The Letter to the Hebrews

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 4 - Inheriting the Promises

It is very important that we should recognise what lies behind this letter in the mind of the Spirit, for it has an abiding message, and it is as much for the Lord's people today as it has ever been, and it is calculated to revolutionise everything for those who recognise its spiritual meaning and are made alive to that. Surely few portions of the Word of God are more calculated to do this than the letter to the Hebrews, so it is important for us to see that this letter was addressed to a people who, for a considerable period of their history, had held the position of a people whom God had taken out of the world unto Himself. God's taking of Israel out of Egypt was typically His taking of a people out of the world, and it was that they might be separated unto Himself. He made that very clear, and later, through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, he interrogated them: "Was it ever known", he said, "that God took a people out from the nations for Himself?" (A.R.V.) This was something unique, something peculiar, something which stood in an isolated place in the history of God's dealings with men. Israel had been detached, cut off from many of the peoples of the earth, that they might be distinctive and separated unto God.

This letter to the Hebrews, in the first place, is the heavenly interpretation of that history. That history was a type. The antitype, or the spiritual explanation, relates to the church, to us. John 17 makes that quite clear: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world"; "Whom Thou hast given Me out from the world". We know that the Epistles so strongly and continuously strike that note. "Risen with Christ..."; "Seated together with Christ in the heavenlies..." "Being risen together with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth". And so we could pile up the Scriptures which bear out the fact that Israel's history was a type, and that spiritual thing typified is the church's unique position: while among the nations, absolutely separate from the nations; while in the midst of the peoples of this world, yet with no connection whatever.

So this letter was an explanation to these Hebrew believers of their history. Thus the church in the heavenlies - while here on the earth, spiritually now in the heavenlies - is the thing itself of which Israel in the wilderness was the pattern. This letter, as you notice, refers to the "pattern of things in the heavens". The patterns had to be cleansed, the very heavenly things had to be cleansed. What are the things in the heavens? All that is in this letter is found in the church spiritually. All that it means to be seated together in Christ in the heavenlies is typified by patterns in Israel's history. The Church is the reality of which Israel was but the pattern. "These things...", the things which happened to them, the things which took place in their lives, were for our instruction, "upon whom the ends of the ages are come". That takes you right to the beginning of the Hebrew letter: "...has at the end of these times spoken unto us in a Son". So that all that took place before was but an earthly and passing representation of something which was abiding and heavenly in its essence, and the letter to the Hebrews takes in hand to give us the essence, and the Church is the essence of the things.

So then, these were the patterns of which we have the realities, or, if you like, of which we are the realities. The letter is written to seek to bring them to intelligence about the realities. But then there is this further fact, that this letter shows that even such a people as they were at that time, when separated by God from the world unto Himself, could make their separation an earthly and earth-bound thing. Separation unto God can become an earthly thing unless you are very careful; an earth-bound thing. That is, you may believe that Christians, the Church, is something that is not of the world, something apart from the world, something distinct, that it belongs to God, and Christians are different from worldlings, and yet that very separation unto God can become earthly and earth-bound. Is that not exactly what has happened in the history of what is called "the Church"? Israel's history has become repeated and reproduced in traditional Christianity.

Religious separation became an earthly thing, and an earth-bound thing. It became a static system on this earth, religiously. There came a point, even before the apostolic age passed, when that same course set in with the church, so that the ministry which had been purely spiritual, became ecclesiastical and official. Gatherings which had been purely spontaneous, became formal and institutional. The testimonies, which had been living, became rites, ordinances, and instead of the simple outside-of-the-world places of assembly, ecclesiastical architecture slowly crept in. The whole thing began to be, although separate from the world so far as name was concerned, yet earthly and earth-bound. And so we have it today. A great worldwide system of organised Christianity, the ministry, largely a profession, an academic thing, a class, and the whole thing has lost its essential heavenliness and spirituality. Israel's history has been repeated in Christianity.

It was to save these Hebrews from that very thing, of being God's people yet earthly and earth-bound, bound by a set, rigid system, that this letter was written. We must recognise that it is possible just to be where Israel came to be later, having been separated unto God, to carry that very separation into the realm where it is something on the earth, and where it is earth-bound.

Again and again when God has moved to get a living, spiritual, heavenly testimony in a vessel in this earth - while for a time that has been a pure, spontaneous, detached, heavenly testimony - eventually that has become a set, closed thing, hedges put up round it, something of man in his grip using it, and so on. That has very often happened. There is always that downward tendency when man gets hold of the things of God. The object of this letter was to circumvent that. These believers had come out to Christ by reason of intense persecution, and the consequent ostracism which they met in the religious world, and they were inclined to return to the recognised order of things religiously, where it would be easier. The letter is written to show what that involved. And the most terrible things in the New Testament are said in this letter to the Hebrews.

That is a necessary word by way of introduction, and it makes it possible for us to get a background which gives such intense emphasis to the appeal of this letter, and also brings out into very bold relief the thing which is the divine object for the Lord's people. It very largely defines the language of this letter.

We now take what is linked with sonship in this letter, and will seek to bear in mind all the way through that both sonship in its fuller meaning, and that with which we are now dealing, is bound up with that spiritual position on which we have been meditating, and demands it: an outside position spiritually, so far as this world is concerned. The thing which runs hand in hand with sonship in Christ is:

Heirship.

Let us look at the passages before we meditate very briefly upon them. You will be struck with the references to this very matter:

Hebrews 1:2: "Hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things...".

Hebrews 1:4: "Having become by so much better than the angels, as He hath inherited a more excellent, name than they."

Hebrews 1:14: "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?"

Hebrews 6:12: "That ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises."

Hebrews 6:17: "Wherein God, being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of His counsel".

Hebrews 11:7: "By faith Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house; through which he condemned the world, and became heir...".

Hebrews 11:8: "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance...".

Hebrews 11:9: "With Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise".

Hebrews 12:17: "For ye know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected...".

The recurrence of those words which relate to heirship surely give character to this letter, just as in every part of the Scriptures the recurrent words give the key to the message. These passages, then, have to do with heirship in Christ.

The first thing is:

The Basis of Heirship.

"God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things...". That is the foundation portion. Everything moves to and from that word 'Son'. All leads to the Son. Then everything that follows proceeds from that word 'Son'. All that is in this letter is but the showing of what is contained in that word. Everything is in Christ as Son. The whole Mosaic order in its spiritual meaning is gathered into this one word, and the spiritual values of all that are to be found in sonship.

It will not be long before we find in the letter that we who are in Christ are vitally linked with Him in the relationship of brethren, which means that we share sonship - not Deity, but sonship - in this sense. We are, according to Isaiah 53, His spiritual seed in resurrection, and therefore the birth is by the same Spirit and the same life. The Spirit which raised up Jesus from the dead, raised us up spiritually, and that Spirit of life becomes the one life in the whole family, but, mark you, the whole family heads up in that Son, and receives its life through that Son. So that the very life of the family is the life of the Son, and its character is that of sonship.

This Son is appointed heir. We are told that we are heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. The basis of heirship is sonship. Our sonship is by reason of our being in Christ Jesus. This heirship in and with Christ demands that we shall be spiritually joined to Christ where He is in heaven. The whole aspect of the letter to the Hebrews is that of Christ in heaven: "We see Jesus, crowned with glory and honour...". It is the upward look all the time. He is there; therefore our relationship is with Him there, not with anything on the earth. To put that in other words: we draw everything from the risen, ascended exalted Christ. All the life that we live here, and all the service that we do here is drawn out from Him, and all that we come into is by reason of the inward spiritual link with Him in heaven by the Holy Spirit.

Do you want to know fullness of life? Do you want to know real effectiveness of service? Do you want to know ascendancy, heavenly power? You can draw no resource from this earth for that, but if you know what it is to be inwardly by the Holy Spirit in communion with Him, in fellowship with Him, and that your knowledge is not earthly knowledge, even about the Lord, it is revelation by the Holy Spirit, and all other things are of the same character, then you have the secret. You yourself may not become anything more important in appearance or in the estimate of the world than other people. You may not become known as a famous Christian or a famous Christian worker, but there will be that about you in your life and your service which will contain the very impact of heaven, the very values of Christ in His exaltation, and the result, though people may not take much account of it at the time, will be abiding, deep, and indestructible; your labour cannot be in vain.

The apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:58 says: "Wherefore brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not vain in the Lord". That is only half the statement. It is the second half of another great statement: "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is thy victory? O death where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast..." (1 Cor. 15:54b-58a). Why? Because death has been swallowed up in victory by the Lord Jesus, and therefore it cannot touch your labours. If you are in resurrection union with the Lord Jesus, death cannot touch your labours. That is heavenly union with Christ in service. It is this heavenly union with Him who is crowned with glory and honour that makes for the power and the permanence of labours for the Lord. It is a tremendous thing to come through into that realm, and it is a great background to life.

The second thing is the fact that:

Heirship Carries with it Authority.

Hebrews 1:4: "Having become by so much better than the angels, as He hath inherited a more excellent name than they."

Hebrews 1:5: "For unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, this day have I have begotten thee?"

You follow through that chapter and it is; "Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet". That is said to the Son. We are in the Son. We have received the Spirit of God's Son, we are sharing the sonship. We are in the heavenlies in Christ. This very heirship carries with it authority. It is the authority of the Name: "He hath inherited a more excellent name than they", than the angels. Are you afraid that that is taking something out of Christ for ourselves, and that is a dangerous suggestion? I have only to turn you to Hebrews 2:5-8: "For not unto angels did He subject the inhabited earth to come, whereof we speak. But one hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that Thou makest mention of him? Or the son of man... that Thou didst put Him in charge?"

Adam was created with a view to sonship in its full sense: adoption, the placing, but Adam broke down in his probation. This question from the eighth Psalm originally applied to Adam and his calling. Adam failed and lost his dominion initially and ultimately. The Son of Man came as the last Adam, and recovered what was lost for man, so that we who are in the last Adam, the Son, are brought back by reason of sonship into the dominion, the authority. It is the authority of the Name: "...a more excellent name...". That Name is the Name which is above every name, and it was in that Name that the apostles went forth, and in that Name everything was compelled to yield to them sooner or later.

We have that Name. We are in the Name of Jesus. That puts us in a very strong position. It is not a small thing spiritually to be in the Name of the Lord Jesus. This heirship carries with it the authority of the Name.

The third thing is the fact that:

Heirship Carries with it Inheritance.

Hebrews 1:14: "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?"

All that we shall say in this connection is this, that membership of Christ carries with it heirship. These angels are ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation. That represents membership of Christ, and that membership of Christ carries with it heirship. The letter goes on to say that while membership of Christ does carry with it heir­ship, many members of Christ may never reach the inheritance. Hebrews 3 shows how it is possible even to fall in the wilderness, after having come out to the Lord, and lose the inheritance which in the Lord's mind is bound up with the very fact that we are members of Christ.

It is only necessary to point out that inheritance and heirship are not something extra to Christianity. It is not as though it were some advanced teaching, something beyond salvation, and that you can have simple salvation and the other thing is some quite extra, different thing. Membership of Christ carries this with it, and involves in responsibility for this. But it is just possible to have membership of Christ and fall short of the inheritance and that which is bound up with that membership.

We are led immediately, by what we have just said, to Hebrews 6:12: "That ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises".

What does that mean? It means that the coming to and the enjoyment of heirship is on conditions. You want to go back, of course, to the Old Testament to illustrate it. Go back to Genesis 12:1-3. You will see that that is a promise, or, if you like, they are promises. Now the promises are given quite definitely, but conditionally. If you turn to Genesis 22:1-19, you will find there the ratification of the promises. The promises made conditional; the conditions fulfilled; the promises ratified, established; the promises related to the heirship: "heir of the promises"! It is always like that. The heirship in Hebrews is conditional: "We are made partakers of Christ if we hold fast ..." "Ye have need of patience that, after ye have done the will of God, ye may receive the promise". The fullness of Christ, the inheritance, depends upon: "...be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises". Faith and patience are the conditions of heirship.

We pass over to Hebrews 6:17 and see that God is involving Himself in the faith and patience of His people. He says that "through faith and patience, as surely as I am God, you shall inherit". That is all we are going to say about that for the moment.

We now look at Hebrews 11. There are two things which come up in this chapter. Three times the word "heir" and its cognates, "inheritance" and "heirs" occurs, connected with Noah and with Abraham, and in principle, of course, it is connected with all the others in this chapter. The two things are these, that the principles of heirship are the same always. Whether you go back as far as Noah, or whether you go on to the last saint in the Christian dispensation, the principles are the same. Heirship is in view all the time. This chapter makes a remarkable declaration about these Old Testament saints. It says that they all died in faith, not having received the promises, God having some better thing for us, that they apart from us should not be made perfect, complete. That says, in other words, quite definitely, that the completeness of heirship is to be found in saints of all ages brought together in Christ. But this chapter does make perfectly clear that their faith and patience secured to them, without any question or doubt whatever, the heirship. They could not inherit then, but the inheritance was secured to them by their faith and patience. And those are the principles abiding in all ages. Heirship runs right through to the end.

The principles of heirship, faith and patience, as brought out so clearly in this chapter, are the principles of heirship in all dispensations, at all times. That is why there is this constant urge through this letter: "let us...". You notice how often that occurs: "Let us go on..."; "let us lay aside..."; "let us draw near...". It is all that persistence of faith, that "going-on" faith, and "If we cast not away the boldness of our confession...". Patience brings into the inheritance. The heirship has principles, and those principles are the same in all ages, and all the ages are gathered up in Christ, in sonship.

Lastly, we turn to Hebrews 12:17: "For ye know that even when he (Esau) afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected (for he found no place of repentance) though he sought it diligently with tears."

This chapter is seen to bring the whole force of the letter home with pointed, strong application, and uses Esau and the tragedy of his life as an instrument for bringing home the whole point of the letter. We are called with a heavenly calling, to be partakers with Christ unto sonship in the Son, as joint-heirs, unto the full inheritance. That is our birthright, but we shall not get it willy-nilly, mechanically. It will not just come to pass. It has got to be laid hold of, and all the laws that relate to it have to be observed, and, as we saw at the beginning, one of the things which is basic to all this is the heavenly and spiritual relationship of the Lord's people to Christ in ascension, in exaltation. That is a matter which really can only be understood when we come into it.

We know how it has worked in our own experience, but to try and tell others would be to run the risk of putting them on a line of action which would be purely mechanical. But when you come into it spiritually, all that is merely an earthly order of things falls away, you know yourself to have been emancipated from it all; you know yourself to be in a place of freedom with the Lord; you know that you have the Lord with you; you know that the Lord has become responsible for everything, and has taken the responsibility off your own shoulders. It is impossible to speak to others about it until they see. Spiritual things are only perceived by the spiritual, but they are far more real than anything else in the universe when you come into them.

What does all this amount to? Surely it must amount to this, that there is something, which we may but dimly see, which may sound to us like a wonderful, mystical tale, or we may just see a glimmer of its meaning. However we may see it, dimly, far away, or nearer, it is the greatest reality in God's universe, and we should, even though we may not have clearly grasped anything, go to the Lord and ask Him to make His realities as real to us as they are for us in Christ, as clear to us as ever the Holy Spirit was intended to make them clear. And if that breaks upon us, we shall be like those who have awakened from a dream, everything changed. The same, and yet different. When you come there you come into a place that you will never be able to define or explain to anybody, but you know; and then through your life, your testimony, your ministry, there is going to be a registration of the eternal and infinite forces of the exalted Christ upon the spiritual background of this world. That is where we count in the Lord.

My urge is that you ask the Lord to make this clear to you. There is such a difference (taking one instance) between a movement projected by men for the Lord, and a purely spiritual testimony making its quiet but persistent progress in the earth. Many people can never see the difference between the movement of a spiritual testimony, and what they call "a movement", and you know what people mean by "a movement".

The Lord lead us all into all that fullness of Christ which is yet for us.