THE SON AND THE OATH OF GOD
"God, being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of His counsel, interposed with an oath."—HEBREWS 6:17
Having placed the Son against the background of Hebrew history to the point where the nation was seen as an established Theocracy around a system of worship and a mediating priesthood, the writer turned aside to a section in which he uttered words of almost dread solemnity, warning against the peril of apostasy, or the refusal of the speech of the Son.
The argument now goes back in .the history of the Hebrew people to Abraham, and the writer returns there for a definite purpose. He returns to that point where God spoke through angels, and to the particular hour in which He made His final appearance to Abraham in connection with the offering of Isaac.
It is to be observed that the writer's quotation from the Genesis story is not complete, although sufficient for his purpose. If we return to the story itself, as recorded in Genesis 22:14-19), we shall find that in that communion, God had said to Abraham
"In thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
The writer is drawing attention to the fact that when God said this, He said it on oath, the oath of God.
Now that is the arresting and perhaps amazing thing in this story. We find that God uses the language which reveals Him as putting Himself on oath: "By Myself have I sworn, saith the Lord."
That which He asserted on oath was that His counsel is immutable, that it cannot be changed, that whatever the appearances of the hour may have been to Abraham, that whatever the passing of the years may have brought to the nation, the one thing that remained certain was that of the immutability of the Divine counsel. The application at the moment was to the declaration that He had made:
"I will bless thee . . . and thy seed . . . and in thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
That was the counsel of God, and He put Himself on oath that it was immutable. I repeat that it is at first sight an amazing story. This may be emphasized by the fact that our Lord, when uttering the great Manifesto of His Kingdom, forbade the taking of oaths, as He said:
"I say unto you, Swear not at all."
He declared that their Yea or Nay would be enough, by which, of course, He meant that they were to be such men that when they said Yea or Nay, they meant what they said. And yet God is here found putting Himself on oath.
It is important that we consider carefully the illustration which the writer of the letter to the Hebrews employs to illuminate the matter, for he is careful to point out exactly what he means. He says that when men swear, they "swear by the greater." That was the custom of the time, and it is the custom still. It still obtains in American and English courts of justice, where a man, sworn to give evidence, does so by taking an oath in the form of placing His hand on the Bible or in England with the kissing the Book. In doing that he is swearing by something greater than himself. Now, says the writer, in every transaction and utterance the oath is final for confirmation, and by that he means the oath is the basis of confidence. If a man takes an oath by appealing to that which is higher than himself, it is supposed that what he shall utter shall be the truth, and that constitutes a basis of confidence. Now that is what the Genesis story tells us that God did and this letter to the Hebrews reaffirms it. But at once we see the difference. A man taking an oath appeals to someone or something higher than himself. This God cannot do, for there is none higher than Himself. Thus He took the human method, qualified by His own Being and nature, and His action was final for confirmation, that is, it became the basis of confidence for Abraham.
It may be said that there was no necessity for God to put Himself on oath because of what He was in Himself. We have another illustration of that, of which there are so many in the Biblical account of God, of His accommodating Himself and His method to meet man in his need. The writer shows that when he uses the phrase, "being minded to show." Man needed some confirmation beyond the simplicity of the declaration. In his dealings with his fellow man, the oath was the method by which this confirmation was gained. God in condescension came to that human level, and, adopting the human method, put Himself on oath.
The disparity between the oath of a man and the oath of God lends increased importance to the fact. A man's oath, if it be sincere, and acted upon, binds him to an outside authority. When I take the oath, I am recognizing that authority, and appealing to it, because I am obedient to it. The oath of God necessarily depended upon his own final and complete authority. Therefore He sware by Himself.
Having already referred to it, we now ask more particularly what was this oath of God? It was a declaration of the immutability of His counsel. The word "counsel" there refers to volitional determination, leading to purposeful action; and that counsel was concerned with the blessing of Abraham and his seed; and, as the Genesis story reveals, the blessing of "all the nations of the earth."
Canon Farrar tells us of something to be found in Jewish literature, which is imaginative, but which is very suggestive. In the Treatise Berachoth, Moses is pictured as speaking to God about this oath, and as saying this:
"Hadst Thou sworn by heaven and earth, I should have said they will perish, and therefore so may Thy oath; but as Thou has sworn by Thy great name, that oath shall endure forever.”
If this be imaginative, it nevertheless does reveal the confidence created by this action of God. There can be no doubt that faithful souls, through centuries, had built upon that oath of God. God had given to them not merely the declaration of His intention, but had condescended to employ the method of man, and had sworn by Himself that that intention should be carried out.
Now the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, conscious of the confidence thus placed in that oath of God, is showing how it had literally and completely been fulfilled in the Son of God. The intervening centuries had run their course, and now he speaks of Jesus, and shows how through Him the oath is ratified and fulfilled. In writing to the Galatians, Paul spoke of the seed of Abraham, and declared, "Which is Christ"; and a little later he said:
"If ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed."
He was then writing, not to Hebrews, but to Gentile Christians. The Hebrew people after the flesh, had been excommunicated by the word of Jesus spoken in Jerusalem:
"The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."
Thus the counsel of God is immutable. His purpose cannot change. His word to Abraham:
"I will bless thee . . . and thy seed; and in thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,"
This shall come to the point of actual and historic fulfillment. One day 144,000 shall take the gospel message to the ends of the earth concerning Christ as the Seed fulfilling the covenant, and those who are Christ's are then "Abraham's seed."
Now we may glance at what the writer has to say about Jesus in this connection. He declared that He has entered:
"Within the veil . . . as a Forerunner, having become a High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek."
This fact constitutes the "anchor of the soul," the ultimate secret of confidence. The oath of God, fulfilled in the Person of His Son, as He passes into the heavens, assures the heart.
An arresting word in this connection is the word "Forerunner." It marks a difference between Christ's passing within the veil, and everything that had preceded it in the ritual of the Hebrew people. Aaron had entered within the veil once a year, but never as a forerunner. He entered as the representative of those who were left outside. But they were always left outside. No one followed Aaron when he entered within the veil to stand in the presence of the ark and the mercy-seat. When Jesus passed within the veil, He went as a Forerunner, which at once suggested that the way was open for others to follow Him. He was the Seed in which, and through which, all nations were to be blessed; and He had made it possible for all those who were His to pass with Him into the same place. That surely was the symbolic suggestiveness of the rending of the veil when He died.
Another matter which is suggestive is the use the writer makes of a figure of speech in this connection. He speaks of "an anchor of the soul." Now an anchor has been from time immemorial a symbol of hope. It is found so employed in Greek literature. It was also suggestive of safety in danger. We drop the anchor, and the ship is moored; and because of that, we realize safety from peril. Nevertheless, let it be remembered, that an anchor, as a matter of fact, prevents a ship from functioning according to its capacity. No ship is fulfilling the true meaning of its being when it lies at anchor. As Kipling shows in his sketch, "The Ship that found herself," she does that, not when riding at anchor, but when moving out into the deep. We remember there was a time when Paul and others with him, having flung the freight overboard, and the tackling of the ship, let go four anchors, and prayed and waited for the day. It is self-evident that while the ship was thus held, she was not fulfilling the meaning of her existence. Now the remarkable thing is here that the writer uses that figure in such a sense that it breaks down, and yet fulfills itself. The anchor is cast within the veil, that is, it is flung out into the vastness of the eternities, not to the shoals near the shore, but into the deep itself. Thus the figure of speech fulfills its intention as it emphasizes anew the immutability of the counsel of God. This counsel found its fulfillment when He passed within the veil; and into all the vastness of that which lies beyond, the anchor is cast. The confidence of the soul is ratified because One has passed within the veil, the Forerunner, leaving the way open for us.
Through angel ministry God had dealt with men, and in this meeting with the father of the nation He met human frailty with an oath. The oath, or the declaration made on oath, became personal by Incarnation, and that Incarnation led to the Cross, and through it to resurrection and ascension wherein the Son of God passed within the veil. That, then, is the secret of our confidence. Nearly a hundred years ago Edward Mote wrote a hymn which catches up and gloriously expresses the teaching which we have been considering. The refrain of that hymn is found in the words:
"On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand."
Three of the stanzas, in each case ending with the refrain, run thus:
"My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus' name.
When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay."
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