Hebrews 9:28

ὁ Χριστός. “The Christ”; the Anointed High Priest.

ἅπαξ προσενεχθείς. “Having been once offered.” Christ may also be said as in Hebrews 9:14 “to offer Himself”; just as He is said “to be delivered for us” (Romans 4:25) and “to deliver up Himself” (Ephesians 5:2).

πολλῶν. “Many” is only used as an antithesis to “few.” Of course the writer does not mean to contradict the lesson which runs throughout the N. T. that Christ died for all. Once for all One died for all who were “many” (see my Life of St Paul, II. 216).

ἀνενεγκεῖν. “To carry them with Him on to the Cross,” as in 1 Peter 2:24 : or as probably in Isaiah 53:12 “to take them away.”

χωρίς. Not merely “without (ἄτερ)” but “apart from (χωρὶς) sin,” i.e. apart from all connexion with it, because He shall have utterly triumphed over, and annulled it (Hebrews 9:26; Daniel 9:24-25; Isaiah 25:7-8). The words do not go with “the second time,” for at Christ’s first coming He appeared without sin indeed, but not “apart from sin,” seeing that “He was numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12) and was “made sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

εἰς σωτηρίαν. “It shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; … we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (Isaiah 25:9). It is remarkable that the Sacred writers—unlike the Mediaeval painters and moralists—almost invariably avoid the more terrible aspects of the Second Advent. “How shall He appear?” asks St Chrysostom on this passage, “As a Punisher? He did not say this, but the bright side.” The parallelism of these verses is: Man dies once, and is judged; Christ died once, and shall return—he might have said “to be man’s judge” (Acts 17:31)—but he does say “He shall return … for salvation.”

We may sum up some of the contrasts of this previous chapter as follows. The descendants of Aaron were but priests; Christ, like Melchisedek, was both Priest and King. They were for a time; He is a Priest for ever. They were but links in a long succession, inheriting from forefathers, transmitting to descendants; He stands alone, without lineage, without successor. They were established by a transitory ordinance, He by an eternal oath. They were sinful, He is sinless. They weak, He all-powerful. Their sacrifices were ineffectual, His was perfect. Their sacrifices were offered daily. His once for all. Theirs did but cleanse from ceremonial defilement, His purged the conscience. Their tabernacle was but a copy, and their service a shadow; His tabernacle was the Archetype, and His service the substance. They died and passed away; He sits to intercede for us for ever at God’s right hand. Their Covenant is doomed to abrogation; His, founded on better promises, is to endure unto the end. Their High Priest could but enter once and that with awful precautions, with the blood of bulls and goats, into a material shrine; He, entering once for all with the blood of His one perfect sacrifice into the Heaven of Heavens, has thrown open to all the right of continual and fearless access to God. What a sin then was it, and what a folly, to look back with apostatising glances at the shadows of a petty Levitism while Christ the Mediator of a New, of a better, of a final Dispensation—Christ whose blood had a real and no mere symbolic efficacy, had died once for all, and Alone for all, as the sinless Son of God to obtain for us an eternal redemption, and to return for our salvation as the Everlasting Victor over sin and death!