The Witness of the Holy Spirit
X.-15. And the Holy Ghost also beareth witness to us: for after he hath said,
16. This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, saith the Lord;
I will put my laws on their heart,
And upon their mind also will I write them;
then saith he,
17. And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
18. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.
THE writer has concluded his argument. He has made clear that the sacrifice of Christ, as the offering up of His body to the will of God, had opened for us a new way into the Holiest. Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ we have been sanctified. When He had offered one sacrifice for ever, He sat down on the right hand of God. By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. His sacrifice is over, and has everlasting power; in virtue of it He sits on the throne, expecting His final triumph; those He has sanctified are perfected for ever. The sacrifice is of infinite worth; it has opened the entrance to a state of perfect and everlasting holiness and glory; nothing is now needed but to rejoice and wait and see the King on the throne applying and revealing the power of His finished work.
The writer appeals to the words of the institution of the new
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covenant (viii. 6-13), in support of what he has said. He does so with the words, And the Holy Ghost also beareth witness to US. The words of Jeremiah are to him the words of the Holy Spirit. He believes in a direct inspiration. It was the God who knows the end from the beginning, who had planned all from the least to the greatest in the preparation of redemption, who had revealed to Jeremiah the new covenant that would be made centuries later. It was the same Holy Spirit who had inspired the first record of Melchizedek, and the Psalm with the oath of God, who had ordered the tabernacle and the veil to signify that the way into the Holiest was not yet open, and had watched over the first covenant, and its dedication not without blood, through whom the promise of the new covenant was spoken and recorded. Our writer appeals to Him and His witness.
He does so as one who himself has the teaching of that Spirit. Anyone might read the words of the covenant, and of the death of Jesus; no one could connect and expound them in their divine harmony and their everlasting significance but one taught by the same Spirit. These men preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; the Spirit, from the King sat down upon the throne, revealed in and to them the will of God, and the eternal power of the one sacrifice, to open the way into the Holiest.
And what is now the witness of the Holy Ghost in the new covenant? The witness to the two blessings of the covenant in their divine inseparable unity. I will put My laws in their heart, and their sins will I remember no more. The complete remission of sins, the removal of sin out of God’s sight and remembrance for ever, was promised. Now, our writer argues, where remission of these is, there is no more
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offering for sin. The one offering hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. The death of Christ has opened up and introduced us into a relationship to God, a state of life before Him, in which sin has been finally put away, and God receives us into His fellowship as those who have been sanctified in Christ. He receives us into the Holiest of All through the blood. The blood that sprinkles the mercy-seat also sprinkles and cleanses our conscience, bringing the full remission, the full deliverance from sin and its power, into our inmost being; and, fitting our heart to receive that Spirit of heaven which witnesses with the blood, as a Spirit of life, puts the law within us, as the law of our life.
And so we enter into the finished work of Christ, and the rest of God in it; enter the perfection with which He Himself was perfected for evermore, and hath perfected us for ever; into that Holiest of All, into which God fulfils the promise, I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people. And the offering of the body of Christ once for all, the one sacrifice for ever, becomes, in ever-growing blessedness, the one thought, the one trust, the one joy, the one life of the believer. His salvation and redemption are finished and eternal realities, His perfection and sanctification too. Our one need is to believe and abide in and receive what our Priest-King on the throne imparts through His Spirit: a full entrance into the no more offering for sin, with all that flows from it, in the person and throne and work of our Priest for ever: this is the entrance into the Holiest.
And the Holy Ghost also beareth witness to us. It is easy to understand the truth of the forgiveness of sin as one of the elementary foundation truths, of which we read in chap. vi. (ver. i). But if we seek to press on to perfection, and to know what the fulness of salvation is into which it leads, we may count upon the Holy Spirit to reveal it, to witness to it, in our inner life. He reveals it not to the mind, or as the reward of earthly study, but to the poor in spirit and them that are of a lowly heart. It is in the heart God sends forth the Spirit of His Son; the heart that longs for and chooses and loves and waits for this life of perfect fellowship with God more than its chief joy, shall have it witnessed by God’s Spirit that the no more offering for sin is indeed the opening up of the Holiest of All. The Holy Ghost who comes from heaven, bears witness of what is in heaven. We can know nothing really of what takes place in heaven but by the Holy Ghost in our heart. Dwelling in us He gives in our inmost life the full witness to all the efficacy of Christ’s atonement and His enthronement in the presence of God.
1. The one central truth to which the Holy Spirit testifies is this: that the old way of liuing and serving God is now completely and for ever come to an end. Death and the devil are brought to nought; the veil is rent; sin is put away; the old covenant is disannulled, vanished away, taken away. A new system, a new way, a new and eternal life has been opened up in the power of Christ Jesus. Oh to have our eyes and hearts opened to see that is not merely a thought, a truth for the mind, but a spiritual state of existence which the Holy Ghost can bring us into.
2. The Holy Ghost beareth witness. For this He came down on the day of Pentecost out of the heavenly sanctuary and from our exalted Priest-King, to bring down the heavenly life, the king dom of heaven to the disciples, and make it real to them, as a thing found and felt in their hearts. Each one of us needs and may claim the Holy Spirit in the same Pentecostal power, and the new, the sternal, the heavenly life will fill us too.
SECOND HALF — PRACTICAL — Ch. x. 19 — xiii. 24.
The Call to a Life in Harmony
with the Glory of God’s Revelation of Himself
in the Son.
NINTH SECTION.-x. 19-25.
Of Life in the Holiest of All.
IT may help us the better to master the rich contents of this central passage, containing a summary of the whole Epistle, if we here give the chief thoughts it contains.
I. The four great Blessings of the new worship:
1. The Holiest opened up.
2. Boldness in the Blood.
3. A New and Living Way.
4. The Great High Priest.
II. The four chief Marks of the true worshipper:
1. A True Heart.
2. Fulness of Faith.
3. A Heart sprinkled from an Evil Conscience.
4. The Body washed with Clean Water.
III. The four great Duties to which the opened Sanctuary calls:
1. Let us draw nigh (in the fulness vlfaitK).
2. Let us hold fast the profession of our hope.
3. Let us consider one another to provoke unto love.
4. Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together.
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