Hebrews 9

Notes

Ver. 1. But, to return to our comparison of the earthly and heavenly sanctuary—the Sinai covenant of God's peculiar headship over Israel, and the legal dispensation of the covenant of grace therewith connected, had various typical ordinances of God's appointment for religious worship, and a magnificent tent or temple for the celebration of those ordinances formed by men out of earthly materials. 2. In the first or eastern apartment of this tent or temple stood the golden candlestick, with its seven burning lamps, representing Christ, his Spirit, oracles, and ordinances as the light of the church; and the golden table, with its twelve loaves of show-bread, which represented him as the abundant, suitable, and never-failing provision of his people, and them as in him presented before God in their respective generations. 3, 4. Passing through this eastern apartment, called the sanctuary, you entered into the western, called the Oracle, or Holy of Holies, where was the golden censer, in which the high-priest carried the burning coals from the altar of burnt-offering, to burn the incense before the ark on the day of expiation, as a representation of Jesus' intercession, founded on and deriving its virtue from his atoning sacrifice; and the ark, which contained the law of the covenant made with Israel, and represented Christ as the reconciler and rest of Jehovah, and end of the law for righteousness to believers; and the golden pot of manna, which represented him as the true and ever-living bread which came down from heaven; and the budding rod, with which Aaron and Moses had wrought many miracles, and which represented Jesus Christ as growing out of dry ground, but manifested to be our ever-glorious and flourishing High-priest; and, in fine, the two tables on which God at Sinai wrote the ten commandments of the moral law, lodged in the midst of the ark, intimating their fulfilment in Christ, as a covenant, for the justification of his people, and their continuing an unchangeable and perpetual rule of holy obedience in his hand. 5. And above the ark were two glorious cherubims of gold, which represented holy angels and gospel ministers as looking into, admiring, and ready to promote our redemption to God through the righteousness of his Son.—But these things not being so directly to my purpose, I shall not insist upon them.—6. Now this sacred tent or temple, being thoroughly prepared, according to the divine model given to Moses or David, the ordinary priests, in their turns, entered into it every day, to offer sacrifice, burn incense, and dress the lamps. 7. But the high-priest alone, and only upon the day of the great annual expiation, entered into the holy of holies, and that not without blood of expiatory sacrifices, one for himself, and another for the Israelites' sins of infirmity and ignorance: 8. By this restricted access to the holy of holies, the Spirit of God plainly signifying that the access of believers to the throne of grace, or heavenly state, was not, as now, clearly revealed, while the ceremonial tabernacle, temple, and services thereof, continued to be established and observed by divine institution. 9. For these structures, and all the services pertaining to them, were, by the appointment of God, no more than temporary, imperfect, and figurative representations of those good things which have been manifested and fulfilled under the gospel. None of their oblations, bloody or unbloody, having the smallest influence to remove the moral guilt of sin from their conscience, but only to remove the ceremonial defilement and prevent temporal punishment: 10. Consisting in meat-offerings and drink-offerings, manifold washings and sprinklings, and numberless other ceremonies, which only removed external ceremonial pollutions, and consecrated to external service; and which, because of their insufficiency to purify the conscience, and perfect the state of the church, were appointed to continue no longer than till the Messiah, being come, should establish in the church a complete state of spirituality and holiness, light and grace. 11. But he, having at last actually appeared in our nature as a High-priest, hath accomplished what had been long prefigured by ceremonial ordinances, and secured and procured for his people the expected blessings of grace and glory, by officiating in his transcendently excellent manhood, and in the heavenly state, both of which were formed by the immediate operation of God himself. 12. Nor did the sacrifice, by virtue of which he entered into the heavenly state, in dignity and excellency less transcend the Levitical sacrifices; for it was not, as in the case of the Jewish sacrifices, by the blood of mean, though useful, animals, but by his own precious blood, that he, through the vail of his own flesh, entered into the heavenly oracle—to present himself God-man, with the merit of his perfect and ever-available sacrifice for us, before the immediate presence of God: having thereby purchased and secured for us, not a figurative pardon or annual reprieve, but a complete and everlasting forgiveness, and deliverance from sin, Satan, and the broken law, the incensed wrath of God, a present evil world, and death; and a full and unchangeable right and title to an eternal inheritance of all blessedness and glory. 13. For if the blood of bulls and goats, and other mean and insignificant animals, or the ashes of a heifer mingled with running water, were, by God's appointment, effectual to purify men from the external ceremonial impurities of their bodies, and give them a re-admission to public worship in the tabernacle or temple, and into the congregation of the Lord, from which they had been excluded on account of their defilement, 14. How much more effectually and gloriously shall Jesus' finished righteousness, his unblemished and infinitely valuable sacrifice of himself—which he, through the infinite dignity and supporting influence of his divine nature sanctifying his gift, and through the unmeasurable unction and inconceivable influence of the Holy Ghost, did, with the utmost readiness and submission to his Father's will, with entire trust and confidence in him, with fervent zeal for his glory, and with the most amazing love and compassion to his people, fulfil and offer up to God, as an offended Judge—purge your consciences from all the guilt and defilement of your unprofitable, abominable, and destructive works of wickedness, and free you from all dreadful apprehensions of condemnation and wrath on their account; and animate and enable you, with confidence and cheerfulness here, and in perfection hereafter, to believe in, worship, and obey the only living and true God. 15. And for bringing about this great end, he undertook and executes the office of Mediator of the new and better covenant, and particularly of the New Testament dispensation of it—that by means, not of legal sacrifices, but of his own death, as an atonement for the sins of those under the Old as well as New Testament, who, in whatever period, have been or are tenderly called into a state of union to and fellowship with him, they might, in a free and honourable manner, be made partakers of the blessings of grace here and glory hereafter. 16, 17. And the new covenant, as dispensed to us, being of a testamentary nature, in which Jesus Christ, who secured all possible blessings, and, as Trustee of the covenant, has them all lodged in his hand, actually bequeathes them to sinful men: his death was also necessary to render this testamentary disposition firm and irrevocable, and of full force to all them who by faith claim their title under him. 18-20. And it was chiefly in order to prefigure this that the Sinai covenant, and establishment of the legal dispensation, was ratified and confirmed by the blood of typical sacrifices; and that Moses, the typical mediator, having recited to the Israelites the principal laws of the covenant respecting them as a church and nation, did, in a solemn manner, sprinkle the book in which those laws were written, and all the representatives of the people, with the blood of the sacrifices offered on that occasion—solemnly intimating that that sprinkling of blood was a divinely instituted confirmation of the covenant between God and them, whereby his faithfulness for fulfilling his promises, and their obedience in performing the duties of it, were mutually engaged.—21. Moreover, when the tabernacle was first erected, and afterwards once every year on the great day of expiation, it, and all the vessels of service therein, were ceremonially purged from defilement, and consecrated to their sacred use, by a sprinkling of sacrificed blood. 22. Nay, so important was the blood of sacrifices under that dispensation, that almost all purification from ceremonial defilement was effected by the offering and sprinkling of it; and without the bloodshedding of typical sacrifices, no typical forgiveness of sin, or removal of temporal judgments, could be obtained. 23. Now, if it was necessary that the book and the people, the tabernacle and its furniture, which were but figurative representations of spiritual and heavenly things, should be purified and consecrated to their sacred use by typical sacrifices and sprinklings, it was certainly proper that Jesus Christ and his people, and all the spiritual and heavenly things, places, and furniture, should be consecrated by the infinitely more excellent sacrifice and blood of God's only begotten Son: 24. For Jesus Christ, the anointed High-priest of his church, has not, like the Jewish high-priest, entered into holy places formed by the art and labour of men, which were but mere figures of the heavenly sanctuary; but has, in his human nature, ascended into heaven itself, that there, in the immediate presence of God, he might continually present himself as our Representative, and the merits of his blood as securing our eternal salvation. 25, 26. Nor was it necessary that Christ, like the Jewish high-priests, should repeat his atoning sacrifice, that he might again and again enter into the heavenly sanctuary; for had that been the case, it had been necessary very often since the fall of man to have suffered unto death, that he might make atonement for one generation after another: but such is the infinite dignity, perfection, and virtue of his sacrifice, and such its extensive influence to former, present, and future generations, that his single manifestation of himself, in the end of the ceremonial dispensation and beginning of the gospel period, to offer his soul and body as personally united to his divine nature, was absolutely sufficient and able to pardon the guilt and abolish the power and fruits of all the sins of the world. 27. And as, by the righteous appointment of God, all sinful men must, in the ordinary course of nature, once die, and after that appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that a final and decisive sentence, relative to their eternal happiness or misery, may pass upon them, according to their qualities, thoughts, words, and actions: 28. So Christ, to fulfil the law of God as a broken covenant, and to abolish the curse and secure eternal happiness, was once, and but once, offered in sacrifice, to bear the awful iniquities and suffer because of the sins of the unnumbered millions of sinful people; and unto them who, by faith, hope, desire, and love, expect and patiently wait for his coming again to judge the world, he will at the last day appear, not, as formerly, charged with sin or bearing the punishment of it, but in the most transcendent glory and majesty, to give them the complete enjoyment of that heavenly and eternal happiness which he secured for them by his death.

Ver. 1. In this chapter Paul compares, in some of their more important details, the two covenants or dispensations—the Jewish and Christian; demonstrating at every step the transcendant glory of the latter. 'In one point above all is this comparison shown calculated to set forth the superiority of the Christian—the supreme efficacy of the blood of Christ as set against the nullity of the blood of bulls and of goats to purge away sins.' The whole argument is most instructive, throwing much light not merely upon the typical rites of the Mosaic law, but upon the fundamental doctrines (especially the doctrine of substitution) of Christianity. P.—A worldly sanctuary. An earthly place of worship, prepared of perishable materials and by human skill, as distinguished from the 'greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands,' ver. 11. C.

Ver. 4. The golden censer is not mentioned by Moses (Le. 16. 12), but it is described by Josephus (Antiq. b. iii.), and it appears to have been left in the holiest from one anniversary till another. —Wherein, &c. See note on 1 Ki. 8. 9, in which the mode of reconciling the apparent discrepancies seems decidedly preferable to that of Deyling, Stuart, and others, who consider the apostle to speak of the tabernacle as furnished by Moses, and the historian in 1 Ki. 8. 9 to speak of the temple as ordered by Solomon. C.

Ver. 7. Once—that is, upon one day; for it is evident from the Old Testament that he entered twice on the day of expiation, Le. 16. 12-15, which statement is followed by Philo, p. 591, though the rabbins say he entered four times; but for this they adduce no certain scriptural authority.—Errors. Sins of ignorance, as distinguished from sins of presumption, for which the law provided no atonement, Nu. 15. 30, 31; Ps. 19. 12, 13; He. 10. 28. C.

Ver. 11. Good things to come—after the incarnation of Christ; viz. access to God by a new and living way; the ever-living intercessor, ver. 8; a perfect pardon for sin, ver. 12; peace of conscience, ver. 9; and eternal blessedness, ver. 15.—'By' (that is, by means of his appearance and services in) 'a greater and more perfect tabernacle,' even the heavens of glory, ver. 12, 23, 24.—Not of this building. Rather, 'not of this creation,' not of earthly, but heavenly structure. C.

Ver. 13. Such sacrifices restored the unclean to domestic companionship with his friends, and social worship in the tabernacle, Le. xix. C.

Ver. 14. Through the eternal Spirit he was raised from the dead, 1 Pe. 3. 18, and so 'offered' in his body 'without spot' before his Father. C.

Reflections.—The great things concerning Jesus Christ and salvation through him were gradually, but for a long time obscurely, and by dark shadows, revealed to the church. But infinitely glorious and useful must he be, our great High-priest—to prefigure whom, in his person and service, so many ancient types were necessary. Unbounded is the value and efficacy of his atoning sacrifice, and extensive its virtue through time and through eternity. Full of blessings to sinful men, and infinitely full, firm, and glorious are the promises of the new covenant ratified by his death. And necessary for his honour and for our salvation is his intercession at his Father's right hand; and how efficacious and successful! Certain and unavoidable are death and judgment. Happy are they who, having all their sins forgiven through faith, are looking for his glorious appearance to judge and save them.—Quickly shall he, my soul, who bore the curse, hung on the cross, and lay in the grave, sit down on his great white throne to judge and save me.