With the words of a prophet the Apostle contrasts the ritual of the priests. Jeremiah prophesied of a better covenant, because he found the former one did not satisfy conscience. A description of the tabernacle, its furniture and ordinances of Divine service, follows. At first it appears strange that the author should have thought it necessary to enumerate in detail what the tabernacle contained. But to infer that he is a Hellenist, to whom the matter had all the charm of novelty, would be very precarious. His purpose is to show that the way of the holiest was not yet open. The tabernacle consisted of two chambers: the foremost and larger of the two, called the sanctuary, and an inner one, called the holiest of all. Now the sanctuary had its furniture and stated rites. It was not a mere vestibule or passage leading to the holiest. The eighth verse, literally rendered, expresses that the outer sanctuary “held a position.”[158] Its furniture was for daily use. The candelabrum supported the seven lamps, which gave light to the ministering priests. The shewbread, laid on the table in rows of twelve cakes, was eaten by Aaron and his sons. Into this chamber the priests went always, accomplishing the daily services. Moreover, between the holy place and the holiest of all hung a thick veil. Into the holiest the high-priest only was permitted to enter, and he could only enter on the annual day of atonement. This chamber also had its proper furniture. To it belonged[159] the altar of incense (for so we must read in the fourth verse, instead of “golden censer”), although its actual place was in the outer sanctuary. It stood in front of the veil that the high-priest might take the incense from it, without which he was not permitted to enter the holiest; and when he came out, he sprinkled it with blood as he had sprinkled the holiest place itself. In the inner chamber stood the ark of the covenant, containing the pot of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the two tables of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written. On the ark was the mercy-seat, and above the mercy-seat were the cherubim. But there were no lamps to give light; there was no shewbread for food. The glory of the Lord filled it, and was the light thereof. When the high-priest had performed the atoning rites, he was not permitted to stay within. It is evident that reconciliation through blood was the idea symbolized by the holiest place, its furniture, and the yearly rite performed within it. But the veil and the outer chamber stood between the sinful people and the mercy-seat. Our author ascribes this arrangement of the two chambers, the veil, and the one entrance every year of the high-priest into the inner shrine, to the Holy Spirit, Who teaches men by symbol[160] that the way to God is not yet open. But He also teaches them through the ordinances of the outer sanctuary that access to God is a necessity of conscience, and yet that the gifts and sacrifices there offered cannot satisfy conscience, resting, as they do, only on meats and drinks and divers washings. All we can say of them is that they were the requirements of natural conscience, here termed “flesh,” and that these demands of human consciousness of guilt were sanctioned and imposed on men by God provisionally, until the time came for restoring permanently the long-lost peace between God and men.
Contrast with all this the ministry of Christ. He made His appearance on earth as High-priest of the things which have now at length come to us.[161] The blessings prophesied by Jeremiah have been realised. As High-priest He entered the true holiest place, a tabernacle greater and more perfect, even heaven itself.[162] It is greater; that is, larger. The outer sanctuary has ceased to exist, because the veil has been rent in twain, and the holy place has been taken into the holiest place. The tabernacle has now only one chamber, and in that chamber God meets all His worshipping saints, who come to Him through and with Jesus, the High-priest. The tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell, as in the tabernacle, with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them.[163] Yea, the holiest place has spread itself over Mount Zion, on which stood the king’s palace, and over the whole city of Jerusalem, which lieth four-square, and is become the heavenly and holy city, having no temple, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. “And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it; for the glory of God lightens it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb.” The city and the holiest place are commensurate. So large, indeed, is the holiest that the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof. It is also more perfect.[164] For Christ has entered into the presence of God for us. Such a tabernacle is not constructed of the materials of this world,[165] nor fashioned with the hands of cunning artificers, Bezaleel and Aholiab. When Christ destroyed the sanctuary made with hands, in three days He built another made without hands. In a true sense it is not made at all, not even by the hands of Him Who built all things; for it is essentially God’s presence. Into this holiest place Christ entered, to appear in the immediate presence of God. But the Apostle is not satisfied with saying that He entered within. Ten thousand times ten thousand of His saints will do this. He has done more. He went through[166] the holiest. He has passed through the heavens.[167] He has been made higher than the heavens.[168] He has taken His seat on the right hand of God.[169] The Melchizedek Priest has ascended to the mercy-seat and made it His throne. He is Himself henceforth the shechinah, and the manifested glory of the unseen Father. All this is expressed in the words “through a greater and more perfect tabernacle.”
Moreover, the high-priest entered into the holiest place in virtue of the blood of goats and calves.[170] Add, if you will, the ceremony of cleansing a person who had contracted defilement by touching a dead body.[171] He also was cleansed by having the ashes of a heifer sprinkled upon his flesh. Why, the very defilement is unreal and artificial. To touch a dead body a sin! It may have been well to make it a crime from sanitary considerations, and it may become a sin because God has forbidden it. So far it touched conscience. When Elijah stretched himself upon the dead child of the widow of Zarephath three times, and the soul of the child came into him again, or when Elisha put his mouth upon the mouth of the dead son of the Shunammite, his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and the flesh of the child waxed warm, God’s holy prophet was defiled! The mother and the child might bring their thank-offering to the sanctuary; but the prophet, who had done the deed of power and mercy, was excluded from joining in thanksgiving and prayer. If the defilement is unreal, what shall we think of the means of cleansing? To touch a dead child defiles, but the touch of the ashes of a burnt heifer cleanses! Yet natural conscience felt guilty when thus defiled, and recovered itself, in some measure, from its shame when thus made clean.[172] Such men resemble the persons, referred to by St. Paul, who have “a conscience of the idol.”[173] Judaism enfeebled the conscience. A man of morbid religious sentiment is often defiled in his own eyes by what is not really wrong, and often finds peace and comfort in what is not really a propitiation or a forgiveness.
On the other hand, Christ entered the true holiest place by His own blood. He offered Himself. The High-priest is the sacrifice. Under the old covenant the victim must be “without spot.” But the high-priest was not without blemish, and he offered for himself as well as for the errors of the people. But in the offering of Christ, the spotless purity of the Victim ensures that the High-priest Himself is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. For this reason it is said here[174] that He offered Himself “through an eternal spirit,” or, as we should say in modern phrase, “through His eternal personality.” He is the High-priest after the order of Melchizedek; and He invests the sacrifice with all the personal greatness of the High-priest. Is He “without beginning of days or end of life”? So also His sacrifice abides for ever. His power of an indissoluble life belongs to His atonement. Is He untouched by the rolling stream of time? His death was of infinite merit in reference to the past and to the future, though it took place historically at the end of the ages. His eternal personality made it unnecessary for Him to suffer often since the foundation of the world. Because of His personal greatness, it sufficed that He should suffer once only and enter once into the holiest place. The eternal High-priest in one transitory act of death offered a sacrifice that remains eternally, and obtains for us an eternal redemption. If, then, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of an heifer appease, in some measure, the weak, frightened conscience of unenlightened nature, how much more shall the conscious, voluntary sacrifice of this eternal, personal Son deliver the conscience of him who worships, not a phantom deity, but an eternal, personal, living God, from the guilt of dead works, and bring him to worship that living God with an eternal, living personality!
Mark the contrasted notions. The brute life, dragged to the altar, little knowing that its hot blood is to be a propitiation for human guilt, is contrasted with the blood of the Christ (for there is but one), Who, with the consciousness and strength of an eternal personality, willingly offers Himself as a sacrifice. Between these two lives are all the lives which God created, human and angelic. Yet the offering of a beast in some fashion and to some degree appeased conscience, unillumined by the fierce light of God’s holiness and untouched by the pathos of Christ’s death. With this imperfect and negative peace, or, to speak more correctly, truce, of conscience is contrasted the living, eager worship of him whose enlightened conscience has been purified from spiritual defilement by the blood of Christ. Such a man’s entire service is worship, and his worship is the ministering of a priest.[175] He stands in the congregation of the righteous, and ascends unto God’s holy hill. He enters the holiest place with Christ. He draws near with boldness to the mercy-seat, now the very throne itself of grace.
It will be seen, if we have rightly traced the line of thought, that the outer sanctuary no longer exists. The larger and more perfect tabernacle is the holiest place itself, when the veil has been removed, and the sanctuary and courts are all included in the expanded holiest. Several very able expositors deny this. They find an antitype of the holy place either in the body of Christ or in the created heavens, through which He has passed into the immediate presence of God. But this introduces confusion, adds nothing of value to the meaning of the type, and is inconsistent with our author’s express statement that the way into the holiest was not yet open so long as the holy place stood.
III. A New Covenant ratified in the Death of Christ.
“And for this cause He is the Mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it. For a testament is of force where there hath been death; for doth it ever avail while he that made it liveth? Wherefore even the first covenant hath not been dedicated without blood. For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses unto all the people according to the Law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself, and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded to you-ward. Moreover the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry he sprinkled in like manner with the blood. And according to the Law, I may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission. It was necessary therefore that the copies of the things in the heavens should be cleansed with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands, like in pattern to the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us: nor yet that He should offer Himself often; as the high-priest entereth into the holy place year by year with blood not his own; else must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once at the end of the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment; so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation. For the Law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, they can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh. Else would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more conscience of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith,
Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
But a body didst Thou prepare for Me:
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst no pleasure:
Then said I, Lo, I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God.
Saying above, Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein (the which are offered according to the Law), then hath He said, Lo, I am come to do Thy will. He taketh away the first, that He may establish the second. By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest indeed standeth day by day ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, the which can never take away sins: but He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made the footstool of His feet. For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. And the Holy Ghost also beareth witness to us: for after He hath said,