into the essential nature of the Gospel as a “new covenant,” moving on a totally different plane of religious reality from the now antiquated covenant given by Moses (viii. 13).
The following plan of the epistle may help to make apparent the writer’s theory of Christianity as distinct from Judaism, which is related to it as “shadow” to reality:
| Thesis: The finality of the form of religion mediated in God’s Son, i. 1-4. | ||
| i. | The supreme excellence of the Son’s Person (i. 5-iii. 6), as compared with (a) angels, (b) Moses. | |
| Practical exhortation, iii. 7-iv. 13, leading up to: | ||
| ii. | The corresponding efficacy of the Son’s High-priesthood (iv. 14-ix.). | |
| (1) | The Son has the qualifications of all priesthood, especially sympathy.
Exhortation, raising the reader’s thought to the height of the topic reached (v. 11-vi. 20). | |
| (2) | The Son as absolute high priest, in an order transcending the Aaronic (vii.) and relative to a Tabernacle of ministry and a Covenant higher than the Mosaic in point of reality and finality (viii., ix.). | |
| (3) | His Sacrifice, then, is definitive in its effects (τετελείωκε), and supersedes all others (x. 1-18). | |
| iii. | Appropriation of the benefits of the Son’s high-priesthood, by steadfast faith, the paramount duty (x. 19-xii.). More personal epilogue (xiii.). | |
As lack of insight lay at the root of their troubles, it was not enough simply to enjoin the moral fidelity to conviction which is three parts of faith to the writer, who has but little sense of the mystical side of faith, so marked in Paul. There was need of a positive theory based on real insight, in order to inspire faith for more strenuous conflict with the influences tending to produce the apostasy from Christ, and so from “the living God,” which already threatened some of them (iii. 12). Such “apostasy” was not a formal abjuring of Jesus as Messiah, but the subtler lapse involved in ceasing to rely on relation to Him for daily moral and religious needs, summed up in purity of conscience and peace before God (x. 19-23, xiii. 20 f.). This “falling aside” (vi. 5, cf. xii. 12 f.), rather than conscious “turning back,” is what is implied in the repeated exhortations which show the intensely practical spirit of the whole argument. These exhortations are directed chiefly against the dullness of spirit which hinders progressive moral insight into the genius of the New Covenant (v. 11-vi. 8), and which, in its blindness to the full work of Jesus, amounts to counting His blood as devoid of divine efficacy to consecrate the life (x. 26, 29), and so to a personal “crucifying anew” of the Son of God (vi. 6). The antidote to such “profane” negligence (ii. 1, 3, xii. 12 f., 15-17) is an earnestness animated by a fully-assured hope, and sustained by a “faith” marked by patient waiting (μακροθυμία) for the inheritance guaranteed by divine promise (x. ii f.). The outward expression of such a spirit is “bold confession,” a glorying in that Hope, and mutual encouragement therein (iii. 6, 12 f.); while the sign of its decay is neglect to assemble together for mutual stimulus, as if it were not worth the odium and opposition from fellow Jews called forth by a marked Christian confession (x. 23-25, xii. 3)—a very different estimate of the new bond from that shown by readiness in days gone by to suffer for it (x. 32 ff.). Their special danger, then, the sin which deceived (iii. 13) the more easily that it represented the line of least resistance (perhaps the best paraphrase of εὐπερίστατος ἁμαρτία in xii. i), was the exact opposite of “faith” as the author uses it, especially in the chapter devoted to its illustration by Old Testament examples. His readers needed most the moral heroism of fidelity to the Unseen, which made men “despise shame” due to aught that sinners in their unbelief might do to them (xii. 2-11, xiii. 5 f.)—and of which Jesus Himself was at once the example and the inspiration. To quicken this by awakening deeper insight into the real objects of “faith,” as these bore on their actual life, he develops his high argument on the lines already indicated.
Their situation was so dangerous just because it combined inward debility and outward pressure, both tending to the same result, viz. practical disuse of the distinctively Christian means of grace, as compared with those recognized by Judaism, and such conformity to the latter as would make the reproach of the Cross to cease (xiii. 13, cf. xi. 26). This might, indeed, relieve the external strain of the contest (ἀγών xii. 1), which had become well-nigh intolerable to them. But the practical surrender of what was distinctive in their new faith meant a theoretic surrender of the value once placed on that element, when it was matter of a living religious experience far in advance of what Judaism had given them (vi. 4 [ff]., x. 26-29). This twofold infidelity, in thought and deed, God, the “living” God of progress from the “shadow” to the substance, would require at their hands (x. 30 f., xii. 22-29). For it meant turning away from an appeal that had been known as “heavenly,” for something inferior and earthly (xii. 25); from a call sanctioned by the incomparable authority of Him in whom it had reached men, a greater than Moses and all media of the Old Covenant, even the Son of God. Thus the key of the whole exhortation is struck in the opening words, which contrast the piecemeal revelation “to the fathers” in the past, with the complete and final revelation to themselves in the last stage of the existing order of the world’s history, in a Son of transcendent dignity (i. 1 ff., cf. ii. 1 ff., x. 28 f., xii. 18 ff.). This goes to the root of their difficulty, ambiguity as to the relation of the old and the new elements in Judaeo-Christian piety, so that there was constant danger of the old overshadowing the new, since national Judaism remained hostile. At a stroke the author separates the new from the old, as belonging to a new “covenant” or order of God’s revealed will. It is a confusion, resulting in loss, not in gain, as regards spiritual power, to try to combine the two types of piety, as his readers were more and more apt to do. There is no use, religiously, in falling back upon the old forms, in order to avoid the social penalties of a sectarian position within Judaism, when the secret of religious “perfection” or maturity (vi. 1, cf. the frequent use of the kindred verb) lies elsewhere. Hence the moral of his whole argument as to the two covenants, though it is formulated only incidentally amid final detailed counsels (xiii. 13 f.) is to leave Judaism, and adopt a frankly Christian standing, on the same footing with their non-Jewish brethren in the local church. For this the time was now ripe; and in it lay the true path of safety—eternal safety as before God, whatever man might say or do (xiii. 5 f.).
The obscure section, xiii. 9 f., is to be taken as “only a symptom of the general retrogression of religious energy” (Jülicher), and not as bearing directly on the main danger of these “Hebrews.” The “foods” in question probably refer neither to temple sacrifices nor to the Levitical laws of clean and unclean foods, nor yet to ascetic scruples (as in Rom. xiv., Col. ii. 20 ff.), but rather to some form of the idea, found also among the Essenes, that food might so be partaken of as to have the value of a sacrifice (see verse 15 foll.) and thus ensure divine favour. Over against this view, which might well grow up among the Jews of the Dispersion as a sort of substitute for the possibility of offering sacrifices in the Temple—but which would be a lame addition to the Christianity of their own former leaders (xiii. 7 f.)—the author first points his readers to its refutation from experience, and then to the fact that the Christian’s “altar” or sacrifice (i.e. the supreme sin-offering) is of the kind which the Law itself forbids to be associated with “eating.” If Christians wish to offer any special sacrifice to God, let it be that of grateful praise or deeds of beneficence (15 f.).
In trying further to define the readers addressed in the epistle, one must note the stress laid on suffering as part of the divinely appointed discipline of sonship (ii. 10, v. 8, xii. 7 f.), and the way in which the analogy in this respect between Jesus, as Messianic Son, and those united to Him by faith, is set in relief. He is not only the inspiring example for heroic faith in the face of opposition due to unbelievers (xii. 3 ff.), but also the mediator qualified by his very experience of suffering to sympathize with His tried followers, and so to afford them moral aid (ii. 17 f., v. 8 f., cf. iv. 15). This means that suffering for Christianity, at least in respect of possessions (xiii. 5 f., cf. x. 34) and social standing, was imminent for those addressed: and it seems as if they were mostly men of wealth and position (xiii. 1-6,
