Jesus sprang from the royal tribe of Judah, not from the sacerdotal tribe of Levi. The apostle intentionally uses a term that glances at Zechariah’s prediction (Heb_7:14) concerning Him who shall arise as the dawn, and be a Priest upon His throne. We shall therefore entitle Him “Lord,” and say that “ our Lord “ has risen out of Judah. He is Lord and King by right of birth. But this circumstance, that He belongs to the tribe of Judah, hints, to say the least, at a transference of the priesthood. For Moses said nothing of this tribe in reference to priests, however great it became in its kings. The kingship of our Lord is foreshadowed in Melchizedec.
2. It is still more evident that the Aaronic priesthood bar been set aside if we recall another feature in the allegory of Melchisedec. For Jesus is like Melchisedec as Priest, not as King only. The priesthood of Melchisedec sprang from the man’s inherent greatness. How much more is it true of Jesus Christ that His greatness is personal! He became what He is, not by force of law, which could create only an external, carnal commandment, but by innate power, in virtue of which He will live on and His life will be indestructible. The commandment that constituted Aaron priest has not indeed been violently abrogated; hut it was thrust aside in consequence of its own inner feebleness and uselessness. It has been lost, like the light of a star, in the spreading “dawn” of day. The sun of that eternal day is the infinitely great personality of Jesus Christ, born a crownless King; crowned at His death, but with thorns. Yet what mighty power He bar wielded! The Galilaean has conquered. Since He has passed through the heavens from the eyes of men, thousands in every age have been ready to die for Him.
Untouched by the downfall of kingdoms, and the revolutions of thought, such a King will sit upon His moral throne from age to age, yesterday and to-day the same, and for ever.
3. The entire system or covenant based on the Anionic priesthood has passed away and given place to a better covenant, better in proportion to the firmer foundation on which the priesthood of Jesus rests. Beyond question, the promises of God were steadfast. But men could not realise the glorious hope of their fulfilment, and that for two reasons. First, difficult conditions were imposed on failible men. The worshipper might transgress in many points of ritual. His mediator, the priest, might err where error would be fatal to the result. Worshipper and priest, if they were thoughtful and pious men, would be haunted with the dread of having done wrong they knew not how or where, and be filled with dark forebodings. Confidence, especially full assurance, was not to be thought of. Second, Christ found it necessary to urge His disciples to believe in God. The misery of distrusting God Himself exists. Men think that He is such as they are; and, as they do not believe in themselves, their faith in God is a reed shaken by the wind. These wants were not adequately met by the old covenant. The conditions imposed perplexed men, and the revelation of God’s moral character and Fatherhood was not sufficiently clear to remove distrust. The apostle directs attention to the strange absence of any swearing of an oath on the part of God when He instituted the Aaronic priesthood, or on the part of the priest at his consecration. Yet the kingship was confirmed by oath to David. In the new covenant, on the other hand, all such fears may be dismissed. For the only condition imposed is faith. In order to make faith easy and inspire men with courage, God appoints a surety for Himself. He offers His Son as Hostage, and thus guarantees the fulfilment of His promise. (T. C. Edwards, D. D.)
Incentive to Christians to promote the spiritual welfare of the Jews
Our Lord sprang not from the tribe of Levi, but from the tribe of Judah. That tribe, originally one of the twelve, was in an early period of the history of Israel the most distinguished by its numbers, its power, its talents, and the many favours and honours conferred upon it by God. Upon the unhappy and criminal apostasy of the ten tribes in the reign of Rehoboam, the tribe of Judah remained faithful to the royal house of David, and it was preserved and became a great nation after the whole of the others were swept away and lost for ever. In the fulness of time God sent forth His Son--the Lord of glory becoming incarnate--of the tribe of Judah; and among the honourable names which He condescends to wear, He is called, “The Lion of the tribe of Judah”--the Lion for His majesty and power, but never forgetful of His parentage and descent. Does not this contain a fact, then, which appeals to the judgments and to the hearts of serious Christians in relation to the claims which the descendants of Judah, and consequently the kinsmen after the flesh of our Lord prefer on Christian piety and exertion? I would endeavour to place before you two plain considerations, with the view of increasing this sentiment in your minds.
I. It receives an increase FROM THE NATURAL FEELING WHICH WE ALL HAVE BY ASSOCIATION. FROM ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WITH A BELOVED NAME. AND BELOVED PERSONS. Who, for example, can go to Runnymede, who can go through the aisles of the Abbey at Westminister, without having the most lively feelings awakened in his heart, from associations connected with our national history? Now, in reading that our Lord sprang out of Judah have we any affection, any gratitude of soul at the thought of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us? The fact that our Saviour, our life, our hope, our righteousness, sprang out of Judah--oh how it should endear to us the helpless race of Judah! We see in them the countrymen of our blessed Redeemer, we see in them His relations according to the flesh, and ought not this to work in our minds some strong sentiment of concern, and pity, and desire that they may be brought out of the gulf of darkness and ruin in which they are paced?
II. This feeling of human nature receives an increase of power and tenderness WHEN THERE IS A MELANCHOLY DEGENERACY IN ANY TO WHOM SUCH AN ASSOCIATION ENDEARS US. Have none of us known the pain of such a feeling? When we see the child of an honoured friend sunk in circumstances, broken in character, cast down from the station of respectability and dignity in society in which their honoured parents moved--such facts as these are exceedingly painful; and in proportion as theeminent merits, the usefulness, or the Christian godliness of the progenitors may be inscribed in our affection, in that proportion should we bitterly lament when their prosperity have their honours laid low in the dust. This is a feeling which applies in the present case, “Our Lord sprang out of Judah,” but what has since happened to Judah? The Prince of life deigned to take our nature, to be born of the tribe of Judah, but that tribe and the other branches of the nation of Israel who were connected with it are now in a state of dispersion. See the tribe from which our Lord sprung trampled down under foot, the sport of cruelty and oppression. It is no excuse for Christians that the descendants of the tribe of Judah have rejected the glory of their tribe; this in the sight of God is infinitely criminal, but this will not be remedied by adding insult and cruelty to their condition. And when, triumphant over death and hell, Christ rose and sent forth His servants to go into all the world, and preach in His name repentance and remission of sins to mankind universally, He said, “Begin at Jerusalem.” Are we then the servants of the Lord Jesus? Then we must be animated with His temper an,! spirit. The unbelief and opposition of the Jewish nation, taken in general, against the Lord Jesus, so far from being a reason why we should be insensible to their spiritual condition, and leave them to perish in unbelief, affords the highest of all reasons why we should do all that we can to remove the evil from their eyes. (Dr. J. P. Smith.)
After the power of an endless life
The power of Christ’s endless life
This endless life is not the eternity He had with the Father before worlds began; it is His endless life as Mediator. The words mean an indissoluble or indestructible life, safe against the assault of all enemies, and secure from all decay, or possibility of diminution. It may be said, But is not this, after all, the same, for none but the eternal Son of God could become the endless Mediator? Yet, granting this, it leads us to a different point of view for contemplating the work of Christ. Do we not feel that in His incarnation, as God manifest in the flesh, we can have thoughts about God which we could never have gained from the study of the Divine nature in its absolute essence? And so, in considering the endless life of Christ, we may rise to conceptions and feelings about the world to come, and our share in it, which we could not receive from any attempt to grasp the idea of Christ’s original and eternal nature.
I. The first thought is the power which this endless life has of COMMUNICATING ITSELF. The very idea of such a life brings with it an inspiration of hope. That we should be able to think of a life like our own, but free from all the impurity which attaches to us going forward, age after age, without a break and without a check, rising and widening, a joy to itself and a source of joy to others: is it not something to make us hopeful about the soul of man? There is no creature around us that has such a power, and may we not then cherish the expectation of something corresponding to it in reality? But if moreover, we can come to the reasonable conclusion that such a life really exists; that One of the race has risen above the power of death; that He gave such evidence of it to those who were about Him as made them willing to endure any extremity, even to death, for this conviction; if He has been giving proofs of it since, by new spiritual life in the men, and new moral life in the nations, that have come into contact with Him, must there not be power in the faith of such an endless life? But the power of Christ’s endless life does more than communicate the hope of it to others, it gives the possession. When the original well of life had been talented and poisoned by sin, He came to open up a new and pure fountain. He secures for us a pardon consistent with righteousness, without which it could have brought no real life. He begins a new life in the soul, which has hard and manifold struggles with the fierce reluctance of the old nature. He encourages, strengthens, renews it, and at last makes it victorious. All this He does not merely by presenting knowledge, but by an act of creation through the Holy Spirit. He gives, not the perception or hope, but the possession of it. “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” Now we may begin to see what power there is in the endless life of Christ. It belongs to Him, not to reserve it for Himself, but to be-tow it on all who will take it from His hand who do not shut their eyes and steel their hearts against the gracious influences that are visiting the world through His death on earth and His life in heaven. But in order to this He must have a continued life. Ha,! it been merely an example, a system of doctrine. He might have diet and left it to itself, but for a power He must live, and live onward. Men are being born who need Him, and they will be born while this world exists, men who have sins, sorrows, temptations, death; nothing can help them--none but Christ Himself, and so He must have the power of an endless life. And even when all are gathered in from earth, when time in its present form is closed, and another kind of time, an eternal time, begins, He will be needed. He will be the Mediator between the unseen God and man for ever, through whom they see God, and know Him, and have fellowship with Him.
II. This thought, which we have been trying to express, contains the germ of all we can say, but we may attempt to unfold it in some of its applications. Let us think then of the power Christ has in His endless life of CONVEYING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE. Death is the one great barrier between man and growth. What secrets might the man of science wring from the bosom of nature, if he had countless years in which to put his questions, and mark the answers! What wisdom might philosophers gain if they could watch for ages the course of thought and the currents of emotion! But what wrecks lie scattered around us of plans scarcely begun, and what noble thoughts have passed away without an utterance! We do not say that there are no compensations for these short earthly lives, and no sufficient reason for this sad check to our fallen nature in the pursuit of knowledge. Sometimes, when we are disappointed and weary, we get reconciled to the pause, and are glad to think of rest. But when the soul is strong and wisdom sweet, the conception of endless progress in knowledge answers to something very profound in human nature. We recoil from death, not merely as the animal recoils, but because it cuts us off from answers to the greatest questions the spirit can raise. How fitting it would be that beside the tree of knowledge there should be the tree of life! And this want is met when we think of One in our nature with the power of an endless tile, who can be our Leader in all the paths of nature and providence and grace, by which souls can advance in the wisdom of God. All the experience which He gained in His own earthly life is carried up into the higher life, and with it all the experience of all the ages since, in His contact, through the Holy Spirit, with doubt and struggle and grief in the lives of men. Thus Christ is full of endless, fresh life in His Word, so that we find it deeper and higher, and need to grow at, to it. And when we pass in thought from this side of death to those who have entered into the immediate presence of Christ, we can see that the endless life of Christ has its relations to them. What we have in the word of God, they have in the living Christ.
III. We may think, next, of the SENSE OF UNITY IN CHRIST’S PLAN, which we may derive from the “power of His endless life.” There are two things secured for the unity of Christians by Christ’s unending life.
1. The first is a oneness of heart and sympathy. He became the centre of common affection, not a dead abstraction, but as a living person who draws them all to Himself, and infuses into them common feelings, not at one time or in one place, but through all time and in all places; and so the apostle, speaking of the unity of the Spirit, puts first the one Lord, and then the one God and Father. They are scattered through many generations and many lands, but the thought of an abiding, living Christ makes them brethren of the same family, puts into their heart the same life-blood, and prepares them for dwelling at last in the same house.
2. The other unity secured by this endless life of Christ is that of action. The Christian Church grows up under the hands of innumerable labourers. They come and go, and” are not suffered to continue by reason of death”; they have their own views and temperaments, and portions of the building bear the marks of it. There are chasms in the walls, raising and removing of scaffolding in dust and noise, to the perplexing of our brief lives. In the midst of all this there are minds eager for unity, and ready to take whatever seems to promise it. It is not to be found in any ecclesiastical despirtism, nor even in the outward gathering of faithful men under one discipline, good though this may be in its place. It is to be sought in the one heart of which we have spoken, going toward Christ, and then in ,he overruling plan which He carries out through all their work.
IV. Think, moreover, how the power of Christ’s endless life may fill us with the SPIRIT OF PATIENCE. Many of the evil schemes of the world come from the impatience that belongs to short lives. Even good men take ill-advised ways, because they are anxious for speedy results. They wish for something they can see, “Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants.” But he who has the power of an endless life will not only choose no ways that are unrighteous, he will not be hurried into any that are premature. A subject that causes doubt with many is the slow progress of justice and mercy in the world. See how sanguinary wars, iniquitous acts of oppression, great national vices and follies, run the weary round. There is progress; yes, there is progress; Christianity is slowly forming a moral opinion which compels men to have some pretext of right for war, and it is sending its messengers of healing to help friend and foe alike. But how tardy in its approach is the reign of righteousness and peace! The endless life of Christ is a source of comfort to us. He could very soon check the symptoms, but the disease would remain. The great problem is to put down sin not merely because it is opposed to the will of God, but because it is also opposed to the happiness of His universe; it is not simply a contention of power, but of goodness, and this needs time. The endless life of Christ gives Him patience in working for it, bringing His moral and spiritual motives to bear, and using His power at last for those whom no motives could persuade.
V. The last remark we make is that the power of Christ’s endless life opens THE PROSPECT OF ABIDING JOY. There is a philosophy of the present day called Pessimism, which holds that life is so entirely wretched, and the universe so tainted with misery, that the only resource possible is utter extinction. It proposes in various ways the question, Is life worth living? and after weighing its short pleasures against its long suffering, it concludes that non-existence for men, and, if it could be, for the universe, is the desirable goal. If those who put such questions would only be led to widen their inquiry, they might find that there are other balances than theirs in which the pains and pleasures of life are to be weighed. When we come to the emotions of the soul, the measure is not by quantity but by quality. There are moments of joy which outbalance years of toil and pain. The first glimpse of the New World to Columbus, the tremulous delight which seized Newton when he was in sight of the new law of gravitation, and which made him unable to finish the last figures of the calculation--these led them to forget as nothing sleepless nights and long anxieties and depressing fears. And there are greater things than these. The joy of selfsacrifice for the cause of truth and righteousness has been to some men more to be chosen than crowns and palaces, and has made flames unfelt as if He who walked in the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar were with them in the fire. This is the joy of souls, and Jesus Christ is the Lord of that kingdom where its home is fixed. (J. Ker, D. D.)
The power of an endless life
This word “after” is a word of correspondence, and implies two subjects brought into comparison. That Christ has the power of an endless life in His own person is certainty true; but to say that He is made a priest after this power, subjective in Himself, is awkward even to a degree that violates the natural grammar of speech. The word translated power in the text, is the original of our word dynamic, denoting a certain impetus, momentum, or causative force, which is cumulative, growing stronger and more impelling as it goes. And this is the nature of life or vital force universally--it is a force cumulative as long as it continues. It enters into matter as a building, organising, lifting power, and knows not how to stop till death stops it. We use the word “grow “ to describe its action, and it does not even know bow to subsist without growth. In which growth it lays hold continually of new material, expands in volume, and fills a larger sphere of body with its power. And yet we have, in the power thus developed, nothing more than a mere hint or initial sign of what is to be the real stature of his personality in the process of his everlasting development. We exist here only in the small, that God may have us in a state of flexibility, and bend or fashion us, at the best advantage, to the model of His own great life and character. What Christ, in His eternal priesthood, has done; or the fitness and practical necessity of it, as related to the stupendous exigency of our redemption. The great impediment which the gospel of Christ encounters in our world, that which most fatally hinders its reception or embrace, is that it is too great a work. It transcends our belief--it wears a look of extravagance, We are beings to insignificant and low to engage any such interest on the part of God, or justify any such expenditure. The preparations made, and the parts acted, are not in the proportions of reason, and the very terms of the great salvation have to our dull ears, a declamatory sound. How can we really think that the eternal God has set these more than epic machineries at work for such a creature as man? Christ therefore comes not as a problem given to our reason, but as a salvation offered to our faith. His passion reaches a deeper point in us than we can definitely think, and His Eternal Spirit is a healing priesthood for us, in the lowest and profoundest roots of our great immortality, those which we have never seen ourselves. (H Bushnell, D. D.)
Heaven--an endless life
Such is the nature of that life which Christ came to secure for the children of men. It is life, and life in its noblest sense--glorious, divine, eternal--in comparison with which all we haveknown of existence in this world is but a dream. The power of such a life! Life endless, unchangeable, save only from accumulating glory; perpetual in its freshness and boundless in its infinitude for ever and ever! It is this glory which is held out for our attainment. We who are here even in the death of trespasses and sins, are invited to seek it. It was to secure for us such a life, and to redeem us from the cause of death, that Christ came. He was made, not after the law of a carnal commandment--that is say, one that had merely to do with the body and with time. He was constituted, not for any temporary purpose, but in accordance with the plan of an eternal salvation. “The power of an endless life”--what is it?
1. It is a perfect life. They who enter upon it are without fault before the throne of God. There is no sin, no defilement, no spot, nor wrinkle, nor fear of evil.
2. This endless life is a social life. All the communicative and compaionable tendencies of our nature and powers of our being will be exercised in an enjoyment intensified by being shared with the beatific experience of others. The sight of others in glory will be infinite icy, a study of salvation, a rapture of delight. There will be the good and the holy of all gee and all worlds to love and rejoice with. There will be communion with Christ, sweeter than on the way to Emmaus, more frank and more loving than it hath entered the heart of man to imagine. There will be revealed to all the principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God in the salvation of man. There will be mutual study, nothing solitary, nothing exclusive, no need of guardian forms of courtesies, nor any distant or reserved civilities--no sense either of superiority or inferiority--all pride, jealousy,distrust, and envy, can find no entrance there. Divine love is the atmosphere of heaven; its blessed inhabitants dwell in love, for they dwell in God, and God is love; and in sweet forgetfulness of self, the happiness of others is as dear and delightful to each as their own.
3. It is a progressive life. The power of an endless life! The idea is truly magnificent. The idea of a life of an antediluvian--a life of a thousand years--is grand and imposing. What an accumulation of impulse and of power from generation to generation! But a thousand years are as one day in the arithmetic of an endless life. Our plans on earth are contracted, fragmentary, broken, and incomplete; but in the infinitude of eternal existence there will be nothing to prevent the execution of schemes encompassing all ages and all worlds. The understanding will be divinely illumined, the memory retentive and capacious.
(1) There will be progression in holiness--we mean in the power of holy habit. Perfect in the righteousness of Christ, there can be no improvement in the legal qualification for heaven; but as star differeth from star in glory, so in the reflection of that glory, which will be brighter and brighter as the soul knows more and more of the holiness and character of God.
(2) There will be progression in knowledge. For this there will be boundless room throughout eternity. What heart can conceive, what mind can measure, even in imagination, the infinite riches of the Creator’s wisdom and love! And thus the power of an endless life will progress in delight, in joy, in happiness unutterable, inconceivable. For ever increasing with the increase of the knowledge of God in Christ, ages on ages shall witness an undiminished freshness and novelty in the glory still to be revealed, a capacity of bliss for ever enlarging, and a volume of pleasure for ever accumulating. The joy arising from a sense of the love of God can have no limit--nay, must be, in the nature of things, positively and eternally progressive. The experience of a dying servant of God, recorded not long since, was in these words: “This is heaven begun. I have done with darkness for ever. Satan is vanquished. Nothing now remains but salvation with glory--eternal glory.” This was of God. It is His smile, His presence, His love, that cheers the pilgrim through the valley. (G. B.Cheerer.)
The indestructibility of Christ
In what way had the Jewish priests been appointed? “According to the law of a carnal commandment,” or ordinance, which was descent from Aaron. But this involved no certainty of their endowment with the true priestly helpfulness; they might or might not possess the gifts which distinguished their illustrious progenitor. Nay, it was rather a presumption against their endowment with these; for eminent qualities of mind and soul are not usually transmitted thus from generation to generation in the same family. Well, now, the apostle claims for Jesus that He was a Priest infinitely transcending them, and destined to set them aside, to banish them from the scene. And why? Because He was “made not after the law of a carnal ordinance, but after the power of an endless life.” He held the position undeniably. Multitudes of all classes and in many lands were looking up to Him and leaning on Him in spiritual matters; were turning confidingly to Him for spiritual guidance and succour; were calling Him, with eager reverence, Lord and Master. And how had He gained such position? Not by any appointment from without, nor by any recognised social rank into which He had been born, but by the might of what He was in Himself. He had been raised to it by no external edict or arrangement, but by an inward force--the force of the life with which He throbbed and overflowed. But it was the power of “endless life” which made Christ a Priest, aa, s the apostle, of life indissoluble, indestructible; by which He meant, I fancy, the irresistible strength and energy of the life in Him as distinguished from the dead perfunctoriness of the hereditary priests; that being life, and not death, it could not be suppressed or baffled, but was bound to thrust itself out and make itself felt, in spite of all difficulties and hindrances. How irresistibly strong and energetic the living spirit in Jesus, the force of His spiritual vitality, did prove itself! All the hostile circumstances and influences by which He was surrounded were unable to suppress it or prevent its triumph. They raged at Him, and eventually trampled Him to death. Nevertheless, He rose, and survived, and impressed Himself deeply on the world, became the acknowledged High Priest of millions, and the hereditary priesthood of Judea melted away before Him. But this is what I want to ask you: Is there not in Jesus a power of life indissoluble, indestructible--a power of life that withstands victoriously the wear of time, the shakings and convulsions wrought by the progress of knowledge, by the march of ideas, and the severest assaults of hostile criticism? Reiterated attempts have been made to resolve Him into mist or to reduce Him to clay. They have never succeeded; He has always reappeared; has always shone out afresh, with lustre undimmed, after each attempt; has been found looking down on us from above when the smoke of the attack has cleared away, with the same calm eyes and commanding aspect as before, like an angel in the sun. And, morally and spiritually, does not He remain the ideal, unsurpassed and unsurpassable--the ideal which gathers up and collects within it all the finest elements, all the best features of the various ideals represented by religions or nursed in the breasts of individuals--an ideal which we have never yet improved upon or advanced beyond? Yea, and after all our experiences and experiments in society, after all our projects and panaceas, who will not admit that the religion of Christ, generally embraced and practised, would be the life of the world--that nothing could bring us nearer to some realisation of the dream of the Golden Age than a general diffusion of His ethical ideas? After the lapse of nearly two thousand years, are we not learning to feel more than ever that if a new heaven and a new earth are to be reached, it must be by our uniting to follow these ethical ideas; that the way thither lies enfolded for us in His spirit and principles; that the penetration of society with Him would be the redemption of society. (S. A. Title.)
The incomparable priesthood
I. CHRIST’S PRIESTHOOD IS NOT AN ARBITRARY ORDINANCE, BUT A NECESSARY FACT.
1. Christ is a priest by the necessity of His own nature--God-man.
2. Christ is a priest by the necessity of depraved souls.
II. HIS PRIESTHOOD IS NOT A TEMPORARY ORDINANCE, BUT AN ENDLESS POWER.
1. His priesthood was not for the mere temporal interests of mankind.
2. His priesthood was not merely for the spiritual interest of the soul in time. (Homilist.)
The power of an endless life
There is a deep, mystic sense in which the life that Christ lived in this world--its infancy, its development, its temptations, its solitude, its conflicts, its sufferings, its joys, its holiness, its love, its dying, its rising--all is enacted over and over again in the soul and in the experience of every individual that lives in time, nay, beyond time into eternity. Who has not sometimes traced within himself the antitype to the type of Christ’s life that He lived upon this earth? What a view that gives us of the endlessness of that life which Jesus lived from Bethlehem to Bethany. And what a force there is in the fact; with what a power it must have invested, to the mind of Christ, every act, every deed, every word He spoke, as He walked His path of thirty years and three. But, apart from this mystic sense, in which the Holy Spirit re-casts in every Christian’s soul every feature of his Master’s life, see it more simply. Christ taught many things, and when He had taught them He passed away; but every word He said, as a precept, or a doctrine, or a promise, lives for the Church always. It stands now, and shall stand for ever, for evidence of faith or comfort to every one who is ever received into the Church’s pale. Or see Christ’s prayers--what were they? The first voices of that eternal intercession which goes up within the veil--beginnings ,.f petitions for His people’s sake, that will never cease--spoken here, this side the horizon, for this very end, that we might all know and realise how He is praying beyond it. And Christ, with His own hands, laid the foundation of the Church. And there it stood in its safeness, its gatherings, its order, its discipline, its unity, and its mission; and it is that same Church which He laid then, which is to outlive the universe, and “the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.” And Christ offered up, once for all, the sacrifice of Himself, to be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world: but once though it be for all, do not we know that there is a sense--a sense, oh! how true to the eye of faith!--in which that blood is always flowing. Wherever there is a stain of guilt felt, is it not there ready to be poured out again to wash that stain away? But the efficacy of the “power” of Christ’s “endless life” does not stop here. It is the marvel of His grace that whatever is united to Christ by that union, shares His power; and hence it is not only His prerogative, it is yours and mine--“the power of an endless life.” You say a word--the word flies, and is lost, and never can be traced. But where is that word? It lives, and must live. It will meet you again. It, and all its effects--effects, it maybe, multiplying themselves into thousands and thousands, on and on, for ever and for ever. You think a thought--you receive an impression--you are conscious of a feeling. That thought, that feeling, that impression goes to make character, moral being; and that moral being is eternal; and in that eternity of being will be found again that thought, that impression, that feeling, which scarcely filled a space or occupied a moment. You do an act. It makes its little way, and that way gets marked; and so another way and another mark, in circles which have ,me centre, but no shore. You said a prayer, and there is no answer to it. But the prayer is recorded, and the record is imperishable, at the throne of God; and that prayer will live when you are dead. And who shall limit the answers, down to all generations of people? You form habits--you are always forming habits--every separate thing goes to habit--and these are to be your habits--your habits of mind and being to millions of ages. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
After the order of Melchisedec
The resemblance of Melchisedec to Christ
There is something very solemn in the thought that a man shall be lifted above his generation, moulded distinct from all his contemporaries, and thus stand out, not in respect of his own interest, but with a reference to some personage of a remote futurity--a pledge that he shall arise, a portraiture of his character and a specimen of his history. These instances are but few, and only appear in relation i o Him who was to come, and to the purposes of His mission. Prophet does not announce and foreshadow prophet. Christ only is thus predicted and prefigured. It is very important, in all these examinations, to hold fast as a first, principle that he correspondence which is supposed is not of the Messiah to any earlier personages, but of them to Him. He is the Prototype. Theirs only is the conformity. Like the morning planet that announces and catches the first light of the sun, these herald and reflect Him to whom they are so mysteriously bound.
I. WE SEE IN THE OFFICE OF PRIESTHOOD AN IDEA AND A PRINCIPLE WHICH EXCLUSIVELY BEAR UPON THE INCARNATE MANIFESTATION AND REDEEMING WORK OF JESUS CHRIST. From the beginning, the function of offering sacrifice was known and practised. The individual might act it for himself. It soon became vicarious. It grew into a service and a dignity. It widely, if not universally, obtained.
1. It was religious. All adoration and piety were founded upon it.
2. It was representative. He who was invested with it was “ordained for men in things pertaining to God.” But this was not all: he was rather appointed between heaven and the people than between the people and heaven.
3. It was divinely conferred. “No man taketh this honour unto himself; but he that is called of God.”
4. It was imparted by solemn induction. The candidate must pass through many ceremonials the most solemn and impressive.
It resolved itself into invariable duties.
1. To offer sacrifice. “Every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices.” “Gifts” were oblations of a votive and eucharistic kind; “sacrifices” were the inflictions of death upon a victim, with confession of sin and hope of expiation. The flowers which grew just on the border of Eden might suffice for the one; the firstlings of the earliest folded flock were demanded for the other. The Messiah is the anti-type. “He has come a high priest of good things to come.” His temple was His own Body. His altar was His own Divinity. His ephod was His own authority. Yet in abasement and economic subordination, “He glorified not Himself to be made a high priest.” The blood of His sacrifice realises the twofold use of the emblem; it is the blood of sprinkling--toward the Divine throne for its honour and vindication, for its exercises of justice and mercy--toward the penitent sinner for his relief and hope, for his obedience of faith and love.
2. To present intercession. The priests, the ministers of the Lord, might weep between the porch and the altar; but our attention is turned to an advocacy more efficacious and direct. The high priest went alone into the holiest once every year. “We have such a High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” His sacrifice is single and complete. It cannot be repeated. ‘But it is continually presented. “He now appeareth in the presence of God for us.”
3. To pronounce benediction. “The Lord separated the tribe of Levi to bless in His name.” “Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people, and blessed them.” The language is preserved (Num_6:23, &c.). It seems the outline of Christian formula. But it was not to be given until the sacrifice had bled and until the incense was kindled. The more painful and anxious ministrations were first to be accomplished. Our Lord, clothed in the days of His flesh with poverty and humiliation, seen in the form of a servant and the fashion of a man, having laid aside the ensigns of His glory, has now gone into heaven. His array on earth was for abasement, for sacrifice. “Many were astonished at Him.” He is now within the veil, and the heaven has closed upon Him as the curtain hid the most holy place. His intercession there is the cause and source of all spiritual blessings. Perfect analogies we cannot expect in relations like these. The law was the “shadow,” but not the “perfect image.” In the priesthood of our Saviour there must be peculiarities which cannot be reflected nor transferred.
(1) It is real. The title is not allusively conferred upon Him because it is common and known. Whatever is common and known in the title is only derived from His office.
(2) It is roundest on His actual death. He was at the same time Victim and Priest. He was “made perfect,” or consecrated to His work, “by sufferings.”
(3) It is strictly meritorious. There could be no congruity between the hecatomb and the effacement of human guilt. But in the death of Christ is a moral strength and right which the Scripture most emphatically describes.
(4) It is most tender in its design. “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
(5) It is associated with all other necessary offices. His suretyship of the new covenant involves these relations. He is Priest, Prophet, and King. Melchisedec was a priest and a king, but not a prophet; Samuel was a prophet and a priest, but not a king; David was a king and a prophet, but not a priest. All these high trusts and duties unite in Him who is the Prophet raised up unto us, the High Priest of our profession, and the King set upon the holy hill of Zion. The eternal perpetuity of His priesthood, which the text affirms, must, as a fact, embrace certain consequences which may be readily defined. It is not the exaggeration or poetry of truth, but a simple statement of it. What does it involve?
1. The influence of the atonement and intercession of Jesus Christ is supposed in the one idea of mediation. Merit and moral power are its effects. To this we owe all that justifies and cleanses the soul. We must ascribe to the same source the blessing of eternal life. Such an office can never cease to operate.
2. The union of the Divine and human natures in the person of Immanuel, as necessary to His priesthood, cannot, if that priesthood be eternal, admit of termination.
3. Whatever be the honours and rewards of His priesthood, they shall be eternal. His robe of light shall not decay. His tiara shall not dim. We may look deeper into this truth. There shall be a manifestation of principles, arising out of His incarnate and mediatorial work, which can only gather strength and clearness through all duration. He will be glorified in their exhibition and influence. There has also been brought by Him to His heavenly kingdom a countless multitude of redeemed sinners of our race. These were once enemies; all of them were alienated from the favour and the service of God. By His priesthood He has reconciled them to both. They have access to the Divine presence and sympathy with the Divine will. They stand forth before Him. He shall see His seed. They have become a holy nation--a royal priesthood, priests of God and of Christ. They offer themselves a living sacrifice. They offer to God the sacrifice of praise continually,
II. WE PROCEED TO CONSIDER THAT PARTICULAR RIFLE OR ARRANGEMENT IN WHICH THE HIGH-PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST IS CONSTITUTED AND DECLARED. It is necessary to collect, if we would form a proper and consistent judgment, whatever is recorded of Melchisedec, from his first appearance in sacred history, until he is made in far later inspired Scripture the subject of allusion and illustration.
1. It seems probable, though we would lay upon it no undue stress, that the fragmentary history of Melchisedec was not destitute of design. A sort of ambiguity belongs to it, not inherent in it as a whole, but because it is so singularly told. The curtain arises, there passes before us the suddenly apparelled actor; but ere we can discern his intent, it drops. The stranger crosses our path, hut as we would require his anxious errand, he disappears. The star shoots along the firmament, and all again is dark. Advantage seems taken of this sudden emergence, this undeveloped character, to give greater depth of resemblance to that Prototype whom it respects. “Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My name?” “No one knoweth who the Son is.” “As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father.” “He hath a name written, that no one knoweth but He Himself.”
2. “The order” of this priesthood was doubtless primaeval. There is no disproof from chronology that Melchisedec might be Shem, “the father of all the children of Eber.” He lived five hundred years after the flood. We know that in him is the direct genealogy of Christ. But this is unimportant to our argument. It was assimilated to patriarchal service. It was that religion. Long before the Levitical ritual was given, the same “pattern” prevailed. The Aaronic rule was defective, a temporary relief, a mere substitute: Christ shall not be “called of God a high priest” in subjection to it. The Melchisedaican class was unchanging, germinant, comprehensive, initial; it is according to its perfect idea of pontificate that Christ shall be installed.
3. The resemblance is much promoted when we observe in type and counterpart the union of the regal and sacerdotal dignities. Censer and sceptre are in his hand; crown and mitre are on his head. Be passes from temple to palace, from palace to temple; from throne to altar, from altar to throne. His personal name and puissant style are significant. He is king of righteousness and king of peace. His capital, notwithstanding a thousand revolutions, still endures. He was not “the mighty hunter before the Lord,” the bloody tyrant, the desolating scourge; his reign was that of blameless justice and of benignant concord. The king is not lost in the priest. It is a sanctified alliance. Now our Lord is a priest for ever after this order.
4. The priesthood of Salem knew no separating demarcation. It regarded man with perfect impartiality. The high, altar of Calvary is covered wit, the “propitiation for the sins of the whole world.” The breast-plate of our High Priest is inscribed with all peoples. There is henceforth no middle wall of partition. Rival distinctions of speech, climate, and complexion are abolished, Nor is this anomalous. It is but a reverting to principles older than Judaism.
5. This order of priesthood involves an entireness and self-independence. It is pronounced by the historian that “he was the priest of the most high God.” The inspired commentator dilates upon this ministry in words confessedly remarkable: “Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life: he abideth a priest continually,” or uninterruptedly. We may premise from language so strong as this, that his office was immediately conferred, and that it could not possibly be alienated.
6. The oath which confirms the Saviour’s “order” is calculated to give it the deepest impression. “The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent.” Bow much of interest must be contained in this order of priesthood! How should it awaken our study! The Lord doth not lift up His hand to heaven and swear by Himself, but for that which is great and dread and glorious! He will not afford this sanction to any dispensation and its priesthood which is temporary, national, interstitial; but seizing the purest Conception of atonement which earth could afford--the least diverted, admixed, corrupted by any taint of earth--the truest idea, the simplest abstract, the surest pledge of priesthood--as when God pitched the awful tent at the east of Eden and wrought for the guilty, naked fugitives garments from their sacrifices--honouring all this in the person and vocation of His servant Melchisedec--“the Lord said unto my Lord--the Lord sware and will not repent--Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec!”
7. Nor is another descriptive feature of this early priesthood to be depreciated. That strangeness which surrounds it simply arises from the broken and incomplete character of the narrative. It is not in any sense even the biographic sketch. It is but a segment, a single section, without reference to the extremes of human being. Nothing is guessed. That bare and abrupt account is made the basis of every reasoning. All we have to do with him is contained in that account. There consists all his typic importance. Not a single extraneous point is pressed. And this is not without its lesson. The everlasting priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ is wholly a revelation. Any idea that illustrates it, in cypher and image, is wisdom from above.
8. The symbols which this royal priest brought forth in meeting Abraham are not to be overlooked. They were the signs of oblation. The bread was for a perpetual offering in the ancient temple, and the wine was a libation poured continually upon the ancient altar. And when we hear that Christ is after this “order,” is it vain imagination to think of Him “who took bread and brake it, who took the cup and gave it”? Was it but accident that bread and wine were before Him? Were they not Paschal relics? Is their appropriation arbitrary? Is it not conformable to sacrificial law? Did not these aliments always signify the flesh and blood of sacrifice? And in our Christian feast, that feast on sacrifice, we behold them dedicate to one commemoration--Christ’s offered, though sinless, humanity! (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)
Christ a Priest after the similitude of Melchisedec
I. THE PRIESTHOOD OF MELCHISEDEC COMBINED WITH IT REGAL AUTHORITY.
II. THE PRIESTHOOD OF MELCHISEDEC WAS FOR MANKIND RATHER THAN FOR A CLASS.
III. THE PRIESTHOOD OF MELCHISEDEC WAS MORALLY INFLUENTIAL. It touched the heart of Abraham, so that he “gave the tenth of the spoils.”
1. Christ’s priestly blessings, wherever truly received, will awaken gratitude.
2. Gratitude awakened will prompt generous contributions.
3. Such contributions are the only legitimate secular instrumentality for promoting the gospel.
IV. THE PRIESTHOOD OF MELCHISEDEC HAD NO HUMAN ANCESTRY.
V. THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST REMAINS FOR EVER WITHOUT A SUCCESSOR. (Homilist.)
Christ--a Priest and King
As a Priest, He relieves us from the curse and the guilt of sin; as a King, He relieves us from the power and the dominion of sin. By His sacrifice as a Priest He restores us to the Divine favour; by His sceptre as a King He creates within us the Divine image. If Jesus were not our Priest, we should lie under the curse; if Jesus were not our King, we should lie under the power and dominion of sin. By His priestly office we are pardoned; by His kingly office we are sanctified. In the first we have a title to heaven; in the last we have a fitness for heaven. It is as necessary that we should be made fit for the enjoyments of the blessed, as that we should have a title and a right to enter on the privileges of the blessed. And hence we believe in Christ, not only as our great High Priest, but also as our great and Almighty King. (J. Cumming.)
A priest after the order of Melchisedec
Two orders of priesthood are referred to in the Scriptures-that of Melchisedec and that of Aaron. Certain functions were common to both, such as sacrifice, intercession, and blessing. The text implies peculiarities in the order of Melchisedec, and that it was in some respects superior to that of Aaron. These were
1. That it was a royal order. Melchisedec was berth king and priest, which was never the case in the Mosaic economy. He was arrayed with double honour--a king of righteoustness and a priest of the Most High God; He received tribute from Abraham, and conferred his blessing upon him. In these respects he typified Christ, who was the Head of His Church, and thus their King; while He was also Saviour of the Church, which is His body, and so their Priest.
2. Its universality. The Levitical order was national and limited in its scope, and its honours and privileges were for the Jew alone. In Melchisedec’s day there were no Jews. No nation bad yet been chosen as the peculiar people of God. Humanity was one, and Melchisedec was a priest of humanity. The shadow of his mitre extended as far as the shadow of his crown, and the incense of his intercession covered all that his sceptre swayed. Christ was a Priest of this higher order. He never once called Himself the Son of Judah, but on sixty-three occasions the Son of Man. The intercession of the high priest was bruited to those for whom he offered sacrifice, arid no sacrifice was offered for Gentiles on the Great Day of Atonement. The extent of Christ’s intercession was evidenced by three little words. All, every, the whole. “Christ died for all.” “He tasted death for every man”; “for the sins of the whole world.”
3. It was intransissible. Melchisedec’s priesthood began and ended with himself, and thus differed from the Levitical, which was strictly dependent on an unbroken pedigree, on both father’s and mother’s side. Melchisedec was selected as one specially qualified for the office. The Levitical priests were officially, but not always personally, holy. Christ, too, fulfilled this requirement.
4. It was a perpetual priesthood. Under the Levitical law the priest could hold his office only between the ages of thirty and fifty. In Melchisedec’s day no such law obtained. The Levitical priest died out of his office, Christ in the exercise of His office. In the grave of Joseph He was still a Priest. That was His robing-room, where He was preparing for His everlasting work of intercession, putting off mortality that He might put on immortality. The golden bells on the hem of the high priest’s robe rang when he sprinkled the blood of the covenant upon and below the mercy-seat, and thus conveyed the assurance to the silent multitude without that their priest still lived, and that their sacrifice was accepted. These golden bells were paralleled by the declarations of the Word of God, such as “He is consecrated a Priest for evermore”; “I am He that liveth and was dead,” &c. Then there was the great bell of God’s oath, “The Lord hath sworn and will not repent; Thou art a Priest for ever,” &c. (R. Roberts.)
The law made nothing perfect
The old and new dispensations
The text tells us plainly that “the law made nothing perfect.” Now what are we to understand by this? It is not said that the law did not perfect everything, but that “the law made nothing perfect.” Are we, then to say that it was useless? The law in this passage means the dispensation of Moses, and are we at liberty to say that, since it “made nothing perfect,” that dispensation was in every point of view utterly useless? But of what is the apostle speaking when he says that “the law made nothing perfect”? Does he mean that it did no good to the Jews? Does he mean that it made no perfect, consistent, definite discoveries to them? This were to make it useless indeed. But the apostle means no such thing; he is speaking of the salvation of the world, and when he speaks of the law as “making nothing perfect,” he means to say that, with regard to the spiritual salvation of the world, it made nothing perfect. It did not touch that salvation at all; it did nothing for the spiritual salvation of the Jews; it did nothing for the spiritual salvation of the Gentiles; it could do nothing, it was intended to do nothing, for either. When we speak of the law as making nothing perfect with regard to spiritual salvation, it may be asked whether the Jews then had no salvation revealed to them. We answer that they had, but not in the law of Moses. You are not to take the whole of the Old Testament as belonging to the dispensation of Moses because it was delivered under that dispensation. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and many of the prophets often discourse about the spiritual condition and character of the people, but there is nothing of that kind in the law of Moses. Here are discoveries made while the Jewish dispensation yet continued, but they are no part of the ancient economy. We must not receive any portion of the Old Testament which does not belong to the law of Moses as a part of that law. Looking at the subject, then, as leading us to a division between the parts of the Old Testament--the one part including the economy of Moses, the other the instructions of the prophets, of John the Baptist, and of the Saviour Himself--we shall find that the Jews had spiritual discoveries made to them beyond and irrespective of the disco-reties of the law of Moses. The law of Moses was not intended to teach them this spiritual department; it made nothing perfect there, though it made everything perfect within its own province. It provided a perfect division of the tribes; it provided a perfect appropriation of the land; it provided a perfect arrangement for rites and ceremonies; it provided a perfect arrangement for distinguishing between the Jews and Gentiles; it provided a perfect provision for the prevention of idolatry and of the practice of idolatrous rites; it provided, moreover, a perfect system of civil legislation for the management of affairs between man and man among-t the Jewish people. All these arrangements were perfect, and in all these respects instead of making nothing, the law made everything perfect. If its perfect commandment were not obeyed, that did not make them the less perfect in themselves. The imperfection rested in that case with the disobedient. So far as the provisions of the law of Moses were concerned, they came from a perfect God, and they were perfect provisions.
1. In the first place, the Jewish dispensation was temporal, while the Christian is spiritual. Look through the whole of the law of Moses, examine every precept which it contains, and you will not find one enactment connected with spiritual and eternal salvation. Hence with regard to this you see at once that it “made nothing perfect.” It was intended to form a nation; it was intended to preserve that nation from mixing with the idolatrous nations of the earth; and hence you will find that all its rites and sacrifices were meant and adapted to remind the people of their transgressions, and to prevent them from going after other lords and other gods; whilst other peculiar provisions of their economy were intended to keep up the middle wall of partition between them and the Gentiles, lest the idolatry of the one should overwhelm the worship of the true God offered by the other. The altar, however, was a national altar; the sacrifices were national sacrifices; they all had reference to present things, to the present world, to the state of the Jewish people in the present world; and there is not, within the whole range of them, one single allusion to the world to come. Hence you will find that the priests and the Levites were instructors of the people, not instructors of the people in their eternal salvation. Prophets were raised up from time to time for this purpose, sometimes from the priesthood and sometimes from the sheepfold; not official characters described by the law of Moses, but characters raised up by Divine Providence to treat of the spiritual and eternal salvation of the people. You see, therefore, how the Jews might receive knowledge of the way of salvation, though they did not receive it through the law of Moses, and yet the law of Moses was necessary to prevent them from being lost amidst the idolatrous nations around them. We have said that the New Testament dispensation is spiritual as contrasted with the old economy, which we have shown you was temporal and worldly. Now, when we come to look at the New Testament dispensation, we not only find that it was spiritual, but we find that it was nothing else. As the economy of Moses was temporal, and temporal only, so the economy of Christ is spiritual, and spiritual only. It sets up no class of men clothed with worldly authority; it gives to no kingdom on earth worldly power. It deals with its disciples as persons having immortal souls that are to be trained by holy consistency in time into meetness for the glory of immortality.
2. The Jewish economy was limited m its extent, while the Christian economy is universal. The Jewish economy, as you are aware, was to be confine! to the Jewish nation. They were to have only one place of sacrifice, and that a place which God should choose. To this place they were to go up three times a year, at least all the males in Israel, to celebrate the feasts; and as there was a prohibition against carrying out the law in any place except Judaea, the one place appointed for that purpose, it is quite clear that the Jewish economy was to be an economy of limited range with regard to territorial extent. It is very true that there might be Gentile proselytes, proselyted to the Jewish economy, and acknowledging the one living and true God, and if they were in Palestine they might, in that part of it which was appointed for that purpose, present their offerings; but it was only in Palestine, and in that one spot which God had chosen, that the Jewish economy could be fully acted upon. Thus it is evident that the Jewish economy was to be of limited extent as to territory. Bat this was not the case with the Christian dispensation. The Christian economy, a, you arc aware, was intended to spread from the rivers to the ends of the earth, and from the rising to the setting of the sun.
3. The Jewish dispensation was temporary and intended to be temporary, while the Christian is intended to be perpetual. That a dispensation should be confined to one country, and yet be intended to be perpetual, would imply that God had doomed all other countries to everlasting darkness and everlasting alienation. This was far from being His intention. It was His intention to enlarge the range of territory over which His religion should spread; it was His intention to remove and abolish the temporary system by which the territory of true religion had long been limited. The whole of the Epistle to the Hebrews proceeds upon this principle; it shows that the Jewish dispensation was temporary, and the Christian perpetual, in duration; and it contrasts the one with the other. It shows that Aaron and his descendants were priests only for a tithe, but that Christ is a Priest for ever. Looking, then, at the Jewish dispensation as thus contrasted with the Christian economy, the perpetuity of which we need not dwell upon because it is admitted by all, I think we may clearly see the characteristic distinctions between the two. And if we look at one as worldly and the other as spiritual; if we look at one as limited in the range of its observances and the other as universal; if we look at one as temporary in its duration and the other as perpetual, we must see that we have no right at any time to blend the two dispensations of the Word of God; the distinction between them is clear if we will but keep it; and if we lose sight of it, away with ever, thing like sound principles of interpretation in reference to the New Testament. We defy any one to make a correct interpretation of the New Testament if there is to be a blending of the two dispensations.
4. But, finally, to show you that it is of great importance to distinguish between the Old Testament dispensation and the new, and that a serious evil is likely to result from blending them, we have now to notice two steps in the abolition of the ancient economy. The first step is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the Saviour expired, the vail of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom. This was heaven’s own intimation--that heaven’s own economy had now passed away. It had done its work; it was required no more; and henceforth any person that would blend it with the new dispensation would be acting against the intimation which God had given of its abolition when He rent the vail of the temple. But there was another step in the abolition of the law of Moses. The Jews did not attend to this intimation. They maintained the perpetuity of the law; they refused to yield. The sacrifices at Jerusalem were still continued. The rites and ceremonies of Moses were still observed. But did this perseverance in keeping up the Jewish dispensation succeed? It was under the hands of God destined for the powerful arms
