"And inasmuch as it is not without the taking of an oath: by so much also hath Jesus become the Surety of a better covenant. Wherefore also He is able to save completely them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them."-HEB. vii. 20, 22, 25.
A SURETY is one who stands good for another,
that a certain engagement will be faithfully
performed. Jesus is the Surety of the New
Covenant. He stands surety with us for God--,
that God's part in the Covenant will faithfully be
performed. And He stands surety with God for
us, that our part will be faithfully performed too.
If we are to live in covenant with God, everything
depends upon our knowing aright what Jesus
secures to us. The more we know and trust Him,
the more assured will our faith be that its every
promise and every demand will be fulfilled, that
a life of faithful keeping of God's Covenant is
indeed possible, because Jesus is the Surety of the
Covenant. He makes God's faithfulness and ours
equally sure.
We read that it was because His priesthood
was confirmed by the oath of God, that He
became the Surety of a so much better Covenant.
The oath of God gives us the security that His
suretyship will secure all the better promises.
The meaning and infinite value of God's oath had
been explained in the previous chapter. "In
every dispute the oath is final for confirmation.
Wherein God, being minded to show more
abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the
immutability of His counsel, interposed with an
oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is
impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong
encouragement." We thus have not only a
Covenant, with certain definite promises; we have
not only Jesus, the Surety of the Covenant; but
at the back of that again, we have the living God,
with a view to our having perfect confidence in
the unchangeableness of His counsel and promise,
coming in between with an oath. Do we not begin
to see that the one thing God aims at in this
Covenant, and asks with regard to it, is an absolute
confidence that He is going to do all He has
promised, however difficult or wonderful it may
appear? His oath is an end of all fear or
doubt. Let no one think of understanding the
Covenant, of judging or saying what may be
expected from it, much less of experiencing its
blessings, until he meets God with an Abrahamlike
faith, that gives Him the glory, and is fully
assured that what He has promised He is able to
perform. The Covenant is a sealed mystery,
except to the soul who is going without reserve
to trust God, and abandon itself to His word and
work.
Of the work of Christ, as the Surety of the
better Covenant, our passage tells us that, because
of this priesthood confirmed by oath, He is able
to save completely those who draw near to God
through Him. And this, because "He ever liveth
to make intercession for them." As Surety of the
Covenant, He is ceaselessly engaged in watching
their needs, and presenting them to the Father,
in receiving His answer, and imparting its
blessing. It is because of this never-ceasing
mediation, receiving and transmitting from God to
us the gifts and powers of the heavenly world,
that He is able to save completely--to work and
maintain in us a salvation as complete as God is
willing it should be, as complete as the Better
Covenant has assured us it shall be, in the better
promises upon which it was established. These
promises are expounded (ch. viii. 7-13) as being
none other than those of the New Covenant of
Jeremiah, with the law written in the heart by the
Spirit of God as our experience of the power of
that salvation.
Jesus, the Surety of a better Covenant, Jesus is to be our assurance that everything connected with the Covenant is unchangeably and eternally sure. In Jesus the keynote is given of all our intercourse with God, of all our prayers and desires, of all our life and walk, that with full assurance of faith and hope we may look for every word of the Covenant to be made fully true to us by God's own power. Let us look at some of these things of which we are to be fully assured, if we are to breathe the spirit of children of the New Covenant.
There is the love of God. The very thought of
a Covenant is an alliance of friendship. And it
is as a means of assuring us of His love, of
drawing us close to His heart of love, of getting
our hearts under the power of His love, and
filled with it--it is because God loves us with an
infinite love, and wants us to know it, and to give
it complete liberty to bestow itself on us, and bless
us, that the New Covenant has been made, and
God's own Son been made its Surety. This love of
God is an infinite Divine energy, doing its utmost
to fill the soul with itself and its blessedness. Of
this love God's Son is the Messenger; of the
Covenant in which God reveals it to us He is
the Surety; let us learn that the chief need in
studying the Covenant and keeping it, in seeking
and claiming its blessings, is the exercise of a
strong and confident assurance in God's love.
Then there is the assurance of the sufficiency of
Christ's finished redemption. All that was needed
to put away sin, to free us entirely and for ever
from its power, has been accomplished by Christ.
His blood and death, His resurrection and ascension,
have taken us out of the power of the
world and transplanted us into a new life in the
power of the heavenly world. All this is Divine
reality; Christ is Surety that the Divine righteousness,
and the Divine acceptance, that all-sufficient
Divine grace and strength, are ever ours.
He is Surety that all these can and will be
communicated to us in unbroken continuance.
It is even so with the assurance of what is needed
on our part to enter into this life in the New Covenant.
We shrink back, either from the surrender
of all, because we know not whether we have the
power to let it go, or from the faith for all, because
we fear ours will never be so strong or so bold
as to take all that is offered us in this wonderful
Covenant. Jesus is Surety of a better Covenant.
The better consists just in this very thing, that it
undertakes to provide the children of the Covenant
with the very dispositions they need, to accept and
enjoy it. We have seen how the heart is just the
central object of the Covenant promise. A heart
circumcised to love God with all the heart, a heart
into which God's law and fear have been put, so
that it will not depart from Him--it is of all this
Jesus is the Surety under the oath of God. Let
us say it once more: Surely the one thing God
asks of us, and has given the Covenant and its
Surety to secure--the confident trust that all will
be done in us that is needed---is what we dare not
withhold.
I think some of us are beginning to see what
has been our great mistake. We have thought
and spoken great things of what Christ did on the
Cross, and does on the Throne, as Covenant Surety.
And we have stopped there. But we have not expected
Him to do great things in our hearts. And
yet it is there, in our heart, that the consummation
takes place of the work on the Cross and the
Throne; in the heart the New Covenant has its
full triumph; the Surety is to be known not by
what the mind can think of Him in heaven, but
by what he does to make Himself known in the
heart. There is the place where His love triumphs
and is enthroned. Let us with the heart believe
and receive Him as the Covenant Surety. Let us,
with every desire we entertain in connection with
it, with every duty it calls us to, with every
promise it holds out, look to Jesus, under God's
oath the Surety of the Covenant. Let us believe
that by the Holy Spirit the heart is His home and
His throne. Let us, if we have not done it yet, in
a definite act of faith, throw ourselves utterly on
Him, for the whole of the New Covenant life and
walk. No surety was ever so faithful to his
undertaking as Jesus will be to His on our behalf,
in our hearts.
And now, notwithstanding the strong confidence
and consolation the oath of God and the Surety of
the Covenant gives, there are some still looking
wistfully at this blessed life, and yet afraid to
trust themselves to this wondrous grace. They
have a conception of faith as something great and
mighty, and they know and feel that theirs is not
such. And so their feebleness remains an insuperable
barrier to their inheriting the promise. Let
me try and say once again: Brother, the act of
faith, by which you accept and enter this life in
the New Covenant, is not commonly an act of
power, but often of weakness and fear and much
trembling. And even in the midst of all this
feebleness, it is not an act in your strength, but in
a secret and perhaps unfelt strength, which Jesus
the Surety of the Covenant gives you. God has
made Him Surety, with the very object of inspiring
us with courage and confidence. He longs, He
delights to bring you into the Covenant. Why not
bow before Him, and say meekly: He does hear
prayer; He brings into the Covenant; He enables
a soul to believe; I may trust Him confidently.
And just begin quietly to believe that there is an
Almighty Lord, given by the Father, to do everything
needed to make all Covenant grace wholly true
in you. Bow low, and look up out of your low estate
to your glorified Lord, and maintain your confidence
that a soul, that in its nothingness trusts in Him,
will receive more than it can ask or think.
Dear believer, come and be a believer. Believe that God is showing you how entirely the Lord Jesus wants to have you and your life for Himself; how entirely He is willing to take charge of you and work all in you; how entirely you may even now commit your trust, and your surrender, and your faithfulness to the Covenant, with all you are and are to be, to Him, your Blessed Surety. If thou believest, thou shalt see the glory of God. What Christ has undertaken, you may confidently count upon His performing.
In a sense, and measure, and power that passeth knowledge, Jesus Christ is Himself all that God can either ask or give, all that God wants to see in us. "He that believeth in me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water."
