THE BETTER COVENANT
HEB. viii.
The Person and greatness of our High Priest are now full before the
readers of the Epistle. The paragraph we enter next, after one more
deliberate contemplation of His dignity and His qualifications, proceeds
to expound His relation to the better and eternal Covenant. We shall
find here also messages appropriate to our time.
The first step then is a review, a summing up, a "look again" upon the
true King of Righteousness and peace (verses 1, 2). "Such a High Priest
_we have_." It is a wonderful affirmation, not only of His existence but
of His relation to "us," His people. "_We have_" Him. He has taken His
seat indeed "at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the
heavens." But this great exaltation has not removed Him for a moment out
of our possession; we have Him. He is now the great Minister, the
supreme sacerdotal Functionary, of the heavenly sanctuary, "the true
tabernacle," [Greek: tes skenes tes alethines], the non-figurative
reality of which the Mosaic structure was only the shadow; the true
scene of unveiled Presence and immortal worship, "pitched" by Him whose
face makes Heaven, and makes it all one temple. But this sublimity of
our Priest's place and power does not make Him in the least less ours;
we have Him.
The words invite us to a new and deliberate look upward, and then to a
recollection deeper than ever that He is held spiritually in our very
hands; that He is a possession, nearer to us than any other.
Then (verses 3 and following) the thought moves towards the sacrificial
and offertorial qualifications of this great and most sacred Person. He
is what He is, our High Priest, our Minister of the sanctuary above, on
perfectly valid grounds. For He is, what every sacerdotal minister must
be, an Offerer. And He is this in a sense, in a way, congruous to His
heavenly position. He has no blood of goats and calves to present, like
the priests on earth. Indeed, were He "on earth" (ver. 4), this greatest
of all High Priests "would not even be a priest" ([Greek: oud an en
hiereus]), an ordinary priest. For that function, says the Writer, is
already filled, "according to the law," by the Aaronic order, to which
He never belonged and never could belong (see vii. 13, 14). It is in
charge of the sacred servants ([Greek: latreuousin]) of the earthly
sanctuary, the God-given type and shadow (ver. 5) of the realities of
Heaven, but no more than their type and shadow, partial and transient.
No, His sacerdotal qualification is of another sort and a greater. What
it is which "He hath to offer" in the celestial Holiest is not yet
explicitly said; that is reserved for the ninth chapter, to which this
is but the vestibule. But already the Epistle emphasizes the truth that
"He _hath somewhat_ to offer," so that we may fully realize the
completeness of His high-priestly power.
It may be well to pause here, and to ask whether this passage reveals
that our Lord Jesus Christ is at this moment "offering" for us, in His
heavenly life. We are all aware that this has been widely held and
earnestly pressed, sometimes into inferences which, as far as I can see,
cannot at all be borne even by the doctrine that He _is_ offering for us
now. In particular it is said that, if He in glory is offering for His
Church, then His Church must, in some sense, as in a counterpart, be
offering here on earth, in union with Him. In short, there must still be
priests on earth who are ministers of "the example and shadow of
heavenly things." But surely, if this Epistle makes anything clear, it
makes it clear that our great Priest is the superseding fulfilment of
all such ministrations done by "men having infirmity." It is His glory,
and it is ours, that He is known by us as our one and all-sufficient
Offerer and Mediator. It is precisely as such that "we have Him," in a
way to distinguish our position and privilege in a magnificent sense
from that of those who needed the sacerdotal aid of their mortal
brethren.
But then further, does this passage really intimate at all that He is
offering now? The thought appears to be decisively negatived by the
grandeur of the terms of the first verse of this chapter. Where, in the
heavenly sanctuary, is our High Priest now? He has "taken His seat on
the right hand of the throne of the majesty." But enthronement is a
thought out of line with the act and attitude of oblation. The offerer
stands before the Power he approaches. Our Priest is seated--where Deity
alone can sit.
Does not this tell us that the words (ver. 3), "It is necessary that He
too should have something to offer," are to be explained not of a
continuous historical procedure (to which idea, by the way, the aorist
verb [Greek: prosenenke] would hardly be appropriate), but as the
statement of a principle in terms of time? The "necessity" is, not that
He should have something to offer now, and to-morrow, and always, but
that the matter and act of offering should belong to Him. And they do so
belong, in principle and effect, for priestly purposes, by having been
once and for ever handled and performed by Him. His "need" is, not to be
always offering, but to be always an Offerer. He meets that need by
being for ever the Priest who had Himself to offer, and who offered
Himself, and who now dispenses from His sacerdotal seat the benedictions
based upon the sacrifice of which He is for ever the once accepted
Offerer.
Only thus viewed, I venture to say, can this phrase be read in its full
harmony with the whole Epistle. "He hath somewhat to offer," in the
sense that He has for ever the grand sacerdotal qualification of being
an Offerer who, having executed that function, now bears to all eternity
its _character_. But He is not therefore always executing the function.
Otherwise He must descend from His throne. But His enthronement, His
session, is a fact of His present position as important and
characteristic as possible in this whole Epistle.
Aaron was not always offering. But he was always an offerer. On the
morrow of the Atonement Day he was as much an offerer as on the day
itself. All through the year, even until the next Atonement, he was
still an offerer. He exercised his priestly functions at all times
because, in principle, he "had somewhat to offer" in its proper time.
_Our_ High Priest knows only one Atonement Day, and it is over for ever.
And His Israel have it for their privilege and glory not to be "serving
unto an example and shadow" of even His work and office, but to be going
always, daily and hourly, direct to Him in His perfect Priesthood, in
which they always "have" Him, and to be always abiding, in virtue of
Him, "boldly," "with confidence," in the very presence of the Lord.
Then the chapter moves forward (verses 6 and following) to consider the
relation between our High Priest and _the Covenant_ of which He is the
Mediator. Here begins one of the great themes of the Epistle. It will
recur again and again, till at last we read (xiii. 20) of "the blood of
the Covenant eternal."
This pregnant subject is introduced by a solemn reference to the
"promises upon which has been legislated," legally instituted, [Greek:
nenomothetetai], this new compact between God and man. The reference is
to the thirtieth chapter of Jeremiah, from which an extract is here made
at length. There the prophet, in the name of his God, explicitly
foretells the advent of what we may reverently call a new departure in
the revealed relations between Jehovah and His people. At Sinai He had
engaged to bless them, yet under conditions which left them to discover
the total inability of their own sin-stricken wills to meet His holy
while benignant will. They failed, they broke the pact, and judgment
followed them of course. But now another order is to be taken. Their
King and Lawgiver, without for one moment ceasing to be such, will also
undertake another function, wholly new, as regards the method of
covenant. He will place Himself so upon their side as Himself to
readjust and empower their affections and their wills. He "will put His
laws into their mind and write them upon their hearts," and "they shall
all know Him," with the knowledge which is life eternal. And further, as
the antecedent to all this, in order to open the path to it, to place
them where this wonderful blessing can rightly reach and fill them,
their King and Lawgiver pledges Himself to a _previous_ pardon, full and
unreserved; "Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more."
They shall be set before Him in an acceptance as full as if they had
never fallen. And then, not as the condition to this but as the sequel
to it, He will so deal with them, internally and spiritually, that they
shall will His will and live His law. There shall be no mechanical
compulsion; "their mind," "their hearts," full as ever of personality
and volition, shall be the matter acted upon. But there shall be a
gracious and prevailing influence, deciding their spiritual action along
its one true line; "I will put," "I will write."
This is the new, the better, the everlasting Covenant. It is placed here
in the largest and most decisive contrast over against the old covenant,
the compact of Sinai, "written and engraven in stones" (2 Cor. iii. 7).
That compact had done its mysterious work, in convincing man of his
sinful incapacity to meet the will of God. Now emerges its wonderful
antithesis, in which man is first entirely pardoned, with a pardon which
means acceptance, peace, re-instatement into the home and family of God,
and then and therefore is internally transfigured by his Father's power
into a being who loves his Father's law.
What the prophet foretold was claimed by the Lord Christ Himself, as
fulfilled in His Person and His work, when He took the cup of blessing,
at the feast of the new Passover of the new Israel, and said, "This cup
is the new covenant in my blood." And what He so claimed His great
apostle rejoiced in, when he wrote to Corinth (2 iii. 6, etc.) of the
"ministry of the new covenant," the covenant of the Spirit, of life, of
glory. And here the same truth is stated again, and in strong connexion
again with Him who is at once its Sacrifice, its Surety, its Mediator;
the Cause, and Guardian, and Giver of all its blessings. He is such that
it is such; ours is "_so great_ a salvation," because of so great and
wonderful a High Priest, the possessor in very deed of "somewhat to
offer," and now, with hands full of the fruits of that offering,
"seated" for us "on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the
heavens."
Here is a message for our times, in a sense which seems to me special,
pressing, and deeply beneficent. For the terms of that new covenant are
nothing less than the glorious essence, the Divine peculiarity, of the
Gospel of the grace of God. This forgiveness, this most sincere and
entirely unearned amnesty, this oblivion of the sins of the people of
God--do we hear very much about it now, even where by tradition it might
be most expected? But do we not need it now? Was there ever a time when
human hearts would be more settled and more energized than now, amidst
their moral restlessness, by a wise, thoughtful, but perfectly
unmistakable reaffirmation of the sublime fulness of Divine forgiveness
in Christ? Men may think that they can do without that message. They may
bid us throw the whole weight of preaching upon self-sacrifice, upon
social service, upon conduct at large. But the fully wakeful soul knows
that it is only then capacitated for self-sacrifice in the Lord's
footsteps when it has received the warrant of forgiveness, written large
in His sacred blood, finding pardon and peace at the foot of His
sacrificial Cross. Then turn to the second limb of the covenant, a limb
greater even than the first, inasmuch as for it the first is provided
and guaranteed. Do we hear too much about this covenant blessing now? Do
our pulpits too frequently and too fully give out the affirmation that
God in Christ stands pledged and covenanted to work the moral
transfiguration of His believing Israel, to act so on "the first springs
of thought and will" that our being shall freely respond to His free
action upon it, and will His will, and live His law? But was there ever
greater need for such an affirmation than in our time, so restless, so
unsatisfied, and, deep below all its superficial arrogance, so
disappointed, so discouraged?
Let us return upon the rich treasures of this great Compact of God in
Christ. The Covenant is ever new, for it is eternal. And it lies safe in
the ministering hands of Him who died to inaugurate it and make it good,
and who lives to shower its blessings down. He is on the right hand of
the throne of the majesty in the heavens. And "_we have_" Him.