_THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF FAILURE._
"But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things
that accompany salvation, though we thus speak: for God is not
unrighteous to forget your work and the love which ye showed toward
His name, in that ye ministered unto the saints, and still do
minister. And we desire that each one of you may show the same
diligence unto the fulness of hope even to the end: that ye be not
sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience
inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham, since He
could swear by none greater, He sware by Himself, saying, Surely
blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
And thus, having patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men
swear by the greater: and in every dispute of theirs the oath is
final for confirmation. Wherein God, being minded to show more
abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of His
counsel, interposed with an oath: that by two immutable things, in
which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong
encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set
before us; which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure
and steadfast and entering into that which is within the veil;
whither as a Forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a
High-priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek."--HEB, vi. 9-20
(R.V.).
Solemn warning is followed by words of affectionate encouragement.
Impossibility of renewal is not the only impossibility within the
compass of the Gospel.[106] Over against the descent to perdition, hope
of the better things grasps salvation with the one hand and the climbing
pilgrim with the other, and makes his failure to reach the summit
impossible. Both impossibilities have their source in God's justice. He
is not unjust to forget the deed of love shown towards His name, when
the only-begotten Son ministered to men and still ministers. Contempt of
this love God will punish. Neither is He unjust to forget the love that
ministered to His poor saints in days of persecution, when the Hebrew
Christians became partakers with their fellow-believers in their
reproaches and tribulations, showed pity towards their brethren in
prisons, and took joyfully the spoiling of their goods.[107] The stream
of brotherly kindness was still flowing. This love God rewards. But the
Apostle desires them to show, not only faithfulness in ministering to
the saints, but also Christian earnestness generally,[108] until they
attain the full assurance of hope. The older expositors understand the
words to express the Apostle's wish that his readers should continue to
minister to the saints. But Calvin's view has, especially since the time
of Bengel, been generally accepted: that the Apostle urges his readers
to be as diligent in seeking the full assurance of hope as they are in
ministering to the poor. This is most probably the meaning, but with the
addition that he speaks of "earnestness" generally, not merely of active
diligence. Their religion was too narrow in range. Care for the poor has
sometimes been the piety of sluggish despondency and bigotry. But
spiritual earnestness is the moral discipline that works hope, a hope
that makes not ashamed, but leads men on to an assured confidence that
the promise of God will be fulfilled, though now black clouds overspread
their sky.
An incentive to faith and endurance will be found in the example of all
inheritors of God's promise.[109] The Apostle is on the verge of
anticipating the splendid record of the eleventh chapter. But he arrests
himself, partly because, at the present stage of his argument, he can
speak of faith only as the deep fountain of endurance. He cannot now
describe it as the realisation and the proof of things unseen.[110] He
wishes, moreover, to dwell on the oath made by God to Abraham. Even
this, if not an anticipation of what is still to come, is at least a
preparation of the reader for the distinction hereafter effectively
handled between the high-priest made without an oath and the High-priest
made with an oath. But, in the present section, the emphatic notion is
that the promise made to Abraham is the same promise which the Apostle
and his brethren wait to see fulfilled, and that the confirmation of the
promise by oath to Abraham is still in force for their strong
encouragement. It is true that Abraham received the fulfilment of the
promise in his lifetime, but only in a lower form. The promise, like the
Sabbath rest, has become more and still more elevated, profound,
spiritual, with the long delay of God to make it good. It is equally
true that the saints under the Old Testament received not the fulfilment
of the promise in its highest meaning, and were not perfected apart from
believers of after-ages,[111] God's words never grow obsolete. They are
never left behind by the Church. If they seem to pass away, they return
laden with still choicer fruit. The coursing moon in the high heavens
is never outstripped by the belated traveller. The hope of the Gospel is
ever set before us. God swears to Abraham in the spring-time of the
world that _we_, on whom the ends of the ages have come, may have a
strong incentive to press onwards.
But, if the oath of God to Abraham is to inspire us with new courage, we
must resemble Abraham in the eager earnestness and calm endurance of his
faith. The passage has often been treated as if the oath had been
intended to meet the weakness of faith. But unbelief is logician enough
to argue that God's word is as good as His bond; yea, that we have no
knowledge of His oath except from His word. The Apostle refers to the
greatest instance of faith ever shown even by Abraham, when he withheld
not his son, his beloved son, on Moriah. The oath was made to him by
God, not before he gave up Isaac, in order to encourage his weakness,
but when he had done it, as a reward of his strength. Philo's fine
sentence, which indeed the sacred writer partly borrows, is intended to
teach the same lesson: that, while disappointments are heaped on sense,
an endless abundance of good things has been given to the earnest soul
and the perfect man.[112] It is to Abraham when he has achieved his
supreme victory of faith that God vouchsafes to make oath that He will
fulfil His promise. This gives us the clue to the purport of the words.
Up to this final test of Abraham's faith God's promise is, so to speak,
conditional. It will be fulfilled if Abraham will believe. Now at length
the promise is given unconditionally. Abraham has gone triumphantly
through every trial. He has not withheld his son. So great is his faith
that God can now confirm His promise with a positive declaration, which
transforms a promise made to a man into a prediction that binds Himself.
Or shall we retract the expression that the promise is now given
unconditionally? The condition is transferred from the faith of Abraham
to the faithfulness of God. In this lies the oath. God pledges His own
existence on the fulfilment of His promise. He says no longer, "If thou
canst believe," but "As true as I live." Speaking humanly, unbelief on
the part of Abraham would have made the promise of God of none effect;
for it was conditional on Abraham's faith. But the oath has raised the
promise above being affected by the unbelief of some, and itself
includes the faith of some. St. Paul can now ask, "What if some did not
believe? Shall their unbelief make the _faith_" (no longer merely the
promise) "of God without effect?"[113] Our author also can speak of two
immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie. The one is
the promise, the immutability of which means only that God, on His part,
does not retract, but casts on men the blame if the promise is not
fulfilled. The other is the oath, in which God takes the matter into His
own hands and puts the certainty of His fulfilling the promise to rest
on His own eternal being.
The Apostle is careful to point out the wide and essential difference
between the oath of God and the oaths of men. "For men swear by the
greater;" that is, they call upon God, as the Almighty, to destroy them
if they are uttering what is false. They imprecate a curse upon
themselves. If they have sworn to a falsehood, and if the imprecation
falls on their heads, they perish, and the matter ends. And yet an oath
decides all disputes between man and man.[114] Though they appeal to an
Omnipotence that often turns a deaf ear to their prayer against
themselves; though, if the Almighty were to fling retribution on them,
the wheels of nature would whirl as merrily as before; though, if their
false swearing were to cause the heavens to fall, the men would still
exist and continue to be men;--yet, for all this, they accept an oath as
final settlement. They are compelled to come to terms; for they are at
their wits' end. But it is very different with the oath of God. When He
swears by Himself, He appeals, not to His omnipotence, but to His
truthfulness. If any jot or tittle of God's promise fails to the
feeblest child that trusts Him, God ceases to be. He has been
annihilated, not by an act of power, but by a lie.
We have said that the oath met, not the weakness, but the strength, of
Abraham's faith. If so, why was it given him?
_First_, it simplified his faith. It removed all tendency to morbid
introspection and filled his spirit with a peaceful reliance on God's
faithfulness. He had no more need to try himself whether he was in the
faith. Anxious effort and painful struggle were over. Faith was now the
very life of his soul. He could leave his concerns to God, and wait.
This is the thought expressed in the word "enduring."
_Second_, it was a new revelation of God to him, and thus elevated his
spiritual nature. The moral character of the Most High, rather than His
natural attribute of omnipotence, became the resting-place of his
spirit. Even the joy of God's heart was made known and communicated to
his. God was pleased with Abraham's final victory over unbelief, and
wished to show him more abundantly[115] His counsel and the immutability
of it. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will
show them His covenant."[116]
_Third_, it was intended also for our encouragement. It is strange, but
true, that the promises of God are confirmed to us by the victorious
faith of a nomad chief from Ur of the Chaldees, who, in the morning of
the world's history, withheld not his son. After all, we are not
disconnected units. God only can trace the countless threads of
influence. Abraham's strong faith evoked the oath that now sustains the
weakness of ours. Because he believed so well, the promise comes to us
with all the sanction of God's own truth and unchangeableness. The oath
made to Abraham was linked with a still more ancient, even an eternal,
oath, made to the Son, constituting Him Priest for ever after the order
of Melchizedek. The priesthood of Melchizedek is said by the Apostle to
be a type of the priesthood founded on an oath. It was becoming that the
man who acknowledged the priesthood of Melchizedek and received its
blessing should have that blessing fulfilled to him in the confirmation
by oath of God's promise. Thus the promises that have been fulfilled
through the eternal priesthood of the true Melchizedek are confirmed to
us by an oath made to him who acknowledged that priesthood in the
typical Melchizedek.
Yet, notwithstanding these vital points of contact, Abraham and the
Hebrew Christians are in some respects very unlike. They have left his
serene and contemplative life far behind. The souls of men are stirred
with dread of the threatened end of all things. Abraham had no need to
flee for refuge from an impending wrath. His religion even was not a
fleeing from any wrath to come, but a yearning for a better fatherland.
He never heard the midnight cry of Maranatha, but longed to be gathered
to his fathers. If any similitude to the Christian's fleeing from the
wrath to come must be sought in ancient days, it will be found in the
history of Lot, not of Abraham. Whether the Apostle's thoughts rested
for a moment on Lot's flight from Sodom, it is impossible to say. His
mind is moving so rapidly that one illustration after another flits
before his eye. The notion of Abraham's strong faith, reaching out a
hand to the strong grasp of God's oath, reminds him of men fleeing for
refuge, perhaps into a sanctuary, and laying hold of the horns of the
altar, with a reminiscence of the Baptist's taunting question, "Who
warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" and a side glance at the
approaching destruction of the holy city, if indeed the catastrophe had
not already befallen the doomed people. The thought suggests another
illustration. Our hope is an anchor cast into the deep sea. The anchor
is sure and steadfast--"sure," for, like Abraham's faith, it will
neither break nor bend; "steadfast," for, like Abraham's faith again, it
bites the eternal rock of the oath. Still another metaphor lends itself.
The deep sea is above all heavens in the sanctuary within the veil, and
the rock is Jesus, Who has entered into the holiest place as our
High-priest. Yet another thought. Jesus is not only High-priest, but
also Captain, of the redeemed host, leading us on, and opening the way
for us to enter after Him into the sanctuary of the promised land.
Thus, with the help of metaphor heaped on metaphor in the fearless
confusion delightful to conscious strength and gladness, the Apostle has
at last come to the great conception of Christ in the sanctuary of
heaven. He has hesitated long to plunge into the wave; and even now he
will not at once lift the veil from the argument. The allegory of
Melchizedek must prepare us for it.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Compare chap. vi. 4 and chap. vi. 18.
[107] Chap. x. 34.
[108] =spoudên= (vi. 11).
[109] Chap. vi. 13.
[110] Chap. xi. 1.
[111] Chap. xi. 40.
[112] _SS. Legg. Alleg._, iii., p. 98 (vol. i., p. 127. Mang.). With
Philo's =tê spoudaia psychê= compare the Apostle's =spoudên= (chap. v.
11).
[113] Rom. iii. 3.
[114] Chap. vi. 16.
[115] =perissoteron=.
[116] Ps. xxiv. 14.