(339-340) purpose of its Great Author. My reverence for and gratitude to him for the precious “meat in due season” for all who “will receive it,” knows no bounds. May he keep you moment by moment, ever closer and THE WATCH TOWER Brooxtyn, N. Y. protecting you through every trial or persecution he may permit to come into your life and crown you “more than conqueror” at the full close of the earthly pilgrimage! Your least Colporteur and joyful fellow-servant, closer ‘‘under the shadow of the Almighty,” sustaining and E. G Vou. XXX BROOKLYN, N. Y., NOVEMBER 15, 1909 No. 22 THE NEW COVENANT IN THE BOOK OF HEBREWS If the New Covenant, in no sense of the word, belongs to the Abrahamic Covenant, which had only free children. He shows church—that is to say, if we are not under the New Covenant, if it belongs merely to Israel, and through Israel to the world, why does the Apostle have so much to say concerning it in the Book of Hebrews? To appreciate the necessity for the Book of Hebrews, we must mentally take our stand back in apostolic days and get our bearings as though we were living there under those conditions. Thinking of matters from this sympathetic standpoint the answer to this question is very simple, very plain. The early church for seven years after our Lord’s baptism, for three and a half years after his cross, was composed exclusively of Jews. Not until the end of Israel’s promised “seventy weeks” of special favor could the Gospel message go outside of that nation at all. We remember that Cornelius, a just man, who prayed always and gave much alms, was the first one from the Gentiles to be received. In his case we remember how it was necessary for God to specially prepare St. Peter for such a remarkable change in the divine method of dealing. We remember that years after this, the question of receiving the Gentiles and eating with them, or in any sense of the word recognizing them as being on equality with the Jews, was one which caused continual disturbance in the church and amongst the most prominent of the apostles of the time. Years after Cornelius had received the holy Spirit teachers from Jerusalem went to Antioch and found that there Gentile were received on an equal footing with the Jews in the church of Christ without in any sense of the word subscribing to Moses and the Law Covenant. They were shocked and expressed themselves in such positive terms that the Antioch church sent Paul and Barnabas with others to Jerusalem that a full conference on the question might be had. Guided of the holy Spirit the apostles reached right conclusions, yet even Peter was so little in sympathy with these conclusions that years after we find St. Paul reproving him for dissimulation and refusing to eat with the Gentile brethren when Jewish brethren were in the company—through deference to the Law Covenant, which somehow all Jews felt must be recognized and subscribed to. St. Paul seems to have been one of the apostles who early got the proper focus on this subject. We find that this Judaizing teaching was not only in the ascendancy in Palestine, but that its influence in considerable measure affected the Gentiles. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, for instance, shows us how many of them, Gentiles by birth, had been misled into believing that whatever blessings they might enjoy through Christ and the original Abrahamic Covenant, they must also become amenable to the Law Covenant. Note that the Apostle’s letter to the Galatians is almost exclusively devoted to this subject, and remember that the Galatians were not Hebrews, or, at least, the majority of them were not. In that epistle he found it necessary to show that he had equal authority with the other apostles as a teacher—that the Galatians might know that he was well qualified as the others, and as fully authorized to instruct them respecting their obligations; that his word was authoritative ; that the Gentiles were not under the Law Covenant, but under the Grace Covenant—the original Abrahamic Covenant. He recounts that he did not get his instruction or his knowledge of the Gospel from the Apostles at Jerusalem, but that, so far as it was concerned, he had under the Lord’s Providence been their instructor, rather than they his instructor.—Gal. 2:1-14. Note carefully the Apostle’s appeal in Galatians ITI., “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes [of understanding] Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?’ ete. His entire argument in this chapter is to show that the Law Covenant never was over or binding upon the Gentiles, but only upon the Jews. He shows also that the Law Covenant, instead of advantaging the Jew, condemned him, so that the Jew needed to be specially redeemed from the curse or sentence of that Law Covenant, by our Lord’s death by crucifixion, Throughout this chapter St. Paul contrasts the Law Covenant, from which the Jews was desirous to get free, with the original that the Gentiles were received under this Abrahamic Covenant of grace (favor), whose blessings are conferred on a basis of faith and not on a basis of works, as under the Law Covenant. St. Paul shows further that the Law Covenant had Moses for a Mediator, because that covenant placed binding obligations of obedience to the law upon all who came under it. But, reasons the Apostle, the original Covenant made with Abraham was not so. It imposed no binding obligations, and therefore it needed no mediator and had no mediator. “Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.” (Gal. 3:20) That is to say, a mediator is not necessary to a covenant in which only one person is bound. In the case of the Abrahamic Covenant this is so: God is the one person bound by that covenant; hence there is no need of a mediator for that covenant to see to the faithful performance of the contract. However, as there was no mediator to guarantee a contract or covenant on God’s side, he gave to Abraham and to all who would be of his faith, the best possible guarantee that God did not make the Covenant lightly, in a trifling manner or thoughtlessly; for, in addition to pledging his Word, God gave his oath—that the covenant was secure, sure, could not fail. It was this that gave Israel such great hope in that Oath-Bound Covenant. The Apostle proceeds to show that the Law Covenant did a good service for the Jews in that it prepared them and brought them to Christ, the great Teacher; that by hearing his message, his invitation, they might exercise obedient faith, sacrificing faith, and, being baptized into Christ, might put on Christ—become members of his body. All such, Jew and Gentle, bond or free, male or female, would be members of the one body, of which Christ Jesus is the Head. This chapter winds up with that forceful statement, “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed and heirs aceording to the promise”—the covenant made to Abraham. All this argument was to show the Galatians that, so far from needing to get under the Law Covenant, they had no need of it whatever, and those who were under it needed to get out from under it, in order to be able by faith to accept Christ as their Redeemer and Justifier, and by faith to consecrate their lives unto death, that they might be acceptable to God as members of the body of Christ. The fourth chapter to the Galatians continues the argument, the expostulation against the error of wanting to get under the Law Covenant, until, with tears in his pen, the Apostle writes, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice (to one of sternness), for I stand in doubt of you. Tell me, ye that desire to be under the Law (Covenant), do ye not hear the Law?” Do ye not realize its bondage, its impossible exactions? “Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised {every Jew], that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are (trusting that you are) justified by the Law (Covenant); ye are fallen from grace.”—Gal. 4:19-21; 5:2-4, We have, perhaps, said sufficient to prove that the question of the Law Covenant was a burning question in the early church, not only with the Hebrews, but also with the Gentiles. It seemed impossible, especially for the former, to learn that the Law Covenant, after having been in force, with all the wonderful paraphernalia of the Jewish dispensation, its laws, its sacrifices, ete—that it, after all, was not necessary and that a Gentile could really have access to the Abrahamic Covenant through Christ easier than could a Jew. It was to counteract this powerful error of that day that St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. It certainly has been a valuable epistle to the Gentiles, but it was written spe cially to the Hebrews, and because of their tenacious adherence to the Law Covenant, from the dominating influence of which they seemed not to be able to free themselves. The Epistle to the Hebrews was written to prove that a totally new dispensation of Grace, and not of Works, had heen ushered in through Jesus at Pentecost. He would have them see that Moses’ faithfulness as a servant and Head of a typi [4510]
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