THE CONTRAST OF THE TWO COVENANTS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
VIRTUALLY a new topic is dealt with in this chapter. Hitherto the personal characteristics of the high priest have occupied the chief place: from this point to Hebrews 10:18, the ministration of the high priest receives special attention. The writer first contrasts the two covenants. God, who entered into the old covenant, had promised, in Jeremiah, a new covenant. It would prove to be superior to the old in three respects:
1. Because the law of it would be written on the heart.
2. Because it would be a universal covenant, not limited to any one race.
3. Because it would be a covenant pledging forgiveness of sins: and so dealing with what, in every age, is found to be man’s deepest need. “The decrepitude of the old covenant, indicated by its being called ‘old,’ is a sign of its approaching and final evanescence” (Hebrews 8:13).
Hebrews 8:1. The sum.—κεφάλαιον; better, as R.V., “the chief point”; Stuart, “the most important thing”; Theophylact, “that I may say the greatest thing, and the most comprehensive.” The idea of review, or recapitulation, is not suitable here. The superiority of Christ’s person and office lead on to the superiority of Christ’s work and sacrifice. The superiority lies in this—the work of Christ is spiritual. So the sacrifice He offered must be a spiritual sacrifice. Three new points are introduced:
1. The nature of Christ’s sacrifice.
2. The place where it is offered.
3. Its efficacy to atone for sin. Who is set.—R.V. “who sat down”; perhaps with designed contrast. The older priests stood before God in His earthly sanctuary. But the contrast between the places is more important than between the attitudes. In the heavens.—Spiritual temple. “The one is seated on the throne of God in the heavens, while the other only ministers on earth, in a temple reared by the hands of men.” Each is on the right side as ministrant, but Christ is in the true temple.
Hebrews 8:2. Sanctuary.—The spiritual, heavenly counterpart of the Holy of Holies, in which the ancient high priest specially and alone ministered. Margin, R.V., gives “holy things.” The word used for minister, λειτουργός, means public “minister,” not merely “servant.” True tabernacle.—Not as distinct from “false,” but in our sense of “real”; “veritable” in contrast with “unsubstantial.” The tabernacle in heaven is the “substance”; that on earth is the “accident,” the “image,” the illustration. “The Alexandrian Jews, as well as the Christian scholars of Alexandria, had adopted from Plato the doctrine of Ideas, which they regarded as Divine and eternal archetypes of which material and earthly things were but the imperfect copies. They regarded the Mosaic tabernacle as a mere sketch, copy, or outline of the Divine Idea or Pattern. The Idea is the perfected Reality of its material shadow” (Farrar).
Hebrews 8:3. Gifts.—Oblations; firstfruits of grain, vegetables, etc. Sacrifices.—Offerings involving the devotion of animal life. “Both were presented to God by the priest, who acted as internuntius between Jehovah and the offerer.”
Hebrews 8:4. On earth.—In the ordinary earthly relations with men. Seeing there were divinely appointed priests for the earthly sphere, Christ could have no place as priest. In the Jewish Temple He was not wanted. Notice how carefully this writer guards the Divine claims of Judaism, while recognising the limitation of its sphere, and the temporary character of its mission.
Hebrews 8:5. Example and shadow.—ὑπόδειγμα, image, effigy, copy, resemblance. “A token suggesting, and designed to suggest, the original.” σκιά, shadow, slight and imperfect image, sketch. “The shadow has no substance or independent existence, but represents only the outline of a body.” “The tabernacle is only a sketch, an outline, a ground pattern, as it were—at the best a representative image—of the heavenly Archetype.” The words of God are not in the Greek. Pattern.— Exodus 25:40. The writer seems to have in mind the Jewish tradition, that a heavenly tabernacle was actually presented to the vision of Moses, and this model was to be imitated by him precisely. The passage in Exodus does not require us to assume a visible representation.
Hebrews 8:6. More excellent.—In a higher range. Old priests kept in the material range; Christ belongs to the spiritual range. Read the clause, “A ministry more excellent in proportion as He is also.” Better covenant.—Seen in one thing. Under the old there was law for the eyes; under the new there is law for the heart.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 8:1-6
The Principal Thing concerning Christ.—“This is the sum” does not mean “this is a brief recapitulation.” It means “this is the chief point”: “this is the most important thing”; “this is the consideration upon which attention should be most anxiously fixed.” It is virtually a new topic that is dealt with here. “The writer has treated of the superiority of Christ’s priesthood, in respect to duration and succession. He has shown that Christ was made priest by the solemnity of an oath, while the Levites were not introduced to their office by such a solemnity. The priesthood of the latter was liable to continual interruption and vicissitude, from the frail and dying state of those who were invested with the office of priest; while the perpetuity of Christ’s priestly office was never exposed to interruption from causes of this nature. And the Jewish priests were themselves not only peccable, but peccant men, and needed to offer sacrifices on their own account, as well as for the sake of others; while Christ was holy, and perfectly free from all sin, and exalted to a glorious state in which He was placed for ever beyond the reach of it, so that His sacrifice would endure solely to the benefit of sinful men. Now the writer comes to the consideration of the duties themselves: viz. the nature of the sacrifice which Jesus offers; the place where it is offered; the efficacy which it has, to atone for sin; and the difference, in regard to all these points, between the sacrifice offered by Christ, and that which was presented by the Jewish priests. The dignity of an office, and the particular qualifications of the person who is invested with it, are things which in their own nature are subordinate to the great end which is to be accomplished by the office itself” (Moses Stuart). The passage before us introduces the new subject by reaffirming the essentially spiritual range and sphere in which this new, and altogether greater, High Priest works.
I. The sphere in which this great High Priest works is the spiritual tabernacle.—Which was but represented and foreshadowed in the Jewish tabernacle. The points presented are—
1. This High Priest is such by virtue of His character, which is a spiritual thing. He is “holy, guileless, undefiled.”
2. This High Priest is in heaven, the sphere in which God is and works, the sphere of spiritual interests and relations.
3. This High Priest ministers in “holy things”—that is, spiritual matters. (This is the marginal reading of the word “sanctuary.”) Reference, however, may be intended to the spiritual counterpart of the Holy of Holies, which Jesus, having once entered for us, never leaves. If the spiritual is higher than the natural; if it is that which the material pictures; if it is the reality,—then the Jewish Christians need not hesitate to give up the shadow for the true, the spiritual tabernacle, and the spiritual Priest who ministers in it. But just what Christian teachers have found supremely difficult in every age, was found as difficult in the first Christian age: it is to awaken in the minds and hearts of men a fitting sense of the value of the spiritual; to deliver them from the deteriorating slavery of the “material.”
II. The office which the great High Priest holds is a spiritual priesthood.—It is no question of rivalry with the Aaronic priests. Jesus cannot be compared with them at all. He does not lie in the same plane. There are priests, Divinely appointed, “who serve that which is a copy and shadow of heavenly things.” Jesus has nothing to do with firstfruits of grain, oblations of meal or of wine; blood of bulls or goats, ashes of heifers, or sweet-smelling incense. “If He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all.” A spiritual priesthood deals with the removal of sin, the effecting of reconciliation, the offering of men themselves to God, the covenant of soul-obedience, the maintenance of communion between God the Spirit and the spirits of men. A spiritual priesthood is the mediacy of spiritual affairs. As a priest Jesus must indeed have somewhat to offer. His offering was Himself. His sacrifice was this—“He offered Himself without spot to God.” That is the true sacrifice, which every other sacrifice does but represent. St. Paul says, “Christ … hath given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2).
III. The ministry in which the great High Priest is engaged is carrying out the conditions pledged in a spiritual covenant.—He is established as Mediator of a better, because spiritual, covenant, which hath been enacted upon better, because spiritual, promises. “The first covenant only promised external purification, and the civil or ecclesiastical pardon of an offender who complied with the rites which it enjoined; but under the new covenant real pardon of sin by God is to be obtained, with purification and peace of conscience, the hope of eternal life, and union at last with the assembly of the redeemed in a better world.” Christ keeps for God all the terms of the new covenant on His side, and graciously and efficiently helps man to keep all the terms of the new covenant on his side. “Judaism was but a shadow of which Christianity was the substance; Judaism was but a copy of which Christianity was the permanent idea and heavenly archetype; it was but a scaffolding within which the genuine temple had been built; it was (now) but a chrysalis from which the inward winged life had departed” (Farrar).
Hebrews 8:2. The Genuine Tabernacle.—The word means “genuine,” and in this epistle “ideal,” “archetypal.” It is the antithesis not to what is spurious, but to what is material, secondary, and transient. The Alexandrian Jews, as well as the Christian scholars of Alexandria, had adopted from Plato the doctrine of Ideas, which they regarded as Divine and eternal archetypes of which material and earthly things were but the imperfect copies. They found their chief support for this introduction of Platonic views into the interpretation of the Bible in Exodus 25:40; Exodus 26:30 (quoted in Hebrews 8:5). Accordingly they regarded the Mosaic tabernacle as a mere sketch, copy, or outline of the Divine Idea or Pattern. The Idea is the perfected Reality of its material shadow. They extended this conception much further:—
“What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought?”
The “genuine tabernacle” is the heavenly Ideal (Hebrews 9:24) shown to Moses. To interpret it of “the glorified body of Christ,” by a mere verbal comparison of John 2:19, is to adopt the all-but-universal method of perverting the meaning of Scripture by the artificial elaborations and inferential after-thoughts of a scholastic theology.—Farrar.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 8:1-2. The Enthroned Servant Christ.—In these two verses strikingly different representations of our Lord’s heavenly state are given. In the one He is regarded as seated “on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty.” In the other He is regarded as being, notwithstanding that session, a “minister of the sanctuary,” performing priestly functions there. The royal repose of Jesus is full of activity for us. Resting, He works; working, He rests. Reigning, He serves; serving, He reigns.
I. The seated Christ.—“Has taken His seat.” The writer, addressing Hebrews, who were steeped in Rabbinical thought, takes one of their own words, and speaks of God as the “Majesty in the heavens,” emphasising the idea of sovereignty, power, illimitable magnificence. “At the right hand” of this throned personal abstraction, “the Majesty,” sits the Man Christ Jesus. His manhood is elevated to this supreme dignity. The eternal Word who was with the Father in the beginning, before all the worlds, went back to “the glory which He had with the Father.” But the new thing was that there went, too, that human nature which Jesus Christ indissolubly united with Divinity in the mystery of the lowliness of His earthly life. We have a High Priest who, in His manhood, in which He is knit to us, hath taken His seat on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. There is a profound sense in which that session of Jesus at the right hand of God proclaims both the localisation of His present corporeal humanity, and the ubiquity of His presence. And what is the deepest meaning of it all? What means that majestic session at “the right hand of the throne”? Before that throne “angels veil their faces.” If in action, they stand; if in adoration, they fall before Him. Creatures bow prostrate. Who is He that, claiming and exercising a quality which in a creature is blasphemy and madness, takes His seat in that awful Presence? Other words of Scripture represent the same idea in a still more wonderful form when they speak of “the throne of God and of the Lamb,” and when He Himself speaks from heaven of Himself as “set down with My Father on His throne.” If we translate the symbol into colder words, it means that deep repose which, like the Divine rest after creation, is not for recuperation of exhausted powers, but is the sign of an accomplished purpose and achieved task, a share in the sovereignty of heaven, and the wielding of the energies of Deity—rest, royalty, and power belong now to the Man sitting at the right hand of the throne of God.
II. The servant Christ.—“A minister of the sanctuary.” The word employed here for “minister,” and which I have ventured variously to translate servant, means one who discharges some public official act of service, either to God or man, and it is especially, though by no means exclusively, employed in reference to the service of a ministering priest. The allusion in the second portion of my text is plainly enough to the ritual of the great Day of Atonement, on which the high priest once a year went into the Holy Place; and there, in the presence of God throned between the cherubim, by the offering of the blood of the sacrifice, made atonement for the sins of the people. Thus says our writer, that throned and sovereign Man who, in token of His accomplished work, and in the participation of Deity, sits hard by the throne of God, is yet ministering at one and the same time within the veil, and presenting the might of His own sacrifice. Put away the metaphor, and we just come to this, a truth which is far too little dwelt upon in this generation, that the work which Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross, all-sufficient and eternal as it was, in the range and duration of its efficacy, is not all His work. The past, glorious as it is, needs to be supplemented by the present, no less wonderful and glorious, in which Jesus Christ within the veil, in manners all unknown to us, by His presence there in the power of the sacrifice that He has made, brings down upon men the blessings that flow from that sacrifice. Our salvation is not so secured by the death upon the cross as to make needless the life before the throne. Jesus that died is the Christ that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. In its implication the text suggests to us other ways in which the rest of Christ is full of activity. “I am among you as He that serveth” is true for the heavenly glory of the exalted Lord quite as much as for the lowly humiliation of His life upon earth. And no more really did He stoop to serve when, laying aside His garments, He girded Himself with the towel, and wiped the disciples’ feet, than He does to-day when, having resumed the garments of His glorious Divinity, and having seated Himself in His place of authority above us, He comes forth, according to the wonderful condescension of His own parable, to serve His servants who have entered into rest, and those also who still toil. The glorified Christ is a ministering Christ. In us, on us, for us, He works, in all the activities of His exalted repose, as truly and more mightily than He did when here He helped the weaknesses, and healed the sicknesses, and soothed the sorrows, and supplied the wants, and washed the feet, of a handful of poor men. This vision of the ascended Christ is—
1. For the past a seal. An ascended Christ forces us to believe in an atoning Christ.
2. For the present a strength. See Christ on the throne, and He interprets, dwindles, and yet ennobles the world and life.
3. For the future a prophecy. There is the measure of the possibilities of human nature. Whatever that Man is, we may be.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Hebrews 8:3. Gifts and Sacrifices.—In Hebrews 5:1 the same distinction is made between “gifts,” or oblations, or free-will offerings, or thank-offerings, and sacrifices for sin, which include the various sin- and trespass-offerings, that involved taking the life of some animal. The two words are put together in order that the work of the old priests should not be unduly limited. If it were, their anticipation of the work of Christ would seem to limit His work also. And, in fact, the attention which has been so exclusively given to the bloody sacrifices of Judaism has involved a too exclusive attention to the sacrificial side of our Redeemer’s work. Christ also is “ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that He may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” The high priest acted the part of a mediator between God and men; he was to aid men in regard to their spiritual and religious concerns. It is infinitely important that our Lord should, by the offering of Himself as the sacrifice for sin, secure our reconciliation and acceptance with God. But we must beware of keeping our interest too exclusively to that. It is the most serious loss to lose Christ’s relations to the whole circle of our religious thought, and feeling, and expression, and relation.
Christ’s Spiritual Offering.—“Wherefore it is necessary that this High Priest also have somewhat to offer.” But His range is the spiritual. There is no place for Christ as a priest in the material and earthly spheres. “There are those who offer gifts according to the law.” We can understand what gifts Christ can offer for us, if we can see what His own offering was. He offered Himself, in His human body, to God. He did not offer only something He possessed—He offered Himself, as a spiritual being. He offered to God His love, His trust, His obedience, His will, His life—Himself. No matter what was the medium through which the offering was made, that, and nothing less than that, was the offering. It carried with it everything He possessed, but it was Himself. And the offering which Christ makes for us as our High Priest is a spiritual offering—it is ourselves. He offers us to God even as He offered Himself—our love, our trust, our obedience, our will, our life; but the offering carries with it all our possessions, all we have, and all we can do. The apostle Paul finds the precise term for the spiritual offering which Christ, as our Priest, presents for us when He says, “I beseech you that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.” Christ offers us to God even as He offered Himself.
Hebrews 8:6. The Spiritual is Every Way Better.—“A more excellent ministry.” We can hardly wonder that the apostles found it so difficult to lift men into the region of spiritual thoughts, and feelings, and associations, seeing that, in these advanced times, we still find it so supremely difficult to do the same thing. Materialistic conceptions of the redemption work namper earnest and enlightened Christian teachers to-day, and such men are called vague and mystical when they try to do the same work that the writer of this epistle did. Still the work must be done, whatever may be the personal sacrifice involved in the doing. The spiritual is the real. Christ is a spiritual being; His mission is to spiritual beings; He deals with spiritual matters; He deals with them in spiritual ways; and He works towards spiritual ends. The salvation He provides is a soul salvation for men who are souls. And the old salvations of Judaism, and the bodily healings of our Lord’s earthly life, are strictly pictorial and illustrative; they are but “figures of the true,” and the spiritual is every way the better. Writing of the antipathies of Jesus to the formalising, materialising, and outward teachings of the Pharisees, so mischievous because not only so unspiritual, but so opposed to the spiritual, Dr. A. B. Bruce says: “The spirit of Pharisaism lives on through the ages, ever embodying itself in new forms, and growing like a fungus on every manifestation of the Divine in human life, not excepting evangelic religion itself, which might be supposed to be its natural antithesis. The protest of the Founder of our faith did not slay the evil thing; it only clearly revealed its nature, and made manifest to the whole world that Christianity and it have nothing in common. Therefore the protest needs to be continually renewed.” We must demand that our Lord Himself, His life-work on earth, and His continuous work in the heavenlies, shall all be seen in the spiritual light. Getting what illustrative help we may from material things and relations, we must see that He is spiritual. His atonement was a spiritual one, and His intercession is spiritual; and for us the spiritual is better; it bears relation to the spiritual beings that we are.
Hebrews 8:6-13. Hand Guidance and Heart Guidance.—The first covenant was not found faultless; therefore place was found for another and a better covenant.
I. The first covenant was the guidance of the hand (Hebrews 8:9).—It was very condescending and gracious on the part of God thus to conduct Israel, but such guidance is suggestive of many imperfections.
1. The guidance of the hand is the guidance of childhood. Thus the parent leads the child. So the first dispensation dealt with a people in a state of childhood. When I was a child I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things. How often may we be reminded of these words in reading the history of Israel! How often do we feel that they were but children in moral understanding and strength, and that God dealt with them as such! This is the precise argument of the apostle (Galatians 4:1-5).
2. The guidance of the hand is the guidance of blindness. Thus do we lead a blind man. Israel was guided by precepts and ceremonies, “seeing through a glass darkly.” How imperfectly they apprehended the spirituality of the law, the real glory of atonement, the highest perfection of character, the future life! And God guided them as a blind man is guided.
3. The guidance of the hand is the guidance of weakness. You stretch out the hand to support the old or sick who walk with tottering step. Thus Israel was “without strength.” “The law was weak through the flesh,” and God by many gracious expedients sought to hold up the ever-fainting, sinking race. This economy was evidently not the best, although it was the best possible for the period, and the fact that Israel on such a large scale lapsed into idolatry and sin proved the weakness and unprofitableness of their carnal dispensation.
II. The second covenant was the guidance of the heart.—
1. It is the guidance of manhood (Hebrews 8:10). The child is controlled by what is external, the man by what is internal and spiritual. So the Christian dispensation makes the mind and affections the grand source of obedience. It puts the love of God and the love of God’s law deep into the soul, and trusts everything to this. It speaks to our rational, affectional, immortal nature, and seeks to harmonise that nature with the Divine nature, so that we may instinctively walk in the right path.
2. The guidance of knowledge (Hebrews 8:11). All shall possess a true spiritual knowledge of God. In this dispensation the Spirit illuminates the soul, and we know the things which are freely given to us of God.
3. The guidance of power (Hebrews 8:12). It gives that purity which is only another name for power. It pardons sin, cleanses from sin, and by imparting righteousness to the soul enables us to go from strength to strength. The Jews are condemned for failing under the first dispensation, although it has so many limitations and defects, but how much more shall we be condemned if we fail under this best of covenants!—W. L. Watkinson.