“God, Who
at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by
the prophets, hath is these last days spoken unto us by (His) Son, whom He hath
appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the ages” (Hebrews i.
1, 2).
“Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
For in this the elders were attested.
By faith we perceive the ages to have been adjusted by a declaration of
God that the things which are seen have not come to pass out of things which
are apparent” (Heb. xi. 1, 2).
Here in the epistle to the Hebrews we find
two important passages that must not be passed over hurriedly by the earnest
student. The ages were made, the ages were adjusted, the existing economy did not arise merely as a matter of
course. The contexts of the two passages
must be considered. In the first, the
wondrous glory of the Son of God shines forth;
in the second, the faith of the overcomers, leading on to the author and
finisher of faith (Heb. xii. 2), is prominent.
In both, the final word is either, “sat down on the right hand of the
Majesty on High”, or, “is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”, and
in both there is a reference to redemption, “purged our sins”, and “endured a
cross”.
It will be necessary to make the meaning
of these passages as clear as possible in order that subsequent consideration
may not be rendered ineffective.
Before looking at the contexts, and
gathering up the teaching of the verses quoted above, we must endeavour to
settle the meaning of one or two words.
Dia
hou, “Through whom.”—Some translators have rendered these words, “For whom”,
and as it is of great importance to understand which of these two phrases is
the true one, we will give a little time to their study.
Dia,
followed by the genitive case, signifies the efficient cause, through or
by; followed by the accusative, the
final cause, for, on account of. Such is
the grammatical rule. It can be easily
illustrated from the New Testament usage.
With the genitive:-- Rom. i. 5, “Through Whom we received grace”; v. 1,
“Peace . . . . . through our
Lord Jesus Christ”; iii. 24, “Through
the redemption”; John i. 3, “all things were made through Him”. With the
accusative:-- I Cor. ix. 23, “This I do for the gospel’s sake; Rom. iv. 23-25, “For
His sake . . . . . but for us . . . .
. on account of our offences . . . .
. on account of our justifying”. These few instances will be sufficient for a
general view. The distinction between dia hou
and dihon is made for us in the very
epistle we are considering. Hebrews ii.
10, “For whom (accusative) are all
things and by whom (genitive) are all things”.
While we believe it to be true that the ages were made for or on account of Christ, yet that is not the truth of the verse before
us. Just as John.i.3
declares that all things were made by
him (dia autou), and Col. i. 16
that all thing were created by Him (dia
autou), so Hebrews i. teaches us that the ages are a part of His
work. He made them. They form a part of the great purpose that
necessitated them. The quotation from Heb. xi. 3
is more difficult to apprehend, and a few helps to its understanding may
be welcomed.
The word translated “framed” (katartizo) is used elsewhere in Hebrews,
namely, Heb. x. 5, “A body hast Thou prepared Me”, and Heb. xiii. 21, “make you perfect”. The word occurs thirteen times in the N.T.,
and the first occurrence, Matt. iv.
21, “mending
their nets”, conveys one of the principal ideas of the word, namely the
restoration, mending, or readjustment of parts;
the idea of “fitted” seems best in
Rom. ix. 22, “fitted to
destruction”.
We shall probably obtain most help by a
more careful study of the use of the word in Hebrews itself. In
Heb. x. 5, “a body hast Thou
prepared Me”, cannot convey the meaning of restoration, sometimes attaching to
the word katartizo. The verse is a quotation from Psa. xl. 6,
yet when we turn to that passage we read, “mine ears hast Thou opened”
(margin, Heb. “digged”) instead of “a body hast Thou prepared me”. “Opened” is misleading; the passage does not refer to the “hearing”,
but to the custom of Exod. xxi. 6. It was the sign of willing submission. This is carried out in the parallelism, “I
come to do Thy will, O Lord”. Hence,
while Heb. x. 5 is not a literal quotation, it is an inspired commentary,
and the “prepared” body of the Lord is referred to in Phil. ii. 7,
“made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant”, in contrast to the
glorious “form” of God. The same sense
will apply to Heb.xiii.21, and it would seem that we must keep to that
aspect of its meaning in Heb. xi.
3, “By faith therefore we understand
that the ages were prepared and adjusted by the word of God.”
We must not confuse the expression “by the
word of God”, with the Logos (“The
Word”) of John i. 1. The
word here is rhema, and occurs in
Hebrews four times, the first passage being
Heb. i. 3, “Upholding all things
by the word of His power”. He who can thus uphold all things, also
perfectly adjusted the ages by the same word.
This perfect adjustment, among other reasons, had the one in view which
is written here, “that the things which are seen have not come to pass out of
things which are apparent”. The
succeeding verses contain illustrations of this truth. Noah prepared an ark when warned of things
“not seen as yet”; Abraham, going out
“not knowing whither he went”; Moses
endured “as seeing Him Who is invisible”.
The secret of their faith was that they did not judge by outward
circumstances. They understood that the
ages were perfectly fitted together, knew they were all prepared by God, and
they relied upon His unalterable word.
Even the dispensations which are within the ages have somewhat the same
character. The dispensation of the
mystery certainly would never have been anticipated by any before its
revelation. The purpose of the ages, and
the making of the ages are both in His hands, and we rest content that it is
so.
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