James Nisbet Commentary - Hebrews 9:14

James Nisbet Commentary - Hebrews 9:14 - 9:14

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James Nisbet Commentary - Hebrews 9:14 - 9:14

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CHRIST’S DEATH AS A SACRIFICE

‘How much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?’

Heb_9:14

Christ was not dragged to the altar. It was a voluntary sacrifice, it was a spontaneous sacrifice, it was a moral sacrifice, offered by that in Him which was highest through the Eternal Spirit; He ‘offered Himself without spot to God.’

Let me dwell on two results of our Lord’s death.

I. ‘Made sin for us’ (2Co_5:21).—What a mysterious expression that seems to be, and no doubt it is. But surely it becomes to a certain extent intelligible to us from one phase of human experience. Is there not such a thing as intense sympathy, intense solidarity of man with man? How could Christ take our infirmities? how could He bear our sicknesses? The incarnate love and glory of God, the sinless son of God, could not be sick; He took death, which summed up all in itself, but sick with particular sickness He could not be; how then did He take our sickness? It was by the depth of His sympathy that He took it.

II. Christ died that He might emancipate ‘them’—as many as—‘who through fear of death were subject to bondage.’ There are those who through fear of death are so subject through all their life; or rather, through all their living—through every function and part of life. Are there any amongst us who as our lives go on are haunted by that bondage to the fear of death? As one aspect of Christ’s death purges man from sin, so another delivers him from the bondage to the fear of death.

III. Now, think of the effect upon human character.—‘How much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?’ Observe, the blood of Christ is said there to be the agent. The blood of Christ in the past has too often been looked at merely as a pathetic expression for the suffering and death of Christ. According to the whole symbolism of Scripture the blood is the life thereof. The blood of Christ speaks of His death, but does not rest there; it goes on to the life, the life that was riven from Him—yes, but the life given again; the life that was rendered, yes, but the life tendered to us.

—

Archbishop Alexander.

Illustration

‘Dr. Johnson had a perfect horror of death for many years in his life; it was taken away before his time came. No doubt some who are present will remember the sweet and solemn history of the death-bed of Sir Walter Scott, how he died with his windows open to the light, and the soft ripple of the Tweed, as it broke over the pebbles, coming to his ears, and in the chamber itself the voice he loved reading words deeper, truer, grander, fuller than any that had ever dropped even from that magic pen: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” ’