(Lincoln’s Inn, Whitsunday, June 4, 1854.)
‘For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover, he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others: for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.’—HEBREWS ix. 19-27.
If the Church called upon us to accept a certain set of opinions, each denoted by a certain specific name, it would not be fitting that I should continue my discourses on Sacrifice when we are keeping Whitsuntide. The death of Christ we should regard as one subject, the descent of the Spirit another; to mix them together would be an outrage upon theological order. But since we are taught to look upon every high festival as an occasion for celebrating the Eucharist—since this particular festival is one of those for which a special thanksgiving is appointed in our Communion Service, we are reminded that we cannot separate the Sacrifice of Christ from any part of our faith, or any act of our worship; that it is the interpreter of all, the bond which unites them together.
And, since Whitsunday is the day which speaks of the establishment of God’s new covenant with men, ‘I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them,’ there is another reason for speaking to you from the passage which I have chosen. That passage refers, as the chapter from which it is taken refers, as the whole of this Epistle refers, to the difference between the old covenant and the new; between that which is said to have been established by law, and that which is said to have been confirmed with an oath; between the covenant of servants and the covenant of sons. This is the primary subject of the text and of the letter. If you would understand the other part of it, the part which I am most anxious to bring before you this afternoon, that which speaks of the remission, or taking away, of sins, and which is the proper sequel to what was said at the close of the passage I considered a week ago, you must attend to this portion of the writer’s statement first. He does not begin with speaking of the blood which purged the vessels of the tabernacle, or of the blood which washes away sins. He begins from the words of Moses, ‘This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you;’ he compares that with the blood which is the bond of the higher and diviner covenant, or testament. If we follow this order, in considering the lessons which he teaches us, we shall enter, I think much more fully and satisfactorily into the meaning of this book, which is commonly and rightly regarded as the book, on the whole question of Sacrifice.
I. (1.) First, he describes to us the character of the Mosaic economy in the words, ‘When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the Law.’ Here we have the Legislator, the man who is telling the people what they are to do, and what they are not to do. He does not speak of himself. They are not his own decrees which he is proclaiming; they are the eternal laws of God’s government. He who breaks them violates his allegiance to God, and incurs death. They are not precepts for one man here, and one man there, they are for all the people. Each man, by being a man, comes under the obligation of observing them.
(2.) But, next, we are told that Moses declared the people who were subject to this Law to be under a divine covenant, constitution or testament. I use all three words, not meaning to determine which expresses best the sense of the original. Perhaps there is something in the phrase which cannot be adequately expressed by any one of these English parallels. We have need to draw something from each of them. It is a constitution, or order, which God has established, which He has created them to obey. It is a covenant, for it is grounded upon a previous promise, and assurance that they are His people, and that He is their God. It is a testament, because both the curse and the blessing of it are in some wonderful manner connected with death.
(3.) This is the third point upon which the writer of the Epistle dwells, and it is a cardinal one. ‘Moses took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people.’ Here the death of certain victims, the blood which is shed when they are slain, is made the pledge and assurance that God has taken them to be his servants. This is their consecration; by this they are sealed, redeemed, devoted to Him. I have no need to dwell more on this topic; I have dwelt upon it so recently and so frequently; I have shown you that the Passover service implied this sacrifice and dedication of the whole people to God. He took them by that act to be His; He acknowledged that He had redeemed them for His service. They were as much given up to Him as the animal was given to Him. They were not slain as that was slain; but the sprinkling of the blood, which was, at once, the sign of the death of the creature, and in which was its life, was the witness that they were offered up as sacrifices to God, that they had no life but what He gave them, that that life was to be used for Him, restored to Him.
(4.) This blood was, therefore, a sign of purification. They were holy creatures; God has made them so; for He had bound them to Himself. They were holy, for He was holy; and everything they had to do with was holy. Whatever they used was a vessel of ministry, an instrument given them by God for His Service. It was sprinkled with the blood with which they were sprinkled; it had the same token of dedication, consecration, sacrifice, which they had; it was redeemed from all corrupt uses, as they were.
(5.) Then he goes on a step further. ‘Without shedding of blood is no remission.’ Here we pass from the making of the covenant to the transgression of it. The people are a holy, dedicated people. They have been told what acts are in conformity with this condition, and what are at variance with it. They can disobey the Law; they can break the covenant, if they choose. God is holding them by His living bonds to Himself; but those bonds may be snapped. They can come under the law of death if they like it. Each man of them, at some time or other, does like it. He tears himself from the right order; he takes the curse instead of the blessing; he becomes its bondsman. The act done, the result is inevitable. Right cannot become wrong, or wrong right. The fetters of evil are no imaginary fetters, but most real. Can the man break them? Does he wish them to be broken for him? God promises him remission, the sending away of his transgression. ‘The blood which was the sign of his union to God, is also the sign that that union is renewed.’ The blood of the calf was sprinkled on him once, as the token of his union to God and his purification. The calf must be presented again, its blood must be poured out before the altar—in token that he submits,—and desires to be treated again as an Israelite,—in token that God puts away his offence and treats him as an Israelite. ‘Without shedding of blood there is no remission.’
Here the case for the old covenant is closed. Each one of these particulars has been distinctly brought before us, and pressed upon our attention; we are made to feel how they bear upon each other. Then the writer passes to the contrast. We are to learn how each of these ordinances, so true in itself, so full of purpose and significance, is unfolded, and the inmost power and principle of it brought forth, in the Gospel of the Son of God.
- (1.) ‘It was therefore necessary,’ he says, ‘that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. I am sure the question must sometimes have occurred to a reader of this sentence: ’How can heavenly things need to be purified at all? Are they not pure in themselves? And what can these heavenly things be? What have we to do with them? How can we be interested in them?’
I hope no one will dismiss these inquiries from his mind till he has got some satisfaction upon them. It is not a subject on which we should tolerate loose or vague notions.
If you will recall the phrase which occurs, not once or twice in the Gospels, but in almost every parable and discourse of our Lord’s, ‘the Kingdom of Heaven;’ and if you will try to ascertain from any one of those parables or discourses what force it must bear; you will not think that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is using strange or unfamiliar language here. If the Kingdom of Heaven is ‘like a Sower who sowed good seed in his field,’ or ‘like treasure hid in a field,’ or ‘like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls,’ it must denote, one would suppose, the spiritual world, in contrast to the natural world. The spirit of man contemplated as the subject of God’s teaching and government, must be one of the heavenly things which may be likened to the things of earth; which may dwell among them, but which cannot be confounded with them. To these the writer of the Epistle must refer; these he must compare with other things, which he calls the images or the patterns of them. The one he must speak of as belonging expressly to the new and higher covenant, the other to the old.
You shall hear how he illustrates his own meaning in an earlier passage of this chapter, one to which I alluded in a former sermon, and of which I shall have more to say hereafter: ‘But Christ being come an High-priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy places having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?’ I do not quote this passage now on account of its allusion to the blood of Christ, but that you may see what the things are which the writer affirms that this blood is to purify. The conscience is that thing which is set in contrast with the flesh. This is that in man which is related to heaven, to the invisible, to God the Judge of all; as the hands and feet are related to the earth on which we tread. Although it is of heavenly origin, although it testifies of a relation to that which is perfectly pure and holy, it is affirmed to need purification, to require that God Himself should purify it and redeem it, and claim it as His servant.
(2.) Now, that which is the instrument of purifying this spiritual or heavenly thing, must be, the writer affirms, better than that which purifies the mere earthly thing which is the pattern of it. The distinction is one which we have traced already through various passages of St. Paul’s writings. It is a distinction which every man recognises in himself, when he begins to reflect. *The acts which I do, fall under the cognisance of law; ‘they are performed through the agency of my body; ’they belong to the outward world. But I, the doer ’of these acts; I, from whose thoughts and will they ’proceed; I, from whom the good or the evil of them ’must come; I cannot be the mere subject of the law “which pronounces whether they are right or wrong, ’which awards to them praise or punishment. I over- “look these acts; but I must be overlooked by Him ’from whom that law proceeds. I want to know how ’He regards me. I doubt Him, suspect Him, fear ’that He regards me as an enemy. I know that He “must consider me not merely as a wrong-doer, but”as being wrong myself. I dare not face Him. I want ’to hide myself from Him, to find some secret place ’where He cannot discover me. It is my conscience ’which is thus skulking, and cowardly and base. It ’is that which wants to avoid the light, all the while ’that it confesses the presence of the Light. It is that “which wishes to disbelieve in the truth, to disbelieve ’in God. Is it not defiled? Does it not need some wonderful purification? And can the blood of bulls ’and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the ’unclean, purify it in any wise?’
Some say, that if God pleases that they should, perhaps they might; the writer of the Epistle mocks at their seeming piety. He says, again and again, it is not possible that they should do this. Deny the words, if you please, but they are written. The writer is speaking of a God of righteousness and order, of a God who had made a creature in His own image; and he says it is not possible, it cannot be, that such a creature should be purified by a mere decree. The blood of bulls and goats cannot make us clean. We must have a better sacrifice than these.
In the pattern with which the writer presented us, we are led, first, to think of the Covenant, by which God had declared the people of Israel to be holy, and which He had sealed and confirmed with blood. This is also the first point to which he has called his reader’s attention in the counterpart. A great part of the Epistle is occupied with an argument to prove that the old Covenant implied an actual Mediator; that no legal enactments and arrangements could create a union between God and man; that they presumed one, and pointed to one. The revelation of this Mediator he has assumed in the fifteenth verse, as the foundation of the New Covenant or Testament. We cannot be satisfied, so the writer reasons, with anything less than such a revelation; with anything less than the assurance that there is a real High-priest, not one established by a formal ordinance, not one sprung from an earthly tribe,—a living Son of God. But seeing that the same conscience which makes this great demand, witnesses also of the transgressions which have separated us from God, there could be no revelation of such a Mediator, he goes on to maintain, which did not imply a redemption ‘of the transgressions that were under the first Testament.’ The man had been convicted of evil acts by the divine Law; had been convicted of a positive alienation of mind and heart from Him who had given that Law. To be told that the transgressions were forgiven, was good; this was what the sacrifices under the Law had told him; but it was not enough; it was chiefly precious for the hint and hope it gave of something more. The alienation must be removed; the man himself must be atoned with his Maker. This was a far deeper, and more wonderful thing than the mere pardon or oblivion of offences. No arbitrary sign or token could denote this reconciliation; no sacrifice that was merely offered by the sinner, even though it was fixed and established by God. There was need of ‘better sacrifices’ than these. I scarcely need stop to remark, that by ‘better’ the inspired writer means not higher in degree, but different in kind; he does not oppose one amount of costliness to another; he opposes a living, voluntary sacrifice to a dead, involuntary one; he contrasts the sacrifice of one who stands in an actual relation to God and to man, with the sacrifice of something which implies no such relation, which is a mere thing that a man can use or destroy at his pleasure. Only a living sacrifice, he intimates, could be the bond of a living covenant between man and his Creator, of a covenant which should declare that their union stood on an eternal, unchangeable ground, that it was upheld in a Divine Person, the High-priest of the universe.
(3.) That this is the primary idea of the passage, the next sentences abundantly prove: ’ For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.’ The great question of men in all ages was: ’ Who shall ascend into the ’ Heavens for us;—who shall break the great barrier ‘which separates us from the Invisible Ruling Power; ’from that pure and holy Being of whom our con- ’sciences speak, before whom they tremble?’ In this question the great contradiction was implied, that the man felt he belonged to this heavenly world; that it was his proper home; that he could not live without God; and that he was a hopeless exile; that he must wander abroad, and find comfort where he could, “amongst things which were beneath him, and for which he did not inwardly care; that God and he must be at strife, now and ever. This was the mournful wail which was going up from the old Heathen world; which was expressed in every kind of sacrifice that ‘cried for mercy to gods conceived or inconceivable; which was expressed in every form of sensual indulgence ’and gratification; the heart testifying: ’We must have earth, for we cannot find heaven; we must eat husks ’of swine to the fill, for, oh! how dreadful it is to ’remember, even for a few minutes, that we have the ’responsibilities of men—of spirits!’
And this was the answer: ‘The Father of all, who ’seemed at so vast a distance from you, in that cold, ’dreary heaven, and yet whom you tremble lest you ’should encounter in every dark night, beside every ’tomb; whom you dread as the author of your misery ’and death; as one who may inflict a deeper misery, ’a more hopeless death upon you hereafter, has sent ’His only-begotten Son to take your nature upon Him, ’to die your death. He has been here in these dark ’nights, amidst these tombs; He has been in the ’tomb; He has risen out of it; He has gone, not into ’some figurative holy place, but into the actual holy ’place, which your hearts tell you of, which all temples ’and altars and priesthoods witness of. Christ is with ’God His Father. And now the Father, in whose ’presence He is, declares that sacrifice of His to be the “bond of peace between Him and you. That is the ’pledge and witness of His covenant with you; with ’your own very selves; with that in you which has ’shrunk from Him, which has wished that it could ’banish Him. The blood, not of goats or calves, but ’of His own Son, of the Eternal Mediator between Him ’and you, is the assurance that he regards you as His ’sons and daughters; that He gives you the Spirit of ’His Son in your hearts; that your sins and iniquities ’He remembers no more.’
(4.) This was the Gospel to the heathen world; this was the ground of a Church on earth, of a society of men who could claim a filial relation to God, who could recognise this living sacrifice as the reconciliation of earth and heaven. But the writer of the Epistle knew too well, too experimentally, what the tendencies of the human heart are, how ready it is to disbelieve in the liberty with which God has made it free, and to forge chains for itself, to stop at that point which might serve the proper climax of his great argument. He adds—’ Nor yet that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.’ He knew well that in the Christian Church, amongst baptized men, amongst those who had come under the new covenant, in that Church of Palestine to which he was writing—though it dwelt on the spot where the one offering had been made, where apostles had first proclaimed the ascent of Jesus Christ as the eternal King and Redeemer, and the Giver of redemption, where the Spirit had come down to witness a fellowship for all nations, of a union of the world that is seen with that which is unseen —though all the events which the Gospel proclaimed had only been a few years ago transacted—he knew well that there and then were those who would crave for the signs which spoke of in unaccomplished sacrifice, for the hope which the blood of the ox and calf gave that the transgression of the day might be blotted out; for the promise which the entrance of the high priest into the holy place held out, that heaven might at some distant day be opened to those who would bring penitence and sacrifice enough to purchase an entrance into it.
All these delusions and diseases of the heart, conscious of part of its misery, unaware of its great necessity, were rampant then, would be rampant, he was sure, under every form, in every section of that Christendom to which he looked forward. And therefore he sets down this great warning, this mighty assurance and comfort, to all who will receive it, that the Mediator, He of whom all covenants and sacrifices had been testifying, for whom all periods had been waiting, had been manifested once in the crisis or winding-up of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Supposing a merely formal sense is given to the word sin—supposing it is taken to mean the violation of some decrees which have been imposed upon men by the will of a Being who could decree whatever he pleased—this announcement could give no rest to the conscience. But he has guarded himself against this perversion of his meaning; his whole Epistle has been one continued protest against it. Sin has been brought before us in its inward radical signification; sin as the disease of the will; sin as conscious separation from a pure and holy will. Every attempt to substitute any less inward and essential definition of its nature for this, the writer discards, because he is a practical man, who in presenting an actual remedy for an actual disease, which he must trace to its principle, which he cannot hope to cure by treating some of its superficial symptoms. Any attempt to substitute a less universal and essential definition for this, he discards likewise, because he is a divine, because he has a message from God to His creature, because he dares not betray his trust and misrepresent the Lord who has made him the steward of His mysteries. But taking this to be the sin which man needs to be freed from, from which God desires to set him free, he declares that the one Sacrifice, made once for all, is the assurance of a union and reconciliation with God, and therefore of the full remission of sins. He proclaims it in this character to the world; he lays it down as that which makes the new covenant well ordered and sure, for all nations, for all mankind. But in doing so, he testifies how the sins of each day,—the conscious evils of those who have broken the covenant of their God,—who feel that their continued transgressions are as great as those of the heathen, and less excusable, who feel that their inward alienation from God is as deep and thorough as that of any heathen can be—may obtain this perfect remission. As the blood of calves and goats, with which the Jewish testament was sealed, which had sprinkled the people, the book, and all the vessels of the ministry, was also the sign that the particular offences against that covenant were forgiven; so the blood of the Son of God, which is the pledge of our original adoption to God, the witness that we are His accepted children, is that which purges the conscience from dead, selfish works, to serve the Living God.
Receiving it as the seal of an everlasting bond that was established before the foundation of the world in the well-beloved Son; receiving it as the witness that God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—the same in His hatred of evil—the same in His desire to deliver men from it;—this blood becomes that remission of sins, that purification of the spirit from the guilt or guile which is the essence of sin, that assurance of divine forgiveness for the acts which have flowed from it, that token of restoration to the house and family of the Father from whom we have wandered, which nothing else in heaven or earth could be.
And wherein lies its power? The writer of the Epistle asks you the question. He knows that you can answer it. He knows that there is One standing at the door of your hearts with a light to show you what is in them, with a voice that is bidding them open to receive Him. The light which shows you your evil is the light of His own and His Father’s love; the voice by which He wooes for admission is, ’ Have I not sacrificed Myself for you? Does not my blood say that Sin and Death are not your masters? Does it not say, There is an eternal life in Me, of which you are the inheritors? Am I not willing to come in and sup with you, to give you that bread which is my body, that wine which is my blood, as the assurances of forgiveness, of a death to evil, of a new birth to righteousness? Have I not ascended on high that ‘the Spirit in which I offered Myself to God might come among you, and might sit in tongues of fire ’upon you, to make you the witnesses of my death, of my life, to the world?’