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DRAWING
BACK
"The just shall live by faith; but if any man draw
back, my soul shall have no pleasure in
him."-HEBREWS x. 38. (Read verses 19-
39.)
THE Epistle has been for some time
glowing with ever-increasing heat; and now it flames out
into a vehement expostulation, which must have startled
and terrified those Hebrew Christians who were still
wavering between Judaism and Christianity. As we have had
more than one occasion to remark, it had become a great
question with some of them whether they should go back to
the one, or go on with the other. The splendid ceremonial,
venerable age, and olden associations of Judaism, were
fighting hard to wean them away from the simplicity and
spiritual demands of the later faith. But surely the
retrograde movement would be arrested, and the impetus
toward Christ accelerated, by these sublime and
soul-stirring remonstrances.
THE THREEFOLD CONCLUSION ALREADY
ARRIVED AT IS summed up in three momentous propositions.
We may boldly enter the holiest
by the blood of Jesus. The holiest was the chamber
of innermost communion with God. To enter it was to speak
with God face to face. And its equivalent for us is the
right to make our God our confidant and friend, into whose
secret ear we may pour the whole story of sin and sorrow
and need. Nor need the memory of recent sin distress us;
because the blood of Jesus is the pledge of the
forgiveness and acceptance of those who are penitent and
believing. We may go continually, and even dwell, where
Israel's high priests might tread but once each year.
Jesus has inaugurated a new and
living way. The veil of the Temple was rent when
Jesus died, to indicate that the way to God was henceforth
free to man, without let or hindrance, and without the
intervention of a human priest. Priests have tried to
block it, and to compel men to pay them toll for Opening
it. But their pretensions are false. They have no such
power. The way stands open still for every trembling
seeker. It is new, because, though myriads have trodden
it, it is as fresh as ever for each new priestly foot. It
is living, because it is through the living Saviour that
we come to God. "No man cometh unto the Father but by
me." Stay here to note that the veil, with its
curious workmanship, was a symbol of the body of Christ.
"The veil, that is to say, his flesh." We get
near to God through the death of that Son of man who, in
real human sorrow, hung on the cross for us.
We have a Great priest.
We belong to the household of God by faith; but we need a
Priest. Priests need a Priest. And such a one we have, who
ever liveth to make intercession for us, and to offer our
prayers on the golden altar, mingled with the much incense
of his own precious merit. These are the three conclusions
which recapitulate the positions laid down and proved up
to this point.
THE THREEFOLD EXHORTATION FOUNDED ON
THE PREVIOUS CONCLUSIONS, "Let us draw near" (ver.
22). "Let us hold fast" (ver. 23). "Let us
consider one an-other" (ver. 24). And each of these
three exhortations revolves around one of the three words
which are so often found in combination in the
Epistles-Faith, Hope, and Love (R.V).
FAITH consists of two parts belief,
which accepts certain declarations as true; and trust in
the person about whom these declarations are made. Neither
will do without the other. On the one hand, we cannot
trust a person without knowing something about him; on the
other hand, our knowledge will not help us unless it leads
to trust, any more than it avails the shivering wretch
outside the Bank of England to know that the vaults are
stored with gold. A mere intellectual faith is not enough.
The holding of a creed will not save. We must pass from a
belief in words to trust in the Word. By faith we know
that Jesus lives, and by faith we also appropriate that
life. By faith we know that Jesus made on the cross a
propitiation for sin; and by faith we lay our hand
reverently on his dear head and confess our sin. Faith is
the open hand receiving Christ. Faith is the golden pipe
through which his fullness comes to us. Faith is the
narrow channel by which the life that pulses in the
Redeemer's heart enters our souls. Faith is the attitude
we assume when we turn aside from the human to the divine.
We ought not to be content with
anything less than the full assurance of faith. The prime
method of increasing it is in drawing near to God. In
olden days the bodies of the priests were bathed in water
and sprinkled with blood ere they entered the presence of
God. Let us seek the spiritual counterpart of this.
Relieved from the pressure of conscious guilt, with hearts
as sincere and guileless as the flesh is clean when washed
with pure water, let us draw near to God and keel) in
fellowship with him; and in that attitude faith will grow
exceedingly. It will no longer sit in the dust, but clothe
itself in beautiful garments. It will wax from a thread to
become a cable. No longer the trembling touch of a woman's
hand, it will grasp the pillars of the Temple with a
Samson's embrace.
HOPE is more than faith, and has
special reference to the unknown future which it realizes,
and brings to bear on our daily life. The veil that hides
the future parts only as smitten by the prow of our
advancing boat; it is natural, therefore, that we should
often ask what lies beyond.
Foreboding is the
prophet of ill; Hope of good. Foreboding
cries, "We shall certainly fall by the hand of; Hope
replies, "No weapon that is formed against us shall
prosper." Foreboding cries, "Who
shall roll away the stone? " Hope sings
merrily, "The Lord shall go before us, and make the
crooked places straight." Foreboding, born of
unbelief, cries, "The people are great and tall, and
the cities walled up to heaven"; Hope
already portions out the land and chooses its inheritance.
But Christian hope is infinitely better and more reliable
than that of the worldling. In ordinary hope there is
always the element of uncertainty; it may be doomed to
disillusion and disappointment; things may not turn out as
we expect: and so, being the characteristic of youth, it
dies down as the years advance. But Christian hope is
based on the promise of God, and therefore it cannot
disappoint; nay, it is the anchor of the aged soul,
becoming brighter and more enduring as the years pass by,
because "he is faithful that promised."
But how may we increase our hope, so as
never to let it slip, but to hold it fast with unwavering
firmness? There is nothing which will sooner strengthen it
than to consider his faithfulness whose promises are
hope's anchorage. Has he ever failed to fulfill his
engagements? Do not the stars return to their appointed
place to a hairbreadth of their time? Have not good men
given a unanimous testimony to the fidelity of the
covenant-keeping God? He has never suffered his
faithfulness to fail-and never will. Our hope, therefore,
need not falter, but be strong and very courageous.
LOVE comes last. She is queen of all
the graces of the inner life. Love is the passion of
self-giving. It never stays to ask what it can afford, or
what it may expect to receive; but it is ever shedding
forth its perfume, breaking its alabaster boxes, and
shedding its heart's blood. It will pine to death if it
cannot give. It must share its possessions. It is prodigal
of costliest service. Such love is in the heart of God,
and should also be in us; and we may increase it
materially by considering one another, and associating
with our fellow-believers. Distance begets coldness and
indifference. When we forsake the assembly of our fellow-
Christians we are apt to wrap ourselves in the chill
mantle of indifference. But when we see others in need,
and help them; when we are willing to succor and save;
when we discover that there is something attractive in the
least lovable; when we feel the glowing sympathy of
others-our own love grows by the demands made on it, and
by the opportunities of manifestation.
Let us seek earnestly these best gifts;
and that we may have them and abound, let us invoke the
blessed indwelling of the Lord Jesus, whose entrance
brings with it the whole train of sweet Christian graces.
THE THREEFOLD REMONSTRANCE. Go
forward! otherwise penally (ver. 26). If a man
unwittingly broke Moses' law, he was forgiven; but if he
willfully despised it, he died without mercy. What then
can be expected by those who sin willfully, not against
the iron obligations of Sinai, but against the gracious
words which distill from the lips of the dying Saviour!
The heart that can turn from the love and blood-shedding
of Calvary, and ignore them, and trample them ruthlessly
under foot, is so hard, so hopeless, so defiant of the
Holy Spirit as to expose itself to the gravest displeasure
of God, and can expect no further offering for its sins.
There is no sacrifice for the atonement of the sin of
rejecting Calvary.
Go forward! otherwise past
efforts nullified (ver. 32). These Hebrew
Christians had suffered keenly on their first entrance
into the Christian life. The martyrdom of the saintly
Stephen; the great havoc wrought in the Church by Saul of
Tarsus; the terrible famines that visited Jerusalem,
causing widespread destitution. They had become even a
gazing-stock by reproaches and afflictions. But they had
taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods, not shrinking
from the ordeal. To go back to Judaism now would annul the
advantages which otherwise might have accrued from their
bitter experience; would miss the harvest of their tears;
would counterwork the respect with which they were being
regarded; and would rob them of the reward which the Lord
might give to them, if they only endured to the end.
"Cast not away your boldness, which hath great
recompense of reward."
Go forward! the Lord is at hand
(ver. 36). Jesus was about to come in the fall of
Jerusalem, as lie will come ere long to close the present
age; and every sign pointed to the speedy destruction of
the Jewish polity by the all-conquering might of Rome. How
foolish then would it be to return to that which was on
the eve of dissolution: to the Temple that would burn to
the ground; to sacrifices soon to cease; to a priesthood
to be speedily scattered to the winds!
There was only one alternative: not to
go back to certain perdition, to the ruin of all the
nobler attributes of the soul, to disgrace and
disappointment and endless regret; but to go on through
evil and good report, through sorrow and anxiety and
blood, until the faithful servant should be vindicated by
the Lord's approval, and welcomed into the realms of
endless blessedness.
Are we amongst those who go on to the
saving of the soul? Here, as so often, the salvation of
the soul is viewed as a process. True, we are in a sense
saved when first we turn to the cross and trust the
Crucified. But it is only as we keep in the current that
streams from the cross, only as we remain in abiding
fellowship with the Saviour, only as we submit ourselves
habitually to the gracious influences of the divine
Spirit, that salvation pervades and heals our whole being.
Then the soul may be said to be gained (R.V., marg.),
i.e., restored to its original type as conceived in the
mind of God before he built the dust of the earth into
man, and breathed into him the breath of life, and he
became a living soul.
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