(Lincoln’s Inn, 4th Sunday after Trinity, July 9, 1854.)
‘Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.’—Hebrews ii. 14, 15.
I alluded, last Sunday, to the opening clause of these verses. The words, ‘Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same,’ proved, I said, clearly, that there was a relation between Christ and men which did not depend upon flesh and blood, which did not commence when He assumed our nature, which was the reason of His assuming it. The more you consider the previous part of this chapter, the more, I think, you will feel that it is the intention of the writer to make us conscious of this truth. In the sixth verse he quotes the eighth Psalm: ‘What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels… Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that was not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare Thy Name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise unto Thee. And again, I will put my trust in Him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.’
That Christ is here put forth as fulfilling the words which were spoken of man on the creation day; as exercising that dominion over things which was committed to man, finally; as triumphing over the death which denoted the humiliation of man, is evident to the most careless reader. But we are not permitted to stop here. Passages are quoted from the Old Testament, in which the divine Word of God speaks of human creatures as His own brethren, in which He says that He will declare His Father’s Name to those brethren, in which He speaks of trusting in God as if He were one of them. That this is the meaning of the writer, there has never, I believe, been any doubt among his commentators. Nor have they failed to perceive that the principle, of which these are instances, may be applied to the interpretation of the Old Testament generally. We have not, I think, followed out the hint which he has given us, as much as we might have done, and as we were bound to do, considering the authority of the teacher. But we have all acknowledged, to some extent, that the language of psalmists and of prophets would be unintelligible, if we did not suppose that Christ, the divine Word, was speaking in them and through them, was discovering His own sympathy with those to whom they were sent, through the sympathy which He awakened in their hearts. If a holy man sorrowed over the sins of his countrymen, or of the world, or of himself, he felt that another, who was higher than he was, had first experienced that sorrow, and had imparted it to him. His joys, his hopes, must have had the same source. No single man could have known them in their depth and power. There must be some one in whom they were all gathered up, some universal Brother, to whom each particular brother owed his place in the family and the affections which corresponded to it.
There must, therefore, be a deep below even this. It is indicated in the words, ‘It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to perfect, or initiate, the Captain of their salvation through sufferings.’ The ground of that brotherhood, which the passage is setting forth, lies in the will of Him who has created all things. He does not regard men as included in these things. They are sons; they are to be saved or delivered out of the mass of things in which they have lost themselves. He purposes to bring them to glory, to His own glory, to a knowledge of Himself. The Only-begotten is the deliverer. That He may be so fully, He is initiated through sufferings. He enters into the inmost mystery of human sorrow. He becomes acquainted with grief; it is His bosom companion. Men have had familiarity with it in its different forms and measures, He has familiarity with it in its root and essence. To give Him this perfect fitness for His work of a Leader and Saviour—a work which could never be performed for His creatures if they were apart from Him—which implies the most entire fellowship and incorporation with Him, became, he says, the Father of all. It belonged to the character of His inmost being that so it should be. In no way but this does that character and inmost being fully declare itself; this interprets all other manifestations of it. What ultimate explanation, then, must not be weaker and less satisfactory than this—‘It became Him?’
This idea of the humiliation and incarnation of Christ is essentially the same with that in the passage of the Epistle to the Philippians, upon which I spoke last week. The difference is, that Obedience and Humility were the aspects of the sacrifice which were brought out prominently before us there—that Sympathy is the great subject here. That sympathy, as the necessary qualification of a Priest, as implied in all he does and all he is, we hear much more of as the Epistle proceeds. Through it the writer is enabled to teach us a truth, which when first stated it is most hard to apprehend, that when the Sacrifice is perfect, and the Priest is perfect, they must be one. That great argument I shall not touch upon to-day. There is another presented to us in the words, ‘that through death He might destroy him which had the power of death, that is, the Devil,’ which will be enough, and more than enough, for one discourse. It might be expanded through a series of discourses; the whole doctrine of sacrifice might be deduced from it; but I only take it as describing one of the effects of our Lord’s death, connected closely and inseparably with reconciliation and propitiation, but still distinguishable from them.
I do not think the word Diabolus is ever used in the New Testament without a direct reference to its derivation and meaning. There are other words,—the Tempter, the Adversary, the Destroyer, which all point to the spirit of evil; but they denote him by different characteristics, each of which we have used to remember, and which we should not mix carelessly together. The Accuser, or slanderer of God and of the brethren, is the title which appertains to this passage. We shall not enter into the sense of it, if we substitute any other title for that.
Whatever our theories are about the existence or non-existence of an evil will, about the personality or impersonality of that will, about the influence of that will upon us,—we all know, as a matter of fact, that whispers do come to us—certainly brought from no visible lips,—which take the form of accusations, cruel and malignant accusations, against persons who may, or may not, have done us wrong; who may be our enemies, or who may be very dear to us. All the horrible suspicions and questions which have been wrought into men’s brains and hearts, and which have destroyed the peace of their lives,—even if there has been some conspiring human demon, some Iago or Iachimo, to strike the spark, to light the tinder, has yet—we feel it, and we confess it by a hundred phrases—a deeper source. We say it is within us, and we say rightly; but yet we know that down in those depths which the vulture’s eye has not seen, there is a slanderous voice speaking to us—suggesting thoughts which we did not originate, which we shrink from, which being rejected, return again; which may cause most anguish and torment to those who most resolutely defy them. I say boldly,—these are facts. I do not try to explain them. The Scripture explains them to me, by telling me of an Accuser of the brethren, of one who seeks to divide us from each other; and I accept this statement, not trying to get rid of it by any analyses or refinements, because I can find no other which accounts so well for an awful individual experience, or so well connects it with that which goes on in every man.
But the same secret whispers which seek to set a man at war with his neighbours, strive also to set him at war with himself. The discontents, the terrible visions of the past and of the future, which every man has been conscious of—which seem to many as if they made up the sum of their existence—whence do they come? At first we think from without. We lay them to any annoying circumstances, to any disagreeable fellow-creature. The same discoveries, which we cannot be deceived in, bring them nearer home. They must have more to do with us than with anything about us. They seem to move from us, and yet towards us. There springs up in us, we cannot tell from whence, a desire to be freed from this vile state of mind, this self-torment. But the moment the effort at reformation begins, there begins a suggestion of discouragement and despair. The evil that has been done is brought against us; the evil that is with us still, is brought against us. Both are arguments, why we cannot obtain freedom, why we should not crave for it. Is this accusation from ourselves? Is it from conscience? Surely, conscience must be much mixed up with it. But conscience cannot be an enemy of reformation, cannot bid us continue in evil. It must be one who is perverting all the witnesses of conscience, who is using them to keep us from ever being what conscience says we ought to become. It must be an accuser, or slanderer;—not one clothed in flesh and bones,—but a spirit.
There is one more discovery still to be made. This spirit is the slanderer and accuser, not only of our brethren, not only of ourselves, but of God. Is it not so? Are not we hearing him accused every moment of the day? Is not every feeling of pain turned into an argument that the Ruler of the world has an ill-will to us? Is not every comfort a proof that He is leading us into temptation? Is not the sin of some men a proof that He has created them to perish? Is not the righteousness of some men a proof that He is partial? Is not that sense of evil in ourselves a proof that He has woven nets about us, from which we cannot escape, that He may have the pleasure of destroying us? Is not that consciousness of inability to escape from an evil a proof that He has sentenced us to inevitable bondage? We know that we have had thoughts of this kind, that they come back to us continually, sometimes nakedly, sometimes in fine court dresses. We know from their words and their acts that it is the same with all who belong to our race. Is there not an accuser of God with them continually?
The words of my text point to the greatest and most decisive argument of all, by which this accusation is supported. The Devil, it boldly says, was he who had the power of Death. Whatever reason some higher and better teacher might suggest to men for trusting God, for believing that he intended good to them, and not evil—whatever rains from heaven and fruitful seasons might tell them, Death was the answer to them all. That was the great ordinance for the whole race, for the whole creation. That stopped all the projects of the individual man; that made all purposes of improvement abortive; that made schemes for the future, which nevertheless, we must always be devising, ridiculous. That cut off all the bonds of family, of tribe, or nation. That made a man’s concern for his children’s children idle dreams. That said, Talk of your freedom as you please; there is this death always waiting to crush it at the last. Talk of Nature with its teeming, ever-renewing life; its mornings after midnight, its springs after winter, as much as you will. But this declares——With men and the inhabitants of the world you have nothing more to do. You may go somewhere else, possibly; you may dwell in some unknown solitude. But the thoughts which have been formed in you here, the life you have led here, the persons you have known,—they are over. This is one part of the argument; one demonstration that God meant nothing by the universe He had formed, or that He meant destruction by it; or that His purpose, if it was a gracious one, had been defeated. But there was another road to the same, or a more fearful, result. The accuser could say, ‘In spite of all these ’witnesses against you, you have a feeling that you ’shall go on, that you must go on, after this death; yes, ’and that everything which you have been doing, seeing, ’feeling, here, must have an influence on your state there; ’that you can part with nothing. It is true, frightfully ’true. Everything must go on; you must go on. And ’every bad thought you have thought, and every bad ’deed you have done, is bound to you now; will be ’bound to you for ever. God has pronounced His sen- ’tence of death upon you for those thoughts and deeds, ’and He will execute His sentence to the utmost. Do ’what you can to hide yourselves from Him. Avert His ’wrath, if it is possible. Forget Him, if you can. Try “to appease Him, if you cannot forget Him. What can ’be so dreadful as to be brought into His presence?’
Thus speaks the Accuser to you and to me; thus spoke he to the generations of old. The Epistle says that there came forth an answer to his whispers; that the answer is a complete one; that the moment we accept it, his chain is broken for us: because God has in truth broken it for our race. ’ By death Christ overcame him that had the power of death, that is, the Accuser.” By His own death He tore in pieces that web of calumnies against God, as if He were compassing the ruin of His creatures, as if He were wishing them to abide in their evil, as if He were not upholding the order and harmony of His own creation, but was indifferent to it, and was permitting discord to prevail in it. No words could have shown that the Spirit of Lies was the author of the distrust which men felt in their Creator; that he was separating the children from their Father. A mighty transcendent act must supply the demonstration. God perfects His only-begotten Son through death. That which was said to be the clear declaration that men are regarded by God as enemies, becomes the sign which Christ gives of His Sonship; as the Resurrection is the great sign which He, of whom are all things and by whom are all things, gives that He owns Him as His Son. Christ bears death not in obedience to an inevitable fate, but to a loving will; not because the tyrant has conquered the earth and those who dwell upon it, but as an eternal testimony that he has not conquered it—that it belongs to the Creator, not to the Destroyer. Death seems to make the great and final chasm,—of which all other separations were but dim prophecies,—the chasm between the Father and Him in whom He delighted. Death is made the pledge of Their eternal union; the pledge of Their infinite satisfaction in each other. That union is shown to be the ground of every other. The satisfaction of God in His Son is His satisfaction with the world whose nature that Son bears. His death is the vindication of their death; they have a right to accept it as a sign of adoption, as an assurance of reconciliation; as a proof that God, initiating them through sufferings, is crowning their work, is preparing them for a higher work. They have no right any longer to speculate about individual deaths, and what they denote. Here is the Universal Death—the death of the Head and Brother of mankind; that is the only test and explanation of its nature; that is the only one to which we dare refer when we would understand the meaning of the universe and God’s purposes to it. When we fall back upon our thoughts and experiences, and reason and speculate upon them, we fall back into the hands of the Accuser. Then frightful recollections of what we have been, and of the evil we have seen in others, and of the sin of the world, raise such a mist and darkness, as wholly shut God out of our sight. It seems as if each death were sending some new creature out of the region of His government, out of the circle of hope, into an unknown abyss over which some malignant power may preside. This thought recurs again and again, oh! under what multitudes of strange forms and seemly disguises,—cloaking itself with religious, even with Christian, arguments; always with the same effect; always bringing the spirit into bondage to the fear of death, always leading it to distrust of Him who is seeking for His sheep in all the thickets and on all the crags to which they have wandered; who is watching for the children who are feeding upon husks, and perishing with hunger. But when they turn from their miserable attempts to solve the mystery for themselves, to Him who entered into the mystery for them, that He might bring light out of darkness; when they turn to the cross and to Him who died upon it; when they determine to learn there what death is, and what man is, and what God is, there and only there; then they find their bondage turned into freedom. The incubus that sat upon their hearts and took away their breathing is gone; that which made trust impossible is the warrant for it; the cause of despair is the foundation of hope; that which seemed to enclose us within time, and to make all beyond it terrible, is that which tells us that the Eternal has triumphed, and that Christ has manifested that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and over which death has no power.
And thus we understand those words of St. Paul: ‘The sting of death is sin, the strength of sin is the Law.’ Death is utterly horrible as long as it is linked to that distrust of God which is Sin, and the root of all sins; so long as it keeps that up in our minds; so long as it teaches us that our safety is in flying from His presence. And the Law which pronounces us to be sinners, which makes us inwardly conscious that we are, and yet which we are sure proceeds from God, aggravates that distrust; and, if it comes alone, makes us wish that we could be atheists. ‘But thanks be to God,’ he goes on, ‘who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Thanks be to that God whom we have counted our enemy, who we supposed had pleasure in our death, for conquering the very enemy we accused Him of sending among us. Thanks be to God, for giving us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Him who has been made sin for us, knowing no sin; through Him who has made the one free, perfect, voluntary sacrifice which takes away the sin of the world. Thanks be to Him for giving us the victory, not over death only, but over him who had the power of death, who changed all the witnesses which God was bearing in our hearts and consciences that we had forgotten Him, and that we could not live without Him, into reasons for turning away from Him. Thanks be to God, that we can now answer the Accuser with these words: ‘We know what death is, for Christ has died.’ We know that His death is the proof of God’s eternal love, the pledge that He has reconciled the world to Himself; the encouragement to draw nigh to Him; the assurance that a new and living way is opened into His Presence, and that in that Presence is fulness of joy. For now the accuser of the brethren is cast down, he that accused them before God day and night. Now we are sure that there is not an accuser, but a Mediator between us and our Father; that the Son of God and the Son of man is with us and with Him. By the blood of the Lamb and the word of His testimony, we can answer the charges which the Accuser brings in our hearts against ourselves, for Christ has ’made us one with Himself; against our brethren, for His death is for us all, the bond of peace between Him and us; against God, for it is God Himself who justifieth us, who then can condemn? It is Christ who points to His own sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; what power in earth and hell can prevent us from drawing nigh in the might of that Sacrifice to the Father of all? And if death does not separate us from Him, or from those who are with us on earth; if the death of the cross is the one way of reconciling us to Himself and to each other—how can it separate us from those who have passed through the veil? Sin is the divider; there is no other. When we eat that flesh and drink that blood whereby the victory has been won, we may be sure that there is fellowship with all, wherever they are, who have overcome. We may not know it, because we have not resisted to blood striving against sin, and therefore do not feel the power and mystery of that Sacrifice which takes away sin. But perhaps if God gives us grace not to love our lives to the death; if he makes us willing to sacrifice ourselves for His glory and the good of men, the communion may become very real even here. Helps greater than the old world dreamed of, when they spoke of mysterious champions descending to the fight, may be granted to those who are struggling hard with the Accuser. At all events they will prevail at last; for God has made the death of His Son the Gospel of peace to men with Him, and the Gospel of everlasting woe and damnation to every power which would divide men from Him.