He is careful not to say that the Law was itself but a shadow.
On the contrary, the very promise includes that God will put His laws in the heart and write them upon the mind. This was one of “the good things to come.” The Law was holy, righteous, and good; but the manifestation of its nature in sacrifices was unreal, like the dark outline of an object that breaks the stream of light. Nothing more substantial, as a revelation of God’s moral character, was befitting or possible in that stage of human development, when the purposes of His grace also not seldom found expression in dreams of the night and apparitions of the day. To prove the unreal nature of these ever-recurring sacrifices, the writer argues that otherwise they would have ceased to he offered, inasmuch as the worshippers, if they had been once really cleansed from their guilt, would have had no more conscience of sins. The reasoning is very remarkable. It is not that God would have ceased to require sacrifices, but that the worshipper would have ceased to offer them. It implies that, when a sufficient atonement for sin has been offered to God, the sinner knows it is sufficient, and, as the result, has peace of conscience. The possibility of a pardoned sinner still fearing and doubting does not seem to have occurred to the apostle. To men who cannot leave off introspection and forget themselves in the joy of a new faith the apostle’s argument will have little force and perhaps less meaning. If the sacrifices were unreal, why, we naturally inquire, were they continually repeated? The answer is that there were two sides to the sacrificial rites of the Old Covenant. On the one hand, they were, like the heathen gods, “nothings”; on the other, their empty shadowiness itself fitted them to be a divinely appointed means to call sins to remembrance. They represented on the one side the invincible, though always baffled, effort of natural conscience; for conscience was endeavouring to purify itself from a sense of guilt. But God also had a purpose in awakening and disciplining conscience. The worshipper sought to appease conscience through sacrifice, and God, by the same sacrifice, proclaimed that reconciliation had not been effected. In allusion to this idea, that the sacrifices were instituted by God in order to renew the remembrance of sins every year, Christ said, “Do this in remembrance of Me”--of Him who hath put away sins by the sacrifice of Himself. Such, then, was the shadow, at once unreal and dark. In contrast to it, the apostle designates the substance as “the very image of the objects.” Instead of repeating the indefinite expression “good things to come,” he speaks of them as “objects,” individually distinct, substantial, true. The image of a thing is the full manifestation of its inmost essence, in the same sense in which St. Paul says that the Son of God’s love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins, is the image of the invisible God. The gracious purpose of God is to forgive sin, and this was accomplished by the infinite humiliation of the infinite Son. God’s will was to sanctify us; that is, to remove our guilt. We have actually been thus sanctified through the one offering of the body of Jesus Christ. The sacrifices of the Law are taken out of the way in order to establish the sacrifice of the Son. It will be observed that the apostle is not contrasting sacrifice and obedience. The dominant thoughts of the passage are the greatness of the Person who obeyed and the greatness of the sacrifice from which His obedience did not shrink. The Son is here represented as existing and acting apart from His human nature. He comes into the world, and is not originated in the world. The purpose of the Son’s doming is already formed. He comes to offer His body, and we have been taught in a previous chapter that He did this with an eternal spirit. For the will of God means our sanctification in the meaning attached to the word “sanctification” in this Epistle--the removal of guilt, the forgiveness of sins. But the fulfilment of this gracious will of God demands a sacrifice, even a sacrificial death, and that not the death of beasts, but the infinite self-sacrifice and obedience unto death of the Son of God. This is implied in the expression “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ.” The superstructure of argument has been raised. Christ as High Priest has been proved to be superior to the high priests of the former covenant. It remains only to lay the top-stone in its place. Jesus Christ, the eternal High Priest, is for ever King; for the priests under the Law stand while they perform the duties of their ministry. They stand because they are only priests. But Christ has taken His seat, as King, on the right hand of God. They offer the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, and wait, and wait, but in vain. Christ also waits, but not to renew an ineffectual sacrifice. He waits eagerly to receive from God the reward of His effective sacrifice in the subjugation of His enemies. The priests under the Law had no enemies. Their persons were sacred. They incurred no hatred, inspired no love. Our High Priest goes out to war, the most hated, the most loved, of all captains of men. The foundation of this kingly power is in two things: first, He has perfected men for ever by His one offering; second, He has put the law of God into the hearts of His people. The final conclusion is that the sacrifices of the Law have passed away, because they are no longer needed. “For where there is forgiveness, there is no more an offering for sin.” (T. C. Edwards, D. D.)
The Old Testament and the New:
In the Old Testament the New Testament lies hid; in the New Testament the Old Testament lies open. (Augustine.)
Judaism and Christianity:
Christianity lay in Judaism as leaves and fruits do in the seed, though certainly it needed the Divine sun to bring them forth. (De Wette.)
The Old Testament and the New:
To pass from the doctrine of the Old Testament to that of the New is to enter a changed world. It is as if we had lived through an Arctic winter, our long night occasionally lit as by an aurora, or by stars the apparent revolutions of which made the mobility of our own minds the more conspicuous, and had suddenly chanced upon a warm and glorious summer with its unsetting sun and nightless day. The age of symbols is no more. Faint administrations of heavenly truths under material forms have given place to the loud proclamation of the same truths under those less material forms of speech and life. (Principal Cave, D. D.)
The two dispensations
The former constitution was not abolished, but exchanged, and by that change perfected; and in this manner did Jesus say that He came not to abolish, but to complete or accomplish: secondly, that the former was a type, and merged into its reality, not so much dying as passing into a second existence, where a true sacrifice covered a typical oblation, where redemption given passed before redemption expected, where uncertainty had ripened into knowledge, and hope yielded its kingdom to faith. To illustrate the noble by the base, the former state was as that living but creeping sheath wherein lie infolded for a time the corresponding parts of a more splendid and gorgeous insect, which in due time takes upon itself the vital functions till then by the other exercised, and rises towards heaven--the same, yet different--a transmigration rather than an offspring. (Cardinal Wiseman.)
No more conscience of sins
Conscience and forgiveness:
Conscience naturally knows nothing of forgiveness; yea, it is against its very trust, work, and office to hear anything of it. If a man of courage and honesty be entrusted to keep a garrison against an enemy, let one come and tell him that there is peace between those whom he serves and their enemies, so that he may leave his guard, and set open the gates, and cease his watchfulness; how worthy will he be, lest, under this pretence, he be betrayed! “No,” saith he, “I will keep my hold until I have express orders from my superiors.” Conscience is entrusted with the power of God in the soul of a sinner, with command to keep all in subjection, with reference to the judgment to come; it will not betray its trust in believing every report of peace. No; but this it says, and it speaks in the name of God, “Guilt and punishment are inseparable twins.” If the soul sin, God will judge. What tell you me of forgiveness.? I know not what my commission is, and that I will abide by. You shall not bring in a superior commander, a cross principle, into my trust; for if this be so, it seems I must let go my throne--another lord must come in--not knowing as yet how this whole business is compounded in the blood of Christ. Now, whom should a man believe if not his own conscience? which, as it will not flatter him, so it intends not to affright him, but to speak the truth as the matter requireth. Conscience hath two works in reference to sin--one to condemn the acts of sin, another to judge the person of the sinner; both with reference to the judgment of God. When forgiveness comes, it would sever and part these employments, and take one of them out of the hand of conscience; it would divide the spoil with this strong one. It shall condemn the fact, or every sin; but it shall no more condemn the sinner, the person of the sinner, that shall be freed from its sentence. Here conscience labours with all its might to keep its whole dominion, and to keep out the power of forgiveness from being enthroned in the soul. It will allow men to talk of forgiveness, to hear it preached, though they abuse it every day; but to receive it in its power, that stands up in direct opposition to its dominion. “In the kingdom,” saith conscience, “I will be greater than thou”; and in many--in the most--it keeps its possession, and will not be deposed. Nor, indeed, is it an easy work so to deal with it. The apostle tells us that all the sacrifices of the Law could not do it (Heb_10:2); they could not bring a man into that estate wherein he could have “no more conscience of sin”--thief is, conscience condemning the person; for conscience, in a sense of sin, and condemnation of it, is never to be taken away. And this can be no otherwise done but by the blood of Christ, as the apostle at large there declares. (J. Owen, D. D.)
