484 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Ca. IX.
pose and yearning to draw them into its own sphere, and to make them partakers of its own eternal quality. This was a fact before the foundation of the world, is a fact to-day, and will be a fact so long as any life remains unreconciled to God. Atonement is eternal in virtue of the eternal spirit of Christ through which he offered himself to God.
Offered himself without spot (éavrtov mpoonveyxey dpo- pov). The two other elements which give superior validity to Christ’s sacrifice. It was voluntary, a self-offering, unlike that of brute beasts who had no volition and no sense of the reason why they were offered. It was spotless. He was a perfectly righteous, sinless being, perfectly and voluntarily obedient to the Father’s will, even unto the suffering of death. The legal victims were only physically unblemished according to ceremonial standards. ~Apewpos in LXX, technically, of victims, Ex. xxix. 1; Lev. i. 3, 10, etc.
Purge your conscience (xa@apict tHv cvveidnow jor). For your rend. our. The superior nature of Christ’s sacrifice appears in its deeper effect. While the Levitical sacrifice ac- complished only formal, ritual expiation, leaving the inner man unaffected, while it wrought externally and dealt with specific sins, the effect of Christ’s sacrifice goes to the centre of the moral and spiritual life, and cleanses the very fountain- head of being, thus doing its work where only an eternal spirit can do it. Kaéapifev to purge is not a classical word. In Class. caOaipeiy (also in LXX): but xaOapifew appears in inscriptions in a ritual sense, and with dzo from, as here,* thus showing that the word was not confined to biblical and ecclesiastical Greek.
From dead works (ao vexpav gpywv). The effect of Christ’s sacrifice upon the conscience transmits itself to the works, and fills them with the living energy of the eternal
* See Deissmann Neue Bivelstudien, Pt. II., p. 48. He gives one specimen, 93 or 91 Bee.
Cn. IX.J THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 485
spirit. It changes the character of works by purging them of the element of death. This element belongs not only to works which are acknowledged as sinful and are committed by sinful men, but to works which go under the name of religious, yet are performed in a merely legal spirit. None the less, because it is preéminently the religion of faith, does Christianity apply the severest and most radical of tests to works. Professor Bruce truthfully says that “the severest test of Christ’s power to redeem is his ability to loose the bonds springing out of a legal religion, by which many are bound who have escaped the dominion of gross, sinful habits.”
15. The efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice is bound up with a covenant. His priesthood involves a new and a better coven- ant. See ch. viii. 6-18. That covenant involves his death.
For this cause (6:a rovro). Indicating the close relation between the cleansing power of Christ’s blood and the new covenant.
Mediator of the new testament (d:a0nxns xaivyis peoirns ). For the new testament rend. anew covenant. See on next verse. For pecirns mediator, see on Gal. ili. 19, 20.
By means of death (avdrov yevuuévov). Rend. a death having taken place.
For the redemption of the transgressions (eis azrov- Tpwow tav tapaSdcewv). The phrase redemption of trans- gressions (that is, from transgressions) only here. ’AoAvTpwars in N. T. mostly absolutely : the redemption, or your redemp- tion, or simply redemption. Twice with genitive of that which is redeemed, Rom. viii. 23; Eph. i. 14. Only once in LXX, Dan. iv. 82. For wapaBaows transgression, see on Rom. ii. 23.
Under the first testament (él). On the basis of: estim- ated according to the standard of the provisions of the first
486 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. ([Cu. IX.
covenant, and to be atoned for in the way which it prescribed. By this expression he emphasises the insufficiency of every other atoning provision, selecting the system which repre- sented the most elaborate and complete atonement for sin prior to Christ. The intimation is in the same direction with that of the phrase through an eternal spirit—that the ideal redemption must be eternal.