05.28. Analysis Of Hebrews And Our Lord's Sonships
XXIII ANALYSIS OF HEBREWS AND OUR LORD’S SONSHIPS
Before commencing the exposition of this remarkable letter, I wish to refer briefly to commentaries suitable to English students. I commend heartily Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown, brief but critical and trustworthy, though dissenting from it, however, in the persons to whom the letter is addressed. I commend very heartily "The Speaker’s Commentary." Its introduction is superb, indeed, the best I have seen, though I differ from this commentary as to the persons addressed in the letter. I commend, with some reservation, "The Pulpit Commentary," particularly its homiletical part. Farrar, in "The Cambridge Bible," is as usual sharp and erratic. Of course, as a radical critic, he dissents from authorship by Paul. Edwards, in "The Expositor’s Bible," is weak. In "The American Commentary," Kendrick follows the radical critics in his introduction, and gives an easy flowing translation of Hebrews. I have never regarded Kendrick as occupying the first rank on the matter of soundness of judgment in interpretation.
ANALYSIS OF HEBREWS 1. INTRODUCTION, answering the questions:
1. Who wrote it?
2. In what language?
3. Where written?
4. What the circumstances of the writer?
5. When written?
6. To whom?
7. The occasion, or circumstances of those addressed.
8. Of what group of letters is it a part, and what its place in the group?
9. What its character and style?
10. What its theme?
II. THE MEDIATOR OF THE NEW COVENANT IS THE SON OF GOD (Hebrews 1:1-9).
1. By eternal subsistence. In his pre-existence: (1) "The effulgence of God’s glory and very image of his substance." (2) "Through whom also he made the worlds." (3) "Upholding all things by the word of his power."
2. In his incarnation (1) "The Firstborn." "Made purification of sins."
3. In his resurrection (1) "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee." "When be again bringeth his firstborn into the world." (2) "Sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high." "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." (3) "Anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows."
III. SUPERIOR TO THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE (Hebrews 1:10-12)
1. He created and upholds it.
2. He is changeless; it changes.
3. He dissolves it by fire at his final coming (Hebrews 1:11-12, and 2 Peter 3:4-12), and recreates it (Revelation 21:1).
IV. SUPERIOR TO ALL OLD TESTAMENT PROPHETS AS REVEALER
1. Their revelation fragmentary, diverse, incomplete.
2. His revelation complete, and closes the canon of Scriptures.
3. It is a gospel of salvation – theirs a promise.
V. SUPERIOR TO ANGELS – GOOD AND BAD
1. To good angels: (1) In his threefold sonship he is the object of their worship. (2) In his expiation of sin. (3) In his inheritance. (4) In his enthronement. (5) In his anointing with the oil of gladness. (6) In their subordination of service. (7) In his confirmation of them for their fidelity in ministering to the heirs of salvation. (8) In his gospel as compared with the law disposed by them. (9) In the higher penal sanctions of his gospel over the penal sanctions of the law. (10) In the gospel’s better accrediting than the law. (11) In his sympathetic priesthood. (12) In his becoming a brother to them whom they only serve.
2. To bad angels: (1) In his successful resistance to Satan’s temptation, both in the desert and in Gethsemane. (2) In his complete victory over Satan and all his demons on the cross. (3) In delivering Satan’s victims. (4) In his final judgment of them.
VI. GREATER THAN MOSES, MEDIATOR OF THE OLD COVENANT
1. The builder of the house greater than the house.
2. The Son in the house greater than the servant.
3. The house built by the Son greater than the house built by the servant.
4. Neither Moses nor the people led out of bondage by him ever reached the earthly Promised Land, but Jesus enters the heavenly promised land, saying, "Here am I and the children thou hast given me."
VII. GREATER THAN JOSHUA, THE CAPTAIN GENERAL OF ISRAELThe rest into which Joshua led his generation was imperfect and temporary, but Jesus entered the true rest or redemption.
VIII. THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH
Commemorating the rest after creation (Genesis 2:2-3), and commemorating the temporal deliverance from Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:4-15), and of the imperfect rest of Joshua (Hebrews 4:8), was nailed to the cross of Christ and blotted out (Colossians 2:14; Colossians 2:16-17), and forever superseded by another day – the Christian’s sabbath – "sabbath-keeping" (Sabbatis mos) that remaineth to the people of God, commemorating the resurrection rest of Christ’s finished work of redemption (Hebrews 4:8-10).
IX. GREATER THAN AARON THE HIGH PRIEST
1. In descent from Judah, not Levi.
2. After the order of Melchizedek.
3. Sinless, whereas Aaron was a sinner.
4. Aaron died, but he ever liveth to intercede, and therefore is able to save to the uttermost all that come to God through him.
5. In sympathetic touch with his people.
X. THE GENERAL SUPERIORITY OF THE NEW COVENANT OVER THE OLD COVENANT (Heb. 8:5-10:18)
1. In its better promises.
2. In its better surety.
3. It is the substance of which the other was the shadow.
4. Written on the heart instead of tablets of stone.
5. In the dignity and intrinsic merit of its one great expiatory sacrifice, offered once for all.
6. This one expiation blots out sin and its remembrance; the multitude of the others, oft repeated, only passed sin over till this one came.
7. In the personal and experimental knowledge of God possessed by all members of the new.
8. All the members of the new are priests unto God, having a superior festival and better nonexpiating sacrifices (Hebrews 13:10-13; Hebrews 13:15-16).
9. The old broken repeatedly by one of the parties to it, and disregarded by the other.
10. The old in its city, its tabernacle, and all its appointments and sacrifices and priesthood and ritual and ordinances forever taken away. The new abideth forever, thoroughly kept by its surety, and so provides for all its members that they, when fully saved, will forever keep it.
XI. ALL THE WORTHIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TIMES
Won their victories by faith – the great first principle of the new covenant (Hebrews 11:1-40).
XII. THE ENCOURAGEMENTS TO A SUCCESSFUL RACE
Under the new far exceed those of the old (Hebrews 12:1-17).
XIII. THE OUTCOME OF THE NEW
Far better and more glorious (Hebrews 12:1-24).. The covenant argument has its climax in Hebrews 12:1-29 and closes at Hebrews 13:16. The Mediator argument finds its climax in Hebrews 13:8.
XIV. CLOSING WORDS (Hebrews 13:17-25). The one theme of this book is: Christian Jews should hold fast to the profession of their faith in Jesus Christ, steadily going forward to maturity, and not relapse into Judaism, because the new covenant, mediated by our Lord, forever supersedes, and on all points is infinitely superior to the old covenant given through the disposition of angels and mediated by Moses.
The argument and exhortation rest on the nature, person, and office of our Lord in relation to salvation, and on the excellencies of the new covenant mediated by him. So resting, the argument naturally commences with the dignity and worth of the Mediator as contrasted with all other intelligencies, and then develops the excellencies of his covenant. Jesus the Messiah is the one hero of the book from start to finish. The arguments, each followed by appropriate exhortation, commence with verse I, reach the climax as to the covenant in Hebrews 12:1-29, and close with the priesthood of all Christians and the superiority of their festivals and of their nonexpiatory sacrifices, at Hebrews 13:10; Hebrews 13:15-16. The climax on the Mediator is reached at Hebrews 13:8.
The Mediator of the new covenant is first presented to view in his threefold sonship to the Father:
1. The sonship of his pre-existence; i.e., prior to time and creation of the universe. He was the Son of God by eternal subsistence, or, as this book expresses it, "being the effulgence of his glory and the very image of his substance." The activities of this substance are thus expressed: "Through whom he also made the worlds," and his providence after their creation, "upholding all things by the word of his power." Eternity of being, creation, providence, set forth his essential deity and overthrow the false conceptions of the Gnostic philosophy concerning eons, which at this very time is one of the active causes tending to apostasy. On this point, as on others, the book fits into the pre-ceding letters of the first Roman imprisonment, rounding up their argument, and prepares for the interfitting of subsequent New Testament books. We cannot, except by violence to the system of correlated revelation, disrupt it from this connection. But it is the evident purpose of the book to connect his first sonship with the second and third sonships, reaching the climax of the argument as to Mediator in Hebrews 13:8 of the last chapter: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today, yea, and forever."
2. Son of God by procreation of the virgin Mary – his "firstborn." Compare Luke 1:35 and 2 Samuel 7:14. This chapter expresses the work of this sonship in four distinct offices.
(1) Prophet: "Hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son" (Hebrews 1:2).
(2) Both priest and
(3) expiating sacrifice: "When he had made purification of sins" (Hebrews 1:3). Other parts of the letter give elaborate details of his priesthood and vicarious sacrifice, which will be considered later.
(4) King: "I will be to him a Father and he will be to me a Son" (latter clause of Hebrews 1:5). This is a quotation from 2 Samuel 7:1-29. The verses immediately before it are: "When thy days are fufilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, that shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever" (2 Samuel 7:12-13).
It is this promise to David which influenced him more than all other words of God to him, and evoked the matchless Psalms 72:1-20; occasioned the kingdom prophecies of Daniel Zechariah, and Micah, and the testimonies so elaborately set forth in the Gospel of Matthew, on the King and kingdom. But so far, the allusions are to the King and his birth, and in the setting up of his kingdom, and the constitution of his church before his death. It is the King building and establishing and not his reigning after his exaltation. The word, "firstborn," belongs to the second sonship, i.e., so far as it relates to his first coming into this world, and not "the bringing in again."
3. The Son of God by his resurrection: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." "And when he again bringeth in his firstborn into the world." The first passage, (Hebrews 1:5) first clause, is a quotation from Psalms 2:1-12, and by Paul himself, is expounded as applying to his resurrection at Acts 13:33. The other passage: "When he again bringeth in his firstborn into the world," needs careful consideration. It means that as he brought him first into the world by his incarnation – his birth of the virgin Mary – so he brought him into the world the second time at his resurrection. It means that when he died on the cross he left the world and his spirit ascended to the Father, as in Luke 23:46 – "And Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ’Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,’ and having said this he gave up the spirit."
Here arises a series of crucial questions: Where did the spirit of Jesus go when separated from his body, why did it go there, and how long did it stay there, and leaving there, where did it next go, and for what purpose, and how long did he remain at this second place, and for what purpose, and then where did he next go and why, and where is he now, and what doing, and how long will he remain, and then where will he go, and for what?
The answers are: His spirit went to heaven; he went there as High Priest to sprinkle on the mercy seat the blood shed on the cross and make atonement for sins. He remained there in the interval between his death and resurrection; he then returned to the earth for his glorified resurrection body, and remained on earth comforting and instructing his disciples for forty days, and then he again ascended to heaven, soul and body, and sat down at the right hand of God; was crowned King of kings and Lord of lords, and there he reigns as King and makes intercession as High Priest until his third and final advent to raise the dead and Judge the world and then turn over the kingdom to the Father.
Let us note very carefully the following points:
1. At his first advent he assumed the body of his humiliation to become the sacrifice for sin. At his second advent he assumed the body of his glory for reigning and interceding in heaven. At his final advent he will assume his mystical body, the church, for its glorification forever.
2. When his body died, his soul, negatively, (1) did not descend into (Gehenna) hell. His descent into hell on the cross, soul and body, during the three hours of darkness; (2) His soul did not go into hades considered as a place, in order to preach a gospel unto the wicked dead, nor to deliver Old Testament saints from a half-way prison, but, positively, according to Leviticus 16:1-34, entered heaven to make atonement in the holy of holies for offering and pleading the merit of his expiating blood. On that great day of atonement (Leviticus 16:1-34) there was continuous action. Immediately after the death of the vicarious sacrifice, the high priest, with the warm blood, parted the veil which hid the holy of holies. This blood of the typical vicarious sacrifice cleanses the typical sanctuary and makes atonement. There is no halt in the proceedings; the action is continuous. So this letter will tell us how Jesus passes through the veil – that is, by the death of his body – and enters into the most holy place beyond the veil and cleanses with his own nobler blood the true sanctuary and makes atonement.
To make this clear, let us repeat: One of the greatest questions of New Testament theology is: How was the soul of our Lord employed in the interval between his death and resurrection? Some make hades an intermediate place between heaven and hell (Gehenna), divided into two compartments – paradise for the good, and Tartarus for the wicked. This they call "the middle life." They contend that all Old Testament saints are sidetracked in paradise, and that all the lost of Old Testament times are sidetracked in Tartarus until the final judgment and that the same disposition is now made of the souls of good and bad. See J. R. Graves’Middle Life,Bishop McTyiere’s sermon inMethodist Pulpit,South, afterward regretted, as I am informed, and Bishop Hobart’s (Episcopal) funeral sermon on a brother bishop, and the interpretation of the creed: He descended into hell (hades).
On this theory some contend, by a misinterpretation of 1 Peter 3:19-20; 1 Peter 4:6, that the disembodied soul of Christ, between his death and resurrection, was employed in preaching a saving gospel in Tartarus to those who perished in the flood. Others, citing apocryphal books, contend he entered into paradise and announced to the souls of the saints resting there the finishing of his work for their salvation, and that he took out with him, when he left, the souls of Abraham and other Old Testament saints. On similar lines is based the Romanist theory of purgatory. When we come to interpret 1 Peter 3:19-20; 1 Peter 4:6, all these theories will be examined in a special chapter. Just now our concern is to establish positively where he was and how employed in the interval between his death and resurrection.
The answer is suggested by his own words on the cross: "It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." And he gave up the spirit, intensified by the recorded prodigy: "The veil of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom" (Luke 23:45) with this comment in our letter:
Which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and stedfast and entering into that which is within the veil; whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. – Hebrews 6:19-20.
But into the second the high priest alone, once in the year, not without blood, which he offereth for himself and for the errors of the people: The Holy Spirit thus signifying that the way into the holy place hath not yet been made manifest while the first tabernacle is yet standing. . . . But Christ having ’become a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. . . . For Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands, like in pattern to the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us. – Hebrews 9:7-8; Hebrews 9:11-12; Hebrews 9:24.
Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus. – Hebrews 10:18-19.
Here it is evident that the veil which hid the holy of holies typified Christ’s body. When his body died that veil was forever rent. Through this rent body he entered the heavenly holy of holies and there offered his own expiating blood an offering through the eternal Spirit, hence in Hebrews 12:22-24, the last glorious thing the Christian comes to is "the blood of sprinkling," not on his heart as applied by the Holy Spirit in regeneration, but that blood sprinkled on the mercy seat in the heavenly sanctuary.
It has been objected to this view that Jesus said to Mary after his resurrection: "I have not yet ascended to my Father," but that refers to his ascension in his glorified body, and not in his disembodied spirit. His body could not be raised until his spirit had made atonement in heaven, hence it said: "Now the God of peace who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus."
I once heard a preacher say that Jesus never sprinkled that blood on the mercy seat in heaven until his ascension in his risen body forty days after his resurrection as described in Acts 1:10. I asked him two questions:
1. "If the high priest in Leviticus 16:1-34 waited forty days after the sacrificial goat was slain to take the blood into the sanctuary?"
2. "How the body of Jesus could be raised until the blood of the covenant was on the mercy seat?"
It was through his rent body, not his risen body that our Forerunner reached that sanctuary. When he expiated sin on the cross it was necessary that he offer the blood in the sanctuary for atonement. So long as the blood remained at the cross it could not be made efficacious. It must be accepted to become a propitiation. The mercy seat was the place of propitiation. There-fore when his body died, his soul immediately passing through the veil – a rent body – entered into the heavenly sanctuary to make his expiation effective in that salvation of men. It was the culmination of the whole process of the work of his second sonship.
His third sonship starts at the resurrection. He was brought to life through the blood of the everlasting covenant accepted in heaven. This makes clear the passage which Milton misunderstood: "And when he again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith: ’And let all the angels of God worship him.’" His soul was out of the world and in heaven. He must be brought into the world again to obtain and inhabit his risen and glorified body, which is his second advent) as our souls must come from heaven with him at his third and final advent, to obtain and inhabit our glorified bodies ( 1 Thessalonians 4:14). And as the angels had worshiped him in his third sonship – his risen and glorified humanity – God says, "Let all the angels of God worship him." You may rest assured that all of Psalms 2:1-12 and Psalms 110:1-7 apply to this third sonship as expressed in this first chapter and affirmed in Acts 4:23-28, and in many other New Testament passages.
I once had a friendly private controversy with a Campbellite who affirmed that there could be no law of pardon till Jesus became the Son of God, which took place at his resurrection, and therefore Acts 2:38 was the first law of pardon under the new covenant, and so all gospel cases of pardon must not be considered. I told him that his fallacy consisted in ignoring the second sonship, and that in all his sonships sinners were pardoned, and that the plan of salvation was one plan from Abel to the final judgment, Hebrews 11:1-40 of this book abundantly shows. It is to this third sonship that his heirship and his anointing with gladness, and his session at God’s right hand, all belong. He was appointed heir because of the reconciliation he accomplished in his second sonship, so our lesson declares (Hebrews 1:4), and the great passage in Php 2:6-11. So testify also Psalms 2:1-12 and Psalms 110:1-7. Equally clear also his anointing with gladness Hebrews 1:9; Hebrews 12:2, which will be considered more particularly in another connection.
3. Superior to the universe (Hebrews 1:10-12). We must note that in all the first two chapters the arguments connect with Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians in a demonstration against the Gnostic heresy concerning creation and eons. Here our Lord’s pre-eminence over the universe appears from:
(1) He created it. (2) His providence upholds it. (3) His eternity and immutability. (4) He dissolves it at his will.
On this last point the reader will recall the process by which the chaotic matter of the earth was reduced to order (Genesis 1:6-10) by the creation of the atmosphere separating the waters above from the waters below, and then separating the waters below from the land, and how this process was reversed in bringing about the flood (Genesis 7:11; Genesis 7:17-24), and then renewed in restoring the old condition after the flood (Genesis 8:2-3). That was a memorable mutation, and showed God’s control over the ordinary course of nature. He will recall his covenant with Noah, pledging continuity of the order of nature, and safeguarding against another water dissolution while the earth remaineth (Genesis 8:22; Genesis 9:8-17).
But here in our lesson is predicted a more remarkable mutation – a dissolution by fire (Hebrews 1:11-12). And no reliance on what is called "the settled course of nature" will avail against this dissolution. Soon after this letter Peter wrote to the same people his great argument on the same line, (2 Peter 3:1-13), and reminded the Christian Jews of Asia Minor of this very letter of Paul (2 Peter 3:14-16). Jesus is sovereign over nature’s course, which he established, and in it brings mutation at his will.
4. Greater as a revelator than all the Old Testament prophets (Hebrews 1:1-2):
(1) In all his sonships he is a revelator of the Father – the visible of the invisible God. The effulgence and image in his first sonship, so in his second sonship (John 14:8-9), and so in his third sonship.
(2) In the teaching of his prophetic office. Their revelation was fragmentary, infrequent, diverse, incomplete (Hebrews 1:1-2), and often beyond their own understanding (1 Peter 1:10-12).
(3) His revelation illumines theirs, dispels its mysteries, and completes the canon of the Scriptures.
(4) It unfolds in panorama the events of all time touching the kingdom of God, until the great culmination. (See Revelation 1:1, and throughout the book.)
QUESTIONS 1. What commentaries named on this book, and how commended?
2. Give the main points of the author’s analysis.
3. What is the theme of this book?
4. On what does the argument and exhortation rest?
5. How does the argument naturally commence, what does it develop, who the hero of the book, and what the terminals of the several arguments?
6. What is the threefold sonship of Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant?
7. What is his work in the first sonship, and how expressed?
8. Against what heresy are the first two chapters especially directed, with what preceding letters does this argument connect, and into what subsequent New Testament books by other writers does it fit?
9. What arthe activities of our Lord in his second sonship?
10. What are the activities of our Lord in his third sonship?
11. How many advents of our Lord into the world, and what the purpose of each?
12. What was Jesus doing between his death and resurrection?
13. What heresies concerning the place where our Lord’s soul went, and his work between his death and resurrection, and what the scriptural and other grounds relied on to support them?
14. What distinguished advocates of these theories?
15. State at length the author’s argument as to what Jesus was doing between his death and resurrection?
16. In what particulars is our Lord superior to the material universe?
17. On what ground do men of science reject miracles?
18. Show from Genesis the process of the established order of things, and in one remarkable instance this reverse of this process, and its restoration.
19. What is the second mutation, according to this letter, awaits the heavens and the earth, and what the means of its accomplishment?
20. Prove from Peter in a letter subsequent to this how men’s reliance on the continuity of the order of nature will be swept away by this second mutation.
21. Show how in this letter of Peter to the same people addressed in Hebrews, he identifies this letter as Paul’s.
22. In what particulars is our Lord superior to Old Testament prophets?