Hebrews 9:13-14 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh:… Stress must be laid on each of three particulars: Christ offered Himself; in offering Himself He presented a spotless offering; He offered Himself through an eternal spirit. I. First, then, Christ's sacrifice possesses incomparable worth and virtue because the victim was HIMSELF. In this one fact is involved that Christ's sacrifice possessed certain moral attributes altogether lacking in the Levitical sacrifices: voluntariness and beneficent intention, the freedom of a rational being with a mind of his own and capable of self-determination, the love of a gracious personality in whom the soul of goodness dwells. Christ's sacrifice was an affair of mind and heart — in one word, of spirit. II. Christ's sacrifice possesses incomparable worth and virtue, secondly, because in Himself He presented to God a SPOTLESS sacrifice — spotless in the moral sense. He was a perfectly holy, righteous Man, and He showed His moral purity precisely by being loyal and obedient even to the point of enduring death for righteousness' sake. The victims under the law were spotless also, but merely in a physical sense. Christ's spotlessness, on the contrary, was ethical, a quality belonging not to His body, but to His spirit. III. We are now prepared in some measure to understand the third ground of the value attached to Christ's sacrifice; viz., that He offered Himself THROUGH AN ETERNAL SPIRIT. Putting aside for a moment the epithet "eternal," we see that Christ's sacrifice was one in which spirit was concerned, as opposed to the legal sacrifices in which flesh and blood only were concerned. It was a free, loving, holy spirit. But the writer, it is observable, omits mention of these moral qualities, and employs instead another epithet, which in the connection of thought it was more important to specify, and which there was little chance of his readers supplying for themselves. The epithet " eternal" suggests the thought: the act performed by Jesus in offering Himself may, as a historical event, become old with the lapse of ages; but the spirit in which the act was done can never become a thing of the past. The blood shed was corruptible; but the spirit which found expression in Christ's self-sacrifice is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and in its eternal self-identity lends to the priestly deed imperishable merit and significance. This fitly chosen phrase thus makes the one sacrifice of Christ cover with its efficacy all prospective sin. But it does more than that. It is retrospective as well as prospective, and makes the sacrifice valid for the ages going before. For an eternal spirit is independent of time, and gives to acts done through its inspiration validity for all time. One virtue more must be ascribed to this magic phrase, "through an eternal spirit." It helps us over the difficulty created by the fact that Christ's real self-sacrifice took place on earth, and yet ideally belongs to the heavenly sanctuary. When we think of Christ's sacrifice as offered through an eternal spirit, we see that we may place it where we please, in earth or in heaven, on Calvary or on high, as suits our purpose. Do you insist that Christ's proper offering of Himself took place in the celestial sanctuary after the ascension, even as Aaron's proper offering was the blood-sprinkling within the most holy place? I reply, Be it so; but it took place there through an eternal spirit which gave to it its value; and if we want to know what that spirit was, we must look to the earthly life of obedience and love culminating in the crucifixion, wherein it found its perfect manifestation. Through this eternal spirit Christ offered Himself before He came into the world, when He was in the world, after He left the world. It was as a spirit He offered Himself, as a self-conscious, free, moral personality; and His offering was a spirit revealed through a never-to-be-forgotten act of self-surrender, not the literal blood shed on Calvary, which in itself possessed no more intrinsic value than the blood of Levitical victims. Thus interpreted, the term " spirit" unfolds the implicit significance of "Himself," and gives us the rationale of all real value in sacrifice. It can have no value, we learn therefrom, unless mind, spirit be revealed in it. Death, blood, in its own place, may have theological significance, but not apart from spirit. It goes without saying that the idea of spirit is essentially ethical in its import. Voluntariness and beneficent intention enter into the very substance of Christ's sacrifice. Another remark still may be added. In the light of the foregoing discussion we can see the vital significance of the death of Christ in connection with His priestly work. The least priestly act of the Levitical system becomes here the most important, the humble, non-sacerdotal first step the essence of the whole matter. Through the death of the Victim His spirit finds its culminating expression, and it is that spirit which constitutes the acceptableness of His sacrifice in the sight of God. On the epithet "eternal" attached to "spirit" it is not necessary further to enlarge. As the term "spirit" guarantees the real worth of Christ's offering as opposed to the putative value of Levitical sacrifices, so the term "eternal" vindicates for it absolute worth. It lifts that offering above all limiting conditions of space and time, so that viewed sub specie asternitatis it may, as to its efficacy, be located at will at any point of time, and either in earth or in heaven. "Eternal" expresses the speculative element in the writer's system of thought, as " spirit" expresses the ethical. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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: |
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