Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews

The following chapters are the work of intervals of leisure scattered over a long time. The exposition had advanced some way when an unexpected call to new and exacting duties compelled me to put it aside for several years. Accordingly a certain difference of treatment in the later chapters as compared with the earlier will probably be seen by the reader, particularly a rather fuller detail in the exposition. But purpose and plan are essentially the same throughout.

No attempt whatever is made, here or in the course of the work, to deal with those literary and historical problems which so conspicuously attach themselves to this Epistle. Who the “Hebrews” were is nowhere discussed. Nor is any positive answer offered to a question to which assuredly no such answer can be given, the question, namely, of the authorship. In my opinion, in face of all that I have read to the contrary, it still seems at least possible that the ultimate human author was St. Paul. All, or very nearly all, the objections to his name which the phenomena of the Epistle primâ facie present, and some of which lie unquestionably deep, seem to be capable of a provisional answer if we assume, what is so conceivable, that the Apostle committed his message and its argument, on purpose, to a colleague so gifted, mentally and by the Spirit, that he might be trusted to cast the work into his own style. The well-known remark of Origen that only God knows who “wrote” the Epistle appears to me to point (if we look at its context) this way. Origen surely means by the “writer” what is meant in Rom. xvi. 22. Only, on the hypothesis, the amanuensis of our Epistle was, for a special purpose presumably, a Christian prophet in his own right.

In any case the author, if not an apostle, was a prophet. And he carries to us a prophet’s “burthen” of unspeakable import, and in words to which all through the Christian ages the soul has responded as to the words of the Holy Spirit.

HANDLEY DUNELM.

Easter, 1909.

Heb. i.-ii.

Let us open the Epistle to the Hebrews, with an aim simple and altogether practical for heart and for life. Let us take it just as it stands, and somewhat as a whole. We will not discuss its authorship, interesting and extensive as that problem is. We will not attempt, within the compass of a few short chapters, to expound continuously its wonderful text. Rather, we will gather up from it some of its large and conspicuous spiritual messages, taken as messages of the Word of God “which liveth and abideth for ever.”

No part of Holy Scripture is ever really out of date. But it is true meanwhile that, as for persons so for periods, there are Scripture books and Scripture truths which are more than ordinarily timely. It is not that others are therefore untimely, nor that only one class of book or one aspect of truth can be eminently timely at one time. But it seems evident that the foreseeing Architect of the Bible has so adjusted the parts of His wonderful vehicle of revelation and blessing that special fitnesses continually emerge between our varying times and seasons on the one hand and the multifold Word on the other.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is in some remarkable respects a book timely for our day. It invites to itself, if I read it aright, the renewed attention of the thoughtful Christian, and not least of the thoughtful Christian of the English Church, as it brings him messages singularly in point to some of the main present needs of his spiritual life and its surroundings. It was written manifestly in the first instance to meet special and pressing current trials; it bears the impress of a time of severe sifting, a time when foundations were challenged, and individual faith put to even agonizing proofs, and the community threatened with an almost dissolution. Such a writing must have a voice articulate and sympathetic for a period like ours.

We will take into our hands then, portion by portion, this wonderful “open letter,” and listen through it to some of the things which “the Spirit saith” to the saints and to the Church.

We now contemplate in this sense the first two chapters. We put quite aside a host of points of profound interest in detail, and ask ourselves only what is the broad surface, the drift and total, of the message here. As to its climax, it is Jesus Christ, our “merciful and faithful High Priest” (ii. 17). As to the steps that lead up to the climax, they are a presentation of the personal glory of Jesus Christ, as God the Son of God, as Man the Son of Man, who for us men and our salvation came, suffered, and prevailed.

Who that reads the Bible with the least care has not often noted this in the first passages of the Hebrews, and could not at once so state the matter? What is the great truth of Hebrews i.? Jesus Christ is God (ver. 8); the Son (ver. 2); absolutely like the Father (ver. 3); Lord of the bright Company of Heaven, who in all their ranks and orders worship Him (ver. 6); creative Originator of the Universe (ver. 10), such that the starry depths of space are but the folds of His vesture, which hereafter He shall change for another (ver. 12); Himself eternal, “the same,” transcendent above all time, yet all the while the Son begotten, the Son, infinitely adequate and infinitely willing to be the final Vehicle of the Father’s voice to us (verses 1, 5, 6). What is the great truth of Hebrews ii.? Jesus Christ is Man. He is other than angelic, for He is God. But also He is other than angelic, for He is Man (verses 5, 6, 7). He is the Brother of Man as truly as He is the Son of God (ver. 11). He has taken share with us in flesh and blood (ver. 14), that is to say, He has assumed manhood in that state or stage in which it is capable of death, and He has done this on purpose (it is a wonderful thought) that He may be capable of dying. This blessed Jesus Christ, this God and Man, our Saviour, was bent upon dying, and that for a reason altogether connected with us and with His will to save us (ver. 15). We were immeasurably dear and important to Him. And our deliverance demanded His identification with us in nature, and His temptations (ver. 18), and finally His mysterious suffering. So He came, He suffered, He was “perfected” — in respect of capacity to be our Redeemer — “through sufferings” (ver. 10). And now, incarnate, slain, and risen again, He, still our Brother, is “crowned with glory and honour” (ver. 9). He is our Leader (ver. 10). He is our High Priest, merciful and faithful (ver. 17).

Thus the Epistle, on its way to recall its readers, at a crisis of confusion and temptation, to certainty, patience, and peace, leads them — not last but first — to Jesus Christ. It unfolds at once to them His glories of Person, His Wonder of Work and Love. It does not elaborately travel up to Him through general considerations. It sets out from Him. It makes Him the base and reason for all it has to say — and it has to say many things. Its first theme is not the community, but the Lord; not Church principles, not that great duty of cohesion about which it will speak, and speak urgently, further on, but the Lord, in His adorable personal greatness, in His unique and all-wonderful personal achievement. To that attitude of thought it recurs again and again in its later stages. In one way or another it is always bidding us look up from even the greatest related subjects and “consider Him.”

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