Hebrews 7:14-24 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood.… Such is the nature of that life which Christ came to secure for the children of men. It is life, and life in its noblest sense — glorious, divine, eternal — in comparison with which all we have known of existence in this world is but a dream. The power of such a life! Life endless, unchangeable, save only from accumulating glory; perpetual in its freshness and boundless in its infinitude for ever and ever! It is this glory which is held out for our attainment. We who are here even in the death of trespasses and sins, are invited to seek it. It was to secure for us such a life, and to redeem us from the cause of death, that Christ came. He was made, not after the law of a carnal commandment — that is say, one that had merely to do with the body and with time. He was constituted, not for any temporary purpose, but in accordance with the plan of an eternal salvation. "The power of an endless life" — what is it? 1. It is a perfect life. They who enter upon it are without fault before the throne of God. There is no sin, no defilement, no spot, nor wrinkle, nor fear of evil. 2. This endless life is a social life. All the communicative and compaionable tendencies of our nature and powers of our being will be exercised in an enjoyment intensified by being shared with the beatific experience of others. The sight of others in glory will be infinite icy, a study of salvation, a rapture of delight. There will be the good and the holy of all .gee and all worlds to love and rejoice with. There will be communion with Christ, sweeter than on the way to Emmaus, more frank and more loving than it hath entered the heart of man to imagine. There will be revealed to all the principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God in the salvation of man. There will be mutual study, nothing solitary, nothing exclusive, no need of guardian forms of courtesies, nor any distant or reserved civilities — no sense either of superiority or inferiority — all pride, jealousy, distrust, and envy, can find no entrance there. Divine love is the atmosphere of heaven; its blessed inhabitants dwell in love, for they dwell in God, and God is love; and in sweet forgetfulness of self, the happiness of others is as dear and delightful to each as their own. 3. It is a progressive life. The power of an endless life! The idea is truly magnificent. The idea of a life of an antediluvian — a life of a thousand years — is grand and imposing. What an accumulation of impulse and of power from generation to generation! But a thousand years are as one day in the arithmetic of an endless life. Our plans on earth are contracted, fragmentary, broken, and incomplete; but in the infinitude of eternal existence there will be nothing to prevent the execution of schemes encompassing all ages and all worlds. The understanding will be divinely illumined, the memory retentive and capacious. (1) There will be progression in holiness — we mean in the power of holy habit. Perfect in the righteousness of Christ, there can be no improvement in the legal qualification for heaven; but as star differeth from star in glory, so in the reflection of that glory, which will be brighter and brighter as the soul knows more and more of the holiness and character of God. (2) There will be progression in knowledge. For this there will be boundless room throughout eternity. What heart can conceive, what mind can measure, even in imagination, the infinite riches of the Creator's wisdom and love! And thus the power of an endless life will progress in delight, in joy, in happiness unutterable, inconceivable. For ever increasing with the increase of the knowledge of God in Christ, ages on ages shall witness an undiminished freshness and novelty in the glory still to be revealed, a capacity of bliss for ever enlarging, and a volume of pleasure for ever accumulating. The joy arising from a sense of the love of God can have no limit — nay, must be, in the nature of things, positively and eternally progressive. The experience of a dying servant of God, recorded not long since, was in these words: "This is heaven begun. I have done with darkness for ever. Satan is vanquished. Nothing now remains but salvation with glory — eternal glory." This was of God. It is His smile, His presence, His love, that cheers the pilgrim through the valley. (G. B. Cheerer.) Parallel Verses KJV: For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood. |
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