This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, saith the Lord;
I will put My laws on their heart,
And upon their mind also will I write them;
then saith He,
And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.”—Heb. ix. 15–x. 18 (R.V.).
The Apostle has proved that a new covenant was promised through the prophet and prefigured in the tabernacle. Christ is come to earth and entered into the holiest place of God, as High-priest. The inference is that His high-priesthood has abolished the old covenant and ratified the new. The priesthood has been changed, and change of the priesthood implies change of the covenant. In fact, to this priesthood the rites of the former covenant pointed, and on it the priestly absolution rested. Sins were forgiven, but not in virtue of any efficacy supposed to belong to the rites or sacrifices, all of which were types of another and infinitely greater death. For a death has taken place for the redemption of all past transgressions, which had been accumulating under the former covenant. Now at length sin has been put out of the way. The heirs of the promise made to Abraham, centuries before the giving of the Law, come at last into possession of their inheritance. The call has sounded. The hour has struck. For this inheritance they waited till Christ should die. The earthly Canaan may pass from one race to another race; but the unchangeable, eternal[176] inheritance, into which none but the rightful heirs can enter, is incorruptible, undefiled, fading not away, reserved in heaven for those who are kept[177] for its possession.
Because possession of it was delayed till Christ died, it may be likened to an inheritance bequeathed by a testator in his last will. For when a person leaves property by will to another, the will is of no force, the transference is not actually made, the property does not change hands, in the testator’s lifetime. The transaction takes place after and in consequence of his death. This may serve as an illustration. Its pertinence as such is increased by the fact, which in all probability suggested it to our author, that the same word would be used by a Hebrew, writing in Greek, for “covenant,” and by a native of Greece for “a testamentary disposition of property.”[178] But it is only an illustration. We cannot suppose that it was intended to be anything more.[179]
To return to argument, the blood of Christ may be shown to have ratified a covenant from the use of blood by Moses to inaugurate the former covenant. The Apostle has spoken before of the shedding and sprinkling of blood in sacrifice. When the high-priest entered into the holiest place, he offered blood for himself and the people. But, besides its use in sacrifice, blood was sprinkled on the book of the law, on the tabernacle, and on all the vessels of the ministry. Without a copious stream, a veritable “outflow”[180] of blood, both as ratifying the covenant and as offered in sacrifice, there was under the Law no remission of sins. Now the typical character of all the arrangements and ordinances instituted by Moses is assumed throughout. Even the purification of the tabernacle and its vessels with blood must be symbolical of a spiritual truth. There is, therefore, in the new covenant a purification of the true holiest place. To make the matter still more evident, the author reminds his readers of a fact, which he has already mentioned,[181] in reference to the construction of the tabernacle. Moses was admonished of God to make it a copy and shadow of heavenly things. “For, See, saith He, that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount.” It appears, then, that not only the covenant was typical, but the tabernacle, its vessels, and the purifying of all with blood were a copy of things in the heavens, the true holiest place. And, inasmuch as the holiest place has now, in Christ, included within it the sanctuary, and every veil and wall of partition has been removed, the purification of the tabernacle corresponds to a purification, under the new covenant, of heaven itself.
Not that the heaven of God is polluted. Even the earthly shrine had not itself contracted defilement. The blood sprinkled on the tabernacle and its vessels was not different from the blood of the sacrifice. As sacrificial blood, it consecrated the place, and was also offered to God. Similarly the blood of Christ made heaven a sanctuary, erected there a holiest place for the appearing of the great High-priest, constituted the throne of the Most High a mercy-seat for men. By the same act it became an offering to God, enthroned on the mercy-seat. The two notions of ratifying the covenant and atoning for sin cannot be separated. For this reason our author says the heavenly things are purified with sacrifices. But as heaven is higher than the earth, as the true holiest place excels the typical, so must the sacrifices that purify heaven be better than the sacrifices that purified the tabernacle. But Christ is great enough to make heaven itself a new place, whereas He Himself remains unchanged, “yesterday and to-day the same, and for ever.”
The thought of Christ’s eternal oneness is apparently suggested to the Apostle by the contrast between Christ and the purified heaven. But it helps his argument. For the blood of Christ, when offered in heaven, so fully and perfectly ratified the new covenant that He remains for evermore in the holiest place and evermore offers Himself to God in one eternally unbroken act. He did not enter heaven to come out again, as the high-priests presented their offering repeatedly, year after year. They could not do otherwise, because they entered “with blood not their own,” or, as we may render the word, “with alien[182] blood.” The blood of goats and bulls cannot take away sin. Consequently, the absolution obtained is unreal and, therefore, temporary in its effect. The blood of the beasts must be renewed as the annual day of atonement comes round. If Christ’s offering of Himself had only a temporary efficacy, He must often have suffered since the foundation of the world. The forgiveness under the former covenant put off the retribution for one year. St. Paul expresses the same conception when he describes it as not a real forgiveness, but as “the passing over[183] of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God.” The writer of the Epistle infers that, if Christ’s sacrifice were meritorious for a time only, then He ought to have repeated His offering whenever the period for which it was efficacious came to an end; and, inasmuch as His atonement was not restricted to one nation, it would have been necessary for Him to appear on earth repeatedly, and repeatedly die, not from the time of Moses or of Abraham, but from the foundation of the world. But our author has long since said “that the works were finished from the foundation of the world.”[184] God Himself after the work of creation entered on His Sabbath rest. The Sabbath developed from initial creation to final atonement, and, because Christ’s atonement is final, He has perfected the Sabbath eternally in the heavens. But the Sabbath of God would have been no Sabbath to the Son of God, but a constant recurrence of sufferings and deaths, if He did not finish transgression and atone for sin by His one death. “Once, at the end of the ages,” when the tale of sin and woe has been all told, “hath He appeared,” which proves that He has finally and for ever put away sin through His one sacrifice.[185]
The Apostle speaks as one who believed that the end of the world was at hand. He even builds an argument on this to him assured fact of the near future. True, the end of the world was not yet. But the argument is equally valid in its essential bearing. For the important point is that Christ appeared on earth only once. Whether His one death occurred at the beginning of human history, or at the end, or at the end of one period and the beginning of another, is immaterial.