Hebrews 10:5

Hebrews 10:5

The Body of Christ.

The mystical body of Christ is the whole fellowship of all who are united to Him by the Spirit, whether they be at rest in the world unseen, or here in warfare still on earth, differing only in this, that all His members who have been gathered out of this world are secure for ever; but in this world they who are still in trial may yet be taken away, and, as the fruitless and withered branch, cast forth for the burning. There are three manners, three miracles of Divine omnipotence, by which Christ's one body has been, is, and present: the first, as mortal and natural; the second, supernatural, real, and substantial; the third, mystical, by our incorporation. Surely these great realities ought to teach us many high and practical truths.

I. As, for instance, with how much of loving reverence we ought to regard every baptised person. He is a member of Christ; what more can be spoken or conceived? He is united by the Spirit of Christ to the mystical body, of which the Lord made flesh is the supernatural Head. He has in Him a life and an element which is above this world; even "the powers of the world to come." We partake of Him of His very flesh, of His mind, of His will, and of His Spirit.

II. This is the great reality which has restored to the world two great laws of love, the unity and the equality of man. All the members of Christ are one in Him, and equal, because He is in all. The highest and most endowed is but as the poorest and the lowest. Christ's kingdom is full of heavenly paradoxes. Even the poor working man, with his hard palms, sits at the marriage supper with the king and princes; it may be he sits higher than his earthly lord. There is a courtesy, and a mutual observance, which is the peculiar dignity and sweetness of a Christian; and the source of it is, that He sees the presence of His Lord in others, and reveres Him in himself. Only the true Christian can have real self-respect. From this springs purity of manners, language, conversation, and amusements in private and social life.

III. And one more thought we may take from this blessed mystery, I mean, with what veneration and devotion we ought to behave ourselves towards the presence of Christ, in the Sacrament of His body and Blood.

H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 190.

The Atonement.

I. In Christ's sacrifice there was no earthly altar, no expiatory form, no visible priest; nobody could have told, either from His life or from His death, that He was the victim; He died by the natural course of events, as the effect of a holy and courageous life operating upon the intense jealousy of a class; He died by civil punishment, and in heaven that death pleaded as the sacrifice that taketh away the sin of the world. But that sacrifice was a willing, a self-offered sacrifice. The circumstance, then, of the victim being self-offered, makes, in the first place, all the difference upon the question of injustice to the victim. He who is sent is one in being with Him who sends. His willing submission, therefore, is not the willing submission of a mere man to one who is in a human sense another; but it is the act of one who, by submitting to another, submits to himself. By virtue of His unity with the Father, the Son originates, carries on, and completes Himself the work of the Atonement. It is His own original will to do this, His own spontaneous undertaking.

II. Consider the effect of the act of the Atonement upon the sinner. It will be seen, then, that with respect to this effect, the willingness of a sacrifice changes the mode of the operation of a sacrifice, so that it acts on a totally different principle and law from that upon which a sacrifice of mere substitution rests. The Gospel puts before us the doctrine of the Atonement in this light, that the mercy of the Father is called out toward man by our Lord Jesus Christ's generous sacrifice of Himself on behalf of man. The act of one produces this result in the mind of God towards another; the act of a suffering Mediator reconciles God to the guilty. But neither in natural mediation, nor in supernatural, does the act of suffering love, in producing that change of regard to which it tends, dispense with the moral change in the criminal. We cannot, of course, because a good man suffers for a criminal, alter our regards for him if he obstinately continues a criminal. And if the gospel taught any such thing in the doctrine of atonement, that would certainly expose itself to the charge of immorality. So rooted is the great principle of mediation in nature, that the mediator-ship of Christ cannot be revealed to us without reminding us of a whole world of analogous action, and a representation of action. It is this rooted idea of a mediator in the human heart which is so sublimely displayed in the sacred crowds of St. John's Revelation. The multitude which no man can number are indeed there, all holy; all kings and priests are consecrated and elect. But the individual greatness of all is consummated in One who is in the centre of the whole, Him who is the need of the whole race, who heads it, who has saved it, its King and Representative, the First-born of the whole creation, and the Redeemer of it. Toward Him all faces are turned; and it is as when a vast army fixes its look upon a great commander in whom it glories, who on some festival day is placed conspicuously in the midst. The air of heaven is perfumed with the fragrance of an altar, and animated with the glory of a great conquest. The victory of the Mediator never ceases, and all triumph in Him.

J. B. Mozley, University Sermons,p. 162.

References: Hebrews 10:5. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., pp. 275, 413.Hebrews 10:5. G. Huntingdon, Sermons for Holy Seasons,p. 161; J. Thain Davidson, Sure to Succeed,p. 61.