CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 10
The principle of chapter 10 is explained in verse 9, “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second”. It is connected with chapter 9. He takes away the system of sacrifices that He may establish the will of God, which He puts in contrast to all those sacrifices. When He comes into the world, He says: “Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not ... Lo, I come ... to do thy will” — that is, in order for the establishing of the will of God, all those sacrifices must go. God found no pleasure in the offerings, and Christ came to do His pleasure, and so He must take away what God had no pleasure in. There never was the least intrinsic value in any offering under the law; there was no value in the victim, though the offerer acknowledged his own state in bringing it; there was no pleasure in the victim, though there might have been in the faith of the offerer. The offering is the basis of God’s will; it is not His will; His will goes on to the bringing many sons to glory. The cross is the basis of everything; it establishes the second, and that remains for ever: “by the which will we are sanctified”. Every item of blessing is a part of the will of God. Christians may come to the morning meeting to get, in a certain sense, assured, and your soul must rest on the completeness of what Christ has done once for all, the basis of the will of God; but the will of God puts us in the place of sons for priestly service.
[p. 462] We are sanctified to that end. When the Lord spoke in John 17 of sanctifying Himself; He spoke of His present glorious place in heaven. It is not the time for possession yet, for He has not taken the inheritance, but He has set Himself apart as the heavenly Man, that we may be sanctified by the truth. The more we understand His place, the more separating the effect. The sanctification here (verse 10) is the same as in chapter 2: 11, he has brought us, as to our apprehension, to God’s point.
The system of continual failure and offerings could not give God pleasure; it is very poor taste when we go to God, to be continually bringing up the question of our sins; it is unbecoming. I really think the answer God would give us would be: ‘But have I not cleared you?’ If I had forgiven another, I should not like to have the thing constantly brought before me; I should doubt if the person had the sense that he really was forgiven.
All depends on this point of appropriation: if you do not appropriate, you cannot be consciously in the family. It is the only principle on which you can be in association with Christ. We can get nothing without appropriation. I think people are content with a Christianity that does not involve appropriation. Justification does not call for appropriation: you believe on Him for forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and numbers are content with that. But I find in Scripture entirely another line which hangs on the place that Christ has taken up as man in the presence of God, and that is our place according to the will of God. That is where Christianity comes in to my mind. We cannot touch this but by the Spirit.
The truth of John 6 depends on John 4. There must be faith before you get the Spirit; you were enlightened by the gospel — that is faith. Those satisfied with justification do not know much about life; they are very like a child who refuses food. You [p. 463] will not get much vigour of life unless you take food. I look on John 6 as a test: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you”. It was a test rather than the act of faith that receives the testimony. John’s point is life, and not peace.
There are a great many anomalies in the present corrupt state of Christianity, but John gives you naked principles, and it is absolutely true that if a man does not eat the flesh and think the blood, there is no life in him. Chapters 5 and 6 depend on chapter 4, you could not alter the order. The man in John 5 (Israel)† is raised up by the law written in the heart. With us, it is by the love of God revealed to us — that is the way in which we are raised up. The love of God is shed abroad in your heart, and you are brought into the place of a child. Hence you do not want to be on the bed of legality any more. In chapter 6 Christ is the living bread; He is on our side and we appropriate Him, and enter into life. You have to die experimentally, appropriating His death, in order to appropriate Him in life — die to the whole system of things in which flesh finds its life.
The offerings are over, and you are sanctified once for all, and properly priestly service is what remains for us, to serve God according to His mind. It is most difficult to impress upon people that they are brought into the new place, not for their pleasure but for God’s pleasure; no question as to responsibility could be entertained; you are silenced as to that, and you have to realise that you are brought into God’s presence for His pleasure. Worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth as He has been pleased to reveal Himself, that is God’s pleasure. You are perfected — no question can ever again be raised.
†The man in John 5 is a figure of Israel, who will be raised up by the word of Christ.
[p. 464] Priestly service is in connection with the assembly. There is no such thing as a single child; the great point is that you should be in company with Christ. There may be thanksgiving and a great deal for saints individually, but worship properly is collective. Chapter 13 gives us more what is individual, and is outside the camp, not inside the veil, it is the place of reproach in the world. When you are inside the veil, you are in company with Christ and the whole worshipping company.
“A body hast thou prepared me”, describes the human condition, all of the power of the Holy Spirit, prepared by God miraculously for Christ; a body prepared for that Person who says, “Lo, I come to do thy will”. It is the condition in which the Lord was and in which none was like Him, He remains the same Person, yet changes His form; He takes a body prepared, a condition as man, though in person still divine.
“In the volume of the book”. I believe that literally this expression means the heading of the roll; I have connected it with the eternal counsels. Referring to the expression in Psalm 40, “ears hast thou prepared me” (digged) you could hardly apply the thought “as I hear, I judge” to God. It expressed the position which the Son had taken in becoming man.
What takes us a long time to get hold of is that it is the pleasure of God to give us this place; the pleasure which Christ came to carry out; we are set in the place of sons for God’s pleasure. We are too commonly occupied with our own side, and Christ is constantly seeking to draw us to His.
When we have come to verse 17, we find that the ground has been completely cleared — there is no hindrance now to anything in the way of privilege; we have got our title. “By the which will we are sanctified”, and then those sanctified by one offering are perfected for ever, completely cleared, and so you are [p. 465] free for privilege. No question can be raised as to responsibility, no hindrance remains to our entering into privilege; we have boldness to enter into the holiest. The Holy Spirit is the witness that there is no more offering for sin (verses 14 - 18). Sins are not revived. It goes on to say, “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin”.
There could not be the terms of the new covenant until there had been an efficacious offering, and the Holy Spirit witnesses to this. If sins and iniquities are remembered no more, there must have been an offering to remove them. The Holy Spirit did not come to do a work, but to bear witness to a work done. The Holy Spirit is an abiding witness. This epistle contemplates the house of God, and it is there that the living voice of God by the Spirit comes out. We learn “the new and living way” in Christ Himself — it is by Him we enter: we have the great truth in Christ that there is a Man alive to God as having died to sin; Romans 6. The principle is established in One, but if so it holds good for a million; God has established the principle. One man fell into sin and died, another man dies to sin and lives to God.
We enter the holiest individually: the truth has to be made good in us individually, but the moment you pass the threshold you find yourself in company. Christian privilege has to be learned individually. We enter that we may come on to the proper ground of the church, of association with Christ where He sings praises in the midst. It is really learning that we belong to heaven, to the consecrated company typified by Aaron and his sons. It is a privilege to be in the assembly, in the holiest. I do not mean to say by this the meeting. The point is being in the sense of the Lord’s presence. We come into the consciousness of being companions of Christ, so that in the midst He is the leader. He sings praises to [p. 466] God. If you come into this you must come into it in the consciousness of your soul. The Lord speaks to Peter of “my assembly”. “To whom coming” (1 Peter 2) is the entrance into privilege. If I come to Him as Lord, I am not His companion, He stands alone; but if I come to Him a Living Stone, I come to Him as one of His companions. He is chief, the Head, firstborn among many brethren, but we are His companions.
Verses 19, 20, is what we have: we have boldness to enter, and we have a Great Priest over the house of God, and the exhortation is, let us draw near. The idea of the holiest is there is nothing holier.
“Through the veil” — that is, He lives to God as having died to sin. His death was the rending of the veil, the veil was His flesh. High Priest and Great Priest are very much alike; the latter perhaps more connected with His place over the house of God. The privilege of entering is always ours, it belongs to us. I question if the privilege is realised short of the assembly, because it depends so much on the presence of Christ. The apostle wanted the Hebrews to accept the privilege. There are two things connected with the rending of the veil — God coming out and man going in. If you enter the holiest you come consciously into all the light of the revelation which God has been pleased to give of Himself, and that not simply in relation to us, as in grace and righteousness, but in what He is in relation to Christ. This latter is another lesson. The point of God’s grace is to bring us into company with Christ, so that God may be towards us as He is towards Christ. One verse expresses it: “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”, and this is the holiest. We come into Christ’s place in the presence of God, and are loved as He is loved. The instant there is a spark of attachment to Christ in the heart, then the Father loves you “because ye have loved me”, and then the point is that Christ is the measure of the love. We could not speak of the grace of God in relation to Christ: grace and righteousness are what God is in relation to us, but in the holiest Christ is firstborn among many brethren, and He declares the Father’s name.
We are accepted in the Beloved, and being before Him, partakers of the divine nature, we are holy and without blame. Divine counsel is that God is bringing many sons to glory; this is our title. In the end of Acts 7 we get the introduction of it. Heaven opened to Stephen. Before that, the heavens opened on Christ and God proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son” — now they open to Stephen, and he saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. What was revealed to Stephen was the glory of God, as it were claiming him, and immediately after, Paul is called out to be the minister of it. Stephen is the illustration of it, and Paul comes on the scene to lead us by ministry into it. Nothing more marvellous than for the heavens to be opened to a man, and that he should see into glory, and more than that, that the glory should claim him! Stephen said: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”.
The blood is the witness (verse 19) that we can be there consistently with the glory of God; every claim of the glory of God has been vindicated. These expressions as to the blood apply to us as down here, but in the next statement (verse 20) you are looked at as on new ground, on the ground of being alive to God. We reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.
The veil is gone as far as God’s coming out is concerned, but it is not gone in the same way in connection with us; we have to appropriate the death of Christ. We have to go in on the ground of another Man “passed out of death into life”. The veil is rent for God to come out, but our going in is another matter.
[p. 468] We only go into the holiest as in the life of Christ, as in Romans 6, “Reckon yourselves ... alive to God in Christ Jesus”. Man in the flesh could not enter: it is by the Holy Spirit. How else could we as a present thing be companions of Christ in the presence of God? The work of Christ has so completely removed all — the old man crucified, and we go in because we are alive to God in Christ, in the Spirit. It has been a source of mischief taking up Romans 6 too exclusively on the death side; we have the same title to reckon on the life side: “alive unto God in Christ Jesus”. Verse 21 is Christ in the midst of the assembly; what is purposed in chapter 2. He is in the midst: how could we entertain the thought of entering into the holiest if He is not there to lead? He is Minister of the holy places, what was typified in Aaron. Aaron was charged with the maintenance of the service. His office was not simply to compassionate the ignorant. The lighting of the lamps, the placing the shewbread, was properly priestly work. We are the priestly company, and Christ is the Great Priest.
So far up to verse 21 it is the statement of our privilege — what we are entitled to. Now we get the exhortation: “let us draw near”, but first we must understand what we are entitled to. It is most wonderful to me that I am entitled to live to God in the light in which God has been pleased to reveal Himself in Christ. We learn the revelation of God first in relation to ourselves in grace and righteousness. We learn this before we learn our place as sons. The character of our life is according to the revelation which God has made of Himself.
“Bodies washed”. This is practical purgation from the pollution of the world, and “hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience”. The priests were washed, sprinkled, and anointed: we do not get the anointing here.
“Pure water” is the power of the word morally, so that you are not hampered by your bodily condition: you are practically cleansed in soul from the filthiness that attaches to your bodily condition. The heart is at rest as to an evil conscience. If there was not all this there could be no entering into the holiest. The holiest is open for the Christian to enter in. It has been said that Christianity is as Christ is — we can only learn it in Him. He is the only perfect expression of what we are.
Verse 23 is to have its place with us, too, “let us hold fast the confession of the hope unwavering”. The full result is what we are to have before us. We have privilege, and faith substantiates what is hoped for; still we do hope and wait for it. The hope refers to the glory. Hope steadies a man. It is like a beacon, so we are to hold fast the confession of the hope. God’s end is to bring many sons to glory, and God is faithful, so we are to hold fast the hope.
Many of us would accept the truth as to keeping the end in view, but where we have failed is in entering into privilege as a present thing. The High Priest is to this end, that we might enter into the holiest.
Glory is the accomplishment of promise; so we get “He is faithful that promised”. If we look at things on God’s side, all is accomplished (see Ephesians 1), but in Hebrews we see not yet all things put under Him. We go on in patience and faith. “For whatever promises of God there are, in him is the yea, and in him the amen”, for in Him where He is set, all is accomplished: it is all effected for God. All is gathered up in Christ; every counsel and purpose is headed up in Him.
We get two extremes presented in the end of chapter 10, i.e., living by faith or apostasy. You either get to life or to perdition; there is no neutral zone,
[p. 470] there are the two poles; they are alternatives. The apostle transposes the order of the statement in the prophet Habakkuk (compare Habakkuk 2: 4 with Hebrews 10: 38): “If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him” is the same as “His soul which is lifted up is not upright in him”. The point in the passage in Hebrews is, “we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul”.
Soul salvation is not exactly life; salvation is from our enemies and the hand of all that hate us; it is salvation from the enemy’s power. Israel was saved at the Red Sea, and they sang the salvation song. You come to salvation when you confess Christ as Lord; when you have left Egypt and are beyond the reach of the enemy, you come under another sway. Life is connected with the sphere where the Son is.
If you look at the end of chapter 7 you find first “this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost”, etc. Then you come to another point, “such an high priest became us”, this of necessity brings in the thought that we are of His order. Both things are predicated of the High Priest, but one is simply saving us, and the other is that He is going to conduct us into the holiest. In chapter 8 we get the thought carried on: He is Minister of the sanctuary.
Soul salvation is the emancipation of the soul from God’s judgment and the power of the enemy; this is in view of life, I admit. We have faith “to the saving of the soul”. “The just shall live by faith” goes further. In Romans 4 and 5 you get soul salvation, to those “who believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead”. We have got to the Lord, have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If we have got to Him, we are free from the power of [p. 471] the enemy. Then in Romans 6 you have another step — you accept death; then in chapter 8 you reach life. The Spirit is life. “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”. Man is saved in being set free from the power of the enemy. It is not temporal deliverance, as in the case of Israel, but soul salvation. The thought of salvation comes out in the song of Zacharias; “Saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us”, etc. It is salvation in view of life: “salvation which is in Christ Jesus” does not go beyond what we are speaking of. “With eternal glory” takes in the other thought in its fulness: “Who has delivered us from the authority of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love”. We get salvation thus, and have reached another authority, “In whom we have redemption”.
Life is reached in reaching Christ. Life is Christianity proper: life is ‘in Him we stand a heavenly band, where He Himself is gone’. “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God”, that is, where life is — with Christ. The first thing is that God takes account of the reality of our position as men. You must be free of death and Satan’s power, and this is really broken for you when you come to the Lord. Life belongs to a completely new relationship. “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” refers to another relationship. The Spirit helps us in our responsibility, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”; but “Spirit of life” involves the thought of relationship. ‘Life of faith’ I do not understand; the just are to live on the principle of faith. We do not yet live as to actual condition, we are not actually quickened: the principle upon which we live is faith. In faith I have got the light of God; now in heaven we shall not want faith, but we cannot be in the light of the knowledge of God now, save by faith.
“†Quickened us together with Christ” includes all the work of God in us: we are not yet quickened according to 1 Corinthians 15: 22, “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”.
In Ephesians 2 it is life in the sense of affection which has appropriated Christ. It is clear that when “quickened ... with Christ” is said of saints, it is when their affection had appropriated Christ. It is the power of God’s Spirit that has enabled me by affection to appropriate Christ as He is and where He is, and thus we are said to be quickened together with Him; it was the then present state of the Ephesians, and the effect of divine power working in them when they were dead. It is thus that we are quickened with Christ; it is life in the character of affection. Love is the life of God; Scripture knows no life that is not love. Natural life is nothing without the system and framework of affections in which it is properly expressed.
“Soul and spirit”? The soul is often used in Scripture as the individual. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”, not another for it. Life in Scripture is connected with the Spirit, and always with a new
†Explanatory Note. — As to Ephesians 2, the statement in that chapter is clearly of what God by His power had effected in the saints: He had, as is seen also in Colossians, quickened them together with Christ. In referring to it, my point was to show what it is in which this is displayed. Evidently the first point is that Christ risen is the centre and ground on which all is formed. Then we stand associated with Him, a heavenly band. We have (conscious of His love) appropriated Him in what He is to God as risen from the dead, and thus live together with Him God-ward in love (see chapter 1: 4). It may be said that this is mixing up what is, in a sense, experience, with the power of God, but I think that the result of God’s work is viewed, as a whole, in Ephesians: the fruit and effect of His power working where nothing was but death, and producing a result suitable and sufficient for Himself. It is seen in its full extent, and is what is true in principle in all Christians, though not realised by all.
[p. 473] relationship. Life comes out in your affections answering to the new relationship.
Body, soul, spirit, may, perhaps, be said to be the three constituent parts of man; the “spirit” as inmost. “Soul” is what man has in common with the animal, the natural life. “Spirit” is the conscious individuality; but you cannot trace a word right through Scripture and always attribute the same meaning to it. “Soul” is often that particular person, not another.