Reading: Hebrews 12:28.
This brings us into that large section of the letter to the
Hebrews which from the point of view of subject matter covers the
bulk of the letter; that is, as to the priestly person and
priestly work of the Lord Jesus.
His Priestly Person
In the first place we are brought to recognise the finality
which is characteristic of His priestly person, and we are
directed to such passages as those which are in chapter 7, taking
Melchizedek as a type of His priestly person:
“For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God
Most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the
kings, and blessed him, to whom Abraham divided a tenth part of
all (being first, by interpretation, King of righteousness, and
then also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; without father,
without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of
days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God), abideth
a priest continually” (verses 1-3).
“Who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal
commandment, but after the power of an endless life” (verse
16).
“(For they indeed have been made priests without an
oath; but he with an oath by him that saith of him, The Lord
sware and will not repent himself, Thou art a priest for
ever)” (verse 21).
Now the priestly person of the Lord Jesus is there and
elsewhere seen to have as His supreme, central, all-inclusive
factor, eternity. The whole point of the argument is that the
Lord Jesus, as God’s High Priest, stands altogether outside
of any particular period of time, dispensation or economy. His
origin no one knows, without beginning of days, without
genealogy. He is the Eternal One, and He is that not only as a
member of the Godhead, not only as Very God in deity, and not
only as the eternal Son of God, but here the point is that He is
eternal in His priestly person: He bounds all time and all
eternity in His person as priest. The principle of that eternity
is an indissoluble life, and a life which is not subject at all
to the effect of time, a life which in no way is tainted or
touched by that which means corruption and death; so that being
constituted on the principle of this indissoluble, incorruptible,
indestructible life, there is that in the very priest Himself
which is unshakeable. This Kingdom which we are receiving, or
which we are exhorted to be receiving, is a Kingdom which is
built upon this priestly person who Himself is constituted by an
indissoluble life.
Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests, and Israel was
gathered round Aaron as a high priest, and the argument in the
letter to the Hebrews is that the value of Aaron’s high
priesthood at most could only be for a day. Therefore
Israel’s place as a kingdom of priests could only be a
temporary thing because it rested upon something which was only
of time, because Aaron himself had a nature and a life for which
offering for sin had to be made. He had a corruptible life, and
the writer of the letter to the Hebrews says that he had to offer
sacrifices for himself as well as for the people because of the
nature that was in him. He himself, and his work, and the people
were all subject to death because all were subject to that
corruption that was in them.
This Son goes right outside of that realm altogether and takes
things right outside of that realm, and the value is that which
is represented by what He Himself is. In Him is an incorruptible
and therefore indissoluble life, and therefore He ever liveth;
and the practical value of that in application is that He is
therefore able to save right on to the uttermost, right on to the
end — and there is no end — those that come unto God by
Him.
The force of this presentation of finality in the priestly
person of the Lord Jesus is this, that that is the kind of
kingdom which is coming to us, which is offered to us, into which
we are brought through Christ. It is the kingdom of an
incorruptible nature, and an indissoluble life, which absolutely
rules out death and corruption and all those elements which
undermine the stability of the universe. The stability of
God’s new universe rests upon what Jesus is as to His nature
and as to the life which He possesses. It does not rest upon
anything at all that is corruptible, or anything that is capable
of changing, of passing. This is the unshakeable Kingdom, rooted
in the very person of the Lord Jesus, and what that person is as
after the power of an endless life, an indissoluble life. I think
it is a very striking phrase: “...but made like unto the Son
of God... after the power of an indissoluble life”.
Do you see, then, that in which our salvation stands, upon
which it rests? First of all upon the priestly Person. You cannot
rightly value the priestly work of the Lord Jesus until you have
rightly grasped the priestly Person, because the work that He
does is done out of what He is, and is therefore like Him; that
is, it partakes of the very same elements and constituents. A
great thing to rest upon is the Person of our Priest. It is not
first of all resting upon something that He has done; it is first
of all resting upon Himself and what He is. This One who was
appointed heir of all things, through whom the ages were made,
who was the very effulgence of the Father’s person, the very
expression of the Father’s image — that One became
Priest and His office was shot through and through with what He
was Himself. Now, give to the priestly office the values of the
very effulgence of God, the express image of the Father’s
person, the Maker of the ages, and the Heir of all things, and
you endue priesthood with something that is altogether outside of
the changes and the course of this world.
That sounds very great, very high, very exalted, but unless
you get hold of it you are going to be shaken. This is the point.
The Lord’s people need to be established. The Lord has in
view here the establishing of His people by way of shakings, and
they can only be established as they see what their foundation
is, and the foundation is not something which belongs to time, it
is something right outside of time. It is not something which is
subject to death; it is altogether outside of death. Nothing in
the course of this present world’s history can touch it,
because it cannot touch Him.
We must rightly see the Lord Jesus: who our High Priest
is, and what our High Priest is. That is an end of
everything; yes, that is finality.
His Priestly Work
Then as to His priestly work. If His priestly person is
eternal, then this word teaches us that His priestly work is
perfect, and those conclusions of this letter are full of value.
You go through, and you see how frequently things are represented
as once and for all finished. Look at some of them.
Redemption accomplished
Take chapter 9 verse 12. There is contrast in those words
between Aaron who went in once a year with the blood of goats and
calves, every year going in. Therefore whatever redemption was
represented in that blood and in that entering in, was at most
only a yearly thing. But now here is the Lord Jesus, said to have
entered by His own blood once for all, once for ever, having
obtained, not a twelve monthly redemption, but eternal
redemption; so that His priestly work has the element of finality
in it in regard to redemption. Our redemption is perfect.
Or look again at chapter 10 verse 12. Punctuation does not
matter in this passage. It says here: “But he, when he had
offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, (the comma comes there)
sat down on the right hand of God”. You could put the comma
in another place: “...when he had offered one sacrifice for
sins, for ever sat down...”. No one knows where the comma
should come, but it does not matter. The point is that once for
all He offered a sacrifice for sins, and redemption became an
accomplished fact. These are the constituents of the unshakeable
Kingdom. But there is no chance in this; there is no speculation
about it. It is not a question of how things will turn out: it is
done, it is finished, it is perfected for ever in Christ. That is
redemption.
Sanctification accomplished
Then look again at chapter 10 verse 10. Our sanctification in
Him has reached finality, and the Kingdom which cannot be shaken
has in it that great fact, something which is done. We shall
never get anywhere while, on any one of these points, we are
still looking to the Lord to do something.
Now that is a most important thing to grasp. Are you pleading
with the Lord to sanctify you? It is not until you receive and
thank God that the Holy Spirit is released that you know it,
because until you do that you are putting things back
generations, and you are virtually saying that what the Lord
Jesus Christ did, He has not done. If you asked me for a coin,
and I put that coin on the table for you, and then you kept
asking me for the coin, and I said to you: Well, there it is on
the table, you may take it! But you still ignored the coin and
kept asking me to give it to you, I should wonder what was the
matter with you. Nothing must be taken away, even by inference or
suggestion, from the perfection of His work: it is done, and you
see the whole call of this book is for faith. The great appeal of
this book is for faith. We will come to that again, but faith is
not that God will do something but that He has done something and
we rest upon something that is done. Our whole attitude has got
to be that of those for whom everything is an accomplished fact.
We have been sanctified once for all.
Of course, I have to say something more about that later, but
it does not come here. What we are trying to do is to emphasise
this element of finality in the priestly work of the Lord Jesus.
Perfection accomplished
Look again at chapter 10 verse 14. We are building things up.
It is as though he said, “It takes your breath away to know
that you have been sanctified; now then, I will see that you have
nothing at all to stand upon; I will go beyond that and say that,
being sanctified, you are also perfected for ever.” Can this
be true? Do we read it rightly: “For by one offering he hath
perfected for ever them that are sanctified”? He has just
said that we are sanctified; now he says we are not only
sanctified but also perfected for ever. Our perfection is an
accomplished fact in Christ.
We very often hear and speak of our identification with Christ
in death. We say so often that when He died we died with Him.
What do we mean? We define that in this way: we say He died as
us, not only for us but also as us, that when He died God saw us
dead in Him. And then we say when He rose we were raised together
with Him, and God saw us risen in Him, or saw Him as us risen,
and called upon us to reckon ourselves to be alive unto God in
Christ. That identification matter spreads over all these things.
Is He sanctified? So are we. Is He perfected? So are we. We are
before God what He is before God: that is the ground for faith,
and that is unshakeable ground.
Glory accomplished
Then look at chapter 2 verse 10: “For it became him, for
whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing
many sons unto glory” (the Revised Version margin reads:
“having brought many sons to glory”). You can read it
which way you like: “...in bringing many sons to
glory...”, or “having brought many sons to
glory...”. It is only a part of the whole comprehensive
truth. Is He in glory? So are we. What is the basis of our
glorification? It is that He is already glorified. On what ground
shall we be glorified? On the ground that He is glorified as the
guarantee. Now what was the point of the Lord Jesus going all
this way — redemption, sanctification, perfection, glory?
The point is that it is not for Himself. There is no need, there
never was any need, for Him to go that way for Himself. He went
that way for us.
He has gone the way. That is the point. The Lord Jesus
is not now doing the work of redemption. He is not now doing the
work of sanctification. He is not now doing the work of
perfection. He has done it all. That is the point here. It is all
done, and that is the foundation for the faith of the people of
God.
Preservation accomplished
One more thing, which is found in chapter 7 verse 25:
“Wherefore also He is able to save to the
uttermost...”, or, as the Revised Version margin puts it:
“...able to save completely...”.
Our preservation rests upon His ever living, His living ever,
and making intercession for us. I am quite sure you will agree
that if our preservation rested upon our prayers it would be a
very fitful kind of experience, but, blessed be God, this is in
Him as all other things are in Him. He is alive for ever, and
alive for ever making intercession for the saints. There are
things which are tremendous facts in our history, of which we
have no consciousness, and this is one of them. Explain why it is
that we are here today: why there is that going on, that
persisting, that enduring, that coming through. It is a miracle
how the saints, how the church, survives. Explain why our faith
has not failed, why we have not gone out in view of the excessive
pressure and trial. Why do we go on, with all the suffering and
all the difficulty? It is not due to us; it is not due to
anything here. This is the answer: He makes intercession! Do you
think that such a one as He is, being in the relationship that He
has to the Father, being the Son of God’s love, any prayer
of His will not be answered? Do you think that He prays futile
prayers, that He does not pray according to the will of God? The
assurance is that prayer according to the will of God will be
answered: it cannot be otherwise. Does He ever pray other than
according to the will of God? No, His prayers are prevailing for
us, and when we get through there finally to the glory it will
just be due to His having been holding on for us all the time.
Now these things are brought to us cumulatively and they are
presented as the constituents of an unshakeable Kingdom, and the
Holy Spirit would say to us through this word: Fasten your faith
upon these things and you will be unshakeable; get these things
under your feet as your foundation, and you will abide for ever;
receive the Kingdom that cannot be shaken, receive the fact that
redemption is accomplished, sanctification is accomplished,
perfection is accomplished, glory is accomplished; intercession
is effective and triumphant; preservation rests with Him and not
with us.
We have said that it is not until we really do get hold of
that in faith that the Holy Spirit can begin to make it good in
us. The danger is — and it is a danger into which many have
fallen — to simply accept that in an objective way, and,
accepting it in an objective way, to proceed blindly, careless of
the necessity for it being made good subjectively. That has
resulted in an utterly false position and a many-sided
contradiction.
There is the other side, that what is true in Him has got to
be made true in us, and God is making it true in us. The
redemption that is in Christ Jesus is going on in those who
believe, and we are moving daily to that day when the finality
which has been reached in Him will be reached in us. His Body has
been redeemed from corruption. “Thou wilt not suffer thy
Holy One to see corruption.” He was redeemed from corruption
in His Body. We are moving to the day when this corruptible shall
put on incorruption in the day of the redemption of the Body. The
earnest of the redemption of the Body is the Holy Spirit of His
already redeemed Body. There is depth of truth and value in the
Lord’s Table that you and I have not grasped for practical
purposes. When we take the loaf and testify that we are one loaf
with Him, that we are joined with Him in His Body (“Take,
eat: this is my Body, which is for you”, said He) what are
we doing? We are laying hold by faith of the fact that we are to
be made like unto His glorious Body, and in that giving of
Himself by the Holy Spirit we have the earnest of a glorified
body. So that by faith I live now upon the Body of Christ,
redeemed, delivered from death, and that is the meaning of Romans
8:11. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the
dead be in you, he that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also
quicken your mortal body by his Spirit who dwelleth in you.”
The Spirit that redeemed Christ’s Body from corruption is in
us to quicken our mortal body, to deliver us now from premature
corruption. It is the earnest of our bodies being made like unto
His glorious Body, the Holy Spirit in us. By faith now we accept
the values of Christ’s Body having been delivered from
corruption. The Holy Spirit sustains us here on the principle of
what Christ has gone through, and where He is. We are by the
Spirit linked with what Christ is and how Christ is.
I have only singled that out as a very practical illustration,
the realm of the redemption of the body. What is true there is
true on all these points. Do I want to know in Him
sanctification, as I want to know in my body redemption from
corruption? Then I must by faith take Christ as my
sanctification, and the Holy Spirit operates on that. I do not
ask the Lord to do something called sanctification; I ask the
Lord to make good in me the sanctification which is already
perfected in His Son. It is living on Christ in every respect by
faith, and the Holy Spirit, the active, intelligent agent, gets
to work to make good in us that which our faith appropriates,
that which we lay hold of by faith. And so here is finality in
Christ as to His priestly work.
The Finality of the Calling and
Position of the Lord’s People
Now I shall come nearer to what I have just said
if I go one step further in the matter of finality as to the
calling and position of the Lord’s people.
The calling and position of the Lord’s people as set
forth in this letter and elsewhere, is shown to be heavenly not
earthly, and that from the divine standpoint is final. That is
God’s conclusion, that is God’s settled mind: the
church is heavenly and not earthly. The church is not becoming
heavenly, it is not going to heaven. From God’s standpoint
it is now heavenly, utterly and finally. But we are not going to
stay with that for the moment. I want to come to the second
point:
The Responsibility of the Lord’s
People
This letter makes it perfectly clear that there is
responsibility on the side of the Lord’s people in
connection with all that we have been saying, the priestly person
and the priestly work of the Lord Jesus. Responsibility runs
right through this letter, but responsibility is related to this
secured and available completeness, and the relation to that is
one of progressiveness. Responsibility rests upon our
progressiveness in this which is a completed work for us. The
urge here is, “Let us go on”, or “Let us be going
on.” As we are found in a state of going on to full growth
the Lord places to our account everything. It is a question of
progressive receiving or forfeiting the Kingdom which cannot be
shaken.
On the one hand the call is: “Wherefore, holy brethren,
partners in a heavenly calling...”; “We are made
partakers with Christ if...”. There are a lot of
provisional things in this letter, and if you read them by
themselves it will make you feel that everything is uncertain, is
not as settled as we have been saying, but that is purely the
side of responsibility, and responsibility is all gathered up
into one thing — going on, and Israel is taken as an
illustration of people who did not go on. Their hearts went back;
they did not go on; they stopped. You can see them as a people
who are not by any means pressing on, and they perished in the
wilderness. They are taken as an example and as a warning.
Now all the warnings, and all those provisional elements in
this letter are connected with God’s full end, not with our
salvation but with God’s full end. They are connected with
the inheritance, with the Kingdom, and in a word what is said
here is: You may miss the Kingdom, you may lose the Kingdom, you
may not lose your salvation but you may lose the Kingdom; and
there are the strongest things in all the Scriptures said here.
Terrible things are said in chapter 10 and they are only to be
explained in the light of the Kingdom which is to be received.
“If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in
him. But we are not of them that draw back unto
perdition...”. That sounds strong. That sounds like the loss
of salvation. Then, Israel came out of Egypt on the ground of
shed and sprinkled blood, the blood of a covenant. They became
God’s people, they perished in the wilderness, and that
wilderness perishing was a perdition indeed. Later the remnant,
the new generation, went into the land, possessed it, and they
again ceased to go on and God sent them away into Babylon, and
Babylon was perdition. They did not cease to be the Lord’s
people, but they were in perdition. A remnant came back, and in
the remnant there were those who went on: “Then they that
feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord
hearkened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before
him... and they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the
day wherein I do make a peculiar treasure.” They went on,
but where do you find them at the end of the New Testament, and
where do you find them in the days of the Lord Jesus? Where is
this Israel now? The Lord Jesus, God’s final speech,
appeared in their midst; God speaks at the end of the times in
His Son. They did not go on. They drew back. I ask you whether
Israel has been in perdition since the year seventy? Is Israel in
perdition today? What word describes better the state of the
historic Israel, the Jews, today? Is it not perdition? But are
they not still that distinctive race? Have they not yet a future
as God’s people? Have they ever been cut off? That would
contradict Romans to start with. It would contradict Ezekiel. But
are they not in perdition? “We are not of those who draw
back unto perdition”; “...my soul shall have no
pleasure in him.” It is terribly true, the Lord’s
attitude towards Israel when they drew back from His Son. How
could Israel go through that awful experience of the year
seventy, and the awful experience since, if the Lord’s soul
had pleasure in them? No, it is concerning the Kingdom. We may
lose the Kingdom if we may not lose our salvation.
“The rest of the dead lived not again for a thousand
years.” There is a different resurrection for the Kingdom,
and we may miss it. Responsibility is not for our salvation, our
redemption, our sanctification. He has taken responsibility for
that. The responsibility is that we can go on in what He has done
and we make progress in what is an accomplished thing for us, and
as we do that the whole question of responsibility is settled, is
answered, and we come by the obedience of faith to the
realisation of the truth that He has accomplished it all: it is
for us through faith. So faith becomes a great word in this
letter, and faith is linked with this progressive attitude,
looking on and going on. It was unbelief, says the apostle, that
brought Israel to perdition in the wilderness, to a standstill.
Faith would have meant that they went on to the Kingdom. So the
Lord calls strongly to us to recognise that the Kingdom is
constituted by all these elements of finality, and we are called
by faith to receive the Kingdom, to go on to full growth, and not
to draw back, not to turn aside, not to allow doubt and unbelief
to creep in and paralyse our walk so that we cease to go on.
Finality in connection with the calling and position of the
Lord’s people as to responsibility is here: He has
accomplished everything for us, and we by faith must go on in the
accomplished thing. So shall we be established, unshakeable.
Our attitude has to be a very practical one from day to day.
We are not yet in ourselves perfect. We discover that as we go on
more and more how imperfect we are, how far from wholly
sanctified. But if, when that reality comes upon us strongly and
sternly, with all its discouragement and despair, we take that
on, if we sit down under that, if we regard that as the final
thing, then it is perdition, we shall know it. But if we take
this attitude, even today, when for some reason we are smitten
again with the imperfection, the lack of sanctification; if we
turn to the Lord and say, “Lord, this is me, it is not You;
You are other than this. You are not as I am; I take anew my
position by faith in what you are. I step off of the ground of
what I am and on to the ground of what you are!”, we shall
discover that the Holy Spirit comes in on that, and we shall know
comfort, and find release, deliverance and uplift.
You could take the other two courses of just accepting that,
and sit down and be miserable for the rest of the day, or the
rest of your days; or you could begin to struggle and strive to
get out of your mire, out of your slough, deploring that you got
in and you had so often got in, and you are going to make another
effort. You will not get very far either way: you will be
dragging along. But if you take Christ’s ground by faith,
repudiate your ground and take His ground by faith, and tell the
Lord that He is altogether other than you are and you take the
ground of what He is by faith, then the Holy Spirit will deliver
you, you will find help and deliverance, you will find yourself
lifted with new comfort, new strength, and, what is more, new
energy to go on, and you will not so easily get into that mire
again. You will grow so that the mire is left more and more
behind. The Holy Spirit is working on the ground of what Jesus
is.
You will find this principle operates in many ways, not only
in the matter of definite sin or failure, when you are tripped up
at some time or become particularly conscious of your own
unholiness, but in many other ways.
Take the matter of going to bed at night just enjoying the
Lord, full of the blessedness of the Lord, all at peace with the
Lord, no cloud between you and the Lord; you simply go to bed and
you go to sleep, and in the morning you wake up to find that all
the blessedness has flown, somehow or other everything is as
though it had never been, and you have got to start all over
again: it is as though you had got to start the Christian life
again. Sometimes we have the blessed experience of waking up in
the morning in the joy of the Lord, and everything is clear, but
that is not always so. We may have the most blessed fellowship
with the Lord last thing at night, and simply the bottom has
fallen out of everything through the night, and it is like
starting the Christian life all over again in the morning. We may
be irritable, we may be anything, not feeling a bit like a
Christian: everything is topsy-turvy. What are we going to do?
Are we going to raise questions about this Christianity, that it
is not certain, not stable, variable, and so on? Or are we going
to succumb to these feelings, these sensations, this situation,
this condition of things and have a wretched day because we feel
like that today, that is how we are today; it is a bad day and so
we go through a bad day? What is going to happen? It is very real
sometimes, you feel just about as evil as you can feel, and you
have all the reasons for asking the questions as to whether you
are a Christian at all.
The cause may be any one of a number of things. It may be the
Devil himself is anticipating something: he has a sense of
something coming which is of value to the Lord, and he has come
in and right from your waking consciousness he is surrounding you
with a black cloud of evil enmity and is pressing that upon you
to frustrate and defeat something for God. But whatever the
reason is there is the fact: you feel bad, and everything argues
that you are bad. What is your way out? I will tell you how I
have found deliverance. I have turned to the Lord and said, Lord,
You are not this; You are other than this. You do not change from
night to morning; there is no variableness with You. You are not
subject to all these elements which give us these different and
varying sensations: You are the same Lord, just the same,
unchanging, unchangeable. Last night You were love, and You are
love this morning; last night You were peace, and You are peace
this morning; last night You were joy, and You are joy this
morning. You are outside of all this, Lord; I take my stand on
what You are, and repudiate what I am, and all this. I forsake
this ground and take my place in You as other than this.
I have found that is a ground on which the Lord encamps for
deliverance. It is so easy to just settle on that ground, put up
your tent there for the day, and go on saying, Oh, well —!
Repudiate that ground, but not in that psychological way of
simply repudiating something and saying it does not exist.
Repudiate that ground in the positive way of Christ’s
ground. He is not that; He is other than we are, and by faith we
take His ground.
The Holy Spirit works according to that faith, and there is
deliverance. Am I feeling evil? He is not feeling evil. Lord, I
take your ground this morning. It is a law of victory, it is the
ground of what Christ is, and that is unshakeable ground.
That is the Kingdom which we are to be receiving. In that way,
by that faith, we go on to full growth. It is full growth in
Christ, and in what He is.
The Lord interpret this to us, and open our understanding, so
that we shall come to rest and be established.