_FUNDAMENTAL ONENESS OF THE DISPENSATIONS._
Hebrews iii. i-iv. 13 (R.V.).
"Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider
the Apostle and High-priest of our confession, _even_ Jesus; who was
faithful to Him that appointed Him as also was Moses in all his
house. For He hath been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by
so much as he that built the house hath more honour than the house.
For every house is builded by some one; but He that built all things
is God. And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant,
for a testimony of those things which were afterward to be spoken;
but Christ as a Son, over His house; Whose house are we, if we hold
fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end.
Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith,
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation,
Like as in the day of the temptation in the wilderness,
Wherewith your fathers tempted _Me_ by proving _Me_,
And saw My works forty years.
Wherefore I was displeased with this generation,
And said, They do always err in their heart:
But they did not know My ways;
As I sware in My wrath,
They shall not enter into My rest.
Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an
evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God: but
exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called to-day; lest
any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin: for we are
become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our
confidence firm unto the end: while it is said,
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
For who, when they heard, did provoke? nay, did not all they that
came out of Egypt by Moses? And with whom was He displeased forty
years? was it not with them that sinned, whose carcases fell in the
wilderness? And to whom sware He that they should not enter into His
rest, but to them that were disobedient? And we see that they were
not able to enter in because of unbelief.
Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering
into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also
they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because they were
not united by faith with them that heard. For we which have believed
do enter into that rest; even as He hath said,
As I sware in My wrath,
They shall not enter into My rest:
although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
For He hath said somewhere of the seventh _day_ on this wise, And
God rested on the seventh day from all His works; and in this
_place_ again,
They shall not enter into My rest.
Seeing therefore it remaineth that some should enter thereinto, and
they to whom the good tidings were before preached failed to enter
in because of disobedience, He again defineth a certain day, saying
in David, after so long a time, To-day, as it hath been before said,
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken
afterward of another day. There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest
for the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest hath
himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Let us
therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall
after the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is
living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and
piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and
marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
And there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all
things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with Whom we
have to do."
The broad foundation of Christianity has now been laid in the person of
the Son, God-Man. In the subsequent chapters of the Epistle this
doctrine is made to throw light on the mutual relations of the two
dispensations.
The first deduction is that the Mosaic dispensation was itself created
by Christ; that the threats and promises of the Old Testament live on
into the New; that the central idea of the Hebrew religion, the idea of
the Sabbath rest, is realised in its inmost meaning in Christ only; that
the word of God is ever full of living energy. Hereafter the Apostle
will not be slow to expose the wide difference between the two
dispensations. But it is equally true and not less important that the
old covenant was the vesture of truths which remain when the garment has
been changed.
At the outset the writer's tone is influenced by this doctrine. He turns
his treatise unconsciously into an epistle. He addresses his readers as
brethren, holy indeed, but not holy after the pattern of their former
exclusiveness; for their holiness is inseparably linked with their
common brotherhood. They are partakers with the Gentile Churches in a
heavenly call. Startling words! Hebrews holy in virtue of their sharing
with Greeks and barbarians, bond and free, in a common call from high
Heaven, which sees all earth as a level plain beneath! The middle wall
of partition has been broken down to the ground. Yet soothing words, and
full of encouragement! The Apostle and his leaders were standing near
the end of the Apostolic age, when the Hebrew Christians were
despondent, weak, and despised, both by reason of national calamities
and because of their inferiority to their sister Churches among the
Gentiles. The Apostle does not bluntly assure them of their equality,
but gently addresses them as partakers of a heavenly call. His words are
the reverse of St. Paul's language to the Ephesians, who are reminded
that the Gentiles are partakers in the privileges of Israel. Those who
sometimes were far off have been made nigh; the strangers and sojourners
are henceforth fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of
God. Here, on the contrary, Hebrew Christians are encouraged with the
assurance that they partake in the privileges of all believers. If the
wild olive tree has been grafted in among the branches and made partaker
of the root, the branches, broken off that the wild olive might be
grafted in, are themselves in consequence grafted into their own olive
tree. Through God's mercy to the Gentiles, Israel also has obtained
mercy.
The Apostle addresses them with affection. But his behest is sharp and
urgent: "Consider the Apostle and High-priest of our profession, Jesus."
Consider intently, or, to borrow a modern word that has sometimes been
abused, Realise Jesus. Dwell not with abstractions and theories. Fear
not imaginary dangers. Make Jesus Christ a reality before the eyes of
your mind. To do this well will be more convincing than external
evidences. To behold the glory of the temple, linger not to admire the
strong buttresses without, but enter. Realisation of Christ may be said
to be the gist of the whole Epistle.
This spiritual vision is not ecstasy. We realise Christ as Apostle and
as High-priest. We behold Him when His words are a message to us from
God, and when He carries our supplications to God. Revelation and prayer
are the two opposite poles of communion with the Father. The
dispensation of Moses rested on these two pillars,--apostleship and
priesthood. But the fundamental conceptions of the Old Testament centre
in Jesus. Though our author has distinguished between God's revelation
in the prophets and His revelation in a Son, he teaches also that even
the prophets received their message through the Son. Though he contrasts
in what follows of the Epistle the high-priesthood of Aaron with
Christ's, still he regards Aaron's office as utterly meaningless apart
from Christ. The words "Apostle and High-priest" pave the way,
therefore, to the most prominent truth in this section of the Epistle:
that whatever is best in the Old Testament has been assimilated and
inspired with new energy by the Gospel.
1. To begin, we must understand the actual position of the founders of
the two dispensations. Neither Moses nor Christ set about originating,
designing, constructing, from his own impulse and for his own purposes.
Both acted for God, and were consciously under His directing eye.[38]
"It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful."[39] They have
but to obey, and leave the unity and harmony of the plan to another. To
use an illustration, every house is built by some one or other.[40] The
design has been conceived in the brain of the architect. He is the real
builder, though he employs masons and joiners to put the materials
together according to his plan. This applies to the subject in hand; for
God is the Architect of all things. He realises His own ideas as well
through the seeming originality of thinkers as through the willing
obedience of workers. Now, the dispensation of the old covenant was one
part of God's design. To build this portion of the house He found a
faithful servant in Moses. The dispensation of the new covenant is but
another, though more excellent, part of the same design; and Jesus was
not less faithful to finish the structure. The unity of the design was
in the mind of God.
Moses was faithful when he refused the treasures of Egypt, and chose
affliction with the people of God and the reproach of His Christ. He was
faithful when he chid the people in the wilderness for their unbelief,
and when he interceded for them again with God. Christ also was faithful
to His God when He despised the shame and endured the Cross.
Yet we must acknowledge a difference. God has accounted Jesus worthy of
greater honour than Moses, inasmuch as Moses was part of the house, and
that part the pre-existent Christ erected. Moses was "made" all that he
became by Christ, but Christ was "made"[41] all that He
became--God-Man--by God. Moreover, though Moses was greater than all the
other servants of God before Christ, because they were placed in
subordinate positions, while he was faithful in the _whole_ house, yet
even he was but a servant, whereas Christ was Son. Moses was in the
house, it is true; but the Son was placed over the house. The work which
Moses had to do was to uphold the authority of the Son, to witness, that
is, to the things which would afterwards be spoken unto us by God in His
Son, Jesus Christ.[42]
The Apostle seems to delight in his illustration of the house, and
continues to use it with a fresh meaning. This house, or, if you please,
this household, are we Christians. We are the house in which Moses
showed the utmost faithfulness as servant. We are the circumcision, we
the true Israel of God. If, then, we turn away from Christ to Moses,
that faithful servant himself will have none of us. That we may be God's
house, we must lay fast hold of our Christian confidence and the
boasting of our hope out-and-out to the end.
2. Again, the threatenings of the Old Testament for disobedience to God
apply with full force to apostasy from Christ. They are the
authoritative voice of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle is reminded by the
words which he has just used, "We are God's house," of the Psalmist's
joyful exclamation, "He is our God, and we are the people of His
pasture, and the sheep of His hand."[43] Then follows in the Psalm a
warning, which the Apostle considers it equally necessary to address to
the Hebrew Christians: "To-day, if indeed you still hear His voice (for
it is possible He may no longer speak), harden not your hearts, as you
did in Meribah, rightly called,--the place of contention. Your fathers,
far from trusting Me when I put them to the test, turned upon Me and put
Me to the test, and that although they saw My works during forty years."
Forty years,--ominous number! The readers would at once call to mind
that forty years within a little had now passed since their Lord had
gone through the heavens to the right hand of the Father. What if, after
all, the old belief proves true that He returns to judgment after
waiting for precisely the same period for which He had patiently endured
their fathers' unbelief in the wilderness! God is still living, and He
is the same God. He Who sware in His wrath that the fathers should not
enter into the rest of Canaan is the same in His anger, the same in His
mercy. Exhort one another. In the wilderness God dealt with individuals.
He does so still. See that there be no evil heart, which is unbelief, in
_any one_ of you at any time while the call, "To-day!" is sounded in
your ears. For sin weakens the sense of individual guilt, and thus
deceives men by hardening their hearts.[44] All that came out of Egypt
provoked God to anger. But they provoked Him, not in the mass, but one
by one, and one by one, with palsied limbs,[45] they fell in the
wilderness, as men fall exhausted on the march. Thus, for their
persistent unbelief, God sware they should not enter into His
rest--"His," for He kept the key still in His own hand. But persistent
unbelief made them incapable of entering. If God were still willing to
cut off for them the waters of Jordan, they _could_ not[46] enter in
because of unbelief.
3. Similarly, the promises of God are still in force. Indeed, the
steadfastness of the threatenings involves the continuance of the
promises, and the rejection of the promises ensures the fulfilment of
every threatening. As much as this is expressed in the opening words of
chap. iv.: "A promise being left to us, let us therefore fear."
To prove the identity of the promises under the two dispensations, the
Apostle singles out one promise, which may be considered most
significant of the national no less than the religious life of Israel.
The Greek mind was ever on the alert for something new. Its character
was movement. But the ideal of the Old Testament is rest. Christ came
into touch with the people at once when He began His public ministry
with an invitation to the weary and heavy-laden to come unto Him, and
with the promise that He would give them rest. Near the close of His
ministry He explained and fulfilled the promise by giving to His
disciples peace. The object of our author, in the difficult chapter now
under consideration, is to show that the idea most characteristic of the
old covenant finds its true and highest realisation in Christ. After the
manner of St. Paul, who, in more than one passage, teaches that through
the fall of Israel salvation is come unto the Gentiles, the writer of
this Epistle also argues that the promise of rest still remains, because
it was not fulfilled under the Old Testament in consequence of Israel's
unbelief. The word of promise was a gospel[47] to them, as it is to us.
But it did not profit them, because they did not assimilate[48] the
promise by faith. Their history from the beginning consists of continued
renewals of the promise on the part of God and persistent rejections on
the part of Israel, ending in the hardening of their hearts. Every time
the promise is renewed, it is presented in a higher and more spiritual
form. Every rejection inevitably leads to grosser views and more
hopeless unbelief. So entirely false is the fable of the Sibyl! God does
not burn some of the leaves when His promises have been rejected, and
come back with fewer offers at a higher price. His method is to offer
more and better on the same conditions. But it is the nature of unbelief
to cause the heart to wax gross, to blind the spiritual vision, until in
the end the rich, spiritual promises of God and the earthly, dark
unbelief of the sinner stand in extremest contrast.
At first the promise is presented in the negative form of rest from
labour. Even the Creator condescended thus to rest. But what _such_ rest
can be to God it were vain for man to try to conceive. We know that, as
soon as the foundations of the world were laid and the work of creation
was ended, God ceased from this form of activity. But when this negative
rest had been attained, it was far from realising God's idea of rest
either for Himself or for man. For, though these works of God, the
material universe, were finished from the laying of the world's
foundations to the crowning of the edifice,[49] God still speaks of
another rest, and threatens to shut some men out for their unbelief. Our
Lord told the Pharisees, whose notion of the Sabbath was the negative
one, that He desired His Sabbath rest to be like that of His Father, Who
"worketh hitherto." The Jewish Sabbath, it appears, therefore, is the
most crude and elementary form of God's promised rest.
The promise is next presented as the rest of Canaan.[50] This is a stage
in advance in the development of the idea. It is not mere abstention
from secular labour, and the consecration of inactivity. The rest now
consists in the enjoyment of material prosperity, the proud
consciousness of national power, the growth of a peculiar civilization,
the rise of great men and eminent saints, and all this won by Israel
under the leadership of their Jesus, who was in this respect a type of
ours. But even in this second garden of Eden Israel did not attain unto
God's rest. Worldliness became their snare.
But God still called to them by the mouth of the Psalmist, long after
they had entered on the possession of Canaan. This only proves that the
true rest was still unattained, and God's promise not yet fulfilled. The
form which the rest of God now assumed is not expressly stated in our
passage. But we have not far to go in search of it. The first Psalm,
which is the introduction to all the Psalms, declares the blessedness of
contemplation. The Sabbath is seldom mentioned by the Psalmist. Its
place is taken by the sanctuary, in which rest of soul is found in
meditating on God's law and beholding the Lord's beauty.[51] The call is
at last urgent. "To-day!" It is the last invitation. It lingers in the
ears in ever fainter voice of prophet after prophet, until the prophet's
face turns towards the east to announce the break of dawn and the coming
of the perfect rest in Jesus Christ. God's promise was never fulfilled
to Israel, because of their unbelief. But shall their unbelief make the
faithfulness of God of none effect? God forbid. The gifts and calling of
God are without repentance. The promise that has failed of fulfilment in
the lower form must find its accomplishment in the higher. Even a prayer
is the more heard for every delay. God's mill grinds slowly, but for
that reason grinds small. What is the inference? Surely it is that the
Sabbath rest still remains for the true people of God. This Sabbath rest
St. Paul prayed that the true Israel, who glory, not in their
circumcision, but in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, might receive:
"_Peace_ be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God."[52]
The faithfulness of God to fulfil His promise in its higher form is
proved by His having accomplished it in its more elementary forms to
every one that believed. "For he that entered into God's rest did
actually rest from his works"[53]--that is to say, received the
blessings of the Sabbath--as truly as God rested from the work of
creation. The Apostle's practical inference is couched in language
almost paradoxical: "Let us _strive_ to enter into God's _rest_"--not
indeed into the rest of the Old Testament, but into the better rest
which God now offers in His Son.
The oneness of the dispensations has been proved. They are one in their
design, in their threatenings, in their promises. If we seek the
fundamental ground of this threefold unity, we shall find it in the fact
that both dispensations are parts of a Divine revelation. God has
spoken, and the word of God does not pass away. "Think not," said our
Lord, "that I came to destroy the Law or the prophets; I came not to
destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the Law
till all things be accomplished."[54] On another occasion He says,
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass
away."[55] These passages teach us that the words of God through Moses
and in the Son are equally immutable. Many features of the old covenant
may be transient; but, if it is a word of God, it abides in its
essential nature through all changes. For "the word of God is
living,"[56] because He Who speaks the word is the living God. It acts
with mighty energy,[57] like the silent laws of nature, which destroy
or save alive according as men obey or disobey them. It cuts like a
sword whetted on each side of the blade, piercing through to the place
where the natural life of the soul divides[58] from, or passes into, the
supernatural life of the spirit. For it is revelation that has made
known to man his possession of the spiritual faculty. The word "spirit"
is used by heathen writers. But in their books it means only the air we
breathe. The very conception of the spiritual is enshrined in the bosom
of God's word. Revelation has separated between the life of heathenism
and the life of the Church, between the natural man and the spiritual,
between the darkness that comprehended it not and the children of the
light who received it and thus became children of God. Further, the word
of God pierces to the joints that connect the natural and the
supernatural.[59] It does not ignore the former. On the contrary, it
addresses itself to man's reason and conscience, in order to erect the
supernatural upon nature. Where reason stops short, the word of God
appeals to the supernatural faculty of faith; and when conscience grows
blunt, the word makes conscience, like itself, sharper than any
two-edged sword. Once more, the word of God pierces to the marrow.[60]
It reveals to man the innermost meaning of his own nature and of the
supernatural planted within him. The truest morality and the highest
spirituality are both the direct product of God's revelation.
But all this is true in its practical application to every man
individually. The power of the word of God to create distinct
dispensations and yet maintain their fundamental unity, to distinguish
between masses of men and yet cause all the separate threads of human
history to converge and at last meet, is the same power which judges the
inmost thoughts and inmost purposes of the heart. These it surveys with
critical judgment.[61] If its eye is keen, its range of vision is also
wide. No created thing but is seen and manifest. The surface is bared,
and the depth within is opened up before it. As the upturned neck of the
sacrificial beast lay bare to the eye of God,[62] so are we exposed to
the eye of Him to Whom we have to give our account.[63]
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Chap. iii. 2.
[39] 1 Cor. iv. 2.
[40] Chap. iii. 4.
[41] =poiêsanti=.
[42] Chap. iii. 5.
[43] Ps. xcv. 7, sqq.
[44] Chap. ii. 13.
[45] =ta kôla=. Cf. chap. xii. 12.
[46] =ouk êdynêthêsan= (iii. 19).
[47] =euêngelismenoi= (iv. 2).
[48] Reading =synkekerasmenos=.
[49] Chap. iv. 3.
[50] Chap. iv. 8.
[51] Ps. xxvii. 4.
[52] Gal. vi. 16.
[53] Chap. iv. 10.
[54] Matt. v. 17, 18.
[55] Matt. xxiv. 35.
[56] Chap. iv. 12.
[57] =energês=.
[58] =merismou=.
[59] =harmôn=.
[60] =myelôn=.
[61] =kritikos=.
[62] =tetrachêlismena= (iv. 13).
[63] =ho logos=.