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THE
IMPOSSIBILITY OF FAILURE.
"But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of
you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak: for God is not
unrighteous to forget your work and the love which ye showed toward His name,
in that ye ministered unto the saints, and still do minister. And we desire
that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope even
to the end: that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith
and patience inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham, since
He could swear by none greater, He sware by Himself, saying,
Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I
will multiply thee.
And thus, having patiently endured, he obtained the
promise. For men swear by the greater: and in every dispute of theirs the oath
is final for confirmation. Wherein God, being minded to show more abundantly
unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of His counsel, interposed with
an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to
lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold
of the hope set before us; which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both
sure and steadfast and entering into that which is within the veil; whither as
a Forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a High-priest for ever after
the order of Melchizedek."-- Hebrews 6:9-20
(R.V.).
Solemn warning is followed by words of affectionate
encouragement. Impossibility of renewal is not the only impossibility within
the compass of the Gospel.[106] Over against the
descent to perdition, hope of the better things grasps salvation with the one hand
and the climbing pilgrim with the other, and makes his failure to reach the
summit impossible. Both impossibilities have their source in God's justice. He
is not unjust to forget the deed of love shown towards His name, when the
only-begotten Son ministered to men and still ministers. Contempt of this love
God will punish. Neither is He unjust to forget the love that ministered to His
poor saints in days of persecution, when the Hebrew Christians became partakers
with their fellow-believers in their reproaches and tribulations, showed pity
towards their brethren in prisons, and took joyfully the spoiling of their
goods.[107] The stream of brotherly kindness was still
flowing. This love God rewards. But the Apostle desires them to show, not only
faithfulness in ministering to the saints, but also Christian earnestness
generally,[108] until they attain the full assurance
of hope. The older expositors understand the words to express the Apostle's
wish that his readers should continue to minister to the saints. But Calvin's
view has, especially since the time of Bengel, been generally accepted: that
the Apostle urges his readers to be as diligent in seeking the full assurance
of hope as they are in ministering to the poor. This is most probably the
meaning, but with the addition that he speaks of "earnestness"
generally, not merely of active diligence. Their religion was too narrow in
range. Care for the poor has sometimes been the piety of sluggish despondency
and bigotry. But spiritual earnestness is the moral discipline that works hope,
a hope that makes not ashamed, but leads men on to an assured confidence that
the promise of God will be fulfilled, though now black clouds overspread their
sky.
An incentive to faith and endurance will be found in the
example of all inheritors of God's promise.[109] The
Apostle is on the verge of anticipating the splendid record of the eleventh
chapter. But he arrests himself, partly because, at the present stage of his
argument, he can speak of faith only as the deep fountain of endurance. He
cannot now describe it as the realisation and the proof of things unseen.[110] He wishes, moreover, to dwell on the oath made by God
to Abraham. Even this, if not an anticipation of what is still to come, is at
least a preparation of the reader for the distinction hereafter effectively
handled between the high-priest made without an oath and the High-priest made
with an oath. But, in the present section, the emphatic notion is that the
promise made to Abraham is the same promise which the Apostle and his brethren
wait to see fulfilled, and that the confirmation of the promise by oath to
Abraham is still in force for their strong encouragement. It is true that
Abraham received the fulfilment of the promise in his lifetime, but only in a lower
form. The promise, like the Sabbath rest, has become more and still more
elevated, profound, spiritual, with the long delay of
God to make it good. It is equally true that the saints under the Old Testament
received not the fulfilment of the promise in its highest meaning, and were not
perfected apart from believers of after-ages,[111] God's words never grow
obsolete. They are never left behind by the Church. If they seem to pass away,
they return laden with still choicer fruit. The coursing moon in the high
heavens is never outstripped by the belated traveller. The hope of the Gospel
is ever set before us. God swears to Abraham in the spring-time of the world
that we, on whom the ends of the ages have come, may have a strong incentive to
press onwards.
But, if the oath of God to Abraham is to inspire us with
new courage, we must resemble Abraham in the eager earnestness and calm
endurance of his faith. The passage has often been treated as if the oath had
been intended to meet the weakness of faith. But unbelief is logician enough to
argue that God's word is as good as His bond; yea, that we have no knowledge of
His oath except from His word. The Apostle refers to the greatest instance of
faith ever shown even by Abraham, when he withheld not his son, his beloved
son, on Moriah. The oath was made to him by God, not before he gave up Isaac,
in order to encourage his weakness, but when he had done it, as a reward of his
strength. Philo's fine sentence, which indeed the sacred writer partly borrows,
is intended to teach the same lesson: that, while disappointments are heaped on
sense, an endless abundance of good things has been given to the earnest soul
and the perfect man.[112] It is to Abraham when he has
achieved his supreme victory of faith that God vouchsafes to make oath that He
will fulfil His promise. This gives us the clue to the purport of the words. Up
to this final test of Abraham's faith God's promise is, so to speak,
conditional. It will be fulfilled if Abraham will believe. Now at length the promise
is given unconditionally. Abraham has gone triumphantly through every trial. He
has not withheld his son. So great is his faith that God can now confirm His
promise with a positive declaration, which transforms a promise
made to a man into a prediction that binds Himself. Or shall we retract the
expression that the promise is now given unconditionally? The condition is
transferred from the faith of Abraham to the faithfulness of God. In this lies
the oath. God pledges His own existence on the fulfilment of His promise. He
says no longer, "If thou canst believe," but "As true as I
live." Speaking humanly, unbelief on the part of Abraham would have made
the promise of God of none effect; for it was conditional on Abraham's faith.
But the oath has raised the promise above being affected by the unbelief of
some, and itself includes the faith of some. St. Paul can now ask, "What if some did
not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith" (no longer merely the
promise) "of God without effect?"[113] Our
author also can speak of two immutable things, in which it was impossible for
God to lie. The one is the promise, the immutability of which means only that
God, on His part, does not retract, but casts on men the blame if the promise
is not fulfilled. The other is the oath, in which God takes the matter into His
own hands and puts the certainty of His fulfilling the promise to rest on His
own eternal being.
The Apostle is careful to point out the wide and essential
difference between the oath of God and the oaths of men. "For men swear by
the greater;" that is, they call upon God, as the Almighty, to destroy
them if they are uttering what is false. They imprecate a curse upon
themselves. If they have sworn to a falsehood, and if the imprecation falls on
their heads, they perish, and the matter ends. And yet an oath decides all
disputes between man and man.[114] Though they appeal
to an Omnipotence that often turns a deaf ear to their prayer against
themselves; though, if the Almighty were to fling retribution on them, the
wheels of nature would whirl as merrily as before; though, if their false
swearing were to cause the heavens to fall, the men would still exist and
continue to be men;--yet, for all this, they accept an oath as final
settlement. They are compelled to come to terms; for they are at their wits'
end. But it is very different with the oath of God. When He swears by Himself,
He appeals, not to His omnipotence, but to His truthfulness. If any jot or tittle of God's promise fails to the feeblest child that trusts Him, God ceases
to be. He has been annihilated, not by an act of power, but by a lie.
We have said that the oath met, not the weakness, but the
strength, of Abraham's faith. If so, why was it given him?
First, it simplified his faith. It removed all tendency to morbid introspection and filled his spirit with
a peaceful reliance on God's faithfulness. He had no more need to try himself
whether he was in the faith. Anxious effort and painful struggle were over.
Faith was now the very life of his soul. He could leave his concerns to God,
and wait. This is the thought expressed in the word "enduring."
Second, it was a new revelation of God to him, and thus
elevated his spiritual nature. The moral character of the Most High, rather
than His natural attribute of omnipotence, became the resting-place of his
spirit. Even the joy of God's heart was made known and communicated to his. God
was pleased with Abraham's final victory over unbelief, and wished to show him
more abundantly[115] His counsel and the immutability
of it. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will
show them His covenant."[116]
Third, it was intended also for our encouragement. It is
strange, but true, that the promises of God are confirmed to us by the
victorious faith of a nomad chief from Ur
of the Chaldees, who, in the morning of the world's history, withheld not his
son. After all, we are not disconnected units. God only can trace the countless
threads of influence. Abraham's strong faith evoked the oath that now sustains
the weakness of ours. Because he believed so well, the promise comes to us with
all the sanction of God's own truth and unchangeableness. The oath made to
Abraham was linked with a still more ancient, even an eternal, oath, made to
the Son, constituting Him Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. The
priesthood of Melchizedek is said by the Apostle to be a type of the priesthood
founded on an oath. It was becoming that the man who acknowledged the
priesthood of Melchizedek and received its blessing should have that blessing
fulfilled to him in the confirmation by oath of God's promise. Thus the
promises that have been fulfilled through the eternal priesthood of the true
Melchizedek are confirmed to us by an oath made to him who acknowledged that
priesthood in the typical Melchizedek.
Yet, notwithstanding these vital points of contact,
Abraham and the Hebrew Christians are in some respects very unlike. They have
left his serene and contemplative life far behind. The souls of men are stirred
with dread of the threatened end of all things. Abraham had no need to flee for
refuge from an impending wrath. His religion even was not a fleeing from any
wrath to come, but a yearning for a better fatherland. He never heard the
midnight cry of Maranatha, but longed to be gathered to his fathers. If any
similitude to the Christian's fleeing from the wrath to come must be sought in
ancient days, it will be found in the history of Lot,
not of Abraham. Whether the Apostle's thoughts rested for a moment on Lot's
flight from Sodom,
it is impossible to say. His mind is moving so rapidly that one illustration
after another flits before his eye. The notion of Abraham's strong faith,
reaching out a hand to the strong grasp of God's oath, reminds him of men
fleeing for refuge, perhaps into a sanctuary, and laying hold of the horns of
the altar, with a reminiscence of the Baptist's taunting question, "Who
warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" and a side glance at the
approaching destruction of the holy city, if indeed the catastrophe had not
already befallen the doomed people. The thought suggests another illustration.
Our hope is an anchor cast into the deep sea. The anchor is sure and
steadfast--"sure," for, like Abraham's faith, it will neither break
nor bend; "steadfast," for, like Abraham's faith again, it bites the
eternal rock of the oath. Still another metaphor lends itself. The deep sea is
above all heavens in the sanctuary within the veil, and the rock is Jesus, Who
has entered into the holiest place as our High-priest. Yet another thought.
Jesus is not only High-priest, but also Captain, of the redeemed host, leading
us on, and opening the way for us to enter after Him into the sanctuary of the promised land.
Thus, with the help of metaphor heaped on metaphor in the
fearless confusion delightful to conscious strength and gladness, the Apostle
has at last come to the great conception of Christ in the sanctuary of heaven.
He has hesitated long to plunge into the wave; and even now he will not at once
lift the veil from the argument. The allegory of Melchizedek must prepare us
for it.
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