The epistle to the Hebrews differs in some important respects from all the other epistles of Paul, so much so that many have questioned whether it be the writing of Paul, of Apollos, of Barnabas, or someone else. Of this my mind has no doubt. I believe that Paul, and no other, was the author, and that it bears the strongest intrinsic traits of his doctrine. The style is different, and so is the manner of handling the truth; but the line of truth, though affected by the object in view, is that which savors of Paul beyond all–not of Peter, or John, or James, or Jude, but of Paul alone.
One good reason why the epistle has a different character is the fact that it goes outside his allotted province. The apostle of the Gentiles, if writing for the instruction of Jews, as here he clearly was, was evidently outside the ordinary function of his apostolic work.
There is another reason why the epistle to the Hebrews diverges sensibly and materially from the rest of the writings of Paul. It is not, strictly speaking, an exercise of apostleship at all, but of the writer (apostle though he were) as a teacher, and here a teacher clearly not of Gentiles, as he says elsewhere, but of Jews. Now it is plain, if he who was an apostle and preacher and teacher of the Gentiles was led by the Holy Spirit to address the saints that were of the old Jewish fold, there must have been a marked departure from his usual manner of presenting the truth of God.
The book of Hebrews, this blessed result of his acting outside his own ordinary sphere, is the finest and indeed the only specimen of teaching, properly so-called, in the New Testament. It is not a revelation given by prophetic or apostolic authority, and for this reason, I presume, he does not introduce himself at all. It is always a failure when the teacher, as such, is prominent. The teaching (not the teacher) should arrest and instruct.
In writing to the Hebrew believers, the writer puts himself in the background. Besides being apostle of the uncircumcision, he was a teacher; and God took care that, although expressly said to be a teacher of Gentiles, his should be the word to teach the Christian Jews too. In fact, we may be assured that he taught them as they never were taught before. He opened the Scriptures as none but Paul could, according to the gospel of the glory of Christ. He taught them the value of the living oracles that God had given them; for this is the beautiful characteristic here. Indeed the epistle to the Hebrews stands unique. By it the believing Jew was led into a divine application of that which was in the Old Testament–that which they had habitually read in the Law, Psalms and Prophets, from their cradle we may say, but which they had never seen in such a light before.
That mighty, logical, penetrating, richly stored mind! That heart with such affections, large and deep, as scarce ever were concentrated in another bosom! That soul of experience wonderfully varied and profound was the one whom God was now leading in a somewhat unwonted path, no doubt, but in a path which, when taken, at once approves itself by divine wisdom to every heart purified by faith.
For if Peter, as is known, were pre-eminently the apostle of the circumcision, it was through him that God first of all opened the door of the kingdom of heaven to the Gentiles; and if the Apostle Paul, with the concurrence of his brethren, had gone to the Gentiles, nonetheless did the Spirit of God employ Paul to write to the believers of the circumcision the most consummate treatise of the bearing of Christ and Christianity on the law and the prophets, and practically dealing with their wants, dangers, and blessing.
Thus God carefully guarded from the technical drawing of lines of rigid demarcation to which even Christians are prone, the love of settling things in precise routine, the desire that each should have his own place, not only as the proper sphere of his work, but to the exclusion of every other. With admirable wisdom the Lord directs the work and the workmen, but never using one exclusively. The Apostle Paul is here the proof of it on one side, as Peter is on the other.
What is the consequence under the blessed guidance of the Spirit? Though the great teacher of the believers from among the Jews, we have not Paul here but through him God Himself left to address His own in the words, facts, ceremonies, offices, persons so long familiar to the chosen people. Paul does not appear. This could hardly have been by any other arrangement–at any rate not so naturally. “God,” says he, “having in many measures and in many manners spoken in time past to the fathers in the prophets, at the last of these days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds.” Paul would thus show them the infinite dignity of the Messiah whom they had received. Never would Paul weaken the personal rights or the official place of the Anointed of Jehovah. Contrariwise, he would lead them on to find what they had never yet seen in their Messiah. And, wonderful to say, he founds his proofs, not on new revelations, but on those very words of God which they had read so superficially, the depths of which they had never approached, nor had they so much as suspected. They knew the facts of Christianity; they had yet to discover the linking of all Scripture with Christ’s Person, and work, and glory.
But mark the manner of the writer. He is careful to establish the thread of connection with God’s Word and ways of old; and yet there is not a single epistle which more elaborately, throughout its entire course, sets the believer in present relationship to Christ in heaven. From the very starting point we see Christ, not merely dead and risen, but glorified in heaven. There is no doubt that the writer meant his readers to hold fast the truth that He who suffered all things on earth is the same Jesus who is now at the right hand of God. But the first place in which we hear of Him is as Son of God on high, according to chapter 1, but we also see Him as Son of man according to chapter 2.
It was there, in fact, that Paul had himself first seen the Lord. Who then was so suitable to introduce Jesus, the rejected Messiah at the right hand of God, as Saul of Tarsus? On the way to Damascus that staunchest of Jews had his eyes first opened by grace to see by the power of the Holy Spirit the glorified Christ.
It is to Christ in heaven then that Paul, writing to the Christian Jews, first directs their attention. But he does it in a manner which shows the singularly delicate tact given him. True affection is prudent for its object when peril is near. In no way are the former messages of God forgotten in the days of their fathers. Nor would one gather from this epistle that its writer labored among the Gentiles, nor even that there was a calling of Gentile believers in the Lord Jesus. The epistle to the Hebrews never speaks of either.
We can understand, therefore, how active-minded men who occupied themselves with the surface–the method, the style, the unusual absence of the writer’s name, and other peculiarities in the phenomena of this epistle–too readily hesitated to attribute it to Paul. They might not attach much general tradition which ascribed it to him. But they ought to have looked more steadily into its depths, and the motives for obvious points of difference, even were it written by Paul.
Granted that there is a striking absence of allusion to the one body here–but there was one nearer and dearer to Paul than even the Church. There was one truth that Paul labored even more to hold up than the one body wherein is neither Jew nor Greek–the glory of Him who is the head of it. Christ Himself was what made the assembly of God precious to him. Christ Himself was infinitely more precious than even the Church which He had loved so well, and for which He gave Himself.
Of Christ, then, be would deliver his last message to his brethren after the flesh (as well as the Spirit). And as he began preaching in the synagogues that He is the Son of God (Acts 9), so here he begins his epistle to the Hebrews. He would lead them on, and this with gentle but firm and witting hand. He would deepen their knowledge lovingly and wisely. He would not share their unbelief, their love of ease, their value for outward show, their dread of suffering; but be would reserve each folly for the most fitting moment. He would lay a vigorous hand on that which threatened their departure from the faith, but he would smooth lesser difficulties out of their way with a light touch.
But when he gained their ear, and they were enabled to see the lights and perfections of the great High Priest, there is no warning more energetic than this epistle affords against the imminent and remediless danger of those who abandon Christ, whether for religious form or to indulge in sin. All is carried on in the full power of the Spirit of God, but with the nicest consideration of Jewish prejudices, and the most scrupulous care to bring every warrant for his doctrine from their own ancient yet little understood testimonies.
It is evident, however, even from the opening of the epistle, that though he does not slight but uphold, the Old Testament scriptures, yet he will not let the Jews pervert them to dishonor the Lord Jesus. How had God spoken to the fathers? In many measures and in many manners. So had He spoken in the prophets. It was fragmentary and various–not a full and final manifestation of Himself. Mark the skill! He thereby cuts off, by the unquestionable facts of the Old Testament, that over-weening self-complacency of the Jew which would set Moses and Elijah against hearing the Son of God.
Had God spoken to the fathers in the prophets? Unquestionably. Paul, who loved Israel and esteemed their privileges more highly than themselves (Rom. 9), was the last man to deny it. But how had God spoken then? Had He formerly brought out the fullness of His mind? Not so. The early communications were but refracted rays, not the light unbroken and complete. Who could deny that such was the character of the Old Testament? Yet so cautiously does he insinuate the obvious character of that which was revealed of old, that at a first reading they might have no more perceived it than most of us. But there it is; and when we begin to prove the divine certainty of every word, we weigh and weigh again its value.
It is then pointed out that there were formerly many portions and modes in God’s prophetic communications. This was doubtlessly the way in which His revelations had been gradually given to His people. But for this very reason it was not complete. God was giving piecemeal His various words, “here a little, and there a little.” Such was the character of His ways with Israel. They could not bear more till redemption was accomplished, after the Son of God Himself was come and His glory fully revealed. Now when promises were given to the fathers, they did not go beyond the earthly glory of Christ; but known to Him were all things from the beginning, yet He did not outrun the course of His dealings with His people. As they manifested themselves in their own weakness and ruin, higher glories began to dawn, and were needed as a support to the people. Hence invariably you will find these two things correlated. Reduce the glory of Christ, and you equally lower your judgment of the state of man. If you see the total absolute ruin of the creature, then none but the Son in all His glory is felt to be a sufficient Saviour for such.
Accordingly, while he intimates by this that all was partial, being piecemeal and multiform in the revelations from God to the fathers, he lets them know in the next verse that the same God had in the last of these days “spoken unto us in His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds.” If His glory was so great, what must be the word of such a Son? What the fullness of the truth that God was now making known to His people by Him? Who was He–this Messiah–that they attempted to confirm Him as king of the Jews, and so if possible, to aggrandize themselves, establishing themselves as the conquerors of the Romans? He was no one less than the brightness of God’s glory, the express image of His substance; the upholder, not of Israel or their land only, but of all things “by the word of His power.”
But listen: “When He had by Himself purged our sins”–was not the whole Jewish system blotted out by such a truth? It is to the exclusion of every other instrument. Help there was not; means there could not be. He Himself undertook and achieved the task alone and, when He had thus done it, “sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; being made so much better than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.”