THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Hebrews 10: 15-18 And the Holy Ghost also bears witness to us: for after He has said, "This is the covenant that I will make with them After those days, says the Lord; I will put my Laws on their heart, and upon their mind also will I write them; then said He, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.
Continuing with the last portion of the EIGHTH SECTION
Hebrews 10: 1-18.
The New Way into the Holiest.
BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY
The writer has concluded his argument. He has made clear that the Sacrifice of Christ, as the offering up of His body to the Will of God, has Opened for us the Way into the Holiest. Through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ we have been Sanctified. When He had offered One Sacrifice Forever, He sat down on the right hand of God. By One Offering He has Perfected forever them that are Sanctified. His Sacrifice is over, and has Everlasting power; in virtue of it He sits on the Throne, expecting His final triumph; those He has Sanctified are Perfected Forever. The Sacrifice is of infinite worth; it has Opened the entrance to a State of Perfection and Everlasting Holiness and Glory; nothing is now needed but our receptivity and obedience to rejoice and wait and see the King on the Throne applying and revealing the Authority and power of His finished work.
The writer appeals to the words of the institution of the New Covenant (8: 6-13), in support of what he has said. He does so with the words, And the Holy Ghost also bears witness to US. The words of Jeremiah (31: 33-34 and are repeated in Romans 11:27 where the writer is dealing with the Hebrews future) are to him the words of the Holy Spirit. He believes in a direct inspiration. It is God who knows the end from the beginning, who has planned all from the least to the greatest in the preparation of Redemption, who had revealed to Jeremiah the New Covenant that would be made centuries later. It was the same Holy Spirit who had inspired the first record of Melchizedek (found in Genesis 14 and 15), and the Psalm (110: 4) with the Oath of God, who had ordered the tabernacle and the veil to signify that the way into the Holiest was not yet open, and had watched over the first covenant, and its dedication not without blood, through whom the promise of the New Covenant was spoken and recorded. Our writer appeals to Him and His witness.
He does so as one who himself has the teaching of that Spirit. Anyone might read the words of the covenant, and of the death of Jesus; no one could connect and expound them in their Divine Harmony and their Everlasting Significance but one taught by the same Spirit. These men preached the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent from Heaven; the Spirit, from the King sat down upon the Throne, revealed in and to them the every Will of God, and the Eternal power of the One Sacrifice, to Open the Way into the Holiest.
And what is now the witness of the Holy Ghost in the New Covenant? The witness to the two Blessings of the Covenant in their Divine inseparable unity. I will put My Laws in their heart, and their sins will I remember no more. The complete remission of sins, the removal of sin out of God's sight and remembrance forever, was promised. Now, our writer argues, where remission of these are, there is no more offering for sin. The one offering has Perfected Forever them that are Sanctified. The death of Christ has Opened up and introduced us into a relationship of intimacy with God, a State of Life before Him, in which sin has been finally put away, and God Receives us into His fellowship (intimate familiarity or intercourse) as those who have been Sanctified in Christ. He Receives us into the Holiest of All through the Blood. The Blood that sprinkles the mercy-seat also Sprinkles and Cleanses our Conscience, bringing the full Remission, the full Deliverance from sin and its power, into our inmost being; and, fitting our heart to Receive that Spirit of Heaven which witnesses with the Blood, as a Spirit of Life, puts the Law within us, as the Law of our Life. (It might be well here to note that Paul in his epistles uses by the Holy Spirit the metaphor of a marriage and the marriage bed to express this revelation. The worldly miss use and miss quote and of course miss understand the hidden meaning of this metaphor and claim the Body of Christ to be His bride when this is not the case at all. His mystical Body can not be a bride, the true bride is still hidden from their eyes and understanding because they continue in their dependency of the external priesthood. emphasis added)
(It is just here that we need to understand this one word "Remission" the definition we'll use is taken from Webster's 1828 Dictionary: Release; discharge or relinquishment of a claim or right; as the remission of a tax or duty. Forgiveness; pardon; that is, the giving up of the punishment due to a crime; as the remission of sins. Mat 26. Heb 9. Not part of the original text. Emphasis added)
And so we enter into the finished work of Christ, and the Rest of God in it; enter the Perfection with which He Himself was Perfected Forevermore, and has Perfected us Forever; into that Holiest of All, into which God fulfills the promise, I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people (Jeremiah 31: 1, 33, 38). And the offering of the body of Christ once for all, the One Sacrifice Forever, becomes, in ever-growing Blessedness, the one thought, the one trust, the one joy, the one Life of the receiver becomes a true believer. His Salvation and Redemption are Finished and Eternal Realities, His Perfection and Sanctification too. Our one need is to believe and abide in and receive what our Priest-King on the Throne imparts through His Spirit: a full entrance into the no more offering for sin, with all that flows from Him, in the person and Throne and work of our Priest forever: this is the entrance into the Holiest.
And the Holy Ghost also bears Witness to us. It is easy to understand the Truth of the total forgiveness of sin as one of the elementary foundational Truths, of which we read in chapter 6:1. But if we seek to press on to Perfection, and to Know what the Fulness of Salvation is into which He leads, we may count upon the Holy Spirit to reveal it, to witness to it, in our inner life. He reveals it not to the mind, or as the reward of earthly study, but to the poor in spirit and them that are of a lowly heart. It is in the heart God sends forth the Spirit of His Son; the heart that longs for and chooses and loves and waits for this Life of perfect intimacy and continued fellowship with God more than its chief joy, shall have it witnessed by God's Spirit that the no more offering for sin is indeed the Opening up of the Holiest of All. The Holy Ghost who comes from Heaven, bears Witness of what is in Heaven. We can know nothing really of what takes place in Heaven but by the Holy Ghost in our heart. Dwelling in us He gives in our inmost life the full witness to all the efficacy of Christ's atonement and His enthronement in the presence of God.
1. The one central Truth to which the Holy Spirit testifies is this: that the old way of living and serving God is now completely and forever come to an end. Death and the devil are brought to nought; the veil is rent; sin is put away; the old covenant is disannulled, vanished away, taken away. A New System, a New Way, a New and Eternal Life has been Opened up in the power of Christ Jesus. Oh! to have our eyes and hearts opened to see and hear what is not merely a thought, a Truth for the mind, but a spiritual state of existence which the Holy Ghost can bring us into.
2. The Holy Ghost bears Witness. For this He came on the day of Pentecost out of the Heavenly Sanctuary and from our exalted Priest-King, to bring the Heavenly Life, the Kingdom of Heaven to the disciples, and make it real to them, as a thing found and felt in their hearts. Each one of us needs and may claim the Holy Spirit in the same Pentecostal power, and the New, the Eternal, the Heavenly Life will fill us too.
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