The High Priest Saving the Obedient

V. — 8. Though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered;

9. And having been made perfect, he became unto all them that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation.

THE death of Jesus has its value and efficacy in obedience, ours as well as His. With Him obedience was God’s great object in His suffering; the root and power of His perfection and His glory; the real efficient cause of our eternal salvation. And with us, the necessity of obedience is no less absolute. With God and with Christ our restoration to obedience was the great aim of redemption. It is the only way to that union with God in which our happiness consists. Through it alone God can reveal His life and power within us. Again I say: The death of Jesus has its value and efficacy in nothing but obedience, ours as well as His. “He learned obedience, and being perfected became to all them that obey Him the cause of eternal salvation.” Our obedience is as indispensable as His. As little as He could work out salvation without obedience, can we enjoy it. In us as much as in Him, obedience is the very essence of salvation.

Let us try and grasp this. God is the blessedness of the creature. When God is all to the creature, when He is allowed

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in humility and dependence to work all, and when all returns to Him in thanksgiving and service, nothing can prevent the fulness of God’s love and joy entering and filling the creature. It has but one thing to do — to turn its desire or will toward God, and give Him free scope, and nothing in heaven or earth can prevent the light and the joy of God filling that soul. The living centre round which all the perfections of God cluster, the living energy through which they all do their work, is the will of God. The will of God is the life of the universe; it is what it is because God wills it; His will is the living energy which maintains it in existence. The creature can have no more of God than he has of God’s will working in him. He that would meet and find God must seek Him in His will; union with God’s will is union with Himself. Therefore it was that the Lord Jesus, when He came to this world, always spoke of His having come to do one thing — the will of His Father. This alone could work our salvation. Sin had broken us away from the will of God. In doing the will of God He was to break the power of sin. He was to prove wherein the service of God and true blessedness consist; He was to work out in Himself a new nature to be communicated, a new way of living to be followed; He was to show that the doing of God’s will at any cost is blessedness and glory everlasting. It was because He did this, because He was obedient unto death, that God highly exalted Him. It was this disposition, His obedience, that made Him worthy and fit to sit with God on the throne of heaven. Union with the will of God is union with God Himself, and must — it cannot be otherwise — bring to the glory of God.

And this is as true of us as of Him. It is to be feared that there are many Christians who seek salvation, and have no conception in what salvation consists — a being saved from their own will, and being restored to do the will of God alone. They seek after Christ, and trust in Him; but it is not the true Christ, but a Christ of whom they have framed their own image. The true Christ is the incarnate will of God, the incarnate obedience, who works in us what God wrought in Him. Christ came as the Son, to impart to us the very same life and disposition as animated Him on earth. Christ came to be a High Priest, to bring us to God in that very same way of obedience and self-sacrifice in which He drew nigh to God. As Son and Priest, Christ is our Leader and Forerunner; it is only as we follow Him in His path on earth that we can hope to share His glory in heaven. “He learned obedience and became the cause of eternal salvation to them that obey Him”

Let us beware that no wrong or one-sided views of what salvation by faith means lead us astray. There are some who think that salvation by faith is all, and obedience not so essential. This is a terrible mistake. In our justification there is indeed no thought of obedience in the past. God justifieth the ungodly. But repentance is a return to obedience. And without repentance there can be no true faith. Justification, and the faith by which it comes, are only for the sake of obedience, as means to an end. They point us to Christ, and the salvation which is to be found in union with Him. And He has no salvation but for them that obey Him. Obedience, as the acceptance of His will and life, is our only capacity for salvation. This is the reason there is so much complaining that we cannot find and do not enjoy a full salvation. We seek it in the wrong way. Jesus Himself said that the Father would give the Holy Spirit, that is, salvation as it is perfected in Christ in heaven, to them that obey Him. To such would He manifest Himself; with such would the Father and He dwell. The salvation of 13

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Christ was wrought out entirely by obedience; this is its very essence and nature; it cannot be possessed or enjoyed but by obedience. Christ, who was perfected by obedience, is the cause of salvation to none but them that obey Him.

God grant that the obedience of Jesus, with the humility in which it roots, may be seen of us to be the crowning beauty of His character, the true power of His redemption, the bond of union and likeness between Him and His followers, the true and real salvation, in the salvation He gives to them that obey Him.

7. Salvation to obedience. Let us draw off our eyes and desires from the too exclusive thought of salvation as happiness, and fix them more upon that which is its reality — obedience. Christ will see to it that a full salvation comes to the obedient

2. Let no wrong thoughts of our sinfulness and Inability secretly heep us bach from the surrender to entire obedience. We are made partakers of Christ, of Himself, with the very life and spirit of obedience which constitutes Him the Saviour. The Son of God came not only to teach and to claim, but to give and work obedience. Faith in this Lord Jesus may claim and will receive the grace of obedience, will receive Himself.

3. Jesus personally learned and exercised obedience; personalty He communicates it in fellowship with Himself; it becomes a personal link with Himself to those who obey Him, THE THIRD WARNING. Chap. v. 11 — vi. 20.

Against Sloth, Standing Still, and Apostasy.