CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6
Everything in the epistle on our side up to this chapter has been elementary, but here we get to the counsel of God; and the rest of the epistle develops the new order of things — the new Priest (chapter 7), the new covenant (chapter 8), the new sanctuary (chapter 9), the new worshippers (chapter 10); but so far as the saints are concerned all is elementary up to chapter 6. We have now the word, “Let us go on unto perfection”; evidently all up to perfection must be elementary,
“leaving the principles” — that which is elementary.
Perfection is the apprehension of the true Christian place, intelligence in the purpose of God. Hitherto it had been mostly warnings. The truth as to Christ and His glory comes out in the first two chapters, but after that it is largely warning, lest the saints should turn back. Now, it is going on to perfection — things connected with manhood. The object of this chapter is to put the saints as to the condition of their souls on the ground of the counsels of God.
“The word of the beginning of the Christ” went no further, I judge, than a kind of John the baptist preaching; repentance, faith towards God, all known before Christ took His place in resurrection. Resurrection of the dead was accepted by orthodox Jews. These were not things that Christ brought, but people were awakened to them by the coming of the Lord: they came with peculiar force, the meaning of them was brought out. They are the things we have been accustomed to be occupied with, and it is quite natural for us to be taken up with the things connected with the responsibility of man. The Hebrews had not got on to the counsels of God. You must begin with responsibility, but you must go on, or you do not get your senses exercised to the discernment of good and evil. The forgiveness of sins is the recognition that I have responsibility, but that it has been met; it does not go beyond. Perfection has reference to the apprehension and intelligence of the place in which it has pleased God to set us. The thought of ‘babe’ here is more in a legal sense. In Christianity the babe cries, “Abba, Father”. The question of responsibility never enters within the veil. The saints here had the hope and the Forerunner, and so were in the light of sonship. It is evident that if Christ was the Forerunner, others were running, too, to the same end. God is bringing many sons to glory. The hope is [p. 433] glory and in Christ Jesus God has effectuated His purpose. He has gone in as Forerunner: we are sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Hope is the pledge of the whole result.
Many read Hebrews, and for many years I read it myself, as though the whole point was how we were to get through the wilderness. But the point is, how you are led into perfection, to get out of the wilderness while you are actually in the wilderness — to get into the holiest, entering into rest, as it were. You enter into the rest of God when you see that all God’s ways have found their rest and accomplishment in Christ in glory. Christ has been raised from the dead and exalted, and we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; that is the rest of God, the satisfaction of all that He is. Aaron never went into the holiest to remain there: he did not enter as forerunner. Now Christ has entered in, and has sent forth the Holy Spirit to carry us there in spirit. The high priest could only go in alone, and had to come out again; he dared not go in to remain. There was no liberty or boldness; it was impossible that man could go in till God had come out; it would have been no good to man. How could he go in to God, unless God had revealed Himself? The veil was rent on the divine side to enable God to come out, when all before Him had been cleared to His glory.
There is a very solemn warning in the early part of the chapter against turning back: “It is impossible for those who were once enlightened” contemplates a class of persons who were, in a certain sense, in the house of God. It is possible to have great light and yet to turn apostate; it contemplates the furthest point to which man could go and yet turn back. “The good word of God” is the ‘good utterance’ — not ‘logos’ as in chapter 4. “Powers of the world to come” were miracles as seen in Christ; it is hopeless to wait for those who have come to that point and turn back;
[p. 434] what more is there? It was fatal apostasy without hope of repentance. It was the case of a man who had deliberately tried Christianity, and had given it up; one who was enlightened, not born again. “The powers of the world to come” refers to that which will introduce the world to come. Christ came in the powers of the world to come. If you are to have a world of blessing such as God contemplates, you must have the devils cast out, the sick healed; every outward effect of sin must be set aside; the infirmities from which people suffer are the effect and fruit of sin. When Christ is present He comes with the word of power and gives relief; even as to the Lord Himself when here, you might say, these miracles were His credentials; He was the vessel anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power. He could say, “For which of those works do ye stone me?” The One who did all these miracles was a man. Christ came as man, the proof and testimony that the world to come is to be put under man. All things will be put under Him, and He has tasted death for everything.
“The heavenly gift” is ‘heavenly giving’; the grace that was present in the church.
The apostle could say, “We are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love”, etc. The Hebrews had shown evidence of a divine work in their souls. If you have not love — that is, part in the divine nature — you are nothing; the divine nature in the Christian is the fruit of the formative power of the Holy Spirit, and for that you must have an indwelling Spirit. The first principle of Christianity is love, the love of God is shed abroad in the heart. No one is formed in love till he knows love.
The ‘rain’ was there — the proof of the blessing of God. If rain was withheld there was no blessing, but [p. 435] the effect of the rain was that people were tested by it. There was gracious ministry, and if the ground that was graciously tilled brought forth only thorns, it showed apostasy; but if it brought forth fruit, it received blessing from God. Apostasy is a public thing. I have known, in my time, of one or two distinguished persons giving up Christianity and turning away to something else, and they put Christ to an open shame. The apostate not only gives up Christ, but he turns back to something else.
Obedience is hardly a principle of the divine nature, but it marks one who is perfect here in a scene where disobedience is. We are to be marked by obedience, because we are in a scene of disobedience, but how could you talk of obedience in connection with God? But obedience was part of the perfection of Christ’s path when here.
A very beautiful expression to my mind is “God is not unrighteous to forget”, etc. Whatever man may overlook, God is not unrighteous. Beautiful fruit we should see in one another if we had the eyes of God — the fruit of love — and I wish we saw more. We have to love saints because they are such; not naturally, as I love my child, because he is my child. In John you are placed under obligation to love because God loved us: it is really thus a question of righteousness. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren”. We have come into the Christian circle, the proper circle of affections. The Christian has more affection for his fellow-Christian than even for his own kindred.
Verse 11. It is a great thing to go on in the path, not to be diverted from it; ‘continue’ is the great test. People will do great things under excitement or momentary influence, but that is not the test; to ‘continue’ is: it is quite a characteristic word in John’s writings. In the case of the patriarchs there [p. 436] was patience. It is remarkable how the entire period of law is passed over in this chapter as if a blank, and the saints are identified as followers of those to whom promises were given long before law was brought in. Promises were the fruit of God’s counsel. You become Abraham’s seed by faith. In Christendom everything is set to work and every energy employed to keep saints at the level of man’s responsibility — a forgiven man, it may be, but still a responsible man. Of course we must begin there, but the great end of God in the gospel is the body, the vessel in which Christ is to be displayed down here, but you cannot come to that unless you understand that as to your place before God you are of that body of which Christ is Head, and as such pre-eminent; the truth of God’s purpose as to your place in His presence must be learnt before you can answer to the other side. What Satan is bent on is, to thwart the object of God in the body — that is, that in it Christ should be displayed.
It is important to see how Scripture is bound together: you get back to Abraham, to promise, and that is the fruit of counsel; and the law, which came in by the way, is ignored. There was no need of the oath to bind God, His word bound Him as much as His oath, but the oath is His condescension for the sake of men, that we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope.
“Heirs of promise” is a very wide expression; it includes all the true seed of Abraham, all on the ground of faith. Nehemiah, Daniel, those who pleaded the promises, they were the heirs of promise: we are the heirs of promise: “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise”.
It is not we who go within the veil here, but the hope is there. In chapter 10 we go in, but here it is the hope that connects us with what is within; the Forerunner is there, the Leader of our salvation.
[p. 437] There is an allusion here to the cities of refuge. It points to the position of the nation, guilty of the murder of Christ, but Christ was after all delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God, and so God had approached the Jews in the gospel on that ground, and they could enter a place of refuge by accepting what God set before them; that through their wickedness He had accomplished His counsel. God sets up His house here, and the condition of salvation is that the Jews must enter it in the appointed way; the house has been set up here in spite of everything man had done in rejecting Christ. The Holy Spirit speaks in the house (see chapter 3: 7, and 1 Timothy 4.) He does not speak in Judaism or heathendom, but in the house.
A believer has to learn that there is a hope which identifies him with heaven. The only principle on which we can enter into present privilege and blessing is the appropriation of Christ. I could not be a son of God as a man down here. I enter into sonship exactly in proportion to the Spirit’s work in me. The Spirit forms us according to the place and by the place which God has given us; having got into the light, the Spirit forms us according to it, making good in us the place which Christ has secured for us. It wants a little energy of faith to look at Christ. People stop short — they are taken up with the grace brought to them down here, but do not care to take up the other side, which involves the acceptance of death. The old corn is what Christ is according to the counsels of God. The manna is more daily grace for daily need.
In this chapter you get the promises introduced; in the next the Priest — both established by oath. The oath indicates the determinate counsel of God; what depends simply on the promise of God, can be confirmed by an oath.