Hebrews 7:16

Hebrews 7:16

The Power of Christ's endless life.

I. The first thought is the power which this endless life has of communicating itself. The very idea of such a life brings with it an inspiration and hope. Even if it were said that the idea is only the offspring of the soul of man, is it not a ground of hope that his soul has the power of forming such ideas? To conceive of eternity is so far to be partakers of eternity. We share what we see. But the power of Christ's endless life does more than communicate the hope of it to others, it gives the possession. When the original well of life was tainted and poisoned by sin, He came to open up a new and pure fountain. He secures for us a pardon consistent with righteousness, without which it could have brought no real life. He begins a new life in the soul, which has hard and manifold struggles with the fierce reluctances of the old nature. He encourages, strengthens, renews it, and at last makes it victorious.

II. Think (1) of the power Christ has in His endless life of conveying knowledge and experience. Death is the one great barrier between man and growth. (2) Note the sense of unity in Christ's plan, which we may derive from the power of His endless life. God has been pleased that the greatest enterprise the world contains should not be passed from hand to hand; it is not to flicker to and fro amid the gusts of grave-vaults, but to be in the power of an endless life. There are two things secured for the unity of Christians by Christ's unending life. The first is a oneness of heart and sympathy. The other unity is that of action. (3) Think how the power of Christ's endless life may fill us with the spirit of patience. (4) The power of Christ's endless life opens the prospect of abiding joy. The power of His endless life is still engaged in works like those which occupied Him on earth, but in grander measure and in wider fields; and what He offers to all who will accept it is a joy, not like His, but a joy the very same. It is the joy of knowledge, of purity, of holy, happy service in doing God's will, in self-sacrifice, itself continued in self-forgetfulness, for without this the joy of heaven would be less than the joy of earth.

J. Ker, Sermons,2nd series, p. 34.

Hebrews 7:16

I. That Christ's life was and is "an endless life" needs no demonstration. He died but death is no cessation of life. At the very moment He was dying in the article of death His own mind was willing it, His own act was doing it, His own priesthood was presenting it; and the very moment He was dead He had converse with one who died with Him; and He went at once and "preached to the spirits in prison"; and it was His own hand and His own power that raised Himself out of His grave after three days. And we know how careful God has been to identify that one risen, crucified life on through the forty days, ascending before the same eyes that had been familiar with Him all along, seen by at least three, the very same Son of Man in His glory, and then distinctly heard saying in heaven, "I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen." So true is the prophecy, "Of the increase of His government and priesthood there shall be no end."

II. Now all the while that Christ was upon the earth He must have carried with Him the consciousness that everything He said and did was the beginning of its own eternity. Each thing had in it the germ of its own immortality. It was to go on and expand for ever and for ever. There is a deep, mystic sense in which the life that Christ lived in this world its birth, its infancy, its development, its temptations, its solitude, its conflicts, its sufferings, its miracles, its joys, its holiness, its love, its dying, its rising, its soaring: all is enacted over and over again in the soul and in the experience of every individual that lives in time, nay, beyond time into eternity.

III. But the efficacy of the power of Christ's endless life does not stop here. It is the marvel of His grace that whatever is united to Christ, by that union shares His power; and hence, it is not only His prerogative it is yours and mine "the power of an endless life." We are all learning a little of Divine truth. It is but the simplest elements we know; and we know them very poorly. But what we know is the beginning of knowledge. I shall hold it, I shall build upon it in another state; and every new lesson I get is another step of the ladder by which I go ascending in knowledge for ever and ever. We try, in our little way, to do something for God. What is it? Of itself nothing. But it is the actual commencement of those very exercises in the service of God which will occupy and fill our perfected condition for ever.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 205.

References: Hebrews 7:16. Homilist,3rd series, vol. ii., p. 199; S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxv., p. 382.Hebrews 7:17. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xii., p. 11; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vi., p. 333.Hebrews 7:19. E. White, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 312.Hebrews 7:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvii., No. 1597. Hebrews 7:23. Ibid.,vol. xxxii., No. 1915; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 357. Hebrews 7:23. Ibid.,p. 358.