Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews

by H. C. G. Moule

"Now the God of peace, who hath brought again from the dead the Shepherd of the sheep, that great Shepherd, with blood of covenant eternal, even our Lord Jesus—may He perfect you in all good unto the doing of His will, doing in you that which is acceptable before Him, by means of Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory to the ages of the ages. Amen."

Here is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the benedictory prayers of the Bible. At every turn it sets before us truths of the first order, woven into one wonderful texture. It presents to us our God as "the God of peace," the God who has welcomed us to reconciliation and is now and for ever reconciled; at peace with us and we with Him. It sets full in view the supreme fact upon which that certainty reposes, the Resurrection of His Christ, recorded here and only here in the long Epistle, as the act and deed by which the Father sealed before the universe His acceptance of the Son for us. It connects that Resurrection with its mighty antecedent, the atoning Death, in words pregnant with the truths characteristic of the Epistle; the Lord, the great Shepherd, was "brought again from the dead" (the phrase is reminiscent of Isa. lxiii. 11, with its memories of Moses and the ascent of Israel from the parted waters), "in the blood" (as it were attended, authenticated, entitled, by the blood) "of covenant eternal," that supreme Compact of Divine love of which twice over (chapters viii., x.) the Epistle has spoken; under which, for the slain Mediator's sake, God both forgives iniquity and transfigures the will of the forgiven. Then the prayer follows upon these mighty premisses. The Teacher asks, with the authority of an inspired benediction, that this God of peace, of covenant, of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, would carry out the covenant-promise in His new Israel to the full. May He "perfect" them, that is to say, equip them on every side with every requisite of grace, for the supreme purpose of their existence, the doing of His will in everything. May He so inhabit and inform them, through His Son, by His Spirit, that He shall be the will within their will, the force beneath their weakness, "working in them to will and to do for His good pleasure's sake" (Phil. ii. 13). To Him, the Father, be glory for ever. To Him, the Son, be glory for ever. Who shall decide, and who need decide, to which Divine Person the relative pronoun ᾧ precisely attaches? The glory is to the Father in the Son, to the Son in the Father.

One closing word remains. Observe this designation just here applied to the Lord Jesus Christ; "the Shepherd, the great Shepherd, of the sheep." It is noteworthy, because in our Epistle it stands here quite alone. We have had the Christ of God presented to us throughout under the totally different character of the High Priest, the great Self-Immolator of the Cross, now exalted in the glory of His High Priesthood to be the Giver of blessing from the Throne. To Him in that sublime aspect the thought of the Hebrew believer, so sorely tempted to look away from Him, to look backward to the old and ended order, has been steadily directed, for spiritual rest of conscience and for loyalty of will. But here, true to that habit of the Bible, if the word may be used, with which it accumulates on Him the most diverse titles in the effort to set forth His fulness, the Writer exchanges all this range of thought for the one endearing designation of the Shepherd of the sheep. It was as such that He went down to death, giving for the flock His life. It was as such that He is "brought again," to rescue, to watch, to feed, to guide His beloved charge, "in the power of life indissoluble."

Not without purpose surely was the Lord left pictured thus in the view of His tried and tempted followers. In the region of conviction and contemplation He was to shine always before them as the High Priest upon His throne, the more than fulfilment of every type and shadow, the goal of Prophecy, "the end of the Law." But He was to be all this as being also, close beside them, their Shepherd, great and good. He was to be with them in the pasture, and in the desert, and in the valley of the shadow of death. They had followed Him indeed as their Sacrifice without the gate. But precisely there He took to Himself His resurrection-life, to be their Companion and their Watcher for evermore. The Lord was their Shepherd, and He is ours; they should not, and we shall not, want.