SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
TYPES IN HEBREWS
CHAPTER 5
CHRIST'S DEITY
ENFORCED
AS already suggested, two qualifications are necessary if
we are to read the Epistle to the Hebrews intelligently. We need an adequate
acquaintance with the typology of Scripture, and we must understand the
position and thoughts of the Hebrew Christians who had been led to Christ under
the tutelage of the divine religion of Judaism. That Christ came to found a new
religion is a figment of Gentile theology. In the classical sense of the word
"religion," Judaism is the only divine religion the world has ever known; and
Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfill it. As contrasted with Judaism (and
in contrast also with the apostasy of Christendom), Christianity, I repeat, is
not a religion,1 but a revelation and a faith. But the Hebrew Christians were
in danger of regarding the coming of Messiah as merely an advance in a
progressive revelation. God who had spoken by the prophets had now spoken in a
still more authoritative way. It was a climax in the revelation, but that was
all. They needed to learn that it was not merely a climax, but a crisis. For
Christ was the fulfillment of the divine religion; and by the fact of His
fulfilling it He abrogated it. In whole and in every part of it, that religion
pointed to Him. Its mission was to prepare men for His advent, and to lead them
to Him when He came. And now that He had come, any turning back to the religion
was in effect a turning away from Christ.
Therefore is it that with such
emphasis and elaboration Hebrews teaches us the divine glory of the Son of God,
and the incomparable pre-eminence of His ministry in every aspect of it. For it
is by way of contrast, rather than of comparison, that He is named, first with
angels, and then with the apostle and the high-priest of the Jewish faith.
Therefore is it that, in a way which to us seems laboured, the Epistle unfolds
the truth that the divinely appointed shrine, with its divinely ordered ritual,
and all its gorgeous furniture living and dead, were but the shadows of
heavenly realities; and that, with the coming of the Son of God, the morning of
shadows was past, for the light that cast them was now in the zenith of an
eternal noon.
All this accounts for the many digressions by which the
Apostle sought to reach the goal of his crowning exhortation in chapter 10 -
digressions due to prevailing ignorance and error. For in "the Judaism of the
Pharisees," as in the false cult of Christendom, a priest means a sacrificing
priest - an error which is not only antichristian, but which, as the Apostle
declares in chapter 5:12, betrays ignorance of "the rudiments of the first
principles of the oracles of God." And deferring for the present any fuller
notice of these digressions, let us now consider the wonderful words of that
exhortation. "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place
by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living
way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a great priest
over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with
pure water. (Hebrews 19:19-22)
To come, or draw near, is one of the "key
words" of the Epistle.2 It occurs first in the exhortation of chapter 4:16,
"Having a great high-priest
let us draw near with boldness unto the
throne of grace." As the tense of the verb indicates, this is not an act to be
done once for all, as when a sinner comes to God for salvation; it is the habit
of the true Christian, who is ever conscious of his need of mercy and grace.
Still more plainly does this appear in chapter 7:25, where Christians are
characteristically called, "comers unto God," drawing near to Him being their
normal attitude and habit. And the man of faith is similarly designated in
chapter 11:6. In the opening words of chapter 10, therefore, the worshipper is
described as one who thus comes or draws near. And this same word is prominent
in the exhortation of the twenty-second verse.
The figurative language here
employed - the blood, the veil, the sprinkled heart, the washed body - so
perplexing to Gentile exegesis, would be plain and simple to the Hebrew
Christian, for it is the language of the typology of that divine religion in
which he had been trained. The Israelite, as we have seen, set out upon his
journey to the land of promise as one of a redeemed and holy people. But, being
none the less a sinner, he was ever liable to fall; and though his sin did not
put him back under either the doom or the bondage of Egypt, it necessarily
barred his approaching the sanctuary. His exclusion, moreover, must have been
permanent if there had been no provision for atonement. And if this was true in
relation to "a sanctuary of this world," how intensely true must it be for us
who have to do with the spiritual realities of which that sanctuary was but a
shadow. Therefore is it that in the teaching of Hebrews "to make atonement3 for
the sins of the people" is given such prominence in enumerating the priestly
functions of Christ. But Hebrews teaches in part by contrast; and whereas the
Israelite had to bring a fresh sin-offering every time he sinned ("because it
is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins"),
atonement for us is based upon the one great sacrifice which in fact
accomplished what these typical offerings were powerless to effect. And yet, I
repeat, the need of atonement is deeper in our case than it was with the
Israelite; and were it not for the work of our Great High-priest in the
presence of God, our sins as Christians would preclude our ever entering that
holy presence during all our life on earth.
If a citizen be guilty of a
crime, his conviction and sentence will dispose of the judicial question raised
by his offence; and yet if he formerly enjoyed the right of entree at the
palace, nothing short of a royal pardon will restore to him that privilege.
This parable may serve to illustrate one aspect of the truth here in question.
Although the believer has vicariously suffered the judicial consequences of his
sin, that sin would none the less bar his ever again approaching God, were it
not that by confession and the atoning work of Christ he obtains
forgiveness.
But even though a citizen may have an acknowledged right to
appear at Court, he may not enter the royal presence mud-splashed or
travel-soiled; and wilderness defilement, even though contracted innocently,
precluded the Israelite from entering the sacred enclosure. And for this also
there was full provision. But no special sin-offering was needed. The unclean
person was purged, first by being sprinkled with "the water of purification" -
water that owed its efficacy to the great sin-offering - and then by bathing
his entire body. The ritual is given in detail in Numbers 19. The victim was
burnt to ashes. The ashes were preserved, and water that had flowed over them
availed to cleanse. A sin required blood-shedding, defilement was purged by
this water (Hebrews 9:13). And, as we have seen, the blood-shedding was the act
of the man who sinned; so here, no priest was needed; any clean person could
perform the rite (Numbers 19:18), thus indicating that the sprinkling and the
washing are not the work of Christ for us, but indicate our own responsibility
to seek the restoration of communion with God by faith and repentance.
This
typical ordinance of the water of purification, though ignored in our theology,
fills an important place in the teaching of Scripture. It is the keynote of the
great prophecy of Ezekiel 36, 37, which loomed so large in Jewish hopes - a
prophecy Nicodemus' ignorance of which evoked the Lord's indignant rebuke, "Art
thou a teacher of Israel and knowest not these things!" (John 3:10)
"Then
will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean," is the promise of
the twenty-fifth verse of chapter 36, addressed to the earthly people. But
though gathered out of all countries and brought into their own land (verse
24), they are likened in the next chapter to dry bones lying on the ground. And
then follows the great. Regeneration: "Come, O breath, and breathe upon these
slain"; and the Spirit of God enters into them, and they live (verses 9, 10,
14). This is "the birth of water and the Spirit," ignorance of which on the
part of a Rabbi of the Sanhedrim was as shameful as it would be for a Christian
teacher not to recognize an allusion to the Nicodemus sermon. And in its
application to ourselves, this is "the loutron of regeneration and renewing of
the Holy Ghost" of Titus 3:5. The word "regeneration" occurs only once again in
the New Testament, namely in Matthew 19:25, where the Lord uses it with
reference to the fulfillment of this very prophecy of Ezekiel 36-37. And the
only other mention of the loutron explains its symbolic meaning. I refer to
Ephesians 5:26: "that He might sanctify and cleanse it (the Church) with the
loutron of water by the word."4 Whether it be a question of salvation for an
individual sinner, or of the national regeneration of Israel, the blessing
depends upon the "once for all" sacrifice of Christ, and the work of the Holy
Spirit. But the great blood-shedding is past; Calvary is never to be repeated,
and it is only by the "living and eternally abiding word of God," ministered by
the Holy Spirit, that sinners are born again. 1 Peter 1:23.
And as it was
by recourse to the water of purification that the Israelite proved the
continuing efficacy of the sin-offering to purge him from defilement, so is it
with us. But we have the reality of which the water was only a type; and by
constant recourse to the Word of God, and by the repentance which that Word
produces in us, we prove the efficacy of the death of Christ to maintain us in
the position of acceptance and access to God, which redemption gives us. When a
Christian whose secular pursuits are uncongenial to the spiritual life turns
away from them to acts of worship or of service, he can appreciate the words of
the exhortation, "Let us draw near
having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience." But the exhortation adds, "and our bodies washed with pure
water." Without the sprinkling of the water of purification, the bath would be
unavailing; and to resort to the sprinkling while neglecting the bath would be
to appeal to the atoning work of Christ without turning away from evil. For
such is the figurative meaning of washing in Scripture. It signifies only and
always practical purity. To read baptism into the passage is to fritter away
its force and meaning, for it relates to the privileges and responsibilities of
the Christian life, and not to the position accorded to the sinner on his
coming to Christ for salvation. And more than this, such a perversion of the
text implies the confounding of Christian baptism with the pagan rite of the
Eleusinian mysteries.5
Chapter Six
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