SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
TYPES IN HEBREWS
CHAPTER 7
A GREAT
PRIEST
"HAVING a Great Priest over the house of God."1 Upon this
depends our right of access to the divine presence. For His priesthood is a
necessity, not only because of human infirmity and need, but because of the
holiness and majesty of God. And yet, owing to our inveterate habit of
regarding redemption from our own standpoint, we forget this highest aspect of
the truth.
In the miracles of Scripture within the sphere of the natural,
there is nothing so seemingly incredible as that God should allow a sinner to
come into His presence. Yet such is the blindness of unspiritual men, that they
carp at the miracles, while treating these amazing truths of grace as
commonplaces of Evangelical doctrine. A comparison between our Christian
hymn-books and the old Hebrew Psalms will indicate how much lower is our
conception of God, than that of the spiritual Israelite of a bygone age.
And we forget that man is not the only created being in the universe. Of the
Gospel of our salvation it is written, "which things angels desire to look
into." No good man would refuse to meet a repentant criminal or magdalen. But
none save a fanatic or a fool would bring such into his home, and give them a
place of special nearness and honour in his family and household. And yet this
would be but a paltry illustration of what the grace of God has done for sinful
men. "While the first tabernacle was yet standing," not even the holiest of the
sons of the old covenant, not even the divinely appointed priests, were allowed
to enter His holy presence. But under the new covenant the worst of men may
receive not only pardon and peace in Christ, but a right of access to God. And
this would be impossible were it not for the presence of Christ at the right
hand of the Majesty on high: it might well strain the allegiance of the
heavenly host, and raise doubts respecting the righteousness and holiness of
God. But all this is well-nigh forgotten, because of our unworthy appreciation
of what is due to God, and our false estimate of what is due to man. That the
Son of God - He who was with God, and was God, the brightness of His glory and
the express image of His person, He who upholds all things by the word of His
power - came down to earth to take part of flesh and blood, and here to live a
life of poverty and suffering and reproach, "despised and rejected of men," and
to die a death of infamy as a common malefactor; and that now, with "all power
in heaven and on earth," He is at the right hand of God, to make atonement and
intercession for us, and to sympathize and succour in all the needs and trials
of our chequered life - if men were not so superstitious and stupid in the
religious sphere, this would divide the world into two hostile camps, and every
one would become either a devout worshipper or an open infidel. For in all the
fables of the false religions of the world there is nothing so utterly
incredible as this.
But breaking away from this train of thought, let us
try to realize in some little measure what His Priesthood means for those who
are His own. If we are saved from wrath by what He has done for us, and what He
is to us, our access to the divine presence depends on what He is to God for
us. But we do well here to shun all fanciful thoughts and phrases, and to keep
closely to what is revealed in Scripture. Phrases in common use, as, for
example, that He "pleads His blood" before the throne, are greatly to be
deprecated. In coming into the world to accomplish the work of redemption, He
was doing the will of God; and in His High priestly work for us, He is doing
the will of God in glory now. His present work of atonement and intercession
are not needed to appease: an alienated Diety, nor to overcome divine
unwillingness to bless a sinner. But He thus makes it possible for God to bless
us consistently with all that He is, and all that He has declared Himself to
be. And this, moreover, is a public fact in heaven. For our redemption is no
"back-stairs" business. Our "drawing near" to the divine presence is in open
view of all the heavenly host;2 and the "principalities and powers in heavenly
places" will find in it a revelation of "the manifold wisdom of God."
(Ephesians 3:10)
Had the Lord not taken part of flesh and blood, the death
to which we owe our redemption would have been impossible. But though the
sufferings of His sojourn upon earth may not have been essential to His
redeeming work, it is to that life we owe it that as our High-priest He can be
touched with the feeling of our infirmities. And this, moreover, even in
respect of the common troubles and privations of the humblest lot.
Our pity
is stirred at times by hearing of destitute and homeless paupers who spend
their nights in the streets of our great cities. If a true and trusting child
of God could be found in such a company - and I say "if" advisedly, for after a
long and varied experience I would say with David, "I have not seen the
righteous forsaken" - what peace might guard the heart of such an one in
remembering that the Lord Himself knew what it meant to be hungry! And
homeless, too; for we recall His words, "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the
air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." And in dark
days of persecution, before the Reformation stamped out the fires of
Smithfield, the martyrs could look away from earth to heaven, rejoicing in the
remembrance that their Lord and Saviour "was made perfect through suffering,"
and "endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself."
But the trials
which engross the thoughts of most of us are of a baser kind. Can we look for
divine sympathy as we resist temptations due to evil lusts and passions? The
Scripture is definite that He "was in all points tempted like as we are." But
the Commentaries tell us that the added words, "yet without sin," do not mean
that He never fell, but that "in all His temptations, whether as to their
origin, their process, or their results, sin had nothing in Him." And this
seems to separate Him from us by a barrier which is impassable. But a right
appreciation of the essential character of sin will break that barrier down,
and teach us to "come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy
and find grace to help in time of need."
"Sin is the transgression of the
law." This perversion of the words of Scripture robs us of important truth.
Law-breaking is merely one phase of sin. In its essence "Sin is lawlessness"3 -
the assertion of our own will against the will of God. And further, we construe
the word "tempt" in its sinister and secondary acceptation as inciting to what
is morally evil. It means first and chiefly to prove, or try, or test. And it
is in this sense that the Greek term is used in the majority of its occurrences
in the New Testament. In this sense alone it is that men are said to be tempted
of God. And thus it was that Christ was "tempted." There is no sin in
satisfying a natural craving for food when we are hungry, and when food is
within our reach. And yet He bore the pangs of hunger, although by a touch He
could make food for a multitude of starving men,. and by a word He might have
changed the stones to bread. But he was treading the: path of absolute
dependence upon His Father; and no pangs of hunger or of thirst, no sense of
homelessness, could make Him swerve from that lonely and tragic path. And if
Christians ever give a thought to the sufferings of His life on earth, it is
for the most part only in relation to such privations and needs as these. And
yet not even the most exquisitely sensitive of mortals can realize what the
sufferings of that life must have been to Him. The immorality, the baseness,
the meanness, the very vulgarities of men, "the contradiction of sinners" -
"every day they wrest my words" (Psalm 56:5)
who can estimate what all this
was to Him. What a long drawn-out martyrdom must that life have been!
And
what may we dare to say about Gethsemane? When the Lord was "tempted of the
Devil" He spurned the thought of reaching the glory save by the path which led
to death. And the suggestion is impious that He faltered at the last. But
Scripture warrants our believing that while the horrors and agonies of Cavalry
give proof of the limitlessness of divine love to man, they could add nothing
to either the preciousness or the efficacy of the blood of our redemption. And
may not this throw light upon the mystery of His prayer in the garden? Sure it
is that the cup which, He pleaded, might pass from Him was not the death He had
come to die. But might He not be spared the attendant horrors, as foretold in
the Psalms, and detailed in the Gospel narratives?
One element in His
sufferings, for example, which we pass almost unnoticed, may have been to Him
more cruel even than physical pain. A pure and delicate woman can possibly
appreciate in some measure what an ordeal it must have been to hang in
nakedness upon the Cross, a public spectacle to that "great company of people,
and of women," that had followed Him to Golgotha. "And sitting down they
watched Him there," the Gospel narrative records a cruelly literal fulfillment
of His words by the Holy Spirit in the twenty-second Psalm, "They look and
stare upon Me!"4
If, as He had said in Gethsemane, a prayer would have
brought legions of angels to His help, we may be sure that He might have sought
immunity from all these shameful indignities and cruelties. For His sufferings
were not endured in obedience to an iron decree of fate, but in submission to
His Fathers will. Therefore it was - therefore, and not in the spirit of
a stoic - that He drank that cup of suffering to the dregs. He might, as I
venture reverently to suggest, have claimed relief. But we recall His words in
Gethsemane, "How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled!" and His words after
the resurrection, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?" and again,
"That all things must be fulfilled that were written in the law of Moses, and
in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me." And yet, we doubt and cavil
at the word that He was in all things tempted like as we are! The trial surely
was in His case all the fiercer just because it was not an incitement to sin in
the sense of moral evil, but merely to a turning aside from the path of
dependent obedience.
The doubt and the cavil are based upon the fact that
we are sinful and He was sinless; for on this ground it is that we question
whether He can understand our struggles. This is as unintelligent as it is
dishonouring to Him. Is it only the reclaimed drunkard who can help one who is
a slave to drink? Can no woman help a magdalen unless she herself has fallen?
The struggles of pure and holy souls, though waged in a different sphere, may
be keener far than any which coarser natures ever know. And if this be true
even on the plane of our fallen humanity, it is far more true of Him. If we
yield to sin and have recourse to evil practices, we need not look to Him for
sympathy, though a penitent confession will bring pardon full and free through
His atoning work. But an incitement or tendency to evil if resisted and kept
down is reckoned an "infirmity," and we can look with confidence to One who can
be "touched with the feeling of our infirmities" - to One who in doing the will
of God has suffered as we have never suffered, as we, with our fallen nature,
are incapable of suffering. Forgetting this we miss the significance of chapter
12, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood." It is still the imagery of the
arena; but instead of the race, as in the opening verses of the chapter, it is
now the combat. That brutal "prize-fight" which lately agitated all America was
preceded by a series of "sparring matches" between noted pugilists. Our
"striving against sin" is compared with combats such as theirs, in which no
blood was drawn. Hence the exhortation which immediately precedes the
above-quoted words: "Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners
against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." Every day of His
earthly life two paths lay open to His choice. The one the path of suffering in
doing His Fathers will; the other a path of peace and ease, yet just as
free from every element of what we call sin. And every day He made choice of
the martyr path; for Gethsemane was but an intenser and more terrible phase of
the struggle of His daily life. Yes, yes! "He was in all points tried as we
are, without sin." And He who never faltered and never failed "is able to save
to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make
intercession for them."
Chapter Eight
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