The Apostle and High Priest of Our Profession
‘’Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.” — Heb. iii, 1.
Although this verse is part of an extended argument, it may, without injury, be isolated and considered as an independent whole. We may safely and profitably confine our view for the time to the properties of a single ring, although, in point of fact, it is a link in the middle of a chain. We shall accordingly pass over the external relations of the text, though they are intimate and interesting, in order that we may examine more fully its actual contents. These are: —
1. The agents: who are exhorted — “Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling.”
2. The object: whom they are exhorted to regard — “The Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”
3. The act: how they ought to regard him —” Consider him.*^
These three do not demand each an equal amount of attention. The burden of the exposition lies on the second head, — the object of regard; and to it the others must be made subordinate. The second is the main theme; the first will serve as an introduction, and the third will assume the form of a practical lesson at the close. The first will point forward, and the last will point backward, and both to Jesus — “Jesus in the midst,”
I. The agents. Who are exhorted to consider Christ? The “holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling,”
“Holy brethren.” The terms define sufiiciently the class of persons to whom this exhortation is directly addressed. It is a word, not for those who are without,, but for those who are within. The direct and specific aim is not to convert, but to edify. Indirectly, the word spoken for instruction to the living may, by the ministry of the Spirit, become the means of quickening the dead; as the word designed for the conviction of sinners may be precious for reproof and instruction to saints; but it is, notwithstanding, an important practical rule in the ministry of the gospel, to divide rightly the word of truth between the world and the Church. The apostles were not deterred from addressing an assembly specifically as Christians, by the suspicion or the knowledge that some of the company had no right to their name. If we should lay it down as a rule, that we would not address an assembly as Christians, until we were sure that none but Christians were in it, we should never begin such an address until all need for it were past. We would not do that work on earth; and we need not do it in heaven. We should not, on the one hand, deprive the careless of the needful convicting reproof, by addressing all to those who are already Christ’s; neither should we, on the other hand, deprive the children of the portion which the
Father sends, by speaking all, and always, for the conviction of sinners. This we ought to do, and that we ought not to leave undone. The appellation, “holy brethren,” does not give a certificate of regeneration to every person included in any Christian assembly. It is the will of the Lord to cherish his own in every community, although strangers mingling among the children should unwarrantably appropriate the children’s portion, and thereby more deeply deceive themselves. We must be like our Father in heaven who brings the precious grain to maturity by his shining sun, although nettles and thistles ripen also in its rays.
The two terms are interesting separately, and in their union. If they do not certify what all the worshippers are, they certainly declare what each ought to be. You may detect here the twofold division of duty, which from its fountain in the decalogue flows down, and penetrates all the moral teaching of the Scriptures. These are the first and second tables of the law, as they appear when, transferred to the soft, yet retentive leaves of a renewed heart. Christians get both the first and the second commandments printed on their life. They love the Lord with all their heart, and their neighbour as themselves. They are “holy” to God, and “brethren” to men.
Further, they are “partakers of the heavenly calling.” The calling is from heaven, and to heaven. It comes from above, and invites them thither. It is not of the earth in its origin, or its character. Hence, if Christians are like their calling, they are strangers and pilgrims here. They are sons of a king in exile. Although wanderers in a desert, they are expectants of a throne. Their prospects give a tone to their conversation, and even a grace to their gait. They walk about on earth, as those who are born from above. Their name is Christian; their pattern, Christ. Their calling is heavenly, and their character too.
Such, in some measure, are all the disciples of Jesus; such in perfection they all long to be.
II. The object. Whom should the holy brethren regard? “The Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”
“Our profession’’ is the religious system which we adopt, — the confession which we make and maintain. It indicates profession to God, * and confession one with another. We hold the truth, and we hold it together. We hold to God by faith, and to our brethren in love. It is the confession of the truth in union with all the true.
Our profession is the worship of God, and not idolatry. Then, as now, the bulk of the world was idolatrous. Men made in God’s image worshipped the work of their own hands. They were mad upon their idols; they loved stocks and stones with an intoxicated, delirious love. Man has an instinct for worship. Its extinction, whether in a community or in a person, indicates not only a want of grace, but also a perversion of nature. The worship of a dead idol is a contrivance by which a man may gratify the instincts of his spiritual being without crucifying his sin, — by which he may worship according to the original appetite of his nature, and yet sin according to the prompting of a depraved will. To all indulged lusts, even in his own children, our God is a consuming fire; therefore idolaters take a cold image to their hearts, that their own cherished sins may not become within their bosoms the fuel of a torment before the time.
Our profession is truth revealed by the Spirit of God, not discovered by the reason of men. A certain amount of truth about God may be discovered from his works by human intellect; and some men constitute the exercise into a species of worship, apart from the written word and the ministry of the Spirit. But, at the best, these are only lunar rays. There is no burning in them to consume lusts, — no light in them to ripen graces. We take revealed truth as our guide to the knowledge of God; and when we know him in Christ, we can rejoice in all his works.
Our profession is the Christian’s trust in a Saviour already come, and not the Jewish expectation of another coming. It is not the truth in type and shadow, but the truth himself unveiled — God manifest in the flesh. Our profession, finally, is not self-righteousness, but faith. It is not what I am able to do, but what God is willing to give. Our plea is, not that our sins are small, but that our Saviour is great. “By grace are ye saved through faith.”
Of this profession, the Apostle and High Priest is Christ Jesus. Either ofiice is important in itself; and the union of both in the person of the Lord Jesus has a distinct and peculiar importance of its own.
An apostle is one sent out. Missionary, with which we have become so familiar in our days, is the same word in another language. The one is Greek, and the other Latin, but both mean the same thing. An apostle is a missionary, and a missionary is an apostle. In these days, which are certainly not “without partiality and without hypocrisy,’’ it is important to assert and vindicate the identity of these two, in order to check the artificial elevation of the one and depression of the other, which is at variance alike with Scripture and common sense.
An inexpressible dignity is connected with the mission of this Apostle. The sender, the sent, and the errand, are all great. The Father sent the Son into the world; the Son, sent by the Father, came forth a missionary from heaven to earth; the design of his coming is to seek and save the lost. All our missions are copies of this great original. When, ourselves in the light, we organize and send out a mission to a people who sit in darkness, we are endeavouring to be merciful to miserable men as our Father in heaven has already been merciful to us. Our missions will shine in the darkness, in proportion as they are reflections thrown off from his.
He is High Priest too. It is his office to go into the holiest with atoning blood, and there plead for the rebellious. With his own blood our High Priest has entered into the heavens, where he ever liveth to make intercession for us.
Right in front of us and very near, a thick veil stretches all the way across between time and eternity.
No hand from without can lay its folds open; no ray from within ever shines through. An anxious inquirer may strain a lifetime in that direction, but his weary eye will never be refreshed by one glimpse of “the things that are unseen and eternal.” What lies beyond that veil? and what welcome will our spirits get when through the portals of the grave they are summoned in? To these questions no answer comes. Only the echo of our own voice resounds from the dread partition wall to mock our ears. God is within, and man is without; we know this, and of ourselves we know no more. What it may be to fall into his hands we know not, for none have come back to tell. Among guilty creatures waiting their time without, there is nothing but “a fearful looking for of judgment.”
Is there not, among all the principalities and powers of the unseen world, one who will bring out the mind of God to us, and bear back our case to him? Is there none who may be sent forth, apostle from that unknown to tell its secrets, and return high priest to win favour for us at the throne of God? Yes. In the fulness of time, and in accordance with prophetic promise, the veil rends, and the Son of God comes forth, an Apostle to publish glad tidings in this outer world. Having accomplished his mission as Prophet, he gave himself the just for the unjust, and entered the holiest again as High Priest with his own blood, to be our advocate with the Father.
In his own personal ministry he was first Apostle and then High Priest. In the order of time his mission as God’s representative sent out to us was first accomplished, and thereafter his mission as our representative sent in to God. Throughout his personal ministry in the body he acted as Apostle; at his death, and resurrection, and ascension, he became High Priest. As Messenger of the covenant he taught the way of life; by his atoning death and triumphant resurrection he opened that way to men. That God might have an advocate with us, he came into the world the Apostle of our profession; that we might have an advocate with God, he ascended into heaven the High Priest of our profession. He came forth from heaven to make known God’s mercy; he returned thither to be our righteousness and present our plea.
From Jesus in the midst both an apostleship and a priesthood, instrumental and subordinate, flow upward to the first of time, and downward to the last; as the sun, before his rising, sends out rays to constitute the dawn, and, after his going down, still gilds the evening sky. From the beginning of time to the incarnation, prophets were Christ’s substitute-apostles, acting during his absence and in his name; priests in the same period offered those typical sacrifices which bridged the chasm of ages, and carried the faith of patriarchs over to fasten for life on the divine atonement, offered once for all on Calvary. His coming, in both these offices, was like the morning. The light of the Justifier shone more and more unto the perfect day, when he dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. Clearer and more clear the shining was from the first rays that mingled with the midnight of the fall, down through all the dispensations, until his own appearing in the fulness of time. His apostleship by substitute began at the gate of Eden; his priesthood was exercised in type when the blood of Abel’s lamb was shed.
When Jesus as our High Priest passed into the heavens, his personal ministry as our apostle ceased; but he has not left himself without a witness. He has left that work to his servants. He prescribed their task, and promised them aid: “Preach the gospel unto every creature; and, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” One sun shines in heaven; the sea, in all its length and. breadth, lies spread beneath it. How many ripples stand at one moment on a hemisphere of the ocean’s surface? No imagination can conceive the number, and yet a sun glances on the edge of every wave. How many leaves are trembling in the forest after a summer shower? Yet that one celestial sun reduplicates itself in each and all. So, while Christ alone is the apostle who makes mercy known to men, a multitude, whom no man can number, publish the same salvation. Christ, the messenger of mercy, shining on uplifted, receptive hearts, imprints his own likeness on his people, manifold as the waves or leaves that glance in the sun of summer. Not only every preacher, but every believer of the word is an apostle, charged and qualified to make it known. When he ascended he left on earth a multitudinous ministry. Nor is divine commission wanting to the meanest: “Let him that heareth say, Come.” Every face that is “turned to the Lord” shines more or less brightly in his blessed light. Epistles of Jesus Christ are the best apostles. The more legibly they are written, and the less they are blotted by conformity to the world, the* more effectually will their evidence propagate the faith.
In a similar manner the intercession of the High Priest in heaven is reduplicated on the earth. “Brethren, pray for us,” expresses the true instinct of the new creature in a time of need. Those who, under Christ and in his name, intercede for men, are a more numerous band than even the apostles who bear witness of his salvation. All who preach in any form to men also pray for them; and, besides these, a great number of the Lord’s little ones, who lack courage or skill to speak a word for Christ, speak in secret to him, for their neighbours and for the world.
In view of both these offices, he said to his disciples, “It is expedient for you that I go away.” His ascension into heaven spreads both the apostleship and the priesthood over the world. In contact with the earth’s surface the sun would be only a consuming fire; from the height of heaven it sheds down light and heat on every land. So Christ, after the days of his humiliation were done, was a “Light inaccessible and full of glory.” Under a momentary glimpse of that light, permitted to pass through the veil after the ascension, the disciple who had familiarly lain on Jesus’ bosom in the days of his flesh “fell at his feet as dead.” Well might we entreat that the voice should not be so spoken — the light not so shown to us any more. The arrangement of the covenant is best. He has entered his people’s forerunner within the veil, and there will remain until, through the ministry of the Spirit, the kingdoms of the world shall become his own.
Disciples in the body lie towards him, and shine in his light. Thus they become apostles to witness his goodness, and priests to intercede for more.
III. The Act. How the holy brethren should regard Christ, “Consider him,”
The term is different from that which is also rendered “consider” in chapter xii. 8 of this epistle. Both terms signify to consider; and yet they are not in meaning precisely the same. In xii. 3, the idea is: Compare one thing with another, calculate and cast up the result. From heaven God looks down upon the children of men, and beholds them absorbed with their gains, neglecting the great salvation. They are eagerly summing up their columns of profit and loss, without a thought about the loss of their own souls, or the need of a Saviour. The Spirit by that word points to Jesus, and invites these calculators to estimate his worth. The warning is on our part needful, — on God’s part kind.
In our text, although the end is very similar, it is reached by a different way. The precept here is: Observe the Apostle and High Priest of your profession; look in that direction; fix your attention on the missionary who has brought out intelligence that God is merciful, and has gone in to be our advocate and our righteousness at the throne of judgment when our case is called. It is implied that Christ has come and called; that he is waiting for an answer; that men permit him to stretch out his hands all dfiy in vain; that they are gazing on vain shows; and that they have not so much as noticed his presence or heard his voice. To these, as they gaze with all their faculties absorbed on the mirth of fools, going up like the flame of crackling thorns, the word comes yet once more; and its reasonable demand is: Turn round, turn from these vanities, and look unto Jesus. He is the Light of the world, and the Light is the Life of men. “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?”
Consider him the Apostle. Well we may. When the heavens must open, and a messenger come forth bearing the mind of God to men, we have cause to rejoice that the mission is intrusted to a partaker of our nature. It was necessary that we should meet God; to make the meeting easy, — to make the meeting possible, God became man and dwelt among us. Consider Him who has brought out the message, for he is “gentle and easy to be entreated.’’ Those who allow their minds to be blinded by the hardness of their hearts, vainly imagine that they would have attended to the messenger if he had come from heaven in flaming fire, in sight of a wondering world. “Show us a sign from heaven,” they said, “and we will believe.” Not knowing God, they cannot know themselves. Our Apostle’s coming was like dew on the mown grass. He came a babe in Bethlehem. For authority He who is sent must be divine; but in tenderness to us, divinity at the place of contact, was pointed with humanity in its gentlest form. He clothed himself with our nature, that we might look upon him and live; he knows well, and he warns us faithfully, that he will come in another fashion on another errand, and then every eye shall see him.
Although the Apostle has departed, he has left his message in the word; and by his own gracious appointment, “great is the company of them that publish it,”
Consider him the High Priest. He is before the throne, charging himself with all the interests of his people. Consider him; he has power with God and pity for man. When a greatly-grieving, dimly-seeing, feebly-believing father had found Jesus, and was leading him in haste and hope to the bedside of his dying child, some officious members of his family came out to meet him with the sad intimation, ‘*Thy daughter is dead,’’ and the foolish advice, “Trouble not the master.” Little did they know the power or the love of Jesus. He is the Resurrection and the Life: trouble him even for the dead. It is the delight of the Intercessor to have his hands full of work. When the priest within the temple sent the sweet incense up, the whole multitude of the people prayed without. The Hebrew worshippers, who clustered like bees in the outer courts, were encouraged to send up their requests to heaven, when they learned by a signal that the type of Messiah’s intercession was ascending within the sanctuary made by hands. They will rise up in the judgment to condemn us, if, knowing that our High Priest has entered in our nature into the holiest, we do not from the outer court send up our supplications with strong crying and tears.
As Priest, he is in the heavens listening for our message, that he may present it in his own merits to the Father. While he is bowing down his ear to receive your requests, do you send in few or none? If we had no advocate in our nature with the Father, we would think and say that the want of hope prevented prayer. Having such an High Priest to present our case, let us put our case with godly simplicity and filial confidence into his hands. Consider Him who is our High Priest, and so be encouraged to send many supplications in. Send in requests for yourself, that your sin may be blotted out, and your heart renewed; that your faith may be living and your hope bright; that your life may be his epistle, and your death his praise: for your family, that those who are bound so closely to you, may be more closely bound to him; that you and yours may be heirs together of the grace of life, and dwell together with the Lord: for the city, that its Christians may be more like Christ, and its dead masses shaken, and brought together, and clothed with skin, and raised to life, like the bones of Ezekiel’s valley: for the world, that its tumults may be hushed at last, as the stormy sea became calm at the command of Jesus; that all tongues and peoples may learn on earth the common hymn of heaven, “Worthy the Lamb that died.’’ Having such an High Priest in the heavens, why should we, by restraining prayer, leave him, as far as we are concerned, standing there all the day idle?