No. 764
“Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” (Heb. 5:7)
What the Lord feared was not that the love or promises of God would fail. He knew that God is “faithful that promised.” (Heb. 10:23) He knew that God is a covenant-keeping God, and that all His conduct and dealings are founded upon the eternal principles of truth and righteousness. For Him to vary in the least iota from those principles would be a moral impossibility. But the Lord also knew that the plan of human salvation was made dependent upon the obedience of the Anointed High Priest to every “jot and tittle” of the Law concerning Him, as shown in the typical service of the Tabernacle. Not only must the sacrifice be made, but it must be offered exactly as prescribed.
If the typical high priest Aaron had at any time failed to conform to the directions given for the offering (Lev. 9:16), if he had forgotten or ignored any part of the directions, or if he had substituted some of his own ideas, he would not have been allowed to sprinkle the blood of that imperfect sacrifice upon the mercy-seat. His offering would not have been accepted. He would have died, and so he could never have come out and blessed the people. (Lev. 16:2-3; Lev. 9:22)
Thus we see that in undertaking the great work of redemption, our Lord bore the full weight of life and death – not only for the whole human race, but for Himself as well. Figuratively speaking, He took His life into His own hands. It was no wonder that the Lord experienced fear under the weight of this responsibility! The strain of the trials to which He was subjected was too great for even the perfect human nature unless aided by divine grace. Therefore, He frequently sought through prayer “grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:16)
Consider the great fight of afflictions through which He passed: the subtle and deceptive temptations in the wilderness (See Studies in the Scriptures, Volume V, pages 110-117); the “contradiction of sinners against himself,” (Heb. 12:3) and the base ingratitude of those He came to save. Consider also His poverty, His loss of friends, His labors and weariness, His homelessness, His bitter and relentless persecutions, and His final betrayal and dying agony! Surely the tests of endurance and of obedience to the exact requirements of the Law of sacrifice, under these circumstances, were most crucial. The Lord was exceedingly careful for fear He might come short of the full requirements of His office as Priest – for fear He might fail to render acceptable service.
On the last night of His earthly life, the Lord became sorrowful and heavy. (Matt. 26:37) The powers of darkness were no doubt busy in that awful hour, taking advantage of the circumstances and the Lord’s physical weakness and weariness, discouraging His hope and filling His mind with fears that He would fail to complete the work acceptably, making His resurrection uncertain. Had He done everything in perfect accordance with God’s will? Would He be able to complete the sacrifice of Himself, enduring the suffering, ignominy, and shame? No wonder the agony of emotion brought great drops of bloody sweat! (Luke 22:44)
We are glad that Jesus was not cold and stoical, but instead filled with tender feelings and sensibilities. He must have felt keenly the conditions under which He had placed Himself, in laying down His life on our behalf. His perfection meant He had a greater capacity for joy and a greater capacity for sorrow. Being absolutely perfect, He was immeasurably more susceptible to pain than are others.
In addition, He knew He had a perfect life that had not been forfeited because of sin, and He realized that He was about to part with it. All other members of the human family possess only a forfeited or condemned existence, and they realize that they inevitably must part with it. It was therefore a very different matter for our Lord to lay down His life than it is for any of His followers to lay down theirs. The life that our Lord laid down represented one hundred per cent of a perfect human life. Because of trespasses, sins, and condemnation, others are more dead than alive and have only a small fraction of a perfect life to lay down. The Lord realized that the life He was about to lay down had not been forfeited through sin, but was His own voluntary sacrifice.
This thought of the extinguishing of life was no doubt an important factor in our Lord’s sorrow, as the words of our opening text clearly show. Had He failed in any detail to come to the exact standard of perfection, His death would have meant extinction, and although all men fear extinction, none can know the full depth and force of its meaning as could He who not only had perfect human life, but recalled His previous glory with His Father “before the world was.” (John 17:5) For Him the very thought of extinction would bring anguish and terror. It was this thought that seemed to bear down so heavily upon Him now as He saw Himself about to suffer according to the Law as an evil-doer. The questions naturally arose in His mind: Was He entirely blameless? Would the Heavenly Judge thoroughly acquit Him when so many were condemning Him?
Yet He did not yield to the discouragement and give up the struggle when the crucial test was upon Him. He took those human fears to the Heavenly Father in prayer in order that His human will might be reinforced by divine grace: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matt. 26:39) Though His words were few, because no words could express the emotions of His soul, His chastened spirit was all the while making intercession for Him with “groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Rom. 8:26)
After praying, He went to His three disciples but found them asleep. He gently reproved them asking, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” (Matt. 26:40-41) Then our Lord went away and prayed similar words again. He returned and then went away to pray the same prayer a third time. The matter weighed heavily upon His heart. Could He be sure that having sought to do the Father’s will, having finished His course, He had done it acceptably? Could He have full faith that God would save Him out of death by a resurrection?
His prayers to the Father were not in vain. God sent an angel to comfort and minister to Him, to assure Him of the divine favor, and thus to give Him fresh courage, strength of mind and steadiness of nerve to endure all that was before Him, even unto death. (Luke 22:43) We are not informed what message the angel brought to Him, only that it strengthened Him. We can see that it was a message of peace and that it brought assurance, not only that the Lord’s course had the Father’s approval, but that He would be brought again from the dead by a resurrection. This gave our Lord all the strength and courage necessary for the ordeal before Him, and from that moment onward we find that He was completely cool and calm.
With this assistance of divine grace, our dear Lord went forth with undaunted courage to finish the work which was given Him to do. Calmly He could come now and say to His beloved but weary and bewildered disciples, “Sleep on now, and take your rest.” (Matt. 26:45) The mental conflict was over, and the light of heaven shining into His soul chased away the deep gloom. The fear was all taken away. With the strength God supplied, He knew He was able to meet every requirement of the Law. His salvation from death – His resurrection – was assured.
When He was approached by Judas and His band and when He was before the chief-priest, Caiaphas, He was the most calm and self-possessed of all who were present. When He was before Pilate and when He was crucified, He remained calm. He found peace in the message of the angel. He knew He was approved of the Father and that all the gracious promises of glory, honor and immortality were His. Now He could pass through any ordeal; He could submit Himself perfectly to His enemies.
(Based on Reprint 4804.)
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THE GIFTS AND CALLING TO ISRAEL
“And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament [covenant], that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament [covenant], they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” (Heb. 9:15)
The Apostle was here addressing Hebrews who had come into Christ and were perplexed about the Law Covenant. That Covenant had existed for more than sixteen centuries, and the Jews had supposed all along that under it they were to be God’s favored people and accomplish all the work that was first brought to light in the Covenant made with Abraham. Many of the Hebrews felt that after accepting Christ as the Redeemer, they must somehow still maintain their relationship to the Law Covenant, its ordinances, etc. In his Epistle to the Galatians, the Apostle attempted to counteract this erroneous theory. He cautioned those who were Gentiles by birth that they should not, out of mistaken zeal and earnestness, become Jews by being circumcised, thus coming under the domination of the Law Covenant. By doing so, they would be forfeiting their standing in Christ and, as he pronounced, “Christ shall profit you nothing.” (Gal. 5:2)
St. Paul wanted the Christian Hebrews to take the larger, broader, truer view of the Law Covenant and everything pertaining to it – its sacrifices, its mediator, and its Law. He wanted them to recognize it as merely a typical Covenant prefiguring a New Covenant. He wanted them to see that Moses as its mediator typified a better Mediator, Christ, and that the bulls and goats of its sin-offering typified the better sacrifices by which the New Covenant would become operative, the better sacrifices being those of the better Mediator – Christ, with Jesus the Head and the Church His Body.
St. Paul had already pointed out that the privileges of this Gospel Age, so far as the Church is concerned, are chiefly those of sacrifice: “It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us.” (2 Tim. 2:11-12) In order to share His Kingly honor and His service as the great Prophet, Priest, and King of the Millennial Age, blessing Israel and all the families of the earth, the Church must seek to copy Him in self-denial and self-sacrifice and be baptized into His death.
In attempting to make this matter plain, St. Paul pointed out that before the Law Covenant went into effect, it was necessary that blood should be shed: “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:13-14) Here he contrasted the institution of the Law Dispensation, the Law Covenant, and the institution of the New Covenant. The first effect of this better blood which seals the New Covenant is to cleanse the conscience from “dead works.”
The Apostle was not here referring to all Israel, but only to those Jews who had become Christians. Being previously bound by the Law, he wanted them to see that now the true sacrifice had come and that it was sufficient to satisfy all the claims of Justice. He wanted them to put away from their minds all consciousness of sin. He wanted to assure them that all of their sins were thus covered and that they might now render acceptable service to the living God. Because our Lord’s blood was sufficient to cancel all sin, He is the Mediator of the New Covenant.
He not only purged Christians from a consciousness of sin, that they might serve God and become members of the Body of Christ, accepting Him as their Advocate and trusting in His finished work on their behalf, but He also by the same sacrifice arranged with God and with Justice to serve as Mediator of the New Covenant for all Israel. The Apostle was not here saying that the New Covenant was then operative, nor that Christians were under this Covenant. Quite to the contrary, he was speaking of the Jewish nation, as we shall see.
We are not, therefore, to consider the “called” in our opening text as referring to those who receive the High Calling – joint-heirship with Christ, the Spiritual Seed of Abraham. We are to understand that the Apostle here meant the Jewish nation that was called – all of the Jewish nation who would come into accordance with the divine arrangement. The same Apostle said, “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” (Rom. 11:29) Having called the Jewish nation to be His peculiar people, and having made them definite promises regarding the blessing of all nations, God has no thought or intention of revoking those promises. God has foreknown the full significance and the results of every covenant, every promise, and every action He has ever made, and He has done nothing hastily. Israel, therefore, is the nation He has foreknown to be the one He will use in His work of blessing all of the families of the earth. Speaking for the Father, the Apostle said, “For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.” (Rom. 11:27)
ISRAEL’S BLINDNESS A MYSTERY
In the same chapter, the Apostle wrote: “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Rom. 11:25) The mystery is that God has been gathering out only a special few of the Jews and a special few from all nations to constitute Spiritual Israel, to whom belong the highest feature of the Abrahamic Covenant or promise. As soon as this Spiritual Israel, which will constitute the Prophet, Priest, and King, is complete, the Deliverer – taken from among Jews and Gentiles – will come forth, fulfilling the promise: “And so all Israel shall be saved [recovered from blindness]: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” (Rom. 11:26)
This is God’s Covenant with the seed of Jacob (a representative of natural Israel), as we read: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.” (Jer. 31:31) When we consider that not all of the Gospel Church were under the Old Law Covenant, but only the Jewish nation, this thought of the New Covenant being with the natural seed of Abraham is confirmed.
The heart of the Apostle’s argument, therefore, is that Christ by death becomes the Mediator of the New Covenant for the redemption of the transgressions under the Old Law Covenant. In other words, the Jewish nation needed to be redeemed in a special manner before God could use it as His channel for blessing the other nations.
Since the mediation work of the Millennial Kingdom is to be accomplished through natural Israel, with all the families of the earth being blessed through them, it follows that until Israel has been recovered from its present outcast condition, the blessings of the Lord cannot go forth. Note that we are to distinguish between the work to be done through this nation and the one who will do that work. It will be the Mediator of the New Covenant who will have the power to confer the blessings – the great High Priest, Prophet, and King. There could be no blessing outside of this great Mediator and, as the Apostle Paul and all the other Apostles clearly show, this great Mediator is composed of Jesus the Head and the Church His Body.
THE NEW COVENANT TO BE MADE WITH THE JEWS
There is no doubt that many Jews are now faithless and unbelieving because of the long period of blindness upon them, but perhaps in their hearts they hunger after the promises. When the light of the New Dispensation begins to dawn upon the world, when they begin to see the resurrected Ancient Worthies as recipients of divine favor, and when they see their brethren beginning to be blessed under the ministration of this new Kingdom, then many of the Jews who are now blinded and unbelieving will manifest true faith, be obedient, and turn to the Lord. None will become an Israelite, however, unless he has the “faith of Abraham” – sincere faith, trust in God, faith that will be manifested by obedience.
As the people of the various nations then gather themselves to the Lord and seek to come into harmony with Him, their way of approach will be by coming into harmony with the Holy Nation – God’s representative Kingdom in the world – and thus they will come into harmony with the Spiritual Christ, the Great Prophet, Priest and King. Eventually, by the close of the Millennial Age, those who prove faithful will be turned over to the Father and will be in full Covenant relationship with Him.
The New Covenant is not to be made with any others than the Jews, for no others were in Covenant relationship with God under the Old Law Covenant. The words “New Covenant” seem, therefore, to indicate the repetition of God’s favor to Israel under the better Mediator, who will bring the glorious blessings that they had expected under Moses, but failed to obtain because of the inability of Moses to make satisfaction for their sins: “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” (Heb. 10:4) The antitypes of these, the sacrifice of the Lord and the members of His Body, must first be accomplished before this New Covenant with Israel can supersede the Old Law Covenant, which it then will do.
We read: “For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.” (Heb. 9:16) In the case of Moses, the death of the Testator was represented by the slaying of the bullock and the goat. In the case of the Antitypical Moses, the death of the Testator is shown in the sacrifice of our Lord and the Church, His Body.
We must also understand the ability of Christ to make a Testament or Covenant. He could not make this Covenant as the man Jesus because as a man – not spirit-begotten – He could merely have given His human life for mankind and then would have had nothing left for Himself. If He had on the other hand retained His earthly life, He could have established only an earthly Kingdom and never could have given eternal life to anyone subsequently. He might have blessed mankind with wise laws and regulations and improved conditions in the present, but He never could have given them the perfect life and blessings that He will be able to give them under the New Covenant.
HOW THE LORD BECAME A TESTATOR
In order to be a Testator and give eternal life to the world, it was necessary for our Lord to carefully follow the plan that God had arranged. He first had to demonstrate His loyalty to God by perfect obedience to the Law, with life on the divine plane as His reward. He then had to submit His perfect human life, which He did not in any way forfeit because of sin, giving that human life and its rights to Israel and ultimately to all mankind through Israel. By doing these things, He became a testator – one who bequeaths something to others. He did not bequeath His human life as a gift while He was alive in the flesh, but He gave it as a testator upon His death.
Jesus did not invite His loyal footstep followers to be sharers of restitution privileges with the world under His Mediatorial reign. According to the will of God, He instead has invited them to do something else: He has invited them to join with Him in becoming Testator, in laying down their lives and thus becoming sharers with Him in the spirit of His great work, that they might also share with Him in the actual features of that work during the Millennium.
The very first difficulty is that they, unlike Jesus, do not have perfect bodies to give as perfect sacrifices. Hence God arranged for the Lord Jesus, as their advocate, to impute to them His merit, His restitution rights, to make up for and offset their blemishes and imperfections. In this way, they are able to offer to God a sacrifice that would be pleasing to Him. The imputation of Jesus’ merit covers past sins, allowing their sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. Even then, their imperfections would cause them to be unable to carry out the sacrifice to completion unless He continued to be their Advocate. With all their unwilling blemishes and imperfections, they can go to Him as their Advocate and obtain mercy and have cleansing from all sin through the merit of His sacrifice.
“THROUGH YOUR MERCY”
Thus we see the great Testament or Covenant which is in Christ’s blood and to which He referred: “For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins.” (Matt. 26:28, ASV)[1] Instead of applying that blood of the Covenant to the world or to Israel, He applied it first for the Church. It must, so to speak, all pass through the Church, which is why He instructed them: “Drink ye all of it.” (Matt. 26:27) They cannot share in His life unless they first share His “cup” of suffering.
None are worthy to deal directly with the Father, but the Father, nevertheless, had the Church as a class in mind from the beginning, as the Apostle says: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” (Eph. 1:4-6) Hence the “mystery” – the selection of the Church, the Body of Christ – is not an amplification of the original divine plan, but merely the carrying out of a feature of that plan foreordained by God but not previously disclosed or revealed.
It has required all of the Gospel Age for the Church of Christ to drink of His “cup” and be “baptized into his death.” (Rom. 6:3) When the last member has drunk of this cup, been baptized into His death, and finished His course, then all the sufferings of the Priest, Head and Body, will have been accomplished. The Prophets had prophesied of this: “Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” (1 Pet. 1:10-11) The sufferings began with the Head and have continued all the way down to all the members of the Body; and as soon as these sufferings are finished The Christ will be crowned with glory, honor and immortality beyond the veil.
Those who drink of this cup of the Covenant – His blood or sacrificed life – are also to be participants in His special life on the divine plane. (1 John 3:2) They will thus share with Him in this work of making the New Covenant that will go to Israel and through Israel to the world. Paul specifies that God’s gifts and callings from the remote past include the restoration of the Jews to divine favor at the close of the Gospel Age, and His promises cannot fail. This blessing must come through the spiritual seed. Speaking of the time when Israel is to be recovered from its sins, the Apostle says, “For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.” (Rom. 11:30-31)
This will be the mercy of God operating through Jesus and the mercy of Jesus operating through the Church. So in one sense, it will be God’s mercy and in another sense it will be Jesus’ mercy, and in a third sense it will be the Church’s mercy. This mercy of the New Covenant will go to Israel and by this Covenant Israel will get the earthly life and earthly rights laid down in sacrifice by Christ, Head and Body. All those rights to life eternal, and all those things lost in Adam and redeemed by Christ, will go to Israel alone – and actually to none but those who believe – “Israelites indeed.”
During the Millennial Age, it will thus be necessary for all mankind to come to Israel, God’s earthly people, to get eternal life and to share in this Covenant (Testament or Will) of Christ. They must become “Israelites indeed” so that they may be heirs of this Testament or Will, which gives to them perfect and everlasting human life and all the earthly rights which Jesus had and sacrificed – the rights which He imputed to the Church, allowing them to join in sacrificing together with Him.
“And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (Isa. 2:3)
(Based on Reprint 4623.)
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[1] As discussed in our March 2021 paper, the word “new” is properly omitted from this verse.