* Taken down by a hearer, and revised by the author.
THE Epistle to the Hebrews is largely devoted to a discourse upon the priestly office of the Lord Jesus Christ. The inspired writer undertakes to show that the priesthood of Christ was incomparably superior to the priesthood that obtained under the old dispensation. God had certainly appointed the Levitical priesthood, but He did not design that that priesthood should always continue. The Levitical priesthood was only appointed as a shadow or figure of better things that were yet to come. It shadowed forth the priestly work of the Son of God who was called to this office even from all eternity and who would appear “in the flesh” in due time.
Now, in looking at the words before us for a short time, in dependence on the Spirit of Truth, let us observe, in the first place, the Person of the High Priest who is here brought under our notice; then, in the second place, let us consider the “one offering” which He presented unto God; in the third place, let us observe the perfection which He produces by this one offering: and in the last place, let us notice the description that is here given of the persons who are perfected by His offering.
I.—Let us notice first, briefly, the Person of the High Priest who is spoken of in our text.
The High Priest is evidently none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. The inspired apostle sets forth the constitution of the person of the great High Priest whom God had appointed, and the work which He came to accomplish. If you study the first and second chapters of this Epistle, you will see a wonderful account of the person of the Lord Jesus. He is set before us as none other than the Son of God by a mysterious eternal generation. The Father said to Him, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” He is also described as a Son who is co-equal with the Father in the ever-blessed Godhead. For it is written that “Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy Kingdom,” while He is further addressed as the divine Creator of heaven and earth. “And thou, Lord, hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hand.” Now, my friends, it is perfectly plain that the great High Priest of our New Testament profession is a divine person, “God over all blessed for ever.” He exercises His priestly office in His divinity as well as in His humanity. It is the Son of God as a divine, eternal person, who has been called to the discharge of this important office. The Father, as representing the dignity and love of the ineffable Godhead in relation to the fallen children of men, called the Son to perform the work of a priest as a part of His great task as Mediator of the new Covenant. “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” Observe, further, that the Great High Priest possesses in the constitution of His Person a real human nature. In the fulness of the time, and with a view to perform His work of sacrificial obedience and suffering unto death, He humbled himself and became flesh—very man as well as very God. “Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” The High Priest, therefore, as He stands before us in the estates of humiliation and exaltation is the eternal Son in human nature, the Word “made flesh.”
It is plain also, from many passages of Scripture, that He was active in His divine as well as in His human nature during the discharge of His priestly office upon earth. It was He who was “upholding all things by the word of his power,” who “by himself purged our sins,” and then “sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high” (Heb. i. 3). It is further declared that “Christ . . . through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God” (Heb. ix. 14). And again, the apostle proclaims, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, that it was God’s dear Son, by whom “all things were created that are in heaven and that are in earth,” who “made peace through the blood of his cross.”
II.—Let me now proceed, in the second place, to observe the “one offering” which He presented unto God.
- You will clearly see from the context that the inspired writer is making a contrast between this “one offering” and the many sacrifices that went before under the ceremonial law. By this contrast he emphasises the pre-eminent worth and virtue of Christ’s sacrifice. Let us notice two things in connection with those ancient sacrifices which will make plain the apostle’s point in the matter—first, their intended use, and secondly, their special inefficacy.
(1) Let us observe, then, the use of those sacrifices.
They were manifestly of divine appointment. We are not to think of them as some men do nowadays, who do not hesitate to suggest that they were the crude products of a barbarous or degenerate age. The so-called higher critics look upon the Jews as partaking of the same spirit with the heathen nations around them in the matter of offering bloody sacrifices, and of supposing that the Most High was needing to be propitiated, and could be propitiated by the sacrifice of slain beasts. They regard such a manner of worship as a Pagan way of dealing with God on behalf of sin. Now, this is an absolutely erroneous view of the case, and proceeds from an unenlightened and unholy opposition to the principle of satisfaction to divine justice by an atonement. The same critics have no right view of the atonement of Christ. We joyfully accept the plain testimony of the Bible on the subject of atonement, and pity those who reject it. The witness of both Testaments is harmonious throughout. Nothing can be clearer than that the ancient sacrifices offered by the Church were directly appointed by God from the beginning. Abel and Moses are outstanding witnesses to the truth of this.
Now, the use of these sacrifices was two-fold. For one thing, under the ceremonial law, God declared that certain actions were “unclean.” If a person, for example, happened to touch the dead body of a human being or the carcase of an unclean beast, that person was defiled, and would require to be cleansed by sacrifice from the defilement. Death is the fruit of sin, and so the people were taught the desirability of shunning all contact with the moral evil of sin, and the necessity of applying to the divine provision for cleansing when they came under its influence. An immediate use of those sacrifices was the removal of ceremonial defilement.
But there was another use, namely, to point out the way by which God would take away sin in the fulness of the time. By these sacrifices He impressed upon the people, in the first instance, the solemn facts that they were sinners, justly obnoxious to eternal death, and that they required an atonement of blood to be made for their souls; and then, secondly, that he had provided a remedy whereby sin could be taken away—even a priest and a sacrifice—in the person of the coming Messiah. Thus from the sacrifices of the ceremonial law, they could get a glimpse by faith beforehand of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who would appear in due time to take away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
It is very clear, then, my friends, that those sacrifices had very important uses. They were appointed by divine wisdom as means of spiritual and saving instruction to the children of Israel under an economy of shadows and figures of “good things to come.” Though without efficacy to make real atonement for sin, they possessed an efficacy of teaching with respect to the future atonement by Christ.
(2) Let us notice the special inefficacy of those former sacrifices.
The apostle points this out in the chapter before us. I take it that the Jewish people had fallen into practical error on the subject. Many of them rested in the shadows and figures. They brought their bullocks and goats to the altar and imagined that the blood of these was sufficient in itself to take away, not merely ceremonial, but positively moral, defilement. They failed to look beyond these offerings to the one great sacrifice which was to be offered by the Messiah in due time. The Apostle therefore reminds them of the constant frequency of the legal sacrifices which proclaimed their inefficacy to take away sin. They had to be repeated over and over again. “The law . . . can never with these sacrifices, which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. For, then, would they not have ceased to be offered?” God had no delight or satisfaction in these sacrifices in themselves—that He had such delight was the error the Jews were ready to fall into—His satisfaction was found in the great object whom the sacrifices “of the law” prefigured, even His own Son, Jesus Christ, who said “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.” It mattered not how numerous the sacrifices were; they were entirely inefficacious to satisfy divine justice or purge the guilty conscience. The blood of irrational animals had been shed all down the centuries from Adam to Christ—a vast ocean of blood was poured forth—but all that blood could not make atonement for the guilt of rational beings, could not take away one single sin, the smallest sin that had ever been committed by any member of the human race. But, on the other hand, here is one offering—not a thousand or a million offerings, but one—and by this single offering, the innumerable sins of a countless multitude of transgressors were swept away in a moment into everlasting forgetfulness. He made an end of sins and brought in everlasting righteousness.
- Now, let us observe more closely the nature of the “one offering” by which the Son of God has perfected for ever them that are sanctified. That offering was, in one word, Himself. Over and over again is it stated in the Scriptures that He “offered up Himself” to God. The offering here has particular reference to His surrender of Himself to the accursed death of the cross and His endurance of all the shame and suffering implied in that death. In an important respect He was giving Himself to God in a way of obedience and suffering during His whole life on earth, but nothing less than the suffering of death could make a complete atonement for sin. “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” He perfected his work of substitutionary obedience when He shed His blood upon the cross.
(1) Observe then, that the material of the “one offering” which Christ, as the High Priest, offered to God was Himself, or in other words, His human nature, consisting of soul and body.
The word “Himself,” in the fullest extent of its meaning, would embrace His divine as well as His human nature. But it was not possible, in the nature of things, that His divine nature could suffer, and when it is stated that He “offered up himself,” it is not meant that He offered up His divine nature as a sacrifice to God. Still, at the same time, we must very carefully remember that His human nature was in union with His divine person during all the days of His obedience and suffering upon earth, and that when He endured the accursed death of the cross, His suffering humanity was all the time in vital union with His eternal Godhead. His Godhead was active, though not suffering, in all the transactions of Calvary. In this way the infinite dignity of His divine Person gave immeasurable value to the obedience and suffering of that humanity which was in personal union with it.
The material, then, of the offering, as consisting of a human nature in personal union with the eternal Son of God, was of infinite worth and value. This may be illustrated as follows:— The body of a great king among the sons of men may be intrinsically no better in itself than the body of one of the meanest of his subjects, but, inasmuch as its possessor is a man of high dignity, it shares in the dignity. All he does in and by the body is regarded as done by himself, and possesses importance in proportion to the loftiness of the position he occupies in the world. Should he be willing to sacrifice himself in any way on behalf of his subjects, the sacrifice is rightly estimated at all the greater value owing to the dignity of his person. Thus we may see, by an imperfect illustration, the incalculable value of that sacrificial offering which the eternal Son, Jesus Christ, presented on the altar of His divinity to the Father.
(2) Let us notice, further, the manner of the offering.
Christ offered His holy humanity in a way of obedience and suffering, with a view to satisfy the claims of law and justice. It was for these ends “He took part” of flesh and blood.
The Scriptures clearly teach us that this was the device of infinite mercy and wisdom for the redemption of a guilty people from sin and the curse. The Son of God comes forth from the Father and humbles Himself to assume into personal union with His Godhead, a real but holy human nature, taken from one belonging to the fallen race of Adam, and in the character of a surety and substitute for a company which no man can number of this race, He meets the claims of law and justice against them, which they were perfectly unable to satisfy, and offers a suitable and sufficient sacrifice on their behalf in the obedience and sufferings of His life and death.
It is to be observed, then, that while the obedience and sufferings of the bullocks and goats and other animals offered under the law were unintelligent, compulsory, and of no moral value, it was quite different with the Son of God, the glorious ante-type. His was an intelligent sacrifice in the highest degree, a most suitable substitute in the room of rational, though fallen beings of Adam’s race. He possessed the human soul in all its faculties, and He was well acquainted with the will of Him who sent Him. “As the Father knoweth me,” He said, “so know I the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” He offered Himself, also, a willing sacrifice. He declared that it was His “meat and drink to do the will” of the Father. He hid not His face from shame and spitting, but willingly gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. “The cup which my Father hath given me to drink, shall I not drink it?” His, still further, was a holy sacrifice. It is written concerning Him: “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” He loved the holy law which His people had broken with all His soul and strength and mind, and hated sin with an infinite hatred. He bore all the sufferings inflicted upon Him with humble and holy acquiescence in the righteousness of the law which required them. Perfect purity characterised all His thoughts, words, and actions during all the period of His suffering unto death. “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Peter ii. 22). And lastly, His was an infinitely God-glorifying sacrifice. He said, “I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John xvii. 4). He obeyed and suffered all that was necessary to be accomplished to the glory of the divine perfections. The sword of justice awoke against Him. The call went forth from the Father, “Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow,” and He lovingly endured inexpressible sufferings in body and soul at the hands of men and devils and the righteous Judge of all. The sacrifice was enveloped in the hot but holy fire of God’s infinite wrath, and the incense that ascended from it into the presence of Jehovah was perfumed with those graces of knowledge, filial submission, holy obedience, love to God’s glory, and love to the souls of perishing sinners which characterised the adorable Jesus as Priest and Sacrifice. He magnified the law as a covenant of works, and unfolded the riches of the covenant of grace for the complete and everlasting redemption of sinners. Here, then, my friends, you may clearly see that Christ in His obedience and sufferings unto death is the “one offering” whereby you and I can obtain eternal redemption. Looking unto Jesus alone, we shall find in Him all that our souls shall need in view of death, judgment, and an endless eternity.
III.—But this leads me now to speak, in the third place, of the perfection He has accomplished by this one offering.
“By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” What perfection is this?
It is to be noticed that the word, “perfect,” is used in various senses in Holy Scripture. It is sometimes employed in a comparative sense. “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect,” says the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians, second chapter. There he refers to the perfection of regeneration, or of spiritual maturity. Believers are “perfect,” as compared with unbelievers; and some Christians are “perfect,” in the sense of having reached a greater maturity of knowledge and godliness than others. Then the word is used in an absolute sense. “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” The Lord Jesus here points out to His disciples the goal of absolute perfection which they were to seek as matter of attainment—perfect conformity to the character and will of their Father in heaven. I may say that the perfection spoken of in our text appears to be complex in its nature, both absolute and comparative. Let us notice the respects in which the Great High Priest has perfected His people.
1. Christ, by His one offering, has perfected them in relation to the requirements of law and justice.
He has made a perfect atonement for all their sins.
Those for whom Christ acted in His priestly office during the days of His flesh were under condemnation, and could by no means find access to the favour and fellowship of God unless the demands of the righteous law were satisfied. Now, the Lord Jesus, by His one substitutionary offering, has perfectly satisfied the requirements of God’s justice. He endured the full penalty of disobedience in their room and stead, suffering for sins, “the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.” His satisfaction may be called infinitely perfect, for it was the satisfaction of Him who was both God and man—”God manifest in the flesh.” Such perfect satisfaction the law could never have received from any or all of the race of Adam, though they had continued in original innocence. Here is Immanuel—God in our nature—obeying His own law and satisfying His own justice. He has magnified the law and made it honourable before the whole universe. As covered with the merits of His obedience unto death, His people stand perfect in the presence of the law as a covenant of works. They stand perfect in the presence of the righteous Judge, who must exact all that that covenant requires from the guilty. God, as lawgiver, beholds the whole election of grace perfect in Christ. “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. v. 21).
Such all of them were in Christ, as their representative, at the moment He finished the work which was given Him to do, but the truth of it had to be applied, individually and experimentally, to a vast multitude of them in the succeeding ages—a work, indeed, that will not be completed until the end of time.
2. Then, secondly, I observe as a consequence of this perfection in Christ, that they are personally made “perfect as pertaining to the conscience.”
The sacrifices of the law could not make the worshippers thus perfect. They were quite insufficient to satisfy the requirements of an awakened and enlightened conscience. They were not intended for this purpose, though the spiritually ignorant were no doubt finding a superficial satisfaction and rest in them. The Lord desired that sinners should look through and beyond these sacrifices to “the Lamb” who was to appear in due time to take away sin “by the sacrifice of himself,” and those who were savingly taught were longing for the coming of this Lamb of God in whose work they should behold a perfect remedy for sin and all its consequences.
Let us notice, then, that the Divine High Priest by His one offering has provided perfect satisfaction for the conscience.
The conscience is the vicegerent of God in man’s soul. It has suffered considerably by the Fall, but when awakened and instructed by the Spirit of God through the word of truth, it does its proper work with power, and makes its voice to be heard by the poor sinner. The conscience then re-echoes the just demands of the law, and calls for satisfaction to these demands. Possibly the soul who has such a conscience may for a season run to a great variety of expedients wherewith to stay the law’s requirements and pacify the voice within, but no real or abiding rest is found. The best works of fallen men are utterly insufficient to give the necessary peace, for they are corrupt in heart, if not in form. Thus it comes to pass that not till the poor sinner flees to Christ unreservedly as the one atoning sacrifice is he made perfect as pertaining to the conscience. Then, and then alone, does his conscience find the perfect satisfaction which is suited to its constitution and graciously provided by God in the gospel.
True it is that the children of God are not always able to retain this peace in experience. Darkness and unbelief and sometimes mistaken views of the way of life interfere with their happiness in this respect. But still they are not entirely cut off from Christ, though they lose their hold in conscious experience of their perfect acceptance in Him. The blessed Spirit leads them anew to His feet, and enables them again and again to act faith on His perfect sacrifice, and they can bear testimony at such seasons. “I find perfect satisfaction, perfect rest, perfect peace there. When I come as a poor sinner to the precious blood of atonement, and rest by faith on the word in which it is held forth, I am made perfect as to satisfaction for the present and hope for the future; I need nothing else and want nothing more than ‘Jesus Christ and Him crucified.'”
3. Still further, my friends, let us observe that Christ has perfected His people in the sense that by this one offering He has made perfect provision as to their complete sanctification.
Wherein does this appear?
Well, observe that His name was called Jesus, because He should “save his people from their sins.” He died, not only to save poor sinners from the guilt of their sins, but from the power of their sins. He offered the one sacrifice with a view to make His people holy as well as just—with a view to regenerate and sanctify them as well as to pardon and justify them. He hath perfected in Himself the means whereby He shall make them perfect inwardly in their souls, as well as outwardly in their relation to God. The Apostle elsewhere tells us that “Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephes. v. 25-27). It may be said that the people of God are potentially perfected in Christ as to their sanctification as well as their justification. Everything is in the glorious Redeemer that is necessary to make them holy even as God is holy. As the result of His finished work, Christ has received the Holy Spirit in His saving influences that He may send the Spirit forth to communicate all the blessings of the covenant to His redeemed ones, and thus gives them possession of the inheritance in all its perfect completeness. And if you read the succeeding context, you will see that sanctification as well as justification is in the immediate view of the Apostle. “Whereof the Holy Ghost is a witness to us; for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, said the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them: and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
4. Let us observe, lastly, in this connection, that Christ has perfected his people “for ever.”
It is everlasting perfection He bestows.
This is pre-eminently the case in regard to His representative work on their behalf. He perfected them as to the requirements of law and justice by His one sacrifice, and that perfection can never be annulled, but will stand fast for ever. Similarly, their justification, on the ground of His righteousness, in a day of power, can never be changed. The act of justification on God’s part is complete, perfect, unalterable, and everlasting. The inward changes they experience in their apprehension of their justification do not make void God’s gift or alter their actual and gracious relationship. Their perfect justification is “for ever.” Still, again, though they do not always enjoy inward peace in their consciences, through the inroads of remaining sin, yet they are beside the well of life and will never be vitally separated from it, but will be led again and again to betake themselves by faith to Christ crucified, and find the same perfect satisfaction and rest in their souls as they did at first. Then, their potential sanctification in Christ is also an enduring inheritance which will be enjoyed in its perfect fulness beyond death in the land of eternal uprightness.
IV.—Our fourth and last general head is the description given of the people who are perfected by Christ’s offering, “them that are sanctified.”
Now, friends, the word “sanctified” is used here and elsewhere in this Epistle, not so much in the sense of inward positive holiness, as in the sense of deliverance from guilt and defilement. Those “that are sanctified” in the sense of our text are not those who have been made perfectly holy in heart and life. Not such at all; but those who, by grace, have come to “the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel,” and have been cleansed from reigning guilt and impurity. Every justified person is one of the sanctified in the sense of our text. “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John i. 7). Every poor soul, therefore, who has been led to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness is sanctified in the sense of our Apostle here. His conscience has been purged from guilt in a day of mercy, and he has been separated from a world lying in wickedness in his life and conversation. Now all these have been perfected by Christ in the manner already imperfectly explained. He has made perfect provision for their everlasting acceptance before God, and their everlasting enjoyment of all gospel benefits. They have a perfect High Priest who has offered a perfect sacrifice, and obtained a perfect redemption to meet their soul’s necessities in time and for ever and ever.
Well, my friends, in conclusion, it should be a matter of serious enquiry with each one of us as to whether we are among the sanctified or not. Have we found out to begin with, that as fallen creatures we are among the unsanctified, the unholy, the corrupt, the guilty, the hell-deserving? Have we been led to see that if left to ourselves we shall be with wicked men and the devil and his angels at last? Have we been disposed and enabled to look to the Lord Jesus alone as our Saviour, Redeemer, High Priest and perfect Sacrifice? If so, then we are among them that are sanctified. We may sometimes feel as if it was only more corrupt and unholy we were getting instead of growing in grace, but if the sense of indwelling sin leads us to look to and depend more and more upon Christ as our all in all, and causes us to be more tender and watchful in our life and conversation, it is well. Your complete perfection is in Christ, and will be seen in all its glory and beauty at the last day. On the other hand, pause and consider, you, my hearers, who have no sense of these things pertaining to sin and redemption. If you do not turn to God in Christ by repentance and faith in the days of time, you will yet be perfectly conformed to the image of Satan, and shall suffer along with him in the place of never-ending misery. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” The Lord in His infinite mercy open your eyes to see your sins, and to flee for cleansing, renewing and perfect pardon and acceptance to the great High Priest of our profession, now entered within the veil and yet drawing near to us in the Gospel. “Able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him.” May the Lord bless to us His Word!
LET me love the men that are in the world, but never the things of it. If I have too great affection for any worldly thing, I may expect an answerable affliction. Whatever I make an idol of will be a cross to me if I belong to Christ, and a curse if I do not. Man was not made for the world, but the world for man. The more the things of this world are known they will be the less admired and prized. And, indeed, riches are but dust; honours, shadows; pleasures, bubbles; and men, lumps of vanity, compounded of sinfulness and misery.—John Brown.