Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews.
by Handley C.G. Moule.
PREFACE
The following chapters are the work of intervals of leisure scattered over a long time. The exposition had advanced some way when an unexpected call to new and exacting duties compelled me to put it aside for several years. Accordingly a certain difference of treatment in the later chapters as compared with the earlier will probably be seen by the reader, particularly a rather fuller detail in the exposition. But purpose and plan are essentially the same throughout.
No attempt whatever is made, here or in the course of the work, to deal with those literary and historical problems which so conspicuously attach themselves to this Epistle. Who the "Hebrews" were is nowhere discussed. Nor is any positive answer offered to a question to which a.s.suredly no such answer can be given, the question, namely, of the authorship. In my opinion, in face of all that I have read to the contrary, it still seems at least possible that the _ultimate_ human author was St. Paul. All, or very nearly all, the objections to his name which the phenomena of the Epistle _prima facie_ present, and some of which lie unquestionably deep, seem to be capable of a provisional answer if we a.s.sume, what is so conceivable, that the Apostle committed his message and its argument, on purpose, to a colleague so gifted, mentally and by the Spirit, that he might be trusted to cast the work into his own style. The well-known remark of Origen that only G.o.d knows who "wrote" the Epistle appears to me to point (if we look at its context) this way. Origen surely means by the "writer" what is meant in Rom. xvi. 22. Only, on the hypothesis, the amanuensis of our Epistle was, for a special purpose presumably, a Christian prophet in his own right.
In any case the author, if not an apostle, was a prophet. And he carries to us a prophet"s "burthen" of unspeakable import, and in words to which all through the Christian ages the soul has responded as to the words of the Holy Spirit.
HANDLEY DUNELM.
_Easter, 1909._
CHAPTER I
CONSIDER HIM
HEB. i.-ii.
Let us open the Epistle to the Hebrews, with an aim simple and altogether practical for heart and for life. Let us take it just as it stands, and somewhat as a whole. We will not discuss its authorship, interesting and extensive as that problem is. We will not attempt, within the compa.s.s of a few short chapters, to expound continuously its wonderful text. Rather, we will gather up from it some of its large and conspicuous spiritual messages, taken as messages of the Word of G.o.d "which liveth and abideth for ever."
No part of Holy Scripture is ever really out of date. But it is true meanwhile that, as for persons so for periods, there are Scripture books and Scripture truths which are more than ordinarily timely. It is not that others are therefore untimely, nor that only one cla.s.s of book or one aspect of truth can be eminently timely at one time. But it seems evident that the foreseeing Architect of the Bible has so adjusted the parts of His wonderful vehicle of revelation and blessing that special fitnesses continually emerge between our varying times and seasons on the one hand and the multifold Word on the other.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is in some remarkable respects a book timely for our day. It invites to itself, if I read it aright, the renewed attention of the thoughtful Christian, and not least of the thoughtful Christian of the English Church, as it brings him messages singularly in point to some of the main present needs of his spiritual life and its surroundings. It was written manifestly in the first instance to meet special and pressing current trials; it bears the impress of a time of severe sifting, a time when foundations were challenged, and individual faith put to even agonizing proofs, and the community threatened with an almost dissolution. Such a writing must have a voice articulate and sympathetic for a period like ours.
We will take into our hands then, portion by portion, this wonderful "open letter," and listen through it to some of the things which "the Spirit saith" to the saints and to the Church.
We now contemplate in this sense the first two chapters. We put quite aside a host of points of profound interest in detail, and ask ourselves only what is the broad surface, the drift and total, of the message here. As to its climax, it is JESUS CHRIST, our "merciful and faithful High Priest" (ii. 17). As to the steps that lead up to the climax, they are a presentation of the personal glory of Jesus Christ, as G.o.d the Son of G.o.d, as Man the Son of Man, who for us men and our salvation came, suffered, and prevailed.
Who that reads the Bible with the least care has not often noted this in the first pa.s.sages of the Hebrews, and could not at once so state the matter? What is the great truth of Hebrews i.? Jesus Christ is G.o.d (ver.
8); the Son (ver. 2); absolutely _like_ the Father (ver. 3); Lord of the bright Company of Heaven, who in all their ranks and orders worship Him (ver. 6); creative Originator of the Universe (ver. 10), such that the starry depths of s.p.a.ce are but the folds of His vesture, which hereafter He shall change for another (ver. 12); Himself eternal, "the same,"
transcendent above all time, yet all the while the Son begotten, the Son, infinitely adequate and infinitely willing to be the final Vehicle of the Father"s voice to us (verses 1, 5, 6). What is the great truth of Hebrews ii.? Jesus Christ is MAN. He is other than angelic, for He is G.o.d. But also He is other than angelic, for He is Man (verses 5, 6, 7).
He is the Brother of Man as truly as He is the Son of G.o.d (ver. 11). He has taken share with us in flesh and blood (ver. 14), that is to say, He has a.s.sumed manhood in that state or stage in which it is capable of death, and He has done this on purpose (it is a wonderful thought) that He may be capable of dying. This blessed Jesus Christ, this G.o.d and Man, our Saviour, was bent upon dying, and that for a reason altogether connected with us and with His will to save us (ver. 15). We were immeasurably dear and important to Him. And our deliverance demanded His identification with us in nature, and His temptations (ver. 18), and finally His mysterious suffering. So He came, He suffered, He was "perfected"--in respect of capacity to be our Redeemer--"through sufferings" (ver. 10). And now, incarnate, slain, and risen again, He, still our Brother, is "crowned with glory and honour" (ver. 9). He is our Leader (ver. 10). He is our High Priest, merciful and faithful (ver.
17).
Thus the Epistle, on its way to recall its readers, at a crisis of confusion and temptation, to certainty, patience, and peace, leads them--not last but first--to Jesus Christ. It unfolds at once to them His glories of Person, His Wonder of Work and Love. It does not elaborately travel up to Him through general considerations. It sets out from Him. It makes Him the base and reason for all it has to say--and it has to say many things. Its first theme is not the community, but the Lord; not Church principles, not that great duty of cohesion about which it will speak, and speak urgently, further on, but the Lord, in His adorable personal greatness, in His unique and all-wonderful personal achievement. To that att.i.tude of thought it recurs again and again in its later stages. In one way or another it is always bidding us look up from even the greatest related subjects and "consider HIM."
Am I not right in saying that here is a message straight to the restless heart of our time, and not least to the special conditions of Christian life just now in our well-beloved Church? We must, of course we must, think about a hundred problems presented by the circ.u.mference of the life of the Christian and the life of the Church. At all times such problems, asking for attention and solution, emerge to every thoughtful disciple"s sight. In our own time they seem to multiply upon one another with an importunate demand--problems doctrinal, ritual, governmental, social; the strife of principles and tendencies within the Church; all that is involved in the relations between the Church and the State, and again between the Church and the world, that is to say, human life indifferent or opposed to the living Christian creed and the spiritual Christian rule.
Well, for these very reasons let us make here first this brief appeal, prompted by the opening paragraphs of the great Epistle. If you would deal aright with the circ.u.mference, earnest Christian of the English Church, live at the Centre. "Dwell deep." From the Church come back evermore to Jesus Christ, that from Jesus Christ you may the better go back to the Church, bearing the peace and the power of the Lord Himself upon you.
There is nothing that can serve as a subst.i.tute for this. The "consideration" of our blessed Redeemer and King is not merely good for us; it is vital. To "behold His glory," deliberately, with worship, with worshipping love, _and seen by direct attention to the mirror of His Word_, can and must secure for us blessings which we shall otherwise infallibly lose. This, and this alone, amidst the strife of tongues and all the perplexities of life, can develope in us at once the humblest reverence and the n.o.blest liberty, convictions firm to resist a whole world in opposition, yet the meekness and the fear which utterly exclude injustice, untruth, hardness, or the bitter word. For us if for any, for us now if ever, this first great message of the Epistle meets a vital need; "CONSIDER HIM."
CHAPTER II
A HEART OF FAITH
HEB. iii.
We have just endeavoured to find a message, "G.o.dly and wholesome, and necessary for these times," in the opening paragraphs in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We come now to interrogate our oracle again, and we open the third chapter as we do so.
Here again we find the Epistle full, first, of "Jesus Christ Himself."
He is "the Apostle and the High Priest of our profession" (ver. 1), or let us read rather, "our confession," the "confession" of us who are loyal to His Name as His disciples. We are expressly called here to do what the first two chapters implied that we must do--to "consider Him"
(ver. 1), to bend upon His Person, character, and work the attention of the whole heart and mind. We are pointed to His holy fidelity to His mission (ver. 2) in words which equally remind us of His subordination to the Father"s will and of His absolute authority as the Father"s perfect Representative. We are reminded (ver. 3) of that magnificent other side of His position, that He acts and administers in "the house of G.o.d" not as a servant but as the Father"s "own SON (ver. 6) that serveth Him." Nay, such is He that the "house" in which He does His filial service is a building which He Himself has reared (ver. 3); He is its Architect and its Constructor in a sense in which none could be who is not Divine. Yes, He is no less than G.o.d (ver. 4); G.o.d Filial, G.o.d so conditioned that He is also the faithful Sent-One of the Father, but none the less G.o.d. We saw Him already in the first chapter (ver. 10), placed before us in His majesty as the Originator of the material Universe, to whom the starry skies are but His robe, to be put on and put off in season. Here He is the doer of a yet more wonderful achievement; He is the Builder of the Church of the Faithful. For the "house" which He thus built is nothing else than "we" (ver, 6), we who by faith have entered into the structure of the "living stones" (see 1 Pet. ii. 5), and who, by "the confidence and the rejoicing of our hope,"
abide within it.
Thus the blessed Lord is before us here again, filling our sphere of thought and contemplation. It is here just as it is in the Epistle to the Colossians. There, as here, errors and confusions in the Church are in view--a subtle theosophy and also a retrograde ceremonialism, probably both amalgamating into one dangerous total. And St. Paul"s method of defence for his converts there--what is it? Above all, it is the presentation of Jesus Christ, in the glories of His Person and His Work. He places HIM in the very front of thought, first as the Head, Founder, and Corner-stone of the Universe; then as the Head, Redeemer, and Life of the Church. With HIM so seen he meets the dreamy thinker and the ceremonial devotee; Christ is the ultimate and only repose, alike for thought and for the soul.
In this Epistle as in that we have the same phenomenon, deeply suggestive and seasonable for our life to-day. In both cases, not only for individuals but for the Church, there was mental and spiritual trouble. Alike in Phrygian Colossae and wherever the "Hebrews" lived there was an invasion of church difficulties and confusion. A certain affinity in detail links the two cases together. Colossian Christians and Hebrew Christians, under widely different circ.u.mstances, and no doubt in very different tones, persuasive in one case, threatening in the other, were pressed to _retrograde_ from the sublime simplicity and fulness of the truth. Their danger was what I may venture to call a certain medievalism. Not Mosaism, not Prophetism, but Judaism, the successor and distortion of the ancient revelations, invited or commanded their adhesion, or, in the case of the "Hebrews," their return, as to the one true faith and fold. There were great differences in detail. At Colossae it does not seem that the "medievalists" professed to deny Christianity; rather they professed to teach the Judaistic version of it as the authentic type. Among the "Hebrews"
anti-Christianity was using every effort to allure or to alarm the disciples back to open Rabbinism, "doing despite to the Son of G.o.d." But both streams of tendency went in the same general direction so far that they put into the utmost prominence aspects of religion full of a traditional ceremonialism, and of the idea of human meritorious achievement rather than of a spiritual reliance for the salvation of the soul.
Deeply significant it is that in both cases we have the danger met thus--by the presentation of the Incarnate Redeemer Himself, in His personal and official glory, to the most immediate possible view of every disciple, "nothing between." The Epistles, both of them, have much to say on deep general principles. But all this they say in vital connexion with Jesus Christ; and about Him they say most of all. He is the supreme Antidote. He, "considered," considered fully, is not so much the clue out of the labyrinth as the great point of view from which the mind and the soul can look down upon it and see how tortuous, and also how limited, it is.
But the message of our chapter has not yet been fully heard. It has spoken to us of Christ Jesus, and of the "consideration" of Him to which we are called. At its close it speaks to us of faith: "Take heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living G.o.d" (ver. 12). "To whom sware He that they should not enter into His rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief" (verses 18, 19).
That is to say, our "consideration" of Jesus Christ must not be all our action towards Him, if we would be sure, and safe, and strong. It must be but the preliminary to a "heart of faith." That is to say again, we must personally and practically take Him at His word, and rely upon Him, committing our souls and our all to Him, to Him directly, to Him solely.
We must, in the exercise of this reliance, use Him evermore as our Prophet, Priest, and King. We must venture upon His promises, just as Israel ought to have ventured upon the promises of Him who had redeemed them, although He _tried_ their will and power to do so by the terrors of the wilderness and by the giants of Canaan.
Thus to rely is faith; for faith is personal confidence in the Lord in His promise. And such faith is not only, as it is, the empty hand which receives Divine blessings in detail. It is the empty arms which clasp always that comprehensive blessing, the presence of "the living G.o.d" in Christ, so making sure of a secret of peace, of rest, of decision, of strength, of deep-sighted and tranquil thought upon "things which differ," which is of infinite importance at a time of confusion and debate in the Christian Church.
Therefore, alike for our safety and for our usefulness, let us first afresh "consider Him." And then let us afresh "take heed" that with "a good heart of faith" we draw to and abide in union with the "considered"
Christ, in whom we know and possess the living G.o.d.
CHAPTER III
UNTO PERFECTION
HEB. iv.-vi.
Our study of the great Epistle takes here another step, covering three short but pregnant chapters. So pregnant are they that it would be altogether vain to attempt to deal with them thus briefly were we not mindful of our special point of view. We are pondering the Epistle not for all that it has to say, but for what it has to say of special moment and application for certain needs of our own time.
The outline of the portion before us must accordingly be traced. In detail it presents many questions of connexion and argument, for, particularly in chapter iv., the apostolic thought takes occasionally a parenthetical flight of large circuit. But in outline the progression may be traced without serious difficulty.
We have first the appeal to exercise the prompt.i.tude and decision of faith, in view of the magnificent promise of a Canaan of sacred rest made to the true Israel in Christ. Even to "seem" (iv. 1) to fail of this, even to seem to sink into a desert grave of unbelief while "the rest of faith" is waiting to be entered, is a thought to "fear." Great indeed are the promises; "living" and "energetic" is "the Word" which conveys them.[A]