CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 8:7. Faultless.—Not merely “free from defect,” but “incomplete,” unable fully to meet man’s case. The old system was complete enough for its limited sphere and purpose: fault was found with its limitations. No place have been sought.—There would have been no occasion for introducing another. The ground would have been covered. It may be said, Why then did not God make Judaism fully efficient? The answer may be given in the words of St. Paul, “That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” The spiritual always has to be prepared for.
Hebrews 8:8. He saith.—See Jeremiah 31:31-34. I will make.—Lit. “I will cut”; cutting a covenant was a familiar phrase, referring to the custom of slaying victims at the sealing of a covenant.
Hebrews 8:9. Not according to.—But different from; having a different central idea. The proved infirmity of men called for some alteration of the covenant terms. They needed to be dealt with in another way.
Hebrews 8:10. Covenant, etc.—This is the term of the new covenant; in it God undertook to inspire hearts, and not merely to guide conduct. Into their mind.—Deeply infix. This is fulfilled in Christ. His love is the best of all persuasions to righteousness. Contrast “law” and “love” as motive-powers; or obedience rendered from “fear” or from “affection.” Notice how fully the writer brings out the moral value of the Redeemer’s work.
Hebrews 8:11. Not teach, etc.—This describes generally the contrast between the time when a difficult law covered conduct, and the time when the love of Christ constrained. We need not press this beyond the proprieties of the figure. See Isaiah 54:13.
Hebrews 8:13. A new.—The writer fixes attention on this word. It involved the former covenant taking its place among things old and done with. If the new has come, and it is manifestly a fuller display of the Divine love and power, then the old is superseded. It is ready to vanish like a shadow. Let it go. Ready to vanish away.—Lit. “Now that which is becoming antiquated, and waxing aged, is near obliteration.” R.V. “But that which is becoming old, and waxeth aged, is nigh unto vanishing away.” “What is very old is near dissolution.” Observe that this writer could not have thus expressed himself after the final Roman siege of Jerusalem, which resulted in the sweeping away of the formal Mosaic system.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 8:7-13
The Spirituality of the New Covenant.—Here is an important fact, which the Jewish Christians are called to face. They boasted of the old covenant. They clung to it tenaciously. They were even tempted by the bigoted party to return to their older form of allegiance to it; and yet their own Scriptures declared that God was dissatisfied with it, and with what had been accomplished by means of it, and had promised to establish with His people a new and better covenant. Already this writer had spoken of the older covenant as “weak, unprofitable, and earthly” (Hebrews 7:18). It is a great addition to his argument to be able to add, that Scripture declares God Himself to have been dissatisfied with its working. In support of his position the passage Jeremiah 31:31-34 is quoted. There is an important difference between the way in which the old system is dealt with in this epistle and in the recognised Pauline epistles. “To St. Paul the contrast between the law and the gospel was that between the letter and the spirit, between bondage and freedom, between works and faith, between command and promise, between threatening and mercy. All these polemical elements disappear almost entirely from the epistle to the Hebrews, which regards the two dispensations as furnishing a contrast between type and reality. This was the more possible to Apollos (if he was the writer), because he regards Judaism not so much in the light of a law as in the light of a priesthood, and a system of worship.” In three respects, according to the promise given to Jeremiah, the new covenant would be better than the old. And each respect is an advantage on the spiritual side.
I. The laws of the new covenant were to be written on men’s hearts.—The laws of the old covenant were engraven on stone slabs, or written in books, to be read by men’s eyes; and a thousand things would blind them to, or hinder them from, reading and obeying. And the obedience offered to outward and written law need only be formal and perfunctory. In the new covenant God’s laws get into man’s will through man’s love. The persuasion of “I ought” is changed into the sweet constraint of “I wish to.” Christ, the ministrant of the new covenant, gets His power in men’s hearts, and sways motives and will to an obedience which is a holy joy.
II. The privileges of the new covenant will be universally enjoyed.—A covenant that is spiritual is free from all local, national, or race restrictions. It is something for man as a spiritual being, and therefore something for universal man. Exclusiveness was characteristic of the Mosaic dispensation; it was a necessary feature, because the covenant was formal, and the terms purely material privilege. All barriers between Jew and Gentile, bond and free, male and female, are removed when God graciously makes spiritual covenant with spiritual beings.
III. The working of the new covenant involves free forgiveness of the sins of the older covenant.—This difficulty might come to the minds of those who were called to enter into the new and spiritual covenant—What is to be done with the penalties which rest on us because of the breaking of the old? The promise of Jehovah through Jeremiah is, that when men come into the new covenant, their sins and inquities shall be remembered no more. When men are brought into right relations with God, their past can be dealt with in a way of free forgiveness. Their sins can be blotted out. As the application of his point the writer urges, that to call the former covenant old implies that it had done its work, had become effete, and was ready to be put aside. The old covenant did not match the new times. Nobody need regret the putting aside of that old covenant, if they would enter fully into all the high spiritual privileges of the new. “What is very old is near dissolution.” “If ‘nigh unto vanishing’ at the time when Jeremiah wrote, well might it now be believed to have passed away.” Accept fully the new covenant, which pledges on your part the obedience of love.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 8:10. God’s Side in the New Covenant.—“Called of God a high priest.” One of the grave perils of the evangelical setting of the redemption truths lies in the misapprehension of its teaching which men only too readily make. Fixing such exclusive attention on what Christ suffered and did, many persons are found to cherish the notion that the Atonement is something which Christ devised and carried through, if not in opposition to God, yet in some way to get over difficulties which, for some inscrutable reason, God could not surmount Himself. Notions of appeasing wrath, and uncareful settings of the idea of propitiating, tend to nourish such untrue and unworthy notions. It is the absolutely primary and essential truth of Christianity that the Redemption is God’s redemption, the Atonement is God’s own providing, and the Sacrifice is God Himself in sacrifice. There is no ground whatever for separating God from Christ in the work of the Atonement, either in the Scriptures, or in the doctrine of the Church. What has to be dealt with is the cherished sentiment of many persons, and the evil influence of undisciplined and enthusiastic teachers. It may therefore be shown—
1. That throughout our Lord’s life, and as a marked characteristic of all His teachings, He put Himself in the second place, and the Father-God first. His supreme idea was to get men to think well of God. It is to dishonour Christ to attempt to put Him in a place which He wholly refused to occupy. This kind of thing He asserted continually: “The Father’s who sent Me”; “Thou hast sent Me.”
2. The apostles, in their teaching, carefully keep Christ in the ministerial and mediatorial place, and ascribe all the glory of the world’s redemption to God. One passage may guide the Bible student to many. St. Peter, speaking of Christ, says, “Who by Him do believe in God, who raised Him up from the dead.”
3. A redemption for man could not be satisfactory unless it were God’s devising. This may be shown by the figure of a covenant. It were of little account to us if God were forced, by something Christ did, to enter into covenant with us. The persuasion is on us to enter into covenant, because God so graciously offers it, and provides the Person for negotiating it.
Hebrews 8:12. The Considerateness of the New Covenant.—“For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more.” This is part of the anticipative description of the covenant that was to be made in the latter days; and it gives the supreme point of interest in that covenant. In a sense the old covenant of works had in it no considerateness. It demanded an absolute and perfect formal obedience to formal rules, and took no account whatever of human frailties. Its terms concerned conduct; every man was assumed to be able to order his conduct; and he must order it so as to secure a perfect obedience, or he must endure the punishment that must come on the disobedient. How inconsiderate of human infirmity the old covenant of works was comes into full view when the Pharisees try to translate that covenant for their day, and exaggerate its characteristics. They elaborated its demands until they put men’s lives into prison bonds. They allowed no excuses for failure, and so bound grievous burdens on men’s shoulders beyond their power to bear. The sin of Rabbinism lies in its exaggeration of the inconsiderateness of the formal covenant of works. Or the weakness of the old covenant, and the superiority of the new, may be seen from another point of view. It dealt with men’s legal offences, not with their moral conditions. It dealt with their sins against rules, but not with their sins against God. It did not take into its consideration the iniquities which burdened men’s consciences, but did not find expression in acts which disturbed relations. The considerateness of the new covenant is seen in its contrast with the old in both these respects. It does take account of men’s frailties. It seeks a response of good-will from men, and is pitiful and compassionate when the good-will is thwarted from adequate expression by human infirmities. Nay, in view of human frailty, it proposes to be a power in men. “The method of the kingdom is to have the law written on the heart. Thereby the keeping of all that is essential is effectually provided for.” And the covenant does deal with men’s iniquities, with men’s sins before God, assuring a full Divine forgiveness for the things which burden the conscience and oppress the heart.
Hebrews 8:13, taken with Hebrews 10:9. The True Sacrifice.—Simply a theological expression of the unvarying and unvaried process of all things pertaining to human life. From the embryo to the decaying time of life, all constitutions of men everywhere obey this law. As soon as life comes, it begins to grow, grows to greatness, and then passes on to decay. The writer distinctly states that these “tables of stone,” “written by the finger of God,” the goat’s hair, and the rams’ skins dyed red, and the badgers’ skins, and all these things, said to be ordered by God, are worn out. “Finding fault” with them, he tells us that they are no longer of any possible utility; that though asserted to be of Divine origin, yet they were human in their conditions, and when they got down to earth they were subject to moth, rust, and decay. And, holding up the old covenant as a worn-out vesture, he says, “it is ready to vanish away.” Necessity has ordered it so, that all things shall seem Divine to men which are accepted as such by the wisest men of the time; and, on the other hand, nothing ought to be Divine to any man except the soul of the wisest sees it to be so. Do we really believe that God instituted these sacrifices? The conception of God which led to sacrifice was like most of our thoughts about God. It was born in the human heart. It was of humanity. It is impossible that man can conceive of any God except in his own likeness. The thought of sacrifice proceeds out of sinful hearts, addresses itself to sinful souls, and it belongs to the morning-time of the world, when men were unable to think of a restoration to favour without a material guarantee. Those who are weak require the crutch of Forms. Man grows slowly out of the childish trappings of a time when only through these outward things could be made visible the unseen. The prophets arose, and cast scorn upon the useless system of sacrifices. The people still clung to it, because they thought that all this outward business was a very good substitute for inward repentance and purity; but their wise men knew that there can be no sacrifice of any avail without a penitent soul and a sad heart. Now in this manner of religion you can have habits and forms without any true religion at all; skeletons without any life; substitutes for thought. And the mere observances of such outward forms, things that are done from mere habit, are done at the expense of the soul. Men come to fast without caring or fearing, to bow without reverence, to sing without enthusiasm. Isaiah scorned the Sodom-apple of outward purity when there was no heart of reality within. At last these forms came to be looked upon as dead. Then began the bloodless religion. Wheresoever Paul went, there the knife was sheathed, the fire died down, the beast ceased to be offered up. Wheresoever Christ was preached, and the religion of Christ was introduced, this wonderful effect always followed—the ascending smoke of the sacrifice on the altar was for ever done away with. Even in the Romish Church, they do not offer sacrifice, but only a bloodless offering, in memory of a sacrifice. The orthodox belief touching the death of Jesus Christ is the sublimest progress that man has ever made, up to the time when, through the very sublimity of this progress, it became necessary to go much further. What a wonderful difference there is in the spiritual conception of sacrifice! When the beast died, he died unwillingly; but when the Divine sacrifice was made, it was the sacrifice of Christ’s own will. To come forth freely to save the people is one thing, but to be the unwilling victim of the sacrificing priest is quite another. Therefore the whole thought of the death of Christ, as a free-will offering laid down by Himself in the midst of perfect power to refuse, is an amazing gain, a wonderful improvement in spiritual conception. If we look at it from the other side of it, what a gain! In the old times man supplied the victim; in the new times, God. In the old days the sinner found the sacrificial lamb; in the new days the God against whom man had sinned found “the Lamb of God.” This was the greatest gain that ever theology made, and so complete was it that man dare not afterwards offer his little pitiful sacrifices. God had sent a sacrifice, and it was impossible after that to be offering rams and lambs and bulls. When a man has been sacrificed, when for sinning man the only begotten Son, the beloved of God, has been sacrificed, when He has died, man sees at once that all other sacrifices now are dust and ashes. After the Son of God had been given, what could come? After this great High Priest had sacrificed His own life, after this Son of man had entered into the “Holy of Holies” and sacrificed Himself, the knife must be sheathed for ever, and the altar become cold. “There remaineth now no more sacrifice for sin.” Doth God require any sacrifice before He can forgive? There is the life of Christ, and there is the death of Christ. That throws light upon the old Jewish history. He is perfect manhood filled with Divineness, who laid down His own will in order that the will of God might be all in all. From what direction shall we gather the light in which we are to view the death of Christ? Shall the light be borrowed from Paganism, Judaism, and the old world, or developed from the whole life and spirit of Christ Himself? The Atonement is the reconcilement in a man of the Divine and the human so perfectly, that men following its laws are necessarily redeemed? In them the hostility between heaven and earth has ceased; the will of God has been perfectly done; and therefore all the ends at which religion has ever aimed have been attained, and the supreme victory won at last—the victory of the Spirit over the flesh, of duty over pleasure, of the will of God over the weak wishes and desires of man.—George Dawson, M.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Hebrews 8:11. From the Least to the Greatest.—Why this order, “from the least to the greatest”? We might have expected the gospel to come into the world as the sun begins to shine, first tipping with gold the summits of the loftiest hills, and thence finding its way down to the depths of the valleys. No, it is “from the least to the greatest,” as if that were the natural way for Christianity to work. And so it is—it is God’s way. He chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings perfects His praise.” And this, by the way, affords an answer to an objection which may be made to our Sabbath-school operations abroad. It may be said, What good can your little work do there? This is the old objection—“Master, we have here five barley loaves, and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?” Yes, what are they in man’s hands? We know what they were in the hands of our Lord. “From the least even to the greatest,” that is the history of Christianity. It is the little grain of mustard seed dropped into the ground, which indeed is the least of seeds, but afterwards becomes a tree affording shelter for the birds of the air: it is like the pebble from the brook, which once felled the Philistine giant; it is like the stone cut from the mountain, which destroyed the great image, and filled the whole earth.