The Sacrifices of the Law Cannot Make Perfect
X. — 1. For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, they can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh.
2. Else would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more conscience of sins?
3. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year.
4. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
WE have now seen the Priest for ever, able to save completely (chap, vii.); the true sanctuary in which He ministers (chap, viii.); and the blood through which the sanctuary was opened, and we are cleansed to enter in (chap. ix.). There is still a fourth truth of which mention has been made in passing, but which has not yet been expounded, What is the way into the Holiest, by which Christ entered in? What is the path in which He walked when He went to shed His blood and pass through the veil to enter in and appear before God? In other words, what was it that gave His sacrifice its worth, and what the
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disposition, the inner essential nature of that mediation that secured His acceptance as our High Priest. The answer to be given in the first eighteen verses of this chapter will form the conclusion of the doctrinal half of the Epistle, and especially of the higher teaching it has for the perfect.
To prepare the way for the answer, the chapter begins with once again reminding us of the impotence of the law. The law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things. The law had only the shadow, not the substance. The gospel gives us the very image. The image of God in which man was created was an actual spiritual reality. The Son Himself, as the image of the Father, was His true likeness — ever in possession of His Father’s life and glory.
When man makes an image, it is but a dead thing. When God gives an image it is a living reality, sharing in the life and the attributes of the original. And so the gospel brings us not a shadow, a picture, a mental conception, but the very image of the heavenly things, so that we know and have them, really taste and possess them. A shadow is first of all a picture, an external figure, giving a dim apprehension of good things to come. Then, as the external passes away, and sight is changed into faith, there comes a clearer conception of divine and heavenly blessings. And then faith is changed into possession and experience, and the Holy Spirit makes the power of Christ’s redemption and the heavenly life a reality within us. Some Christians never get beyond the figures and shadows; some advance to faith in the spiritual good set forth; blessed they who go on to full possession of what faith had embraced.
In expounding what the law is not able to do, the writer uses four remarkable expressions which, while they speak of the weakness of the law with its shadows, indicate at the same time
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what the good things to come are, of which Christ is to bring us the very image, the divine experience.
The priests can never make perfect them that draw nigh. This is what Christ can do. He makes the conscience perfect. He hath perfected us for ever. These words suggest the infinite difference between what the law could do, and Christ has truly brought. What they mean in the mind of God, and what Christ our High Priest in the power of an endless life can make them to be to us, this the Holy Spirit will reveal. Let us be content with no easy human exposition, by which we are content to count the ordinary low experience of the slothful Christian — the hope of being pardoned, as an adequate fulfilment of what God means by the promises of the perfect conscience. Let us seek to know the blessing in its heavenly power.
The worshippers once cleansed would have had no more conscience of sins. This is the perfect conscience — when there is no more conscience of sins — a conscience that, once cleansed in the same power in which the blood was once shed, knows how completely sin has been put away out of that sphere of spiritual fellowship with God to which it has found access.
In those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. The cleansing of the heavens and the putting away of sin is so complete that with God our sins are no more remembered. And it is meant that the soul that enters fully into the Holiest of All, and is kept there by the power of the eternal High Priest, should have such an experience of His eternal, always lasting, always acting redemption, that there shall be no remembrance of aught but of what He is and does and will do. As we live in the heavenly places, in the Holiest of All, we live where there is no more remembrance of sins.
It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should
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take away sins. What is impossible for the law is what Christ has done. He takes away not only guilt but sins, and that in such power of the endless life that those that draw nigh are made perfect, that there is no more conscience of sins, that there be no more remembrance of sins.
To how many Christians the cross and the death of Christ are nothing so much as a remembrance of sins. Let us believe that by God’s power, through the Holy Spirit, revealing to us the way into the Holiest, it may become the power of a life, with no more conscience of sins, and a walk with a perfect conscience before God.
/. Here we have again the contrast between the two systems. In the one Qod spake by the prophets, giving thoughts and conceptions — shadows of he good things to come. But now He speaks to us in His Son, the likeness of God, who gives us he very image, the actual likeness, in our experience of the heavenly things. It Is the deep contrast between the outward and the inward — the created and the divine.
2. A perfect conscience. No more conscience of sin. Let me not fear and say, Yes, this Is the conscience Christ gives, but it is impossible for me to keep it or enjoy its blessing permanently. Let me believe in Him who is my Priest, after the power of an endless life, who ever Hues to pray, and is able to save completely, because every moment His blood and love and power are in full operation, — the perfect conscience in me, because He is for me in heaven, a Priest perfected for evermore.
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