A HEART OF FAITH
HEB. iii.
We have just endeavoured to find a message, "godly 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 God" 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 God (ver. 4); God Filial, God so
conditioned that He is also the faithful Sent-One of the Father, but
none the less GOD. 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 circumstances, 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 God." 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 God" (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 God" 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 God.