterious, fearful One, and there wanted, as they imagined, some kind of magic to do it. They took up thus an impression that, if they could suborn one of His followers, it would break the spell of His power, and they could proceed safely. Pilate was profoundly impressed with the sense of something superior, more wise, or holy, or sacred, than he had seen before. The centurion, in presence of the cross, exclaimed, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
II. Notice how the disciples were impressed or affected by the manner and spirit of Jesus.—The remarkable thing is, that He took possession of them strangely, even at the very first, and yet they appear to be more and more impressed with the distance between Him and themselves, the longer they know Him, and the more intimate and familiar their acquaintance with Him. Of this St. Peter affords a striking example. This, in part, is their blessing; for, as they are humbled by it, so they are raised by it, feel the birth of new affinities, rise to higher thoughts, and are wakened to a conscious struggle after God.
III. What is the solution of this profound impression of separateness made by Christ on the world?—His miracles and the repute of His Messiahship do not wholly account for it. It may be said that He produced this impression artificially, by means of certain scenes and observances designed to widen out the distance between Him and the race. Were the really astounding assumptions put forth by Christ designed as declarations or assertions of a superhuman order in His natural person? Certainly He is challenging, in such utterances, honours and prerogatives that are not human. At the same time, if He had not before separated Himself heaven-wide from men, by His character, and produced, in that manner, a sense of some wonderful mystery in Him, He would have been utterly scouted and hooted out of the world for His preposterous assumptions. Indeed, the minds of His disciples were so much occupied with the impressions they felt, under the realities of His character, that they scarcely attended to the strange assumptions of His words, and did not even seem to have taken their meaning till after His death. The impression of Christ’s separation was made, not by scenes, nor by words of assertion, nor by anything designed for that purpose, but it grew out of His life and character—His unworldliness, holiness, purity, truth, love; the dignity of His feeling, the transcendent wisdom and grace of His conduct. He was manifestly one that stood apart from the world in His profoundest human sympathy with it. He rose up out of humanity, or the human level, into Deity and the separate order of uncreated life, by the mere force of His manner and character, and achieved, as man, the sense of a Divine excellence before His personal order as the Son of God was conceived. And so it finally became established in men’s feelings, as it stood in His last prayer, that there was some inexplicable oneness where His inmost life and spirit merged in the Divine and became identical. How great a thing it is that such a Being has come into our world and lived in it! What is meant by holiness, and what especially is its power, or the law of its power? It is the sense of a separated quality in one who lives on a footing of intimacy and oneness with God. It means being drawn apart, or exalted, by being consecrated to God and filled with inspiration from God. This is holiness—the condition of a man when he is separated visibly from the world, and raised above it by a Divine participation. Christianity is a regenerative power upon the world only as it comes into the world in a separated character—as a revelation or sacred importation of holiness. In this lies the efficacy of Christ’s mission, that He brings to men what is not in them, what is opposite to them—the separated glory, the holiness of God. We want a salvation which means a grace brought into the world that is not of it. So Christ will not be a popular Saviour. His profound singularity, as a Being superior to sin and to all human conventionalities, would offend men, and drive them quite away. There is no greater mistake, as regards the true manner of impression on the world, than that we impress it by being homogeneous with it. It is not the being popular that makes one a help to religion,—no holy man was ever a truly popular character. There is no just mode of life, no true holiness, or fruit of holy living, if we do not carry the conviction, by our self-denial, our sobriety in the matter of show, and our withholding from all that indicates our being under the world, that we are in a life separated to God. And there is most profound philosophy in this—“Come out from among them, and be ye separate.”—Horace Bushnell, D.D.
The Divine Charm of Christ’s Character.—“Holy, harmless [guileless, R.V.], undefiled, separate [separated, R.V.] from sinners.”
1. The Christ whom the Jews expected was one whose works should be great—by no means one in whom there should be a humanly superlative character.
2. The separation of Christ from sinners was not one which came out of words of assertion, but one which grew out of His character and His life.
3. We have had among us a Visitor, living out in the moulds of human character, conduct, and feeling the perfections of God. Who, after this, can ever think it a low and common thing
(1) to fill these human spheres;
(2) walk these ranges of human life; and
(3) do these common-place, every-day, human duties?—After Bushnell.
Hebrews 7:27. One Sacrifice suffices.—“Once for all, when He offered up Himself.” That sacrifice suffices for two good reasons:
1. It is the real thing, to which all the pictorial, illustrative, and typical sacrifices pointed.
2. It is so altogether satisfactory, that there cannot possibly ever be any call to have it repeated. Why should it be? The supreme question, in regard to any sacrifice, is this—Is it acceptable to God? Will He make it a basis on which to accept us? If it is acceptable to Him, if He does accept us on the ground of it, what more has to be said? Who has any right to complain? On what ground can any other sacrifice be asked for? And that is precisely what we claim to be the fact concerning the sublime self-sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, concerning the offering of Himself. God is infinitely satisfied with it: He is willing to accept us on the ground of it. And there is nothing more to be said, and nothing more can be required. God requires no other sacrifice; He has accepted this, and makes no other demand. We cannot possibly require any other sacrifice, for we have gained all the acceptance that we can ever want on the ground of this. “By one offering” Christ has gained all-sufficient power to save unto the uttermost: “He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Hebrews 7:25. “He redeemed me!”—The tears of a slave girl just going to be put up for sale drew the attention of a gentleman as he passed through the auction mart of a Southern slave state. The other slaves of the same group, standing in a line for sale like herself, did not seem to care about it, while each knock of the hammer made her shake. The kind man stopped to ask why she alone wept, and was told that the others were used to such things, and might be glad of a change from the hard, harsh homes they came from, but that she had been brought up with much care by a good owner, and she was terrified to think who might buy her. “Her price?” the stranger asked. He thought a little when he heard the great ransom, but paid it down. Yet no joy came to the poor slave’s face when he told her she was free. She had been born a slave, and knew not what freedom meant. Her tears fell fast on the signed parchment, which her deliverer brought to prove it to her. She only looked at him with fear. At last he got ready to go his way, and as he told her what she must do when he was gone, it began to dawn on her what freedom was. With the first breath she said, “I will follow him! I will serve him all my days!” and to every reason against it she only cried, “He redeemed me! He redeemed me! He redeemed me!” When strangers used to visit that master’s house, and noticed, as all did, the loving, constant service of the glad-hearted girl, and asked her why she was so eager with unbidden service night by night and day by day, she had but one answer, and she loved to give it—“He redeemed me! He redeemed me! He redeemed me!” “And so,” said the servant of Christ, who spent a night on his journey in a Highland glen, and told this story in a meeting where every heart was thrilled, “let it be with you. Serve Jesus as sinners bought back with blood; and when men take notice of the way you serve Him, the joy that is in your looks, the love that is in your tone, the freedom of your service, have one answer to give—‘He redeemed me!’
Intercession.—“A child,” saith Ambrose, “that is willing to present his father with a posy goes into the garden, and there gathers some flowers and some weeds together; but coming to his mother, she picks out the weeds, and binds the flowers, and so it is presented to the father.” Thus, when we have put up our prayers, Christ comes and picks away the weeds, the sin of our prayers, and presents nothing but flowers to His Father, which are a sweet-smelling savour.—Thomas Watson.