The Letter to the Hebrews

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 2 - Our Calling in Christ

The letter to the Hebrews has, as one of its main themes, sonship in Christ, I say one of its main themes, because the supremacy of the Lord Jesus is the primary note, but, as running parallel with that, this also is one of the main themes of the letter. That is what is indicated, and implied, or meant by the phrase with which Hebrews 3 commences: "...holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling...". Our calling is to sonship in Christ, in the full meaning of that word 'sonship': the placing, positioning of sons on attainment to majority; the place of honour in the House of God.

So that we place at the head of our meditation the phrase:

Our Calling in Christ.

I would like you to link with that clause in Hebrews 3:1 a fragment from Hebrews 1:9: "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows", or companions; it is that last clause: "thy fellows". Now with that join another fragment from Hebrews 3:14: "For we are become partakers with Christ...". Those fragments are linked with: "...holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling". You see how the idea is a complete one, and it is with that complete idea that we proceed through this letter. With the thought of sonship in Christ before us, we go back to the beginning of the letter and start our course through it.

The Inclusive Sphere of Our Calling
(Heb. 1:1 - 2:18)

This section deals with the Lord Jesus as the Son. We are told at the outset that God in many parts and in many ways of old spoke in the prophets unto the fathers, but at the end of these days He has spoken unto us in a Son. That introduces the whole subject of sonship. From that point onward it is a discussion of the Sonship of the Lord Jesus, His divine Person - "the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His substance", or, the exact expression of His substance.

His function - "...upholding all things by the word of His power...".

His mediatorial activity - "...when He had by Himself made purification of our sins...".

His heavenly position - "...sat down on the right hand of the majesty in the heights...".

A contrast with angels- "...so much better than the angels."

Inheritance -"He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."

What follows is the contrast with the angels, how sonship is superior to angels, and His Sonship especially. So that the inclusive sphere of our calling to sonship is Christ, the Son.

Of course, that would come with peculiar force to the people to whom this letter was written; much more so than to us.

All the rest of the letter is one comprehensive argument that the Lord Jesus has embraced in His own Person the whole of the Jewish system, and has transcended it. The words 'much more', 'better', and such like always point to the transcendence of the Lord Jesus over everything in the Mosaic economy, and yet in Him it is all gathered up. The purpose of the letter, as we know, was to bring these Hebrews wholly and utterly out of what was partial, imperfect, fragmentary, and very largely passing and transient as to the form of its expression, to the full, the complete, the perfect, the final, the eternal; and that is all in Christ. Even with these Hebrews, it is shown in this letter that their history far back in the days of Moses and Aaron had behind it the same principles as are behind the Christian position; that is, God was typically moving with them toward a consummate end, and that end was typically what the spiritual end is of believers in Christ: sonship.

The land of promise, with all that it contained, was but a type of the inheritance in Christ, with all the riches that are in Christ, and all the fullness of Christ - God's end for His ancient people. But they did not enter wholly into their inheritance. The first generation failed, the second generation did not attain unto God's whole thought. It was a typical thing, and so you find that in these early chapters, as we shall see in the next section, the thought is always pointing on to Christ. Christ gathers up the fragments of the past, the diversity of times and manners, and includes them all in Himself, and the one thing toward which everything is pointing is this original thought of God: sonship in Christ. He is the inclusive sphere of the heavenly calling. When we come into Christ we come into the sphere of all that is meant by sonship, inheritance, and everything else, but we only come, as it were, to the border of the land. We are in the land, but only on the border. The course of spiritual history is to go in, and ever in, to possess, to make all that is there as to inheritance ours, by the appropriation of faith.

The difficulty is, with many, that they only enter into Christ and do not possess all that is theirs in Christ. So they remain children, on the fringe of the land, and do not attain unto the adoption of sons, where they are placed in the position of honour, having attained and graduated. Read again this section with that thought before you, that it presents Christ as the inclusive sphere of the heavenly calling.

Responsibility in Relation to the Heavenly Calling
(Heb. 3:1 - 4:16)

In this section Moses is introduced, and that which is referred to in his connection, in the first place, is his faithfulness as a servant in God's House. The movement is now from the servant in God's House to the Son over God's House. You recognise the movement right through the letter is with the word 'son'. You find the word 'if' throughout, and it does not relate to our salvation, but to our sonship, our heavenly calling. That 'if' you find in verses 5-6. Then the 'if' is developed (verses 7-12), and this whole section, if you follow it through with such words as at the beginning of what is chapter 4 in this arrangement: "Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it", brings before us our responsibility in relation to the heavenly calling. The responsibility is to go on to all that God has purposed in Christ for us, and it is a very great responsibility.

God did everything that could be done from His side for Israel, in order to bring them into His full purpose. No one could ever say that God left anything undone in order that they might attain unto the fullness of their heavenly calling. When God had done everything that could be done, the responsibility rested upon them. There was their side, and it was because they did not act on their part in responsibility for the heavenly calling that they never came into it.

That is carried over to us. Here is a heavenly calling. God has done everything from His side that we should come into all that is meant by the adoption as sons, and when God has done all that He can do, the thing turns back upon us, and we have to take a responsibility in relation to it. Our response is simply to go on into what God has provided, what God has secured, and what God has purposed, unto all that which God Himself has so surely wrought out already on our behalf. Going back to Israel again, we are familiar with the fact that before ever God said anything about possessing the land, He said that He had given it. He always exhorted to possession on the ground that He had already given. So that it was not a matter of securing in the first instance, it was a matter of appropriating. And the thing for which we are responsible is faith's appropriation. The works have been finished from the foundation of the world. We are called to walk in them. The solemn warning is given here, that it is possible to be in Christ and to have come into the heavenly calling to the fullness of Christ, and yet miss all that for which we were called. The calling only commences with salvation. Shall I say that eternal salvation is only the initial step of the heavenly calling? We are called into all the fullness of Christ.

We must ever remember that there are two sides to that. There is the side of our privilege, the great blessing conferred upon us all, that we may inherit. But there is the other side, that God has purposed that that should be the way in which He secures what His heart is set upon, and what is necessary and essential to Him for His own eternal glory. We have an inheritance, which is spoken of throughout this letter, but God has an inheritance. God's inheritance is not found merely in saved souls. God's inheritance is found in those who have gone on to the fullness of Christ.

What is God's inheritance in the saints? It is that they provide for Him the ground of the universal display of His fullness. That is the Ephesians letter, of course, the Church, the Body of Christ, is to be the fullness of Him that fills all in all. That is God's inheritance in the saints.

The High Priest of Our Calling
(Heb. 5:1 - 7:28)

Note again the references to the Son:

Hebrews 5:5: "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee...".
Hebrews 5:8: "Though He were a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered...".
Hebrews 6:6: "...seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame".
Hebrews 7:3: "Without father, without mother, without genealogy... but made like unto the Son of God".
Hebrews 7:28: "...a Son, perfected for evermore".

The inclusive thought of this section is that which governs the transition from Aaron to Melchizedek, in order to reach Christ. The argument is that the Aaronic priesthood cannot fully measure up to Christ, and Christ cannot fit into the Aaronic priesthood perfectly. He is too big for it. It serves a purpose, but it is altogether too small. Then He does not fit into it for another reason, that He was not of the tribe of Levi. The statement is that if Christ had been on earth, He could not be a priest, since He came out of Judah, and there is nothing said about priesthood in Judah. So that Christ does not fit into this earthly thing.

Then the argument again is along another line, that the Aaronic priesthood was a thing which was imperfect in two ways. Firstly, the priests had to offer sacrifices for their own sins, and Christ does not fit into that. Secondly, the priests died before they had made anything perfect, and one priest succeeded another. The predecessor had not perfected his work when he died, so a successor had to come, and then another, and then another, and the whole course of that priesthood never reached finality. Christ does not fit into that.

So it is necessary to move from the Aaronic priesthood to something far bigger, and the movement here is from Aaron to Melchizedek, and Melchizedek as a type goes far beyond Aaron and Aaron's sons. He goes beyond Aaron as a king. He is king of Salem, that is, king of Peace. He goes beyond the earth and beyond time: "Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God...". And then that fragment which is so often used for gospel purposes to the unsaved, but in so doing is taken somewhat out of its right connection: "Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost...". That, in its right connection, has to do with the priesthood of the Lord Jesus, which never dies, which never ends, but which goes right through to a perfect and final work, and He is able to save right on to the end, to perfection, to finality; it is that kind of Priest that Christ is. And within all that that represents of heavenliness, spirituality, timelessness, kingliness, finality, fullness, in every sense, within that which is all gathered up into Christ as Son, we have our calling. The calling to sonship is within that magnificent range. The redemptive, atoning, mediatorial work necessary to realise all God's purpose in sonship has been accomplished. How full, comprehensive and universal is the work of this Priest! Not a thing of fragments, not a thing imperfect, not a thing of earth, but endless, heavenly, complete! That is the background of our calling unto sonship. It is because of that that there is a fullness of sonship to be realised in Christ.

Before we pass on there is another thing to be noted in this connection: "For as touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame. For the land which hath drunk the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receiveth blessing from God. But if it beareth thorns and thistles, it is rejected and nigh unto a curse; whose end is to be burned" (Hebrews 6:4-8).

It is necessary to read that in the whole of its context, through Hebrews 5 right on through Hebrews 6 to Hebrews 7:28. If you take that out you will be confused and get into trouble, but if you notice that it is the Son and sonship which is the background, you will recognise that it is not the question of salvation. It is the question of the inheritance, of the full purpose of salvation. It throws us back to that earlier section where very strong things are said about that generation which fell in the wilderness. That generation in the wilderness typically entered into the things here mentioned. That generation knew in type what is here. They were enlightened, tasted of the heavenly gift, were partakers of the Holy Ghost, tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the age to come. In type they had all that. They were enlightened; there was light in their dwellings when there was darkness in Egypt. They had made known unto them God's purpose, God's will. They tasted of the heavenly gift, when they ate of the Passover that night. They were partakers of the Holy Ghost when the pillar of cloud and fire became the governing reality of their lives. They tasted of the word of God; they had the oracles. They knew something of the power of the age to come. There were foreshadowings in their history of what was in store, in the miracles that God wrought for them, as well as in the great judgements which they saw in Egypt. In type they had all these things, and then fell away, and God said concerning them: "They shall not enter into My rest", and their carcasses fell in the wilderness. Are we to say that that took them back again behind the blood? That that necessarily cancelled their redemption? That related to all that God had in spirit for them, and it was not their salvation, but their rest. They never had the fullness of Christ which was represented by that Sabbath rest. All their repentance (and they did repent) never recovered that.

Esau is drawn in in this book. He sought to recover his forfeited birthright with tears, deep repentance, but he never got it. That is a very solemn word.

This section must be read closely in relation to the whole context, otherwise you miss the point. It is sonship in its fullest meaning, adoption as sons, which is in view. It is the inheritance.

The Nature and Basis of the Heavenly Calling
(Heb. 8:1 - 10:18)

The nature and the basis of the heavenly calling is the new covenant in the blood of Jesus, the blood of God's Son.

Hebrews 8:6: "...now hath He obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also He is the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon better promises".
Hebrews 8:9: "Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers for they continued not in My covenant".
Hebrews 8:10: "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days...".
Hebrews 8:13: "In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old".
Hebrews 9:1: "Now even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service...".
Hebrews 9:13-15: "For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause He is the mediator of a new covenant...".
Hebrews 10:16: "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord...".

It is quite clear that the new covenant is the thing which comes in with this section, and it presents the nature and the basis of the heavenly calling. The nature of the new covenant is that inward revelation of God in Christ, where things have changed from the externalities of commandments and ordinances, to the inward and subjective revelation by the Holy Spirit of the mind of God, and the ways of God. That is the new covenant and that has been brought in through the blood of Jesus, and it is established, ratified, by that blood; the new covenant is by the blood of Jesus. The power of the new covenant is the blood of Jesus.

The Practical Outworking of Our Calling in Christ
(Heb. 10:19 - 13:25)

This section is far too detailed to be dealt with fully. We can just hint at things here, and you must read it carefully for yourselves. You will see that the whole section is occupied with an urge, an exhortation to move by faith toward the inheritance.

"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a great priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith".

That exhortation takes various forms, but the sense of it is carried on to the end, that is, the expression of faith in obedience and action. I have only to remind you that this section includes chapter 11, to convince you that that is what is here. Hebrews 11 is the chapter of faith pressing on, and it is always the inheritance in view. It is BY FAITH! It is saved people; it is God's people. It is not God's people hoping that by energy and persistence they are going to make sure of salvation. That is not the point at all. It is that by this pressing on, even at the cost of everything, they should reach the inheritance. It is the outworking of a calling.

You notice that these were all called people; called unto a heavenly calling. They were going to make their calling and their election sure, and so at all costs (and the costs were very great in almost every case) they are going to work out their salvation, to attain unto the purpose of their salvation. So that this final section is the practical outworking of the calling, that is, faith's obedience. It is faith pressing on. It is faith energetic to possess. Read the section, and see entreaties, exhortations, warnings given; but all with one thing in view, and that is the calling to sonship in Christ, with all that that means; as fellow-heirs, joint-heirs with Christ, to share all the fullness that God has placed in Him.

The last part, then, over against the first, is: Make sure of it! It does, surely, at least put this extra stress upon the fact that the New Testament - if not the whole of the Scriptures - makes a very great deal of something after you are saved. It is a great thing to be saved, but it is a far greater thing that we must recognise, and it is that far greater thing that is in our salvation, that the Lord wants us to know and to enter into. It is all that we are saved unto, and not only what we are saved for. The more we apprehend of the fullness of salvation, surely the stronger will be our note with the unsaved. The bigger salvation is with us, the more we shall seek to lead others to the knowledge of the Lord. There is nothing to be lost in evangelism by having a larger apprehension of Christ. The people who know most of the Lord ought to be the people - and are, if they have a right kind of knowledge of the Lord - who are most concerned about the salvation of the unsaved. That may be a challenge to us.

However, all this does say, so forcefully, that the Lord puts a tremendous emphasis upon what comes after salvation, that is, as to its initial steps. May we be able to see His emphasis, accept it, and go on to fullness in Christ.