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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Hebrews 12:22

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But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

22. unto mount Sion ] The true Sion is the anti-type of all the promises with which the name had been connected (Psa 2:6; Psa 48:2; Psa 78:68-69; Psa 125:1; Joe 2:32; Mic 4:7). Hence the names of Sion and “the heavenly Jerusalem” are given to “the city of the living God” (Gal 4:26; Rev 21:2). Sinai and Mount Sion are contrasted with each other in six particulars. Bengel and others make out an elaborate sevenfold antithesis here.

to an innumerable company of angels ] This punctuation is suggested by the word “myriads,” which is often applied to angels (Deu 33:2; Psa 68:17; Dan 7:10). But under the New Covenant the Angels are surrounded with attributes, not of terror but of beauty and goodness (Heb 1:14; Rev 5:11-12).

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

But ye are come unto Mount Sion – You who are Christians; all who are under the new dispensation. The design is to contrast the Christian dispensation with the Jewish. and to show that its excellencies and advantages were far superior to the religion of their fathers. It had more to win the affections; more to elevate the soul; more to inspire with hope. It had less that was terrific and alarming; it appealed less to the fears and more to the tropes of mankind; but still apostasy from this religion could not be less terrible in its consequences than apostasy from the religion of Moses. In the passage before us, the apostle evidently contrasts Sinai with Mount Zion, and means to say that there was more about the latter that was adapted to win the heart and to preserve allegiance than there was about the former. Mount Zion literally denoted the Southern hill in Jerusalem, on which a part of the city was built.

That part of the city was made by David and his successors the residence of the court, and soon the name Zion, was given familiarly to the whole city. Jerusalem was the center of religion in the land; the place where the temple stood, and where the worship of God was celebrated, and where God dwelt by a visible symbol, and it became the type and emblem of the holy abode where He dwells in heaven. It cannot be literally meant here that they had come to the Mount Zion in Jerusalem, for that was as true of the whole Jewish people as of those whom the apostle addressed, but it must mean that they had come to the Mount Zion of which the holy city was an emblem; to the glorious mount which is revealed as the dwelling-place of God, of angels, of saints. That is, they had come to this by the revelations and hopes of the gospel. They were not indeed literally in heaven, nor was that glorious city literally on earth, but the dispensation to which they had been brought was what conducted them directly up to the city of the living God, and to the holy mount where he dwelt above. The view was not confined to an earthly mountain enveloped in smoke and flame, but opened at once on the holy place where God abides. By the phrase, ye are come, the apostle means that this was the characteristic of the new dispensation that it conducted them there, and that they were already in fact inhabitants of that glorious city. They were citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem (compare note, Phi 3:20), and were entitled to its privileges.

And unto the city of the living God – The city where the living God dwells – the heavenly Jerusalem; compare notes on Heb 11:10. God dwelt by a visible symbol in the temple at Jerusalem – and to that his people came under the old dispensation. In a more literal and glorious sense his abode is in heaven, and to that his people have now come.

The heavenly Jerusalem – Heaven is not unfrequently represented as a magnificent city where God and angels dwelt; and the Christian revelation discloses this to Christians as certainly their final home. They should regard themselves already as dwellers in that city, and live and act as if they saw its splendor and partook of its joy. In regard to this representation of heaven as a city where God dwells, the following places may be consulted: Heb 11:10, Heb 11:14-16; Heb 12:28; Heb 13:14; Gal 4:26; Rev 3:12; Rev 21:2, 10-27. It is true that Christians have not yet seen that city by the physical eye, but they look to it with the eye of faith. It is revealed to them; they are permitted by anticipation to contemplate its glories, and to feel that it is to be their eternal home. They are permitted to live and act as if they saw the glorious God whose dwelling is there, and were already surrounded by the angels and the redeemed. The apostle does not represent them as if they were expecting that it would be visibly set up on the earth, but as being now actually dwellers in that city, and bound to live and act as if they were amidst its splendors.

And to an innumerable company of angels – The Greek here is, to myriads (or ten thousands) of angels in an assembly or joyful convocation. The phrase tens of thousands is often used to denote a great and indefinite number. The word rendered general assembly, Heb 12:22 – paneguris – refers properly to an assembly, or convocation of the whole people in order to celebrate any public festival or solemnity, as the public games or sacrifices; Robinsons Lexicon. It occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and refers here to the angels viewed as assembled around the throne of God and celebrating his praises. It should be regarded as connected with the word angels, referring to their convocation in heaven, and not to the church of the first-born. This construction is demanded by the Greek. Our common translation renders it as if it were to be united with the church – to the general assembly and church of the first-born; but the Greek will not admit of this construction.

The interpretation which unites it with the angels is adopted now by almost all critics, and in almost all the editions of the New Testament. On the convocation of angels, see the notes on Job 1:6. The writer intends, doubtless, to contrast that joyful assemblage of the angels in heaven with those who appeared in the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. God is always represented as surrounded by hosts of angels in heaven; see Deu 33:2; 1Ki 22:19; Dan 7:10; Psa 68:17; compare notes, Heb 12:1; see also Rev 5:11; Mat 26:53; Luk 2:13. The meaning is, that under the Christian dispensation Christians in their feelings and worship become united to this vast host of holy angelic beings. it is, of course, not meant that they are visible, but they are seen by the eye of faith. The argument here is, that as, in virtue of the Christian revelation, we become associated with those pure and happy spirits, we should not apostatize from such a religion, for we should regard it as honorable and glorious to be identified with them.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Verse 22. But ye are come unto mount Sion] In order to enter fully into the apostle’s meaning, we must observe,

1. That the Church, which is called here the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and mount Sion, is represented under the notion of a CITY.

2. That the great assembly of believers in Christ is here opposed to the congregation of the Israelites assembled at Mount Sinai.

3. That the innumerable company of angels is here opposed to, those angels by whom the law was ushered in, Ac 7:53; Ga 3:19.

4. That the Gospel first-born, whose names are written in heaven, are here opposed to the enrolled first-born among the Israelites, Ex 24:5; Ex 19:22.

5. That the mediator of the new covenant, the Lord Jesus, is here opposed to Moses, the mediator of the old.

6. And that the blood of sprinkling, of Christ, our High Priest, refers to the act of Moses, Ex 24:8: “And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.”

1. The description in these verses does not refer to a heavenly state; for the terrible nature of the Mosaic dispensation is never opposed to heaven or life eternal, but to the economy of the New Testament.

2. In heaven there is no need of a mediator, or sprinkling of blood; but these are mentioned in the state which the apostle describes.

The heavenly Jerusalem] This phrase means the Church of the New Testament, as Schoettgen has amply proved in his dissertation on this subject.

To an innumerable company of angels] . To myriads, tens of thousands, of angels. These are represented as the attendants upon God, when he manifests himself in any external manner to mankind. When he gave the law at Mount Sinai, it is intimated that myriads of these holy beings attended him. “The chariots of the Lord are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels; the Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the holy place;” Ps 68:17. And when he shall come to judge the world, he will be attended with a similar company. “Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;” Da 7:10. In both these cases, as in several others, these seem to be, speaking after the manner of men, the body guard of the Almighty. Though angels make a part of the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem, yet they belong also to the Church below. Christ has in some sort incorporated them with his followers, for “they are all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation,” and they are all ever considered as making a part of God’s subjects.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

The Spirit now adds the privilege of Christians in the better state to which they have access by the gospel dispensation, Heb 12:22-24; Ye have left those hinderances and disadvantages instanced in before, but are come to these helps for yonr furtherance in holiness; ye have an access to all those most excellent, though invisible, things, by faith, and by it attain them, and are incorporated into them, as they follow.

But ye are come unto mount Sion: this is not literally to be understood for the mount on which the city of David was built, for that was as visible and touchable as Mount Sinai, to which it is opposed; but that mount which is higher than the highest, as high as heaven itself, Heb 12:25; 9:24; Joh 3:13; where is the most orderly government of God for holiness, Mic 4:7; whence all good gifts and gospel blessings are conveyed to the church, of which these believers were members, Isa 8:18; 28:16; 59:20; Rev 14:1.

And unto the city of the living God; of which the living God is the Builder and Maker, and wherein he dwelleth, where nothing but life is, and whence Christs voice giveth life to dead souls, enabling them to live a life of holiness to God, as Psa 46:4,5; 48:1,8; 87:3; Isa 40:14; Joh 5:25. To distinguish this from any earthly city or corporation, it is said to be

the heavenly Jerusalem, its original, nature, and end being all heavenly; a fruitful place, whence believers are made partakers of the most spiritual influences for holiness; where there is nothing carnal, terrible, deadly, barren, but all causal and productive of holiness issueth thence, Isa 42:1-25; 65:17-19; 66:10; Joh 17:24 Gal 4:26; Rev 3:12; 21:2,10.

And to an innumerable company of angels; in which city are many excellent inhabitants with whom believers are incorporated, and to whom they have relation, as myriads of angels, who are ministering spirits under the gospel, as under the law, full of holiness, power, agility, and endowments, fit for their work and end; who, though for number are thousands and millions of them, Psa 68:17; 103:20; 104:4; Act 7:53; Gal 3:19; Rev 5:11, yet are all fulfilling their Lords pleasure in every place, as ordered by him. Their ministration of the law was terrible in flaming fire, but of the gospel, most sweet and gracious, Luk 2:13,14. At Sinai they ministered externally and sensibly, affecting senses; but from Sion they minister spiritually, to hearts, Mat 4:11; Luk 22:43; Psa 91:11, resisting evil spirits ministering wickedly. Their ministry little effectual under the law; but under the gospel, saving, Act 7:53; Heb 1:14; Rev 19:10. Their former ministration temporary and ceasing, but this everlasting, till they bring all their trust into Abrahams bosom, Luk 16:22. They are promoting holiness by Gods sending things to us by them, and by their observing the goings and doings of Christians, whether holy or not, 1Co 11:10, and giving an account of the success of their ministry towards them, as to this end, Mat 18:10. And the neglect of this means to help our pursuing holiness, will God require, Heb 2:2.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

22, 23. to an innumerable company ofangels, to the general assembly and churchThe city ofGod having been mentioned, the mention of its citizens follows.Believers being like the angels (Job 1:6;Job 38:7), “sons of God,”are so their “equals” (Lu20:36); and being reconciled through Christ, are adopted intoGod’s great and blessed family. For the full completion of this wepray (Mt 6:10). EnglishVersion arrangement is opposed: (1) by “and” alwaysbeginning each new member of the whole sentence; (2) “generalassembly and Church,” form a kind of tautology; (3) “generalassembly,” or rather, “festal full assembly,””the jubilant full company” (such as were the Olympicgames, celebrated with joyous singing, dancing, c.), applies betterto the angels above, ever hymning God’s praises, than to theChurch, of which a considerable part is now militant on earth.Translate therefore, “to myriads (ten thousands, compare Deu 33:2Psa 68:17; Dan 7:10;Jdg 1:14; namely), the full festalassembly of angels, and the Church of the first-born.” Angelsand saints together constitute the ten thousands. Compare “allangels, all nations” Mat 25:31;Mat 25:32. Messiah ispre-eminently “the First-born,” or “First-begotten”(Heb 1:6), and all believersbecome so by adoption. Compare the type, Num 3:12;Num 3:45; Num 3:50;1Pe 1:18. As the kingly andpriestly succession was in the first-born, and as Israel was God’s”first-born” (Ex 4:22;compare Ex 13:2), and a “kingdomof priests” to God (Ex 19:6),so believers (Re 1:6).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

But ye are come unto Mount Sion,…. The Alexandrian copy reads, as in Heb 12:18 “for ye are not come”; which may seem to favour that interpretation of this passage, which refers it to the heavenly state; to which saints, in this present life, are not, as yet, come: but, by “Mount Sion”, and the other names here given, is meant the church of God, under the Gospel dispensation, to which the believing Hebrews were come; in distinction from the legal dispensation, signified by Mount Sinai, from which they were delivered: and this is called Mount Sion, because, like that, it is beloved of God; chosen by him; and is the place of his habitation; here his worship is, and his word and ordinances are administered; here he communes with his people, and distributes his blessings and this, as Mount Sion, is a perfection of beauty the joy of the whole earth; is strongly fortified by divine power, and is immovable; and is comparable to that mountain, for its height and holiness: and to come to Sion is to become a member of a Gospel church, and partake of the ordinances, enjoy the privileges, and perform the duties belonging to it:

and unto the city of the living God; the Gospel church is a city, built on Christ, the foundation; and is full of habitants, true believers, at least it will be, in the latter day; it is pleasantly situated by the river of God’s love, and by the still waters of Gospel ordinances; it is governed by wholesome laws, of Christ’s enacting, and is under proper officers, of his appointing; and is well guarded by watchmen, which he has set upon the walls of it; and it is endowed with many privileges, as access to God, freedom from the arrests of justice, and from condemnation, adoption, and a right to the heavenly inheritance: and this may be called “the city of God”, because it is of his building, and here he dwells, and protects, and defends it; and who is styled “the living God”, to distinguish him from the idols of the Gentiles, which are lifeless and inanimate, no other than sticks and stones.

The heavenly Jerusalem: the church of God goes by the name of Jerusalem often, both in the Old and in the New Testament; with which it agrees in its name, which signifies the vision of peace, or they shall see peace: Christ, the King of it, is the Prince of peace; the members of it are sons of peace, who enjoy a spiritual peace now, and an everlasting one hereafter: like that, it is compact together, consisting of saints, cemented together in love, in the order and fellowship of the Gospel; and is well fortified, God himself, and his power, being all around it, and having salvation, for walls and bulwarks, and being encamped about by angels; and it is a free city, being made so by Christ, and, through him, enjoying the liberty of grace now, and having a title to the liberty of glory in the world to come; as Jerusalem was, it is the object of God’s choice, the palace of the great King, and the place of divine worship: it is called “heavenly”, to distinguish it from the earthly Jerusalem; and to express the excellency of it, as well as to point out its original: the members of it are from heaven, being born from above; their conversation is now in heaven; and they are designed for that place; and its doctrines and ordinances are all from thence.

And to an innumerable company of angels; which are created spirits, immaterial and immortal; very knowing, and very powerful; and swift to do the will of God; they are holy, and immutably so, being the elect of God, and confirmed by Christ: and saints now are brought into a state of friendship with them; and into the same family; and are social worshippers with them; and they have access into heaven, where angels are; and with whom they shall dwell for ever: and, in the present state of things, they share the benefit and advantages of their kind offices; who have, sometimes, provided food for their bodies; healed their diseases; directed and preserved them on journeys; prevented outward calamities; delivered them out of them, when in danger; restrained things hurtful, and cut off their enemies: and, with regard to things spiritual they have, sometimes, made known the mind and will of God unto the saints; have comforted them under their distresses; helped them against Satan’s temptations; are present at their death, and carry their souls to glory; and will gather the saints together, at the last day: and, as to the number of them, they are innumerable; they are the armies of heaven; and there is a multitude of the heavenly host; there are more than twelve legions of angels; their number is ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands: and this makes both for the glory and majesty of God, whose attendants they are; and for the comfort and safety of saints, to whom they minister, and about whom they encamp: a like phrase is used in the Apocrypha:

“Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever the moveable powers were established, before the innumerable multitude of angels were gathered together,” (2 Esdras 6:3)

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

But (). Sharp contrast to verse 18 with same form .

Unto Mount Zion ( ). Dative case of , as with the other substantives. In contrast to Mount Sinai (verses 18-21). Paul has contrasted Mount Sinai (present Jerusalem) with the Jerusalem above (heaven) in Ga 4:21-31.

City (). As in Heb 11:10; Heb 11:16. Heaven is termed thus a spiritual mountain and city.

The heavenly Jerusalem ( ). See Heb 11:10; Heb 11:16; Isa 60:14.

Innumerable hosts of angels ( ). “Myriads of angels.” is an old word (from , 1Co 4:15) as in Lu 12:1.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

The heavenly Jerusalem. See on Gal 4:26. The spiritual mountain and city where God dwells and reigns. Comp. Dante Inf 1:128 : “Quivi e la sua cittade, e l’alto seggio.” 242 Comp. Psa 2:6; Psa 48:2, 3; Psa 50:2; Psa 78:68; Psa 110:2; Isa 18:7; Joe 2:32; Mic 4:1, 2; Amo 1:2.

To an innumerable company of angels (muriasin ajggelwn). On this whole passage (22 – 24) it is to be observed that it is arranged in a series of clauses connected by kai. Accordingly muriasin to myriads or tens of thousands stands by itself, and panhgurei festal assembly goes with ajggelwn angels. Muriav (see Luk 12:1; Act 19:19; Rev 5:11; quite often in LXX) is strictly the number ten thousand. In the plural, an innumerable multitude. So A. V. here. Rend. “to an innumerable multitude,” placing a comma after muriasin, and connecting of angels with the next clause. This use of muriasin without a qualifying genitive is justified by numerous examples. See Gen 24:60; Deu 32:30; Deu 33:2; 1Sa 18:7, 8; Psa 90:7; Son 5:10; Dan 7:10; Dan 11:12; Sir. 47 6; 2 Macc. 8 20; Jude 1:14. Ciliadev thousands is used in the same way. See IsaLXX 22; Dan 7:10

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “But ye are come unto Mount Sion,” (alla proseleluthate zion crei) “But you all have approached to (toward) Mount Zion,” you have come face to face with, are confronted with, the New Zion (city of God); The new covenant, is the idea being presented, in contrast with the Sinai law covenant.

2) “And unto the city of the living God,” (kai polei theou zontos) “Even to a city of the living God,” a dwelling place, where God in Christ abides, and his spirit indwells; He promised to be with and dwell or abide in his church forever, Mat 28:20; Joh 14:15-17; and he still does, Rev 1:12-13; Rev 1:20.

3) “The heavenly Jerusalem,” (ierousalem epouranio) “To or toward (facing) an heavenly Jerusalem,” Gal 4:26-27; Rev 3:12; the New Jerusalem that is the church, the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, that shall be the center of all light, worship, fellowship, service and praise in the New Heaven and New Earth, Rev 21:2; Rev 21:9-10.

4) “And to an innumerable company of angels,” (kai muriasin angelon) “Even to myriads of angels; This myriad of angels which the brethren of this book of Hebrews had approached was and is that unnumbered, unseen host of angels sent forth to be ministers to those who have an heir-setting of salvation, to rule and reign with Christ on this earth, as affirmed Heb 1:14; Rev 5:9-10; Luk 22:28-30; Eph 3:21.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

22. Unto mount Sion, etc. He alludes to those prophecies in which God had formerly promised that his Gospel should thence go forth, as in Isa 2:1, and in other places. Then he contrasts mount Sion with mount Sinai; and he further adds, the heavenly Jerusalem, and he expressly calls it heavenly, that the Jews might not cleave to that which was earthly, and which had flourished under the Law; for when they sought perversely to continue under the slavish yoke of the Law, mount Sion was turned into mount Sinai as Paul teaches us in the Gal 4:21 of the Epistle to the Galatians. Then by the heavenly Jerusalem he understood that which was to be built throughout the whole world, even as the angel, mentioned by Zechariah, extended his line from the east even to the west.

To an innumerable company of angels, etc. He means that we are associated with angels, chosen into the ranks of patriarchs, and placed in heaven among all the spirits of the blessed, when Christ by the Gospel calls us to himself. But it is an incalculable honor, conferred upon us by our heavenly Father, that he should enroll us among angels and the holy fathers. The expression, myriads of angels, in taken from the book of Daniel, though I have followed Erasmus, and rendered it innumerable company of angels. (266)

(266) Calvin follows the Vulg. And connects πανηγύρει with “angels.” It means a whole or a general assembly, and occurs in the Sept., and stands for מועד often rendered a solemn assembly: it was a solemnity observed by the whole people. Both as to sense construction, it is better to adopt the arrangement of our version. — Ed

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

IS THE CHURCH DEAD OR DYING?

Heb 12:22-23; Mat 16:18.

TRAVEL by auto is not conducive to reading nor compatible with book study. And yet, a while ago on a western auto trip certain articles upon which my eyes fell suggested this sermon; and to them I may appeal in quotations.

On that trip I purchased and read Leslie H. Allens volume on Bryan and Darrow at Dayton the famous Scopes trial. In the office of a brother pastor I found the Baptist of November 16th, 1929, carrying an article on The Churchs Deepest Wound by Dr. Charles E. Jefferson of New York City. On another day I read with interest, in the Literary Digest of November 30th, 1929, an article on The Coroner Not Needed for the Church. Inasmuch as these three publications all dealt with the same subject, the life or death of the Church, my mind naturally dwelt much upon the question, Will the Church Live or Die?

The two texts to which I call your attention would seem to be the inspired answer to this uninspired query. In the first of these texts we are told what the Church is: new born ones whose names are written in Heaven. That fact would, to say the least, mean its immortality. But in the second, we have the assurance of Jesus, the infinitely wise Son of God, that the gates of heir shall not prevail against it.

However, neither text promises the Church exemption from test, trial, or even temporary defeat. There are three things, then, that one may say concerning the Church; and in each statement be assured of the backing of the Bible: 1. The Church Must Suffer! 2. The Church Cannot Die! 3. The Church Will Conquer!

THE CHURCH MUST SUFFER

It is an interesting study to see at what points Christ suffered and, then, to parallel His experiences as the Head with that of the Church, which is the Body of Christ.

Christ suffered at the hands of His enemies; Christ endured the betrayal of professed friends; and Christ was sorely disappointed in genuine disciples.

The Church was never promised exemption at any of these points.

It has, and will continue to have, its bitter enemies. The Pharisees were never more determined upon His death, and the Sadducees were never more ready to lend assistance in the same, than certain individuals and organizations of the present are set upon the destruction of the Church.

For the first time in American history a great state, through one of its judges, has provided a charter to an organization, the express purpose of which is to destroy the Church. And while Atheism is brazen enough to thus avow its definite intention, there are literally scores of individuals, and no small number of organizations, that entertain the same malignant purpose.

But this is nothing new under the sun. Christ Himself said,

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you * *.

All these things will they do unto you for My Names sake, because they know not Him that sent Me (Joh 15:18-21).

It is most amazing what calumnies can be hurled against the Church. Atheism charges her with ignorance, bigotry, oppression, with being the chief foe of progress, the malignant enemy of man; but it remains for the professed churchman, a prominent modernistic pastor, to charge her with all the brutalities of the late waryea, with the war itself. As Judas Iscariot, who was a professed Apostle of the Christian faith, sought to incriminate Jesus, as a self-seeking waster of precious perfume, when Mary, without announcement, broke the vial over His head, so this disciple of the new theology charges the Church of God with the selfish waste of the war that broke unexpectedly over the Church, and brought her nothing but sorrow and sobs.

From avowed enemies cruel charges are to be expected; but alas, for the deeper betrayal of professed friends.

The true Church of God, the Heaven born, whose names are written in Heaven, had nothing to do with the late war, except to grieve it. And they had no responsibility whatever to either prevent or bring that war to an end, since the Church is not commissioned as a peace-maker.

Christ, its great Head, was clear upon this point. He came not to control the conduct of the unregenerate world, nor yet to arbitrate disputes as between nations. Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division (Luk 12:51).

The most superficial student of the Bible would see that Christs first appearance was not as the Prince of Peace, but rather, as a personal Saviour. That coming was to the end that the lost might be sought and found (Luk 19:10), and that individual regenerations, in response to faith, might be wrought. I challenge any student of the Book to find within the pages of the New Testament any Church commission which looks to the arbitration and possible adjustment of international difficulties.

It is little wonder that modernism, in discussing The Churchs Deepest Wound never makes a remote reference to a Bible text; and, by thus ignoring what that sacred Book has to say, it joins the enemies of the Church itself to send into her side another stab.

The betrayal of professed friends is most painful. Jesus faced His open enemies; but never did He suffer by their acrimonious speech, never from the spit that fell upon His face, nay, not even from the nails that pierced His hands and feet or the thorned-crown that bled His brow, as He did when He looked into the face of Judas and realized that He was betrayed by a professed friend. Perhaps in all human or even Divine speech, no more withering sarcasm was ever employed than this: FRIEND, wherefore art thou come? (Mat 26:50)?

In view of that fact I have been running through my New Testament to see who, in the Church, stabbed it the deepest. I suspect that the inspired record of human conduct is very incomplete, and that many disciples betrayed the Church in one way or another, and the inspired Book flung over their conduct the merciful cloak of non-record. But there are some mens behavior blazoned on the sacred page. The Book of Acts, if not a full record, is at least an efficient one of the early Church history. Did it ever occur to you that Ananias and Sapphira held the highest place of infamy in that record because of their attempt to deceive and even betray the Church of the Living God? Has it ever occurred to you that, in all probability, few sins have smitten the Church more often than that of falsifying facts concerning ones wealth and gifts?

Second to these, stands Simon, the sorcerer, who thought to make the Holy Ghost a medium of personal profit.

Ray Stanard Baker, in an article published in the Literary Digest some years ago, called attention to the real wounds from which the Church of God is suffering when he said, In recent years the unthinkable sum of billions of dollars has been given by American people for various philanthropies, and although prominent Christians are named by him as the most munificent of these givers, he is compelled to say, Only a small proportion of this, goes to the churches. And he adds, Not only the dollars of the rich, but the pennies of the poor have been diverted, in large measure, from the Church.

This past week I walked daily to the end of the blind street in Los Angeles, on one side of which stands a great Bible Institute, erected very largely by the gifts of one consecrated Christian, but now suffering for funds; exactly opposite it is being perfected, at the present time, a club house, the elegance of which will beggar description. For this building a few hundred men, many of them church-members, are laying on the altar of personal pleasure $1,000 per month each, until the same shall be completed. And since this building, stretching skyward in height and swept about with decks that would do credit to the greatest steamer that ever sailed the seas, is due to the clubs choice, it is natural to suppose that these contributions are willingly made.

The Church of God in America carries on its rolls a multitude of men whose hands are open for every social or semi-religious, or purely secular enterprise, that makes appeal to their office, but closed against the only institution that has brought light to the worlds darkness and salt to its moral rottenness; and therein the Church suffers.

But a further step must be taken: The Church suffers at the hands of its best representatives. Here again the parallelism between the experiences of the Head, Christ, and the Body, the Church, is evident.

It was Christs best disciples who slept while He faced Gethsemane alone; and it was Christs most notable Apostle, the greatest preacher of the Twelve, who denied Him in Caiaphas porch. The simple truth is that the Church suffers after a kindred manner. The best of us are but poor representatives of His Spirit. We fail Him in His hour of need. We shrink when there is opportunity to fill up His sufferings. We employ condemnable speech and indulge in unchristian conduct at the very hour when He needs us most. Henry Mabie said what should be true, but what we fear is not the fact, when he declared: As God in Christ spared not Himself, so, we, who believe, are to spare ourselves no conformity to the Redeemers will. We are to stop not short of complete crucifixion; to stop on nothing that stands between us and obedience to Him. The Pauline confession is the ideal expression of it: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Said the eloquent Lacordare, The Church was born crucified.

But is it not a fact that we have now come upon a time when those of us who constitute it, are seeking to draw out the nails, remove the crown of thorns, push aside the sword, and live a life of selfish and personal comfort rather than share with Him the Cross?

These are the true wounds of the Church and they have little or nothing to do with the late war, save as some men, who named the Name of Christ, incited that war to gratify pride of station, extent of country, or to seek the filthy profits of the same. It is a strange thing to charge the Church little flockin the minority everywhere, with what the godless majority wrought.

But, such a charge is in perfect keeping with the false notion that because there are Christians in Germany, the German nation is a Christian nation; that because there are Christians in England or America that England and America are Christian nations. There are no Christian nations! The Bible knows no such thought for this era. The Church is in the world, but not of it. Here, it is a pilgrim and a stranger; and destined to the treatment to which pilgrims and strangers have always been subjected.

But this only leads up to my second remark:

THE CHURCH CANNOT DIE

Its Head, Christ, is not more immortal than is His Body, the Church. They wreathed the Head about with thorns; they drove nails through the hands and feet; they thrust a sword through the body. But both Head and Body of Christ came back from the grave. The lesson is not far to seek!

The wounds of the Church will never prove fatal. The one who charges it with responsibility of the late war has been mistaken in many things. His disloyalty to the authority of the Book is as widely known as is his name. But he was never more mistaken than when he said of the late war: It was a Christian war; fought by Christian nations.

A sentence like that stabs afresh the Church of Christ. But that is not the first stab from this source. It was the same author who wrote of the Bible, The Bible is not infallible in its words, for no translation is faultless. It is not infallible in its language; for though the style is good, it is not perfect. It is not infallible in its facts, for an historian occasionally slips. It is not infallible in its theories, for its theories of the physical universe are mistaken. It is not infallible in its arguments, for some of its arguments are weak. It is not infallible in its moral sanctions, for the Hebrews undoubtedly sometimes confounded their own impulses with the voice of God. It is not infallible in the expectations of even its greatest men, for all the Apostles expected Jesus to return within their own lifetime.

Is it a strange matter that the man who removes the foundations should have some fears lest the house collapse?

But this is not for believers; they hold another and a better view of that blessed institution, His Body.

It is not chargeable with the worlds follies. The late war was a world-folly; nothing was ever more so. It was born of world-ambitions; it was carried forward by world-inventions; it crushed and destroyed world-discoveries.

Sir Robert Anderson, a man who was the head of Scotland Yards, knew perhaps as much of the ways of the world, the flesh and the devil as any living human being; and yet, a man who, as a student of the Sacred Scriptures, was unquestionably Spirit-taught, said, False conceptions of the Church are working great mischief. The most of the perverts to Rome are duped by them; and advocates of the sham, Higher Criticism, appeal to them to justify their rejection of Scripture, for with mingled effrontery and folly they make the doctrine of the Spirits presence in the Church an excuse for rejecting the teaching of the inspired Apostles and Prophets of the New Testament. It is essential to distinguish between The Church as a society, the administration of which was entrusted to men on earth, and the Church as the Body of Christ, dependent only upon Himself as its Lord and Head. The building of the Church, which is His Body is His own work, and it cannot fail. But surely fanaticism or folly alone can refuse to recognize that The gates of hell have prevailed against the organized society on earth The outward frame as Alford calls it, which, in its full and final development or evil will appear as the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

That there is a great proportion of the Church, apostate now, keen observers do not deny. But that many in it are yet loyal is evidenced in certain facts to which the Literary Digest recently called attention.

Mr. Ramsey MacDonald is quoted as having declared that the peace movement of the present is due to the advocacy of the Christian churches; while the vociferous Mr. Shearer, would-be wielder of international thunderbolts, bewails the attempt of the Church to further international good will. Professor Millikan, one of the best known and highly honored of Americas physicists, writing on, What I Believe, declares that a large fraction of the altruistic, humanitarian, and forward-looking work of the world in all its forms, has today its mainspring in the Christian churches. My observation is that about 95 per cent of it has come, and is coming, from the influence of organized religion.

These are tributes to the vitality of the Church of God; to the evidences that there remains a spiritual and self-sacrificing Body of which Jesus spake when He said, The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

But to the last question,

WILL THE CHURCH CONQUER?

It is a question to which the believer can give but one answerYes!

It has immortality itself. It is His Body. He is not dead; He is alive! That is more than an Easter message; that is a fact of history. As Christ conquered against death and the grave, so for 2,000 years the Church has risen from every coffin in which men sought to shut her up. It has come out of every grave in which they expected to permanently place her form.

The Church is not a short-lived individual to be judged adversely by a single incident. The Church is old; 2,000 years she has walked bravely on. The fires of persecution have wrought for her only what they did for the three Hebrew children, namely, burned her bands away and brought her to greater liberty. The sword has accomplished for her only what it did for Christit has thrust her side only to prove her immortality. Betrayal has wrought for her only what betrayal wrought for Jesusit has flung her but temporarily into the hands of enemies, while her betrayers have gone to an eternal doom. As Christ lives, the Church lives. As the powers of Heaven and earth are lodged in Him, so also with it. By faith it can remove mountains; and by obedience it has determined the courses of the streams of the centuries.

Its success is assured by His Word. It was Christ who said, The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Even now when it is attacked, the secular press rises to its defense and says, The minister of religion is not manning a sinking ship; not serving a lost cause, or debating a dead issue. He is the servant of a living Master and a living Church, mediating the truth of an eternal life to men in the midst of their brief and fleeting years. Those lukewarm friends of the Churchmodernistsadmit that practically every beneficent feature of modern civilization reveals the touch of the Church. Wherever man has been bettered and society has been made more beautiful, the good seed of Gods Word has been sown by the Church. One Sunday afternoon I called on Dr. O. P. Gifford, that most lucid thinker, that compiler of perfect sentences; and while the years are upon him, his mind knows nothing of senility, and the visit brought to memory the days of our fellowship in Chicago, when as neighbor pastors the lad listened to the more mature man, to be always interested and profited in all that he said. It was Gifford who said, The greatest man that ever entered Europe was Paul, the Apostle. He has done more for her civilization than all her armies and navies. Near Blair castle in Scotland, was a bare grim crag, one of the unsightly features of the great estate. No one dared climb its face to conquer its ugliness. There were two small cannon on the castle grounds. Alexander Nasmyth had a number of canisters made to fit the cannon, filled them with living seeds of grass, shrub and tree, and fired them against the rocky face. The blow shattered the shells, scattered the seeds, and the seeds transformed the crags into; living beauty. So thought Gifford, the eternal seeds of truth, scattered over the nations by the hand of the Church of God, have produced all that is worth while in every civilization.

This is true of Asia and of Europe. It is true of Africa and the Americas. It is true of every spot that the true Church of God has touched. It is the Church of God that has brought man from barbarism and savagery; that has created all moral and ethical interests and brought society more and more toward the ideal that Christ had and holds for the future world. The Church has been His instrument in all this work.

The Church will conquer by Christs presence. He is now its Saviour. His one mission in this age is to turn men from sin to holiness. But He will come again to take the throne, wear the crown, rule from sea to sea. Then He will sit as the Prince of Peace; and at that timenot now, but then bloodshed will end. The Prophets vision will find a perfect fulfilment:

He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

For the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Heb. 12:22. Mount Sion.The spiritual or heavenly mount. Not Jerusalem, but what is represented by Jerusalem. The mountain and city of a living God. Innumerable company.Lit. myriads, the joyful company of angels.

Heb. 12:23. Church of the firstborn.The saints from the older dispensation. Some regard it as meaning the Christian saints who had gone to glory; but the spiritual association of spiritual Christian Jews with spiritual Jews of all the ages is prominently before the writers mind.

Heb. 12:24. Blood of sprinkling.A figure taken from the blood-sprinklings of the old covenant (Exo. 24:8 : see 1Pe. 1:2). That is done spiritually by Jesus which was materially represented in the old blood-sprinklings. See Heb. 9:14.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Heb. 12:22-24

Emblems of the Spiritual Dispensation.These verses give the antithesis to all this scene of terror which accompanied the introduction of the ancient law. Worshippers, under the new dispensation, approach a scene of a very different nature. There should not be sought anything material to answer to these emblems; the suggestion of them, and explanation of them, lie wholly in the spiritual range. Dr. Moulton quotes a valuable and helpful passage from Delitzsch: What it was to which Israel in the time of the old covenant drew nigh we have now heard. Their drawing nigh was at the same time a standing afar off; the mount of the revelation might not be approached by them; the voice of God was too terrible to be borne; and yet it was only tangible material nature in which God at once manifested and concealed Himself. The true and inner communion with God had not yet been revealed; first must the law lead to the painful consciousness that sin prevents such communion, and intensify the longing that sin may be taken out of the way. Under the new covenant, no longer is a tangible mountain the place of a Divine revelation made from afar; but heaven is thrown open, and a new super-sensuous world, in which God is enthroned, is opened to admit usopened through the Mediator of the new covenant, accessible in virtue of His atoning blood. Sinai and Zion are contrasted in six particulars, as emblems of the respective dispensations.

I. An immaterial mountain.A mountain still, because Zion as truly conserves the impressions of the eternity, stability, and sublimity of God. Zion is not the familiar mount at Jerusalem. It is the name for the heavenly abode, the spiritual abode of God.

II. An intangible city.The heavenly or spiritual Jerusalem. Jerusalem which is above. The city which in his vision St. John saw descending from God. The place where are gathered all who are spiritually quickened, whether they be alive or, as we say, dead.

III. A company of angels.Conceived of as spiritual beings, and therefore kin with men when men are spiritually quickened.

IV. A Church of firstborn souls.To myriads of angels, and to a festal assembly and Church of the firstborn. The reference is meant to appeal directly to personal feeling. The firstborn are those who first received Christ, and eternal life in Him. They had passed from the mortal sphere; but they formed a festal, happy company in the spiritual spheres. Spirits of the just made perfect.

V. A satisfying relation with God.And to God the Judge of all. Intimating the absence of all fear of the Judge, seeing that the Judge is their Saviour. They can come unhesitatingly to Him.

VI. A living and spiritual Redeemer, whose work is a spiritual work in souls. There is no intended reference to the Church, or to any Church on earth. It is to the living, the universal Church that the words are from age to age addressed. They describe the blessed, heavenly fellowship to which each servant of Christ now toiling on earth is joined; when he has run the race set before him, he will, through the blood of sprinkling and through Jesus the Mediator, reach the company of the just made perfect, and stand before the God of all. So constantly and so seriously are spiritual men being enticed back to material conceptions, material relations, and material religionas Christian Jews were to formal Judaismthat it needs to be ever freshly impressed upon us that, though the material will ever seem to be the real so long as we continue imprisoned by the senses, the spiritual is the real; and this we shall fully apprehend when we are free to be the spirits that we are, and free to exercise the spiritual powers that we have.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

Heb. 12:22-24. Privileges of the Christian.Remember the great tenacity with which the Jews held fast to their historical faith; how, over and above pride and worldliness, there was what I might almost call a relentless tenacity in their religious convictions. Therefore apostles urged that, in accepting Christ, the Jew really gave up nothing. You do not abandon the Jewish law, the Mosaic economy, when you accept Christ. You fulfil it more perfectly than when you leave Christ out, and attempt to follow Moses. And, still better, you lose nothing. Under the old dispensation you were constrained, you were under bondage. We ask you not to abandon that in any such sense as to be recreant to its real spirit, but to accept it in the larger presentation which it has in the Lord Jesus Christ, so that you shall have a thousand times more. You lose nothing, you gain everything. Do not fear to accept Christ, for it gives you all that you had before, and a thousand times more. It advances you out of the twilight, and out of the storm-clad horizon of your past faith, into the glorious illumination of a more spiritual worship, where all forms of fear and ghastly motives of terror cease, and where companionship and Divine guidance and infinite blessings await you. And ye are actually come to these things. It is a part of the privilege which belongs to the earthly ministration of your faith. What, then, is the privilege of the Christian? Christians are heirs of a wonderful inheritance, which is already so far dispensed, portions of which are ministered in advance, in such a way that, if they but knew it, they would be transcendently happy.

1. Ye are come unto the heavenly JerusalemGods home. God takes us to His own home. We are surrounded by it. We touch it, or are touched by it. We are brought into such intimate relations, if we be true Christians, with Christ or with God, that, whether we know it or not, the kingdom of God is within us or around us.
2. To an innumerable company of angels. It is not that when we die we shall go where angels live, but that when we come into the new dispensation, by the true spirit of faith, we then come to the general assembly. Angelic ministration is a part, not of the heavenly state, but of the universal condition of men. Moreover, we come into junction and relationship with everything that has been on earth worthy of remembrance, of enunciation, of celebration. All the great natures of the world are ours, if they have been saved. The spirits, they are called, of just men. But they are the spirits made perfect in their beatified condition.

3. To Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant. This to the Jew meant nothing, but to the disciple meant everything. What are fitting applications of this passage?

I. We are come by virtue of our Christian life, not to self-denial, and to pain, and to repentance, and to sorrow, and to limitation.A man who has been going in wrong courses must needs pass through the gate of repentance and the baptism of sorrow. But the popular impression, that to be a religious man is to enter upon a life of gloom, is a false impression. If a man becomes a Christian, he is simply a man that has been in an abnormal state, an out-of-joint state; and becoming a Christian, is merely getting back into joint with God, with his own spiritual being, with the universe. He comes into nature againfor a man that is living in a sinful way is out of naturehis higher and truer nature. Ye are not come to tears or to sorrow. Ye are come to triumph, to an illustrious company, to glorious heraldings. Ye are come to convoys and felicities, and radiant hopes and blessed fruitions. May I not cry then? Yes, just as the night doesand in the morning it is dew. True tears make men beautiful.

II. It is a great comfort, in the light of this truth, that nothing on earth has ever been lost that was worth keeping.Everything has been gathered and garnered, and that for you and me. All the holy men that have lived in every age of the world are mineevery one of them. All the apostles, all the martyrs, all the confessors, all pure and true preachers of the word, all kings that deserved to be kings, all nobles that were nobles of heart as well as of name, all holy mothers and fathers, all great artists, all great benefactors, all the persecuted and despised, and crucified almost, all that have suffered for a principle, all that the dungeons had, and all that the hospitals had, and all that the sea has swallowed, and all that the earth has coveredall of them, though they have passed through so many and such various pains, although they are apparently destroyed, are no more destroyed than the seed that the farmer covers under the clod, that it may rise again in more glorious luxuriance. God has saved everything that was worth saving in this world.

III. No Christian on earth need be lonely.If these truths are not poetical truths; if they are real truths; if the air is full of administering spirits; if time itself is but the Lords chariot, and He rides with those who ride therein; if everywhere, above us, beneath us, and on every side, and all through the world, good men are substantially united, who has had to do more than lift himself up into the consciousness of this essential union of noble natures, to feel that he is not without company?

IV. They also who put themselves into the way of Christ, and who sow in tears, who perform obscure duties, and duties that to others are disagreeable, who will not be reduced by ease from tasks of usefulness, who feel in themselves called to follow Christ in doing, in labouring, who are considered singular and remarkedare they not by these very things joined to this exceeding great company?H. Ward Beecher.

Heb. 12:23. The General Assembly.When the florist gathers his seeds in the best way he can, and winnows them, giving them the best sifting he can, the poorest seeds are carried away by the wind with the chaff, and he loses them, unless he is a very acute seedsman, and goes after these poor seeds to bring them back again, that they may swell the bulk and quantity of his saleable material. But when the great Gardener shall save His seeds, the poorest seed of the whole, the most shrunken, if it only has a germ no bigger than a needles point in it, shall not be lost. Not the great, beauteous, plump seeds alone, but the little infinitesimal seedsall these God has saved, and He will save them all.H. Ward Beecher.

Heaven a State of Perfection.And to the spirits of just men made perfect. The text expresses what the Christian Israelites were come, and were tending, to, the representation whereof hath a double reference: intermediateto the state and constitution of the Christian Church; and finalto the heavenly state; the former being both a resemblance, and some degree, of the latter.

I. The perfection the spirits of the just do finally arrive to in their future state.Being made perfect is an agonistical phrase. To it the idea of running a race plainly leads us. But it is a real, inward, subjective perfection, by which they all become most excellent creatures, that must be chiefly meant. Perfection, in a moral sense, doth contain a threefold gradation:

1. At the lowest, sincerity. The man is a resolved and thorough Christian.
2. An eminent improvement, greater maturity in Divine knowledge, and all other Christian virtues.
3. The consummate state of the Christian, when he is come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The felicity of the future state depends upon such perfection of the subject of it. Concerning the object of felicity, we are agreed it can be no other than the blessed God Himself, the all-comprehending God, fully adequate to the highest and most enlarged reasonable desires. But the contemporation of our faculties to the holy, blissful object is so necessary to our satisfying fruition, that without that we are no more capable thereof, than a brute of the festivities of a quaint oration, or a stone of the relishes of the most pleasant meats and drinks. We are too apt to fill our minds with ideas of a heaven made up of external, outside glories, forgetting we must have the kingdom of God within us, hereafter in its perfect, as well as here in its initial, state. The internal perfection of the spirits of just men is thus indicatedWe shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is; it includes likeness to God, and the vision of Him. This likeness to God may be considered as preparative for the vision of Him; or the vision of Him may be considered as an argument for our seeking to grow like Him. Ultimate perfection is virtually contained and summed up in knowledge.

1. The true and proper object of knowledge must be whatever is requisite to their duty and felicityall that lies within their compass, but especially the blessed God Himself.
2. The manner of knowing is not that slight, ineffectual, merely notional, insipid knowledge, which unregenerate minds are now wont to have of the most evident truths, but a knowledge, or vision, that is most deeply and inwardly penetrative, efficacious, and transforming; admits a light which spreads and transfuses itself through the whole soul. Accordingly, the whole, even of practical religion and godliness, is in the Holy Scripture expressed by the knowledge of God. Likeness to God certainly ensues upon suitable preceding knowledge of Him; for the kind and nature of that knowledge being, as it ought to be, powerful, vigorous, transforming of the whole soul, and the will ductile and compliant, agreeable impressions do most certainly take place. But this likeness to God must be understood with exception to the Divine peculiarities.

II. In what sense may sincere Christians be said to have already come to the spirits of the just made perfect?

1. In a relative sense, as belonging to the general assembly, of which the spirits of the just form part.

2. In a real sense; by a gradual, but true participation of the primordia, the first and most constituent principles and perfections of the heavenly state.

The following reflections conclude the discourse:

1. It ought to be most remote from us to confine, in our narrow thoughts, sincere religion and godliness to a party, distinguished by little things, and most extra-essential thereto.
2. The spirits of the just on earth are in a great propinquity, and have a near alliance to heaven.
3. The just in this world are of the Church in heaven.
4. Angels must have kind propensions towards men, especially good men, in this world.
5. When we find any excellent persons in our world attain far and high towards the perfection of the heavenly state, it ought to be a great encouragement to us, and is an obligation, to aspire to some like pitch.John Howe.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12

Heb. 12:23. The Church Triumphant.The (panguris) was a solemn assembly for purposes of festal rejoicing the word having given us panegyric, which is properly a set discourse pronounced at one of these great and festal gatherings. Business might grow out of the fact that such multitudes were assembled, since many, and for various reasons, would be glad to avail themselves of the circumstance; but only in the same way as a fair grew out of a feria or holy-day. Strabo notices the business-like aspect which the commonly assumed, which was indeed to such an extent their prominent feature that the Romans translated by the Latin mercatus, and this even when the Olympic games were intended. These, with the other solemn games, were eminently, though not exclusively, the of the Greek nation. If we keep this festal character of the in mind, we shall find a peculiar fitness in the employment of this word at Heb. 12:23, where only in the New Testament it occurs. The apostle is there setting forth the communion of the Church militant on earth with the Church triumphant in heavenof the Church toiling and suffering here, with that Church from which all weariness and toil have for ever passed away (Rev. 21:4); and how could he better describe this last than as a , than as the glad and festal assembly of heaven?Trench.

Heb. 12:24. Blood better than Abels.Abel stands forth before us as the first in a cloud of witnesses, bearing brave testimony, and prepared to seal it with their lives. He died a martyr for the truth, the grandly God-like truth that God accepteth men according to their faith. All honour to the martyrs blood which speaks so effectually for precious truth. Our Lord Jesus Christ, being also a testifier and witness for the faith of God, spake better things than Abel, because He had more to speak, and spake from more intimate acquaintance with God. He was a fuller witness of Divine truth than Abel could be, for He brought life and immortality to light, and told His people clearly of the Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ had been in the bosom of the Father, and knew the Divine secret; this secret He revealed to the sons of men in His ministry, and then He sealed it by His blood.C. H. Spurgeon.

Blood crying for Vengeance.To us it seems a slight, and therefore a strange, commendation of the blood of the great sacrifice to say it speaks better things than vengeance. But to Hebrews who had shed their brothers blood the case was widely different. Of the men who in the madness of their persecuting zeal had said concerning Jesus, His blood be on us, and on our children, imagine some brought afterwards to feel what they had done; what more natural apprehension in their awakened conscience than that their brothers blood should cry for vengeance against them, as Abels blood cried against his murderer? It has been so. The Hebrew nation is a living Cain. Their brothers blood crieth against them. To the penitent believer, therefore, how needful, and how suitable, and how satisfactory, was the apostles assurance! His death in their hands was indeed the murder, but by the hand of God it had been turned into a mercy.Hugh McNeile, D.D.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

The mercy of the new. Heb. 12:22-24.

Text

Heb. 12:22-24

Heb. 12:22 but ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, Heb. 12:23 to the general assembly and church of the Firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, Heb. 12:24 and to Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel.

Paraphrase

Heb. 12:22 But ye shall come to a place which I call Mount Zion, because there God will appear to you, not in the terribleness of His Greatness as on Sinai, but in the beauties of His goodness; and instead of being brought to any earthly city to worship, ye shall be brought to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and in your worship shall associate with ten thousands of angels;

Heb. 12:23 To the general assembly and church of the Firstborn, brought from the different parts of the universe to worship God. These are enrolled in heaven as citizens. And, instead of standing afar off, as your fathers did at Sinai, ye shall come near to God the supreme Ruler of the whole universe, and to the spirits of just men made perfect by their union with their glorified bodies, and their introduction into heaven.

Heb. 12:24 And to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to His blood, which is the true blood of sprinkling typified by the Levitical sprinklings, and which, by crying for mercy to penitents, speaketh better things than the blood of Abel, which cried for vengeance on his murderer.

Comment

But ye are come into Mount Zion

Ye are come unto Mount Zion is in contrast to Mount Sinai.

They had a mount that they had to avoid.

We have a mount that we can approach.

McKnight: But ye shall come, making it future. Mount Zion.

Mount Zion stands for grace, and not a literal mountain.

Mount Zion is a part of the hill of Jerusalem, and being the seat of both the royal and sacerdotal authority it was properly called the holy hill of Zion. Psa. 2:6.

No Gentile ever came before Mount Zion, except as he came as a Jewish proselyte or to plunder or to destroy.

and unto the city of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem

Zion is spoken of as being the habitation of God. Psa. 132:13, This is the celestial city that Abraham looked for. Heb. 11:10. This city is described in Revelation 21, 22. I understand it to be the Jerusalem above as Paul taught in Gal. 4:26.

We are come unto it, but our bodies not yet redeemed. We have not seen the new city except by faith.

and to innumerable hosts of angels

The throne of God seems to have great numbers of angels present. See Rev. 5:11; the number was thousands of thousands. It is to such a place of praise that we shall some day come; not to praise the angels, but the object of the angels praise.

to the general assembly

Milligan says: Here it denotes the joyful and multitudinous assembly of angels around the throne of God, who there forever celebrate His praises. See Rev. 5:11; Rev. 7:11-12.

This makes it a festive assembly of angels.

This rules out that our assembly on earth is meant.

If all thus far is future, then let us assume that the general assembly will someday be held, when Christ gathers His faithful from the ends of the earth.

church of the Firstborn

We, of course, have come to the church already, being members of it; but is this what he meant?

McKnight says this refers only to those pious Israelites of all ages who by faith deserve to be called Gods firstborn.

Milligan says it refers to the church on earth.

He quotes Jas. 1:18 to show we are first fruits.

All its members are honored with this title, he says.

Calvin says it refers to the patriarchs and renowned saints of the earthly church.

Newell says Israel is the firstborn of earth, but the church is the first fruits of heaven.

I prefer to allow the church to mean the called out that will someday be called into the great assembly. This is church future, not church present.

Christ wears the title Firstborn, Rom. 8:29, and the church is His.

who are enrolled in heaven

God does the writing, for we cant climb or fly to the book to do the writing. It is a source of joy to have the privilege of having our name there. Luk. 10:20 and Php. 4:3.

Some prefer to have their names in social registers, so-called churches, lodges, etc., than on the church of the firstborn.

and to God the Judge of all

Who does judge? This is a big subject.

God will judge the sinners.

Heb. 13:4 : God will judge adulterers.

Rom. 2:16 : God will judge the secrets of men.

The saints will likewise do some judging.

1Co. 6:2 : will judge the world.

1Co. 6:3 : will judge the angels.

Compare Rev. 20:4.

The problem of judgment is Gods. It will be just how He planned it.

We have come to Him already, and He no longer is our Judge but our. Saviour.

In a sense He is our Judge, so let this inspire fear on our part to do His will.

and to the spirit of just men made perfect

This refers to our heavenly position, Are there any spirits made perfect there now?

What God does with a spirit after death is His business, and I am confident that it is fair and just, But I do not know.

I agree with 1Jn. 3:2 : It is not yet manifested.

John says, What we shall be.

I add my own ignorance, When it shall be.

and to Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant

What covenant is this?

Newell says this is not the better covenant of Chapter Eight, but the new covenant with Israel which lies in the future with Israel.

Here Newell is in error.

The characteristics of the covenant are the same; they must be the same.

Jesus only spoke of one covenant, on the night of His betrayal, and He calls it a new covenant. Luk. 22:19-20.

In Heb. 13:20 the covenant is spoken of as an eternal covenant, and surely he means the same covenant as in Chapter Eight.

In Heb. 8:7 he speaks of the old being replaced by the second, but does not mention a third covenant.

The covenant is the one by which the blood of Jesus will save all men, and to Whom He acts as Mediator.

and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel

Abels sacrifice speaks, according to Heb. 11:4.

Abels sacrifice by faith spoke, saying that it pays to be obedient. In a sense, it is a warning.

Abels sacrifice is not meant here, but his blood.

What does Abels blood speak?

Gen. 4:10-11 says, Brothers blood crieth.

The blood of Abel called for judgment.

What does this blood speak that is greater?

Newell says it speaks of judgment past forever and of eternal peace.

The popular idea is that the blood of Abel speaks a call for mercy.

Milligan: Abels blood speaks well, but Christs speaks better.

If the following verses are considered, we might say this blood speaks a greater warningrefuse not. Heb. 12:25.

No one questions that the blood is that of Christ.

Christs blood speaks better because it avails pardon for sin.

His blood cries out, The atonement is made.

Study Questions

2656.

Contrast the Christians mountain with Moses mountain.

2657.

Is our mountain figurative or literal?

2658.

What is the name of our mountain?

2659.

What was the location of Mount Zion?

2660.

What did it represent?

2661.

What else does the Christian have a right to approach?

2662.

Compare other verses that speak of Zion. Cf. Psa. 132:13; Heb. 11:10; Revelation 21, 22; Gal. 4:26.

2663.

Is this verse to be interpreted as past tense, present, or future?

2664.

How do we see the city? Like Abraham? Heb. 11:10.

2665.

When does the heavenly Jerusalem take place, according to Revelation?

2666.

If this is present, how may we explain that we are in the midst of angels?

2667.

How numerous are Gods angels? Rev. 5:11.

2668.

Does it say into Mount Zion or unto?

2669.

How many are 12 legions of angels?

2670.

Is this general assembly that of angels or men?

2671.

Is it an earthly assembly?

2672.

What is the description of the church here?

2673.

What is meant by Firstborn?

2674.

Is this the church on earth?

2675.

If all of the other expressions refer to future experiences, can we assume that the church on earth is referred to here?

2676.

Does Christ wear the title Firstborn? Rom. 8:29.

2677.

Who all will be in His church?

2678.

Who enrolls men in heaven?

2679.

Compare Luk. 10:20 and Php. 4:3.

2680.

If God writes our name, what can we do to cause God to write it there?

2681.

Do men seem to prefer other registers?

2682.

If God is Judge, do we come to Him?

2683.

Will the Christian come to Him?

2684.

Do we come to Him to be judged? Do we come to Him as Judge or Savior?

2685.

Will Christians do any judging?

2686.

Compare 1Co. 6:2-3; Rev. 20:4.

2687.

What is meant by spirits?

2688.

Could this refer to our heavenly position or to our state now as Christians?

2689.

If we have already come to Mount Zion, the new Jerusalem, how may we explain, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, in Heb. 12:23 when we know none are perfect?

2690.

If none are perfect on earth now, can we interpret this whole message as present action?

2691.

Is this covenant the one of which we are a part?

2692.

How many new covenants are there? Is there one for Jews and one for Gentiles?

2693.

Is the one in Chapter Eight the same here and in Heb. 13:20?

2694.

How many covenants did Jesus teach? Cf. Luk. 22:19-20.

2695.

What is the purpose of the covenant? To save from sin or to get Jews back to Jerusalem?

2696.

What did Abels blood sacrifice speak?

2697.

What adjectives are used to describe the covenant?

2698.

What is meant by, we are come to the blood of sprinkling?

2699.

Whose blood is sprinkled?

2700.

Why is the word sprinkled used?

2701.

Could it be figurative that Christ is our Passover?

2702.

Is Abels blood, or Abels sacrifice, referred to here?

2703.

If his sacrifice is meant, what does it speak?

2704.

From where did Abels blood speak?

2705.

Could it be that Abel speaks, and not his blood or sacrifice?

2706.

Which could do a better job of speaking, Abels blood or Abels sacrifice?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(22) Unto mount Sion.Literally (and in these difficult verses it is unusually important to follow the literal rendering of the Greek), Ye are come unto Zion (the) mountain and city of a Living God, a heavenly Jerusalem. The thought of a celestial city which should be the exact counterpart of the earthly Jerusalem is often dwelt upon in Jewish writings: hence the writer is using familiar words, but with a new and spiritual meaning. The same imagery has been employed in Heb. 11:10; Heb. 11:13-16, for this is the city that hath the foundations, whose Architect and Maker is God. (See also Rev. 21:2, et seq.; Gal. 4:26.) This heavenly Jerusalem is Zion, mountain and city of a Living God. Mount Zion is mentioned first, because the contrast with Mount Sinai is throughout present in thought. The name recalls many passages of the Old Testament, especially of the Psalter, as far back as the time when David chose the place for the Ark of the Covenant. Here God desired to dwell (Psa. 68:16); in this holy hill He set His anointed King (Psa. 2:6). (See also Psa. 48:2; Psa. 48:11; Psa. 78:68; Psa. 110:2; Psa. 132:13.) Zion is not only the mount of God, His dwelling place; it is also the city of God, whose gates the Lord loveth (Psa. 87:2). (See Psa. 48:12-13, et al.) In Heb. 8:2 we find associated the place of the special manifestation of the glory of God and the resort of His worshipping people; so here the heavenly sanctuary and the city inhabited by the ransomed of the Lord (Isa. 35:10). In Horeb Israel intreated that they might not hear the voice of the living God (Deu. 5:26). In this spiritual commonwealth we all have drawn nigh to Him.

In the first member of these three verses (Heb. 12:22-24), therefore, there is very little that is open to question; the difficulties lie in the words which follow, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven. Four or five different arrangements of these words are allowed by the Greek, and every one of these has been adopted and defended by writers of eminence. Here the discussion must be very brief. On a careful examination of the whole passage, it seems in the highest degree probable that the writer introduces by and each successive member of the sentence, and that groups of words not so introduced serve as appositions, explaining what precedes them. If this be so, the arrangement of the Authorised version is not tenable. We believe that the choice must lie between two renderings: (1) And to myriads of angels, a festal assembly and congregation of the firstborn enrolled in heaven. (2) And to myriads, a festal assembly of angels and a congregation of the firstborn enrolled in heaven. In the first of these renderings angels are the subject throughout; in the second, the myriads to whom we have come nigh are divided into two companiesthe festal host of angels, the church of the firstborn. Let us look at the latter interpretation first. By it the firstborn are sought amongst. men; either those who are already inhabitants of the heavenly world, or men still living upon earth, though enrolled as citizens of heaven (Luk. 10:20). Some have understood the words to relate to those who hold precedency, either in rank or in time, among men to whom God has given the name of sons; as, saints of preeminent piety, the noble army of martyrs, the faithful under the Old Covenant, Enoch and Elijah, the Apostles, the first generations of Christians, or the believers of the later as distinguished from those of the earlier dispensation. A far more probable explanation is that which makes the word here equivalent to heirs of the kingdom, all faithful Christians being ipso facto firstborn, because all are kings (Dr. Lightfoot on Col. 1:15). See Heb. 1:6; also, as instances of the figurative use of firstborn in the Old Testament, where the idea of priority of birth is overshadowed by and lost in the idea of pre-eminence, Job. 18:13; Isa. 14:30. If this be the true interpretation, 1Pe. 2:9 unites the two thoughts which this figure suggests, Ye are . . . a royal priesthood (see above, Heb. 12:16); and the whole of that verse. especially as compared with Exo. 4:22, well illustrates the position here assigned to the company of the faithful upon earth. The word which we have here rendered congregation, moreover, is that which is regularly applied to the Church of Christ. There is, therefore, very much to be said on behalf of this interpretation, which is in every way attractive. And yet, full of interest as is such an explanation of the special words, it seems certainly unsuitable to the passage as a whole. It is not easy to believe that the words and to myriads are to be taken by themselves. It is still more difficult to explain the introduction of the living Church on earth in this positionbetween angels and the God of all, whilst the spirits of just men made perfect are mentioned later, in an association from which the Church on earth cannot be severedwith Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant and the blood of sprinkling. For these reasons especially it seems necessary to adopt the first-mentioned arrangement of the words: ye have come near . . . to myriads of angels, a festal assembly and congregation of the firstborn enrolled in heaven. Two passages of the Old Testament seem to have been chiefly in the writers mind (Deu. 33:2, and Dan. 7:10); in each of these the Lord appears attended by myriads of angels, who stand before Him and minister to Him (Psa. 103:20). We who by means of the better hope draw near to God (Heb. 7:19) are led to this holy hill and city, and through the hosts of ministering spirits into the very presence of the God of all. The descriptive words which follow are borrowed from the history of Israel. The first (Eze. 46:11; Hos. 2:11; Hos. 9:5; Amo. 5:21; Isa. 66:10) is the general and joyous gathering for the feasts of the Lord; the second is the word used throughout for the church in the wilderness, the congregation of Israel. The latter points to the united body of the servants of God, the former to the joyful gathering for His service. The second word is so commonly used of Israel and of the Christian Church that it has been denied that any other application is ever made; but there is certainly an exception in Psa. 89:7 (a Psalm which, as we have seen, was much in the writers thoughts), God is greatly to be feared in the congregation of the saints. How fitly angelswho in Job. 1:6; Job. 2:1; Job. 38:7 (comp. Psa. 29:1, et al.), are called sons of God, are here spoken of as firstborn, needs no explanation; they are the enrolled citizens of heaven, whose assembly we are permitted to join (Rev. 5:11; comp. Luk. 20:36).

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

(22-24) What it was to which Israel in the time of the Old Covenant drew nigh, we have now heard. Their drawing nigh was at the same time a standing afar off; the mount of the revelation might not be approached by them; the voice of God was too terrible to be borne; and yet it was only tangible material nature in which God at once manifested and concealed Himself. The true and inner communion with God had not yet been revealed: first must the Law lead to the painful consciousness that sin prevents such communion, and intensify the longing that sin may be taken out of the way. Under the New Covenant, no longer is a tangible mountain the place of a divine revelation made from afar; but heaven is thrown open, and a new super-sensuous world in which God is enthroned is opened to admit us, opened through the Mediator of the New Covenant, accessible in virtue of His atoning blood (Delitzsch).

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

22. Are come unto In your historic progress you have attained to. Note, Heb 12:18. A scene infinitely more joyful opens before them than saluted and appalled the trembling Israel. As Sinai represents the terrors of the law, Zion stands for the glories of the gospel. The old mountain is basis-symbol of the pitiless decalogue; the new, is the basis of all the conceptions of mercy and glory contained in the blessed gospel. Concretely, the old is the basis of the Jewish Church; the new, is basis of the New Testament Church.

Mount Zion Delitzsch asks with much persistence, what and where is this mount Zion? Bengel had said it is “the seat of the new covenant;” which Delitzsch condemns as presenting no idea at all. He thence maintains that this mount Zion is in the highest heaven, (note on 2Co 12:2,) and is the abode celestial of God himself. So that the antithesis here is, mount Sinai in the desert and mount Zion in the third heaven! Of course, such an antithesis is utterly incongruous. To his question, Where is this mount Zion? we answer by asking, Where is this mount Sinai? And our reply to both questions is, that the literal, material mount Sinai is in the Arabian desert, and the literal mount Zion is in Jerusalem. But these two literal mountains are the representative bases of two systems of conception and truth, the one forming the doctrines and institutes of the old Church, and the other of the new. In the peculiar style of our author the first of these two systems is described, or, rather, merely implied, under a description of the physical scene at the Sinaitic lawgiving. The second of the two systems is described by first giving the physical symbolical base, namely, the mountain and city, and then a glowing series of holy idealities which are also divine realities, the clear revealing of which, is the glory of the new dispensation, the unity of which constitutes the doctrine of Christianity, and the faithful believers of which are the new Church. This bringing the significance of the two mountains into congruous relations saves us from mounting in Delitzsch’s exegetical balloon to the third heavens.

The same in principle, though varying in details, is the Jerusalem of Gal 4:25-26, where see our notes. There we distinguish,

1. The physical Jerusalem of walls and houses.

2. The old mystical Jerusalem; namely, the old covenant dispensation and Church.

3. The heavenly Jerusalem; our new theocracy, or dispensation, identical with the “beloved city” of Rev 20:9.

4. The glorified Jerusalem of Rev. xxi, which, after the advent, descends from heaven to earth.

We propose, however, to modify Bengel’s sevenfold gospel symbols given above, and we suggest the following scheme; (giving of the first term, Heb 12:22, of the seven a literal translation of the Greek, which is without the article:) 1. Zion, mountain and city of living God, heavenly Jerusalem, which is the symbolic locality of the universal Church, into full communion with which we have come by faith in Christ. 2. Myriads, a festal assembly of angels, who conceptually hover over the Church, visible by faith. 3. The historic Church of the firstborn, (Heb 12:23,) through all ages, in the body and on earth, yet whose names are written in heaven, anticipatively associated thereby with angels. 4. God, under whom all are as judge, in both the kingly and judicial sense of the Hebrew word. And as thus far, under God, we have had four universals, so next we have rather three specialties belonging to the new dispensation, namely: 5. Disembodied spirits of the thus far saved and made perfect. 6. Jesus the mediator, (Heb 12:24,) by whom they have been thus perfected. 7. The blood through which he has wrought their perfecting. And it is this advance from the old to the new which is attained by substituting our scheme for Bengel’s.

In this our sevenfold scheme the words city of the living God heavenly Jerusalem, are simply an expanding identification of mount Zion, and so designate, unlike Bengel’s scheme, a single object. As Sinai was conceptual seat of the old covenant, this magnificent series of epithets is name of the conceptual seat of the new, which forms term 1 of the above seven.

And now, approaching this mystic Jerusalem, we descry a twofold glorious company, namely, term 2, the angels, and, 3, the firstborn.

To an innumerable Literally, to myriads of angels, who are a general assembly; in the Greek, , the classic name of a general assemblage of a whole people to celebrate any public festivity, as public games, sacrifices, etc. Hence a festal assembly. The collection of holy angels are here so called as being a joyous body ever celebrating the glories of God.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘But you are come to mount Zion,

And to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,

And to innumerable hosts (or ‘large numbers, myriads, thousands upon thousands’) of angels in a festal gathering,

And to the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,

And to the God of all as Judge,

And to the spirits of just men made perfect,

And to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant,

And to the blood of sprinkling which speaks better than that of Abel.’

But what his readers have come to is not like that. Rather it is glorious and wonderful and heavenly. It is both a place of welcome and a place of awe. Because a way has been provided for them through Christ, by which they could enter boldly, they have come into the very presence of God and the glory of the heavenlies, but they must never forget that He is a consuming fire for all but what is acceptable to His nature.

We present the verses in couplets, not in order to present it as poetry but in order to bring out the pairings and contrasts. It is noteworthy that in each pairing the first part of the pairing is a straight statement and represents that which is permanently of Heaven, and the second part represents the people of God who have become a part of Heaven, and in each of the second items in the pairings a further explanation is added on. Thus the first phrases present basic, enduring, heavenly facts, the second refer to their connection with mankind and require expansion. They are interwoven to emphasise the closeness with which they are now combined. Heaven and earth has met together.

The first parts of the pairings are, ‘To Mount Zion — to innumerable hosts of angels in festal gathering — to the God of all as Judge — to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant.’

In these we have that which is heavenly and permanent, the heavenly source of earthly blessing and protection and sustenance. We might almost see it as the sights that meet us as we approach into His presence. First we come to His dwellingplace, to the heavenly Mount Zion. Then we come to the festal gathering of angels. Then we approach the throne itself where the Governor of the Universe is seated, but which can approach without fear because our mediator sits at His right hand.

‘Mount Zion’ represents the original and permanent dwellingplace of God (Psa 20:2; Psa 48:2; Psa 87:1-2; Psa 99:2; Psa 125:1; Psa 135:21; Jer 8:19; Rev 14:1), the very throne room of God in which is the heavenly tabernacle (Heb 8:2; Heb 9:11 compare Isa 16:5; Psa 20:2; Psa 76:2) to which we are privileged to come to seek help in time of need (Heb 4:16). On that heavenly Mount Zion we see the ‘innumerable hosts of angels’, gathered as one whole in festal joy, both rejoicing in God and also rejoicing in every sinner who repents (Luk 15:7; Luk 15:10), who are the servants of God who have always awaited His heavenly bidding, and who minister to us as the heirs of salvation (Heb 1:14 compare Deu 33:2; Psa 68:17; Dan 7:10). They are gathered here for the worship of God (Rev 5:11-12).

Here too is ‘the God of all as Judge’. He represents the One Who is over all, ruling over all and responsible for all. This is not a scene of judgment, He is there as the ‘Judge’ in the wider sense as the One Who exercises authority over all and governs all, Who is in a way like the judges in the Book of Judges (compare Act 13:20), responsible for maintaining and dispensing justice, and giving guidance and help to the people. He is the One Who will one day call all to account, but as yet acts as Moral Governor and Guide and awaits the petitioner who seeks His aid and mercy.

And there too on Mount Zion is ‘Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant’. Without Him we would have no approach. He is the One Who as Eternal God (‘the Son’) and Representative Man acts in Heaven to make His plea on behalf of those who are within the new covenant on behalf of those who approach through Him.

So all the participants are there to welcome God’s people. The way has been made open. The man or woman in Christ may approach God continually in Heaven, looking to worship Him and seek His aid in living their lives for Him under His care. There is no more fear, nothing to keep man away. For Jesus Christ has through His offering of Himself removed the veil that kept men and women from God. Through Him therefore we have access, and there is thus only peace and love in His presence.

‘New.’ The word used (neos) means new because recently established for each one who becomes a Christian. This is in contrast with kainos (Heb 8:8; Heb 8:13) which means new as contrasted with the old, new of a different kind.

The second parts of the pairings are:

‘To the city of the living God, —- the heavenly Jerusalem,

To the church of the firstborn ones — who are enrolled in Heaven,

To the spirits of just men — made perfect.’

To the blood of sprinkling — which speaks better than that of Abel.’

It will be noted that the first of the first pairings, and the last of the second pairings differ from the other three in each case in that they refer to what are non-personal descriptions. Thus Mount Zion is followed by three references to heavenly personages, and the blood of sprinkling is preceded by three references to the people of God. The pattern is clear.

It should further be noted that these second parts of the pairings do not just refer to those who have died and are in Heaven. They refer to all who become His from the moment that they do so. They include the whole true people of God on earth and in Heaven. ‘You have come.’ Once we become His, we come to this heavenly sphere as we seek to worship God. We, along with those who have gone before, are thus spiritually part of the city of the living God, citizens of Heaven even though we travel as ‘strangers’ on the earth. And here we can come in Christ to worship.

We are also therefore part of the assembly of the firstborn ones, whose names have been written in Heaven, which indicates that we are enrolled in Heaven, that we are citizens of Heaven. And we are those who have been called and set apart by and for Him Who is the Firstborn, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17). And we are also included among the spirits of just men made perfect, for God is the Father of spirits including our spirits (Heb 12:9), and we have been perfected in Christ (Heb 10:14). And we are also united with Him and with all God’s people in the covenant by the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus.

‘You are come.’ That is, ‘you have come and are now here’ (perfect tense). For the meaning of proserchomai in the letter see Heb 4:16, Heb 7:25, Heb 11:6. It means to come to God, to draw near to God. And to where have we come to draw near to God? To the new Jerusalem, and to the church of the firstborn ones, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to the blood of sprinkling. We can approach in worship here (Heb 4:16; Heb 10:19) precisely because in Christ we are present in the spiritual realm, in the heavenly places (Eph 2:6), because we have been raised with Him, because we are even now a part of this great assembly and gathering, are even now citizens of this heavenly Jerusalem.

We are not on earth cowering before Mount Sinai in fear, standing in a barren wilderness and petrified at the sound of His voice, rather, together with all those who have passed on before us, we rejoice in this heavenly Mount Zion, in the glory of God’s presence, and we glory in Him, being brought near and having access through the blood of Jesus (Heb 10:19). For the work of Christ on the cross and His establishment as High Priest on our behalf (the resurrection being assumed) has all been in order to make this possible.

‘To the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem’. This is paralleled with Mount Zion, the dwellingplace of God. And its second part in the parallel demonstrates that it refers to man’s part in the heavenly realm, where those who have gone before can worship God, and those still on earth can worship Him too (Heb 10:19). At Sinai the people stood afar off and could not approach the mountain because of their fear, for God temporarily abode there (Exo 24:16) and they were afraid, for they were kept from Him by their sinfulness and by His awful holiness. But the people of the new Jerusalem gather on Mount Zion, the very permanent dwellingplace of God, and are not afraid (compare Rev 14:1).

This city of the living God represents the whole of the people of God whether in Heaven or on earth, all who are founded on the Apostles (Rev 12:14), for in Christ all who are His dwell in the heavenlies, in the spiritual realm (Eph 2:6), and dwell in the new Jerusalem (‘you have come and are now there’) and will one day dwell in the new creation (compare Rev 3:12; Revelation 21 all). This is the city which has foundations (Heb 11:10), the foundations being the Apostles and Prophets with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone (Eph 2:20), or seen in another light the twelve Apostles (Rev 21:14), with the twelve tribes of Israel as the gates. The latter stresses that our access is thus through being of His true people, through our being the true Israel. For in the New Testament the church, the ekklesia, the congregation, is seen as in essence the true twelve tribes of Israel (Rom 11:13-29; Eph 2:11-22; Gal 6:16; 1Pe 1:1; Jas 1:1; Mat 16:18-19; Rev 7:1-8) continuing the congregation of Israel of old).

It is the city for which Abraham looked, whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11:10), which we can even now enjoy. Abraham could only look out for it in hope. We can experience it. It is God’s replacement for rejected earthly Jerusalem. It is the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal 4:25-26), the whole people of God, established in the heavenly Mount Zion, in God’s permanent dwellingplace, through the work of Christ. Its coming and final triumph was vividly portrayed in pictorial fashion in Isa 66:10-24, with the wicked evermore excluded (Heb 12:24). See also Isa 4:3; Isa 4:5-6. Mount Zion is the dwellingplace of God. The heavenly Jerusalem is that wherein God’s people dwell with Him.

We should note that like Zion and Jerusalem in the Old Testament (e.g. Zep 3:16; Zec 2:7; Psa 147:12; Joe 3:1; Isa 40:2; Isa 49:14; Jer 4:14; Jer 6:8; Jer 7:29; Lam 1:8) Jerusalem can represent both the place, and its people when the latter are spoken of in large numbers. In Mat 3:5 Jerusalem is mentioned as going out to hear John. In Mat 23:37 and parallels Jerusalem killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to her. Compare the same idea in Mat 8:34. And this fact is made full use of in Revelation 21. The new Jerusalem is the bride (Rev 21:2 compare Rev 19:7-8), and the twelve Apostles her foundation (compare Eph 2:20). It was thus the ideal way to connect God and Mount Zion with His people. It is both heavenly city and heavenly people.

The ‘church of the firstborn ones.’ This is paralleled with ‘the innumerable host of angels in festal array (in general assembly)’, indicating their uniting with them in the worship of Heaven. All the angels worship the One Who is the Firstborn Who came into the world (Heb 1:6), and worship before the throne. Here His people also worship with them, and they too come as a festal gathering, for in Isa 66:10 LXX it is they who are called on to call a general assembly or feast as the new Jerusalem. ‘Rejoice, O Jerusalem, and all you who love her, hold in her a general assembly (a festal gathering)’).

But Christ’s people are clearly also contrasted with the angels, for they come not as attendants but as His fellow-heirs, sharers in the privileges of the Firstborn, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17). They are ‘firstborn’ ones, co-heirs of Christ’s privileges (compare Rom 8:29 where Jesus is described as ‘the firstborn among many brothers and sisters’). They are one with Him as the angels can never be. For He is their Elder Brother (Heb 2:10-16), and they will share His throne, the one given to Him as glorified Man (Rev 3:21). And part of angelic service is to minister to them (Heb 1:14). In the same way in Revelation 4, 5 the church is represented by the twenty four elders who are seated on thrones and are near the throne of God and have received their crowns, which they cast at His feet.

‘Firstborn ones.’ In Heb 1:2 the Son was called ‘the heir of all things’, for Whom all things are destined. He is the Firstborn, the rightful Heir, because of His Oneness with the Father (Heb 1:6). In Rom 8:29 He is ‘the firstborn among many brothers and sisters’, the heir Who shares all with those who are have been called by God and have been conformed to His image. And in Col 1:18 He is ‘the firstborn of the dead’, the One through Whom the redeemed have received life as firstborn ones, given life by the Firstborn from the dead. Thus by being the ‘church of firstborn ones’, that is, those gathered and given life by the Firstborn (and therefore also heirs), His people are associated with Him in His destiny and in His resurrection

They are the gathering of the redeemed people of God, those who have been united with the One Who is the Firstborn of all creation (Col 1:15), Who is the source of its existence and its life, the One Who is the Giver of being, and Who is the Firstborn from the dead (Col 1:18), the One Who has power over all life and had power to take back His life again (Joh 10:18; Joh 5:21) and is the Giver of New Life, Eternal Life, the One Who came into the world and as Heir of all things (Heb 1:2) is worthy of the worship of angels (Heb 1:6). And to this gathering of firstborn ones (of heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ) belong all Who are His people in Heaven or on earth to whom He has given being and eternal life (Col 1:15; Col 1:18; Joh 5:24; 1Jn 5:12-13 and also Heb 1:6). They are the ‘firstborn’ ones (prototokon), those who will receive their birthright (prototokia) through Him, in contrast with those who have rejected and forfeited it (Heb 12:16). As heirs they are the inheritors of God’s inheritance (Act 26:18; Col 1:12).

‘Which are enrolled in Heaven.’ This restricts the description to genuine believers. They are those whose names are written in Heaven, enrolled in the New Jerusalem as men on earth were enrolled in their cities and were their cities (Luk 10:20; Php 4:3 compare Mal 3:16; Psa 69:28). It is God Who has enrolled them and they are thus citizens of Heaven (Php 3:20 compare Isa 4:3). It was a normal process in great cities that those who were citizens had their names enrolled in the city records, and expunged if they were seen as guilty of some great crime, and all were aware that a select number could be described and enrolled as ‘Roman citizens’ even though they had never lived in Rome. They represented Rome.

‘The spirits of just (righteous) men — made perfect.’ This is paralleled with ‘to the God of all as Judge’. These spirits of righteous men do not fear the God of all, the One who rules and governs as Judge, (in the same way as the Judges of the Old Testament), but love and worship Him, for they come to Him looking for His righteous governance and guidance, for they are righteous, having been perfected by the blood of Christ. They are the spirits of all who have been made righteous by faith (see Heb 12:9), and having been made perfect through Christ’s offering of Himself (Heb 10:14), are even now spiritually present in the spiritual realm (Eph 2:6), perfected by Him with a view to their ultimate sanctification, which is at present in process.

This represents we who are on earth, whose hearts and minds and citizenship are in Heaven (Col 3:1; Php 3:20), as much as those who are in Heaven. (‘They without us shall not be made perfect’ – Heb 11:40). The use of ‘spirits’ may well be in order to confirm that the resurrection is seen as having not yet taken place. Such have not yet been ‘clothed upon’ (2Co 5:2-4; 1Co 15:20-57). They still ‘sleep’ in Christ (because their ‘sleeping’ bodies lie in the grave) or walk on earth. But God is the Father of all such ‘spirits’ (Heb 12:9) and watches over them all.

So the three descriptions reveal God’s people, firstly in connection with God’s dwellingplace, secondly in conjunction with and in contrast to the angels, and thirdly in the relationship that they have with God even prior to the resurrection.

‘To the blood of sprinkling — which speaks better than that of Abel.’ This is paralleled with ‘And to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant.’ This is the blood of Jesus as sacrificed for His own (Heb 9:14) that it might successfully call down mercy from God on those to whom it has been applied. Rather than crying for judgment, as Abel’s did (Gen 4:10-11), its successful plea is for mercy and oneness in the covenant. And its Source is now in Heaven.

This comparison with Abel should make us aware of exactly what the blood of Jesus represents. It represents blood shed through death. It represents the blood of one slain by those who hated Him. But unlike Abel’s it also represents blood which cries out for mercy for His enemies. That is why it speaks better than the blood of Abel.

And ‘the blood of sprinkling’, being here related to the Mediator of a new covenant, is a specific reminder of and contrast with the blood of sprinkling on the people when they were brought into the old covenant (Exo 24:8). Through it He brings His own into the new covenant. Through it all His people are sprinkled and made one, for the sprinkling is on them all..

It may also have in mind the Passover, although there, while the blood was applied with hyssop, it was not said to be sprinkled (Exo 12:22). But see 2Ch 35:11. The blood of sprinkling also hallowed the priests when the priesthood was first set up (Exo 29:21; Lev 8:30) and was continually applied by sprinkling to the altar as an indication of atonement (Lev 1:11 and often). It was also sprinkled in the water of purification for the removal of the taint of death. And it was to be sprinkled by the Servant of Yahweh on ‘many nations’ when He had become the One who bore our sin and was our offering for sin (Isa 52:15; Isa 53:4-5; Isa 53:10-11). Thus we find in this blood of sprinkling participation in the new covenant (compare Mar 14:24 and parallels) and the means of full atonement and purification.

This spiritual blood of sprinkling is applied on earth when we respond to Christ, but it is carried into Heaven on those who have been sprinkled, just as the Lamb is seen in Heaven as the One Who has been slain (Rev 5:6), even though He was slain on earth. The thought is of the fact that all men and women who are in Heaven are there by virtue of the sprinkling of the blood of the Lamb Who was slain. It has to be introduced in order to make this very fact clear. And in that sprinkling we are all made one. And He acts as our Mediator in Heaven because His blood has brought us within the new covenant.

The whole emphasis then of this passage is that in Christ we have broken through into Heaven itself, and into the very presence of God through the blood of Christ (Heb 4:16; Heb 10:19) and join with the people of God in Heaven in worship and praise as one people. Not for us Mount Sinai, but the heavenly Mount Zion. That is why He became our High Priest. Not for us visits to the earthly Jerusalem. That has been replaced. For the earthly Jerusalem is no longer the centre for God’s people. We have come to, and are a part of, the heavenly Jerusalem. Nor for us the gathering in Jerusalem for the great feasts and especially the Passover and Atonement, we join the festal array of the angels and gather in the heavenly Mount Zion with all who call on His name, while our Passover and Atonement, already accomplished in Him, are seen in Heaven as having been applied to us as His people. The earthly copies and shadows are no more. They have been replaced by the heavenly realities. Let men not therefore look back with nostalgia to the old things. They are gone for ever. When that which is perfect has come then that which is in part is done away.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Heb 12:22. But ye are come unto mount Sion, &c. There seems to be throughout this whole period a reference to the manifestation which God made of himself upon mount Sion, as being milder than that upon mount Sinai, and the heavenly society with which Christians are incorporated, is considered as resembling the former, (that is, mount Sion,) in those circumstances in which it was more amiable than the latter. Sion was the city of God: in the temple which stood there, cherubims were the ornaments of the walls, both in the holy and most holy place, to signify the presence of those myriads of angels, who attended at the giving of the law, and are present in the true heavens. There (in the city of Sion) was a general assembly and congregation of the priests, who were substituted instead of the first-born: there was God, as the supreme Judge of controversies, giving forth his oracles; the high-priest was the mediator between God and Israel; and the blood of sprinkling was daily used.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Heb 12:22-24 . Contrast to Heb 12:18-19 . Positive characterization of the communion into which the readers have entered by the reception of Christianity. The description, Heb 12:22-24 , corresponds not in detail to the particulars enumerated, Heb 12:18-19 (against Bengel, who ingeniously constructs a sevenfold antithesis; as likewise against Delitzsch, Kluge, and Ewald, who have followed the same), although we should be led to expect this from the corresponding words of commencement, Heb 12:18 ; Heb 12:22 . Moreover, the succession of clauses contained in Heb 12:22-24 is no strictly logical one, since at least would have been more appropriately placed before than after .

, ] but drawn near have ye to the mountain Zion and the city of the living God, namely, the heavenly Jerusalem . The three substantive-appellations contain a single idea, in that to the closely connected twofold expression: , the following forms an explanatory apposition. As Mount Zion (in opposition to the Mount Sinai, Heb 12:18 ) the heavenly Jerusalem is designated, because in the O. T. the Mount Zion is very frequently described as the dwelling-place of God, and the place whence the future salvation of the people is to be looked for. Comp. Psa 48:3 [2], Psa 50:2 , Psa 78:68 , Psa 110:2 , Psa 132:13 ff.; Isa 2:2-3 ; Joe 3:5 [Joe 2:32 ]; Mic 4:1-2 ; Oba 1:17 , al. Likewise also is the heavenly Jerusalem called the city of the living God (comp. too in relation to the earthly Jerusalem: , Mat 5:35 ), not so much because the living and acting God is its architect (Heb 11:10 ), as because He has His throne there.

] and to myriads of angels , the servants, and as it were the court of God. belongs together (Beza, Schlichting, Jac. Cappellus, Calov, Braun, Kypke, Carpzov, Cramer, Baumgarten, Storr, Dindorf, Tholuck, Kurtz, Hofmann, and others), without, however, our having, with Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Erasmus, Luther, Clarius, Vatablus, Calvin, Corn. a Lapide, Piscator, Grotius, Tischendorf (Exo 2 ), Bloomfield, Conybeare, Ewald, and others, to refer likewise , Heb 12:23 , to the same as an apposition. For such apposition, consisting of a bare individual word, would be out of keeping with the euphonious fulness of the whole description; and, if this construction had been intended, would have been written. But just as little must we with others (also Bleek and de Wette) take alone, as standing independently; whether, as Seb. Schmidt, Wolf, Rambach, Griesbach, Knapp, Bhme, Kuinoel, Stengel, Bisping, Maier, Moll, we regard as apposition thereto merely , or, as Bengel, Chr. Fr. Schmid, Ernesti, Schulz, Lachmann, Bleek, Tischendorf (Exo 1 ), Ebrard, Delitzsch, Riehm ( Lehrbegr. des Hebrerbr . p. 117), Alford, Kluge, Woerner, both the following members: in connection with which latter supposition, however, the more nearly connecting , of frequent use with the author (Heb 2:4 ; Heb 2:11 , Heb 4:12 , al. ), would have been more naturally expected than the bare before . For is a very indefinite notion, which, where its reference is not self-evident from the connection, requires a genitival addition; besides, the accentuation of the idea of plurality alone would here be meaningless. Further, the reasons advanced against our mode of explanation, that in such case we ought, after the analogy of the following members, to expect a before (Seb. Schmidt, Bleek, Ebrard); that and that which follows would become in the highest degree dragging (Bleek); that would be superfluous (de Wette), are without weight. For was omitted by reason of the euphonious , into which a placed also before would have introduced a discordant note; the charge of dragging would have been justified, only if a had really been added before ; nor, again, is , superfluous, since it contains a very significant notion, and one different from that of .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2340
ABELS SACRIFICE AND CHRISTS COMPARED

Heb 12:22; Heb 12:24. Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

AS the Christian dispensation differs widely from that of Moses as to the manner in which it was promulgated, so does it most essentially differ with respect to the spirit and temper which it is calculated to produce in the minds of men. The terrors of Mount Sinai were suited to impress the Jews with a servile fear; as their whole system of rites and ceremonies was, to keep them under bondage. But the mild genius of the Gospel introduces us at once to peace and liberty. In the passage before us the Apostle exemplifies this remark in many particulars; the last of which demands our attention at this time. We propose to shew,

The efficacy of Abels blood

By the blood of Abel we are not to understand his own blood, but the blood of his sacrifice

[The generality of commentators indeed explain this as relating to Abels blood, which cried for vengeance against his murderous brother [Note: Gen 4:10.]. But to commend the blood of Christ in this view, would indeed be no commendation at all. The history of Abel informs us, that he offered one of the firstlings of his flock in addition to the same kind of offering as Cain brought [Note: This is well proved by Dr. Kennicott, in his dissertation on Cain and Abel.], manifesting thereby not merely his obligations to God as a creature, but his conscious guilt as a sinner, and his faith in that Lamb of God, who was to take away the sin of the world [Note: Heb 11:4.]. That sacrifice of his was honoured with very peculiar tokens of Gods acceptance [Note: Perhaps fire might be sent from heaven to consume the sacrifice. See instances of this, Lev 9:24. 1Ki 18:38. 1Ch 21:26 and 2Ch 7:1.]; and may therefore fitly be referred to as illustrative of the sacrifice of Christ.]

It spake to him that offered it very excellent things
[Had not the marks of Gods favour been such as were most desirable, Cain would not have so cruelly envied his brother the attainment of them. But they manifestly declared to Abel the acceptance of his person, and an approbation of his service. What could be more delightful than such a testimony to a pious soul? Had life itself been the price of such a blessing, it had been well bestowed.]
But the excellence of Abels sacrifice is far surpassed by,

II.

The superior efficacy of Christs

The blood of Christ is here, as in other places [Note: 1Pe 1:2.], called the blood of sprinkling

[There is in this place an allusion to the sprinkling of blood on the book and on the people, when God made his covenant with the Jewish nation [Note: Compare Exo 24:6-8. with Heb 9:18-22.]. The blood of Christ is sprinkled upon us, when we enter into covenant with God; and it binds God, if we may so say, to fulfil to us his promises, while it binds us on the other hand to obey his precepts.]

This speaks to us incomparably better things than the blood of Abel
[Great as the expressions of Gods love to Abel were in consequence of the sacrifice which that righteous man had offered, they were not to be compared with those which we receive through Christ. There was no inherent virtue in his sacrifice; its efficacy was derived from the relation it bore to Christ; and the blessings, enjoyed by means of it, were rather typical than real. The continuance of Gods favour to him was to be secured only by a constant repetition of the same sacrifices; nor could he obtain a full and perfect peace of conscience even by their means [Note: Heb 9:9.]: but Christ, by his one sacrifice of himself, has perfected for ever them that are sanctified [Note: Heb 10:14.]. Besides, whatever Abels sacrifice spake, it spake to him alone: whereas the blood of Christ speaks to the whole world, and proclaims acceptance to all who will trust in it for salvation. Thus, while the good things which the blood of Abel spake, were only typical, temporary, and personal, those which the blood of Christ speaks, are real, permanent, and universal.]

Nor will our concern in this matter appear unimportant, if we consider,

III.

The interest which the believer has in it

Every believer comes to this blood of sprinkling
[The efficacy of the Redeemers blood is not a matter of speculation, but of experience, to every true Christian. As Moses and the Israelites came to Mount Sinai in order to make a covenant with God, so do we come to the blood of sprinkling: they came as persons redeemed by God out of the house of bondage: we as redeemed from death and hell: they came to take God as their God, and to give up themselves to him as his people; and we come with precisely the same view: they offered sacrifices and were sprinkled with the blood, in token that they deserved to die, and could be cleansed only by the blood of atonement; and we come in the same manner to the blood of Christ: they looked through the typical sacrifices to him who was in due time to be offered; and we look to him, who in due time was offered for our sins upon the cross.]

In coming thus to Christ we experience all the efficacy of his blood
[Were we afar off? we are brought nigh to God [Note: Eph 2:13.]: Were we enemies to God? we are reconciled to him [Note: Col 1:20.]: Were we condemned for our iniquities? we are now justified [Note: Rom 5:9.]: Were our minds filled with a sense of guilt and a dread of punishment? our hearts are now sprinkled from an evil conscience [Note: Heb 10:22.], and enjoy peace with God [Note: Rom 5:1.]: Were we strangers to communion with God? we now have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus [Note: Heb 10:19.]: Were we enslaved by evil habits? we are now purged from dead works to serve the living God [Note: Heb 9:14.]: Did a sentence of eternal misery await us? we now look forward to the fruits of an eternal redemption [Note: Heb 9:12; Heb 9:15.]. Such is the interest that the Christian has in the blood of sprinkling; and in this sense it may be said of every believer, that he is come to it.]

Application
1.

Let us inquire whether we be indeed come to the blood of sprinkling

[It is not every nominal Christian, that has approached God in this way: all are not Israel who are of Israel. The outward form indeed which was observed by Moses is not required under the Christian dispensation; nor need we feel his terror, in order to obtain his comforts: but we must seriously draw nigh to God, sprinkling ourselves, as it were, with the blood of Christ, and professing our entire reliance upon that for our acceptance with him. Yea, we must go to God in the very spirit and temper in which Abel offered his sacrifice; not merely thanking him with pharisaic pride, as Cain may be supposed to have done; but smiting on our breasts like the Publican, and imploring mercy for Christs sake. Have we done this? Or rather, are we doing it yet daily? On this depends our happiness, both in this world and in the world to come. If God at this moment gives us the witness of his Spirit in our consciences that this is indeed our experience, let us rejoice in such a testimony, and be thankful for it. But if our consciences condemn us, O! let us delay no longer, but instantly sprinkle ourselves with that precious blood, on account of which he will speak peace unto our souls.]

Let us endeavour to fulfil the obligations which this blood entails upon us

[When Moses sprinkled the Jews, and read to them the book of the covenant, they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient: O that there may be in us also such a heart,such a heart, I mean, not merely to promise, but to perform our promises! Certainly this is the end for which Christ shed his blood; he died, not merely to bring us to the enjoyment of privileges, but to lead us to the performance of our duties; he gave himself for us, to redeem us from all iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. Let us then strive to walk worthy of our high calling; and let the love of Christ constrain us to live unto him, who died for us and rose again.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

Ver. 22. But ye are come to Mount ] And the blessings that come out of Sion (grace and peace that come by Jesus Christ) are better than all other blessings of heaven and earth, Psa 134:3 .

The heavenly Jerusalem ] As Jerusalem was distinguished into two cities, the superior and the inferior; so is the Church into triumphant and militant; yet both make up but one city of the living God.

To an innumerable company ] Gr. To myriads, or many ten thousands of angels. Some have said that they are 99 to one, in comparison of the saints; grounding their conceit upon the parable of the lost sheep, Luk 15:4-7 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

22 24 .] Contrast to the above negation, in setting forth that to which they are come . There is apparently no studied logical order in the following clauses: and Bl. supposes there must have been some ancient inversion of them in our copies, seeing that would most naturally follow after . But see on the several clauses, and the general concluding note.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

22 .] but ye have drawn near (both congregations drew near, cf. Deu 4:11 , : the difference is in that, to which. So that Chrys. misses the mark, when he says, , , : and Thl., when he adds, ) to Mount Sion (here at length is expressed: see above. Bhme and Kuinoel would take the following as an epithet belonging to all three, , , and : and so apparently did c.: , , , . . But the form of the sentence will not allow this. Mount Sion, the abode of God which He loved and where He will abide continually, is used to signify, not its mere representative, which men know by that name, but the reality, God’s own abode in heaven. See Psa 78:68 ; Psa 110:2 ; Psa 132:13 ff.: Isa 2:2 f.; Isa 28:16 ; Joe 2:32 ; Mic 4:1 f.: Oba 1:17 al. And so Thl., , . See Delitzsch’s long note) and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (as the earthly Jerusalem, situate on Mount Sion, was the , Mat 5:35 , so in a more blessed sense is that heavenly city the city of the living God. He is its maker and builder, ch. Heb 11:10 ; nor only so, but also evermore dwells in it with the light of His presence, cf. Rev 21:22-24 ):

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Heb 12:22 . The Christian standing and attainment are now described in contrast with the Jewish. Ye are brought into the fellowship of eternal realities. , “but ye have drawn near” (already you have entered into your eternal relation to the unseen) to , “in the twenty-three passages in the LXX where the two words are combined the order is uniformly and not . Evidently here the ‘ Zion mountain ’ is mentally contrasted with another, the ‘ Sinai mountain ’. And thus the omission of in the revised text of Heb 12:18 is virtually supplied” (Vaughan). The ideal Zion is the place of God’s manifestation of His presence (Psa 9:11 ; Psa 76:2 ) but also of His people’s abode (Psa 146:10 ; Isa 1:27 and passim ). It is therefore impossible to find another particular of the enumeration in , as if the former were “the transcendent sphere of God’s existence where He is manifested only to Himself,” and the latter “the place where His people gather and where He is manifested to them”. ( Cf. Isa 60:14 , , ); the mount and the city are viewed together as the meeting-place of God and His people, where the “living God” manifests fully His eternal fulness and sufficiency. It is “the heavenly Jerusalem” ( cf. Gal 4:26 , and Rev 21:2 , [ ], Heb 13:14 ) as being not the earthly and made with hands but the ultimate reality [ cf. the beautiful description in Philo, De Som. , ii. 38, and the Republic , ix. p. 592, where after declaring that no such city as he has been describing exists on earth Plato goes on to say, . Also the fine passage in Seneca, De Otio , chap. 31, on the two Republics.] , and to myriads of angels, the usual accompaniment of God’s glory and ministers of His will, as in Deu 32:2 ; Rev 5:11 ; and Dan 7:10 , . The construction of the following words is much debated. (1) . may be construed in apposition with . , to myriads of angels, a festal gathering and assembly of the first-born enrolled in heaven; or, (2) a new particular may be introduced with .; or, (3) a new particular may be introduced with , “to myriads of angels, to a festal gathernig and assembly of the first-born.” On the whole, the first seems preferable. For although angels are not elsewhere called the “first-born” of God, they are called “sons of God” (Job 1:6 ; Job 2:1 ; Job 38:7 ; Gen 6:2 ; Gen 6:4 ; Psa 89:6 ) and the designation is here appropriate to denote those who are the pristine inhabitants of heaven. Cf. the first choir of Angelicals in the “Dream of Gerontius,” who sing:

“To us His elder race He gave

To battle and to win,

Without the chastisement of pain,

Without the soil of sin”;

and Augustine in De Civ. Dei , x. 7, “cum angelis sumus una civitas Dei cujus pars in nobis peregrinatur, pars in illis opitulatur”. , meaning a festal gathering of the whole people, and meaning the assembly of all enrolled citizens, seem much more applicable to angels. They are enrolled as citizens ( . see the Faym and Oxyrhynchus Papyri, passim ) in heaven, and welcome the younger sons now introduced. The myriads of angels which on Sinai had made their presence known in thunders and smoke and tempest, terrifying the people, appear now in the familiar form of a well-ordered community in the peaceable guise of citizens rejoicing over additions to their ranks (Luk 15:10 ). , “and to a Judge who is God of all,” and by whose judgment you must therefore stand or fall ( cf. Heb 10:27 ; Heb 10:30-31 ). Among the realities to which they had been introduced this could not be omitted. He who is God of all living is the ultimate reality, and the Hebrews have been brought near not only to His city with its original inhabitants, but to Himself; and to Himself as allotting without appeal each soul to its destiny. “and to spirits of just men made perfect,” “spirits,” as in 1Pe 3:19 , of those who have departed this life and not yet been clothed with their resurrection body. is largely illustrated by Wetstein who quotes many examples of “justi perfecti” from the Talmud. It is perhaps more relevant to refer to Heb 11:4 and to the whole strain of the Epistle whose aim it is to perfect the righteousness of the Hebrews, see chap. 6. Of course O.T. and N.T. saints are referred to. But as without us, i.e. , without sharing in our advantages, they could not be perfected, Heb 11:40 , there is at once introduced the recent covenant ( “new in time,” not, as usual, “fresh in quality,”) because the idea first in the writer’s mind is not the opposition to the old but the recent origin of the new. (But cf. Col 3:9 ; 1Co 5:7 ). It is remarkable that the Mediator of this covenant is here called by his human name “Jesus”. The reason probably is that already there is in the writer’s mind the great instrument of mediation, , “blood of sprinkling”. In mediating the old covenant Moses, , Exo 24:8 . [ , however, does not occur in LXX, though is found four times in Numbers ]. But in Heb 9:19 this writer replaces with the more significant ; cf. Heb 9:13 . In 1Pe 1:2 we have . The “blood of sprinkling” is therefore the blood by which the new covenant is established, see Heb 13:20 , , this blood having the power to cleanse the conscience, Heb 9:14 , Heb 10:22 . It cleanses because it speaks better than Abel’s, for while that of Abel cried for vengeance [Gen 4:10 , ] that of Jesus is a message of salvation, the of Heb 11:40 . But it may be adverbial. “Ille flagitabat ultionem, hic impetrat remissionem” (Erasmus).

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Hebrews

WITH WHOM FAITH LIVES

Heb 12:22-23

The magnificent passage of which these words are part sums up the contrast between Judaism and Christianity which this whole Epistle has been illustrating and enforcing. The writer takes the scene on Sinai as expressive of the genius of the former revelation, whose centre was a law which evoked the consciousness of sin, and kindled terror; and which was embodied in sensible and material symbols. Far other and better are the characteristics of the latter revelation. That excites no dread; is given from no flashing mountain with accompaniments of darkness and trumpet blasts and terrible words; and it brings us into contact with no mere material and therefore perishable symbols, but with realities none the less real because they are above sense, and not remote from us though they be. For, says my text, ‘Ye are come,’ not ‘Ye shall come.’ The humblest life may be in touch with the grandest realities in the universe, and need not wait for death to draw aside the separating curtain in order to be in the presence of God and in the heavenly Jerusalem. How are these things brought to us? By the revelation of God in Christ. How are we brought to them? By faith in that revelation. So every believing life, howsoever encompassed by flesh and sense, can thrust, as it were, a hand through the veil, and grasp the realities beyond. The scene described in the first words of my text may verily be the platform on which our lives are lived, howsoever in outward form they may be passed on this low earth; and the companions, which the second part of our text discloses, may verily be our companions, though we ‘wander lonely as a cloud,’ or seem to be surrounded by far less noble society. By faith we are come to the unseen realities which are come to us by the revelation of God in Christ. ‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion.’ Now, looking generally at these words, they give us just two things – the scene and the companions of the Christian life. The remainder of the passage will occupy us on future occasions, but for the present I confine myself to the words which I have read. And I shall best deal with them, I think, if I simply follow that division into which they naturally fall, and ask you to note, first, where faith lives, and, second, with whom faith lives. I. First, then, where faith lives. ‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.’ There are two points here which carry us back to the topography of the ancient sacred city. In the literal Jerusalem, Zion was the lofty Acropolis, at once fortress and site of the king’s palace, and round it clustered the dwellings of the city. The two symbols are thus closely connected, and present substantially the same idea, and perhaps it is pressing a figure too far to find a diversity of meaning in the separate parts of this closely connected whole. But still it seems to me that there is a substantial difference of aspect in the two clauses. The first thought, therefore, that I would suggest to you is this, that the life of a man who has truly laid hold of Jesus Christ, and so is living by faith, is on its inward side – that is, in deepest reality – a life passed in the dwelling of the great King. All through this letter, the writer is recurring to the thought of access to God, unimpeded and continual, as being the great gift which Jesus Christ has brought to us. And here he gathers it into the noblest symbol. There, lifted high above all the humbler roofs, flash the golden pinnacles of the great palace in which God Himself dwells. And we, toiling and moiling down here, surrounded by squalid circumstances, and annoyed by many cares, and limited by many narrownesses which we often find to be painful, and fighting with many sorrows, and seeming to ourselves to be, sometimes, homeless wanderers in a wilderness, may yet ever more ‘dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold His beauty and to inquire in His temple.’

The privilege has for its other side a duty; the duty has for its foundation a privilege. For if it be true that the real life of every believing soul is a life that never moves from the temple-palace where God is, and that its inmost secret and the spring of its vitality is communion with God, what shall we say of the sort of lives that most of us most often live? Is there any truth in such exalted metaphors as this in reference to us? Does it not sound far liker irony than truth to say of people whose days are so shuttlecocked about by trifling cares, and absorbed in fleeting objects, and wasted in the chase after perishable delights, that they ‘are come unto Mount Zion,’ and dwell in the presence of God? Is my ‘life hid with Christ in God’? There is no possibility of Death being your usher, to introduce you into the house of God not made with hands, unless faith has introduced you into it even whilst you tarry here, and unless your habitual direction of heart and mind towards Him keeps you ever more at least a waiter at His threshold, if you do not pass beyond. ‘I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than dwell in the tents of wickedness.’ My brother! do we so knit ourselves to Him, by heartfelt acceptance of the good news of His loving proximity to us which Jesus Christ .brings, as that indeed we have left earth and care and sin at the foot of the mount, with the asses and the servants, and have our faces set to the lofty sweetnesses of our ‘Father’s house’? ‘Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house,’ and no less blessed are they ‘in whose hearts are the ways’ that lead to it. Then let me remind you how Zion contrasts with Sinai, and thus suggests the thought that a true Christian life, based upon faith, has a communion with God which is darkened by no dread, nor disturbed by consciousness of unforgiven sin. We have set against each other the terrors of that theophany on Mount Sinai, attendant on, or rather precedent to, the giving of the law – the mountain wrapped in smoke; in the heart of the wreathing blackness the flashing fire; from out of the midst of it the long-drawn trumpet blasts, the proclamation of the coming of the King; and then. the voice which, divine as it was, froze the marrow of the hearers’ bones, that they entreated that no words like these should any more fall on their trembling ears. That is the one picture. The other shows us the mount where the King dwells, serene and peaceful, the clouds far below the horizon; the flashing fire changed into lambent light; the blast of the trumpet stilled; the dread voice changed into a voice ‘that speaketh better things’ than were heard amidst the granite cliffs of the wilderness. And so in vivid, picturesque form the writer gathers up the one great contrast between the revelation of which the message was law and its highest result the consciousness of sin and the shrinking that ensued, and the other of which the inmost heart is love, and the issue the attraction of hearts by the magnetism of its grace. The old fable of a mountain of loadstone which drew ships at sea to its cliffs is true of this Mount Zion, which is exalted above the mountains that it may draw hearts tossing on the restless sea of life to the’ fair havens’ beneath its sheltering height, There is no dread, though there is reverence, and no fear, though there is awe, in the approach of those who come through Jesus Christ, and live beneath the smile of their reconciled God and Father. ‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion,’ the dwelling-place of the living God, from whose lips there will steal into the ears and the hearts of those who keep near Him, gracious words of consolation, so thrilling, so soothing, so enlightening, so searching, so encouraging, that they which hear them shall say, ‘Speak yet again, that I may be blessed.’ And then there is the other aspect of this scene where faith lives. ‘Ye are come unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.’ I need not remind you of how much we hear in this Epistle in reference to that city. It is generally set forth as being yet to come, as being the object of seeking rather than of possession. But the fact is that there are two aspects of it. In one it is future, in the other it is present, The general idea to be attached to it is simply that of the order and social state of those who love and serve God. Here, in this part of my text, we have to deal with the city rather than with its inhabitants. They follow thereafter, but, so far as we can separate between the two, we have just this idea enforced in the words that I am now commenting upon – viz., that the lowliest life, knit, as it seems to be, by so many bonds to the perishable associations and affinities of earth, yet, if it be a life of faith in Jesus Christ, has its true affinities and relationships beyond, and not here. ‘We have our citizenship in heaven,’ says the Apostle, ‘from whence also we look for the Saviour.’ And every Christian man and woman is therefore hound to two or three very plain duties. If you are living by faith, you do not belong to this order in the midst of which you find yourself. See that you keep vivid the consciousness that you do not. Cultivate the sense of detachment from the present, of not being absorbed by, or belonging to, things which are not coeval with yourself, and from all of which you will have to pass. Cultivate the sense of having your true home beyond the seas; and look to it as emigrants’ and colonists in a far-off land do to the old country, as being home. Live by the laws of your own city, and not by those that run in the community in which you dwell. You are under another jurisdiction. The examples, the maxims of low earthly prudence, or even of a somewhat higher earthly morality, are not your laws. You are not bound to do as the people round about you do.

‘I appeal unto Caesar.’ I take my orders from him. I send my despatches home, and report to headquarters, and if I get approbation thence, it does not matter what the people amongst whom I dwell think about me. Make your investments at home. The Jews invented banking and letters of credit in order that they might the more easily shift their wealth from one land to another as exigencies required. We are strangers where we are. Do not put your property into the country in which you live as an alien, and lock it up there; but remit, as you can do, to the land where you are going, and to which you belong. Home securities are a good deal better than foreign ones. ‘ Ye are come to the city of the living God.’ ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.’ II. And now let me turn to the other thought herewith whom does faith live. I need not trouble you with merely expository remarks upon the diversity of arrangements which is possible in the second half of my text. Suffice it to say that just as the scene of the life of faith has been represented in a twofold and yet closely connected form as Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem, so the companions of that life are also represented in a twofold and yet closely connected form. A slight alteration in the punctuation and order of the words in our text brings out, as it seems to me, the writer’s idea. Suppose you put a comma after ‘innumerable company,’ and substitute for that phrase the original Greek word, so reading ‘and to myriads’ and then pause there. That is the general definition, on which follows the division of the ‘myriads’ into two parts; one of which is ‘the general assembly of angels,’ and the other is the ‘Church of the firstborn which are written in heaven.’ So then, of companions for us, in our lonely earthly life, there he two sorts, and as to both of them the condition of recognising and enjoying their society is the same – via, the exercise of faith, Now the word rendered ‘general assembly’ has a grander idea in it than that. It is the technical word employed in classic Greek for the festal meetings of a nation at their great games or other solemn occasions, and always carries in it the idea of joy as well as of society. And so here the writer would have us think of one part of that great city, the heavenly Jerusalem, as, if I may So say, the dwelling-place of a loftier race of creatures whose life is immortal and pure joy; and that we, even we, have some connection with them. In an earlier part of this letter we read that they are all ‘ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation.’ But here the ministration is not referred to, simply the fact of union and communion. I am not going to enter at any length upon that subject, concerning which we know but very little. But still it seems to me that our ordinary type of Christian belief loses a great deal because it gives so little heed to the numerous teachings of the New Testament in regard to the reality of the existence of such beings, and of the tie that unites them with lowly believers here. All the servants of the King are friends of one another. And howsoever many they may be, and howsoever high above us in present stature any may tower; and howsoever impossible it be for us to see the glancing and hear the winnowing of their silver wings, as they flash upon errands of obedience to Him, and rejoice to hearken to the voice of His word, there is joy in the true belief that the else waste places of the universe are filled with those who, in their loftiness, rejoice to bend to us, saying, ‘I am thy fellow servant, and of them which worship God.’ Brethren, we have a better face brightening the unseen than any angel face. But just because Jesus Christ fills the unseen for us, in Him we are united to all those of whom He is the Lord, and He is Lord of men as well as angels. So if the eyes of our hearts are opened, we, too, may see ‘the mountain full of chariots of fire and horses of fire round about’ the believing soul. And we, too, may come to the joyful assembly of the angels, whose joy is all the more poignant and deep when they, the elder brethren, see the prodigals return. But the second group of companions is probably the more important for us. ‘Ye are come,’ says the text, not only to the angelic beings that cluster round His throne in joyful harmony, but also ‘to the Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven.’ And, seeing that the names are in heaven, that means, evidently, men who themselves are here upon earth. I have not time to dwell upon the great ideas which are here contained in the designation of the community of believing souls; I only remind you that probably the word ‘church’ is not so much employed here in its distinct ecclesiastical sense for there are no ecclesiastical phrases in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as with allusion to the assembly of the Israelites beneath Mount Sinai, the contrast with which colours the whole of the context. It means, therefore, in general, simply the assembly of the firstborn. Can there be more than one firstborn in a family? Yes! In this family there can, for it is a name here not pointing to a temporary order, but to dignity and prerogative. The firstborn had the right of inheritance; the firstborn was sanctified to the Lord; the firstborn, by his ‘primogeniture, was destined in the old system to be priest and king. All Israel collectively was regarded as the firstborn of the Lord. We, if our hearts are knit to Him who is preeminently firstborn amongst many brethren, obtain, by virtue of our union with Him, the rights and privileges, the obligations and responsibilities, of the eldest sons of the family of God. We inherit; we ought to be sanctified. It is for us, as the ‘first fruits of His creatures,’ to bring other men to Him, that through the Church the world may reach its goal, and creation may become that which God intended it to be. These firstborn have their names written in heaven – inscribed on the register of the great city. And to that great community, invisible like the other realities in my text, and not conterminous with any visible society such as the existing visible Church, all those belong and come who are knit together by faith in the one Lord. So, dear friends, it is for us to realise, in the midst, perhaps, of loneliness, the tie that knits us to every heart that finds in Jesus Christ what we do. In times when we seem to stand in a minority; in times when we are tormented by uncongenial surroundings; when we are tempted by lower society; when we are disposed to say, ‘I am alone, with none to lean upon,’ it does us good to think that, not only are there angels in heaven who may have charge concerning us, but that, all over the world, there are scattered brethren whose existence is a comfort, though we have never clasped their hands. Such, then, is the scene, and such is the society, in which we may all dwell. Christian men and women, do you make conscience of realizing all this by faith, by contemplation, by direct endeavors to pierce beyond the surface and shows of things to the realities that are unseen? See to it that you avail yourself of all the power, the peace, the blessing which will be yours in the degree in which your faith makes these the home and companions of your lives. How noble the lowest life may become, like some poor, rough sea-shell with a gnarled and dimly coloured, exterior, tossed about in the surge of a stormy sea, or anchored to a rock, but when opened all iridescent with rainbow sheen within, and bearing a pearl of great price! So, to outward seeming, my life may be rough and solitary and inconspicuous and sad, but, in inner reality, it may have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, and have angels for its guardians, and all the firstborn for its brethren and companions.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

the living God. See Heb 3:12.

heavenly. Greek. epouranios. Compare Heb 3:1.

Jerusalem. Compare Gal 1:4, Gal 1:26. Rev 3:12; Rev 21:2, Rev 21:10.

innumerable company = myriads.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

22-24.] Contrast to the above negation, in setting forth that to which they are come. There is apparently no studied logical order in the following clauses: and Bl. supposes there must have been some ancient inversion of them in our copies, seeing that would most naturally follow after . But see on the several clauses, and the general concluding note.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Heb 12:22. , but) A sevenfold opposition. Let us see the several points:

I. The mountain which was touched: Mount Zion.

II. The fire that burned: The city of the living GOD.

III. Blackness or mist: Ten thousands (an innumerable company) of angels and of the first-born.

IV. Darkness: GOD, the Judge of all.

V. Tempest: The spirits of just men made perfect.

VI. The sound of a trumpet: Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament

VII. The voice of words: The blood of sprinkling speaking what is very good.

In Articles I. and VII. there is an obvious opposition; there is no doubt but that there is an opposition also in the intermediate points, the number of which also the apostle adapts to one another. Access, in the Old Testament, was of that kind, that the people was kept back; in the access of the New Testament, all things are laid open [to all, people and ministers alike].-, ye have come, ye have access to) having received the faith of the New Testament. And from this beginning, they who partake of Christ more and more reap the benefit of this access, till their perfection at death, and till the judgment, and unto eternal life. For this is not spoken of the coming (access) to the church militant, since others came (added themselves) rather to Israel, than the Israelites to others; but there is described here the highly exalted state of believers under the New Testament, in consequence of communion with the Church made perfect, and with Christ and GOD Himself. This access, too, not less than the former, Heb 12:18-19, was joined with the faculty of hearing, and that too in this life, Heb 12:24, etc., although our approach is much more obvious to heavenly eyes than to ours, that are still veiled; and brings along with it the best hopes for the future. The apostle here brings forward an excellent knowledge of the heavenly economy, worthy of what Paul heard and saw, when he was blessed by being caught up into the third heaven; 2Co 12:2; 2Co 12:4.- , Mount Zion) This is the seat of the dispensation of Christ; [and therefore comprehends the spirits of just men made perfect.-V. g.] Rev 14:1; Joh 12:15; 1Pe 2:6.- , and to the city of the living GOD) The seat of the dispensation of GOD, Heb 12:23, [comprehending ten thousands of angels and of the first-born.-V. g.] For it is a Chiasmus: 1. Zion. 2. The city of God. 3. God the Judges 4. Jesus the Mediator. The first and fourth, the second and third agree.- , the heavenly Jerusalem) Rev 21:2.-, ten thousands) These are spoken of absolutely, as in the prophecy of Enoch, Jud 1:14 : comp. Deu 33:2; Dan 7:10.-, of angels) We cannot construe , , …: for both the polysyndeton must be retained, and the general assembly no doubt belongs to one party; the church to another; for who would join the synonyms, general assembly and Church? The church consists of the first-born; the general assembly, therefore, of angels. But the ten thousands consist not only of the general assembly of angels, but also of the church of the first-born. For the expression, ten thousands, is applicable to both, and the dative is suited to both. The things which are presently about to be mentioned, may be added. In the meantime we must here observe the Chiasmus of the genitive and dative [the genitives being first and fourth; the datives, second and third], and .-, general assembly) This word, and presently afterwards, church and Judge, indicate solemnity; which is even now in heaven, and will be at its height at the revelation of Jesus from heaven. Consider the expression-all angels, all nations, Mat 25:31-32.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

angels

(See Scofield “Heb 1:4”).

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

ye are come: Psa 2:6, Psa 48:2, Psa 132:13, Psa 132:14, Isa 12:6, Isa 14:32, Isa 28:16, Isa 51:11, Isa 51:16, Isa 59:20, Isa 60:14, Joe 2:32, Rom 11:26, Gal 4:26, Rev 14:1

the city: Heb 13:14, Psa 48:2, Psa 87:3, Mat 5:35, Phi 3:20, *marg. Rev 3:12, Rev 21:2, Rev 21:10, Rev 22:19

of the: Heb 3:12, Heb 9:14, Heb 10:31, Deu 5:26, Jos 3:10, 2Ki 19:4, Psa 42:2, Psa 84:2, Jer 10:10, Dan 6:26, Hos 1:10, Mat 16:16, Rom 9:26, 1Th 1:9, Rev 7:2

an innumerable: Deu 33:2, Psa 68:17, Dan 7:10, Jud 1:14, Rev 5:11, Rev 5:12

Reciprocal: Deu 12:5 – But unto 2Sa 5:7 – Zion 1Ki 11:36 – the city 1Ki 22:19 – all the host 1Ch 11:5 – the castle 2Ch 32:19 – the God Psa 9:11 – which Psa 15:1 – holy Psa 24:3 – the hill Psa 46:4 – city Psa 48:1 – city Psa 50:2 – Out Psa 68:16 – the hill Psa 87:5 – of Zion Psa 89:5 – in the congregation Psa 99:2 – great Psa 107:7 – that they Isa 1:21 – the faithful Isa 8:18 – which Isa 10:24 – O my people Isa 24:23 – mount Isa 25:6 – in this Isa 27:13 – and shall Isa 56:7 – them will Isa 65:11 – my holy Jer 17:25 – and this Zec 3:7 – I will Zec 8:4 – There Mar 12:25 – but Eph 1:10 – he Eph 1:22 – to the Eph 2:19 – but Eph 5:27 – glorious 1Ti 3:15 – the living Heb 11:10 – he looked Heb 11:16 – they desire Rev 7:9 – no man Rev 13:6 – and them

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

OUR PLACE

But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.

Heb 12:22-25

This place requires faith to apprehend it; it requires faith to understand it. Ye are come to the Mount Sion, the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem.

I. Mount Sion must be in a certain sense upon earth.Because we are the children of the Heavenly Jerusalem, as St. Paul tells us, Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. Here, then, is a great city, of which we are the children; and yet it is heaven, God dwells in it, Christ dwells in it; we shall come to it, and yet we have come to it. Then the general assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in heaven. It is generally supposed that this refers to the saints in heaven. I scarcely think that it does, because it is said written in heaven, their names are written in heaven.

II. Just think what an inestimable and inconceivable privilege it is to be in the Church of Christ.If you consider the Church of Christ as a mere established body made by the breath of man, having some Bible lessons, as it were, communicated to it and doled out by it, then, of course, you cannot apprehend this, the greatness of being in the Church; but if you consider that yourself and every one of your fellow-members are parts and members of One Who is now at the right hand of God, then there is an amazing difference. Now, if we are to look at the Church as we should look, we must remember that every person in it who has been baptized and continues in the fellowship of it has some secret, not merely communication by prayer, but some secret bond of union with a Man at the right hand of God in the highest place of the universe.

III. What that communication is we cannot see with our eyes, but it is clearly revealed when it is said by the Apostle, the Church, from whom the whole body by joints and bands ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. What does that mean but an astonishing, mysterious, unspeakable communication betwixt Jesus Christ and every one of us?

Rev. Prebendary Sadler.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

Heb 12:22. The preceding verses describe the mount to which Christians do not come (as the Israelites did); the apostle now will describe the mount to which they have come. He does so by a series of points of identity which apply to the one divine institution under Christ, which was set up in Jerusalem which is termed Mount Zion. Christians do not actually go to the city of Jerusalem, but they come to the institution that was set up in that city. In coming to this divine institution we are brought into near relation with other spiritual places and things, to be named in this and the next two verses. City of the living God is that one in which He lives and which is the one “which hath foundations” (chapter 11:10). Heavenly Jerusalem is a contrast between Heaven above and the literal one below. The angels live in Heaven but are used in service for the people of God (chapter 1:14). By coming into the church it brings us into the benefit of these holy services.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Heb 12:22-24. Seven things, Bengel notes, show the inferiority of the condition of Israel under the Law, and seven things show the superiority of the true Israel under the Gospel. Our gathering-place is Mount Zion (not Sinai), the abode of Him who is Father and King,and the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. We are come to an innumerable company of angels (literally, ten thousands of angels; not the comparatively few who witnessed the giving of the Law, and aided the administration of the old economy), to the festal gathering of the Church of the first-bornof the Christian Church of this age, consisting as it did of those who were heirs of the promises, and whose names are enrolled, not as were the names of the first-born of Israel, in earthly registers (Num 3:42), but in heaven itself; a privilege shared, moreover, not by the first-born only, but by the entire company of the redeemed (see Luk 10:20);and to God, the Judge of all. The mention of the militant Church and of their adversaries brings up this thought: He is their Defender, and to Him they may commit their cause.

And to the spirits of just men made perfect, from righteous Abel downwards; and to the Mediator of the recent and new covenant (not the same word as in chap. Heb 9:15)

Jesus (the name of our Lord which the writer of this Epistle uses when speaking of His redeeming work), and to the blood of sprinklingthe blood that ratified the covenant is now offered to God and applied (not shed merely) to the human conscience,which speaketh better than Abel, or than the [blood] of Abel. Than Abel may refer to his offering or to his martyrdom. His offering had no intrinsic efficacy, and his martyrdom cried for vengeance. Christs blood cried only for mercy, and secures it.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Our apostle having given an account, in the foregoing verses, of the state of the Jewish church under the law, comes now to declare that most excellent state whereinto believers are called in and by the gospel. The privileges here summed up partly respect the church militant, and and partly the church triumphant.

Observe then, The glorious privilege of the gospel-state, and what believers are said to come to, whilst militant here on earth.

1. They are said to come unto Mount Sion, the city of the living God, the new Jerusalem; not to mount Sinai, which was full of terror and discomfort, but to mount Sion, full of all spiritual blessings.

Where note, The gospel church is called the city of the living God. A city is a place of safety and a place of honour, a place of peace and rest. The souls of sinners can find no place of rest or safety under the law, but we have all these things by the gospel; rest in Christ, peace with God, safety in divine protection, &. And as a king dwells in his city, so God dwells in the church of believers; “This as my rest for ever, here will I dwell says God, for I have a delight therein.”

O what manner of persons ought they to be, who are the denizens of the city of God! Alas! the great number who pretend highly to the church, and its privileges, are citizens of this world only, and altogether unfit for this holy society.

2. Believers are next said to come to an innumerable company of angels. To come to these, is to be of their society; they and we are one in Christ; the angels above, and believers below, make up but one corporation or family; they are our fellow-citizens, and our fellow-subjects. True, they are above us, and at a mighty distance from us, yet upon occasion very near us; and though we do not see them, nor speak unto them, nor familiarly converse with them, yet they love us, have a special care of us, and are ministering to us, as heirs of the same salvation with themselves.

3. They are come to the general assembly or church of the first-born; that is, they are of the number of God’s regenerated and adopted ones, those that are born again, whose names are registered in heaven. As the first-born under the law had a right to the inheritance, to a double part of the inheritance; so they who are interested really in the gospel-church, have a right to all that God has provided, and Christ hath purchased, even to the whole inheritance of grace and glory. O glorious privilege, to be brought unto this blessed society, this general assembly of the first-born; especially if we consider what company, what society, what assembly we belong unto, without it, which is no other than that of devils, and the seed of the wicked serpent.

4. They are come to God the judge of all; that is, they have access to God by Jesus Christ, access to his favour by justification, and access into his presence by prayer and supplication, yea, access to him as a judge, without terror or consternation.

Blessed privilege! believers have a comfortable access to God as the judge of all; with all their causes and complaints, he will hear them, plead their cause, and judge for them, and make their oppressions unsafe to the greatest of the sons of men.

5. Believers are said to come to the spirits of just men made perfect. Come to them, though not in the same place with them, though not in the same place with them till death; yet we and they have the same God and Sovereign, the same Head and Saviour, the same expectation of a glorious resurrection.

Note here, 1. There are spirits of men in a seperate state and condition, capable of communion with God and the church.

2. That all the spirits of just men departed, are made perfect: their race is consummated, perfect deliverance from all sin and sorrow is completed, and a full reward enjoyed; their faith is heightened into sight, and all their graces elevated into glory.

3. That yet are they spirits still, and no more but spirits; and though perfected spirits, yet there is wanting the last finishing stroke from the hand of God to render the bodies as well as the spirits of just men for ever perfect in the morning of the resurrecton.

4. Believers are here said to come to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant; as if the apostle had said, “Your fathers came to a mount of fire and smoke, of darkness, terror, and death, where there was no Mediator to make their peace with God, no blood to cry for mercy, and to cleanse them from sin, but you, by forsaking Judaism, and coming over to Christianity fully, are come into that society where Christ is Mediator and Priest; where the blood of Christ sprinkled upon your souls, cries aloud for mercy, and cleanses from all sin.

And to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. Intimating, that Christ’s blood solicits God with stronger cries for mercy, than did ever Abel’s for revenge.

Question. But what are those better things which the blood of Christ speaks above and beyond that blood of Abel!?

Answer. 1. It speaks better things from God unto us, namely, that his justice is satisfied, his wrath appeased, the condemning guilt of sin expiated, and the majesty of God fully reconciled to all believers.

2. It speaks better things to God for us, namely, to be at peace with us, to rest in his love toward us, to furnish us with all grace here, and to fit us for glory here after.

O blessed Jesus! Thy blood never cried as Abel’s did, for vengeance on them by whom it was shed, but pleaded for pardon, and obtained pardon on the behalf of many of them. Happy they who by faith are made partakers of this typical blood of sprinkling, which speaks better things than the blood of Abel.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Heb 12:22. But ye Who believe in Christ, by your embracing Christianity; are come unto mount Sion Are admitted to the communion of the church of Christ, with its privileges and blessings. Or, ye are come to a dispensation the reverse of all these terrors, even to the mild and gentle discoveries which God makes of himself in the new covenant. For what the apostle intends is evidently to describe that state whereunto believers are called by the gospel: and it is that alone which he opposes to the state of the church under the Old Testament. For to suppose that it is the heavenly future state which he intends, is, as Dr. Owen justly observes, utterly to destroy the force of his argument and exhortation. For they are built solely on the pre-eminence of the gospel state to that under the law, and not on the pre-eminence of heaven above the state of the church on earth, whether Jewish or Christian, which none could question. Unto the city of the living God That holy and happy society or community, of which true believers are citizens, Eph 2:19; Php 3:20; in which God himself dwells, and which is governed by him; the heavenly Jerusalem Termed, (Gal 4:26,) the Jerusalem above; so called because it has its original from heaven, and the members thereof have their conversation in heaven, and tend thither, and its most perfect state will be there. All these glorious titles belong to the New Testament church. To an innumerable company of angels To join with them in the service of God, typified by the cherubs in the temple. The Greek is, to myriads of angels. A myriad is ten thousand; and when it is used in the plural number, it signifies an innumerable company, as we here render it. Possibly he speaks with an allusion to the angels that attended the presence of God in the giving of the law, whereof the psalmist says, The chariots of God are twenty thousand, &c.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The giving of the New Covenant and the things associated with that covenant are more impressive because they are the heavenly realities. These realities include the heavenly city and heavenly beings (i.e., angels and believers). Everything about this vision encourages us to come boldly into God’s presence (cf. Heb 4:16).

The phrase "the general assembly and church of the first-born"-the Greek construction suggests one group-probably refers to all those believers who had died but will receive their full inheritance because they followed the Lord faithfully and did not apostatize. [Note: E.g., Hodges, "Hebrews," p. 811.] Another view is that it refers to all the saints on earth and in heaven. [Note: E.g., Morris, p. 142.] Still other interpreters believe all Christians on earth are in view. [Note: E.g., Moffatt, p. 217; I Howard Marshall, "New Wine in Old Wine-Skins: V. The Biblical Use of the Word ’Ekklesia,’" Expository Times 84:12 (1973):364; and Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews, pp. 115-16).] Others believe all Christians already in heaven are. [Note: E.g., e.g., Bruce, The Epistle . . ., pp. 376-77.]

"To come to the ’church of the firstborn’ means to be called to the privilege of being a firstborn son. All Christians are called to be part of that assembly and by birth have a right to be there. However, they may forfeit that right and never achieve their calling. That is the thrust of all the warnings of the book of Hebrews." [Note: Dillow, p. 85, n. 73.]

The firstborn was the son who received the greatest amount of inheritance. This is evidently another reference to Christ’s companions (Heb 1:9; Heb 3:12) who are partakers of His glory (Heb 3:14; Heb 6:4; Heb 12:8), namely, those who faithfully persevere in their faith. [Note: Lane, Hebrews 9-13, p. 469.] Their names are on a heavenly roll as those who died cleaving to the Lord (cf. Exo 32:33; Psa 69:28; Isa 4:3; Dan 12:1; Luk 10:20; Php 4:3; Rev 3:5; Rev 13:8; Rev 20:12).

"The spirits of righteous men made perfect" evidently refers to all the glorified redeemed, faithful and unfaithful, whom Christ’s sacrifice perfects eventually (glorifies; cf. Heb 10:10; Heb 10:14; Heb 11:40).

Jesus’ blood is better than Abel’s because Jesus’ blood did not cry out for justice and retribution as Abel’s did (cf. Heb 11:4; Gen 4:10). [Note: Their "blood" is a metonymy for their "death." Both deaths were violent and involved the shedding of blood.] It satisfied God’s demands and secured God’s acceptance of New Covenant believers (cf. Heb 9:12; Heb 9:26; Heb 10:10; Heb 10:14; Heb 10:19). It cried out to God for mercy and pardon for those for whom Jesus shed it.

"It must be acknowledged that the reference to Abel in Heb 12:24 b is unexpected, because it does not belong to the developed comparison between Sinai and Zion. It may have been suggested by the reference in Heb 12:23 b to the presence of pneumasi dikaion, ’the spirits of righteous persons,’ in the heavenly city, since the writer had specified in Heb 11:4 that Abel was attested by God as dikaios, ’righteous.’ It may also have been the writer’s intention to evoke the whole history of redemption, from the righteous Abel to the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus, mediator of the new covenant . . ." [Note: Lane, Hebrews 9-13, p. 474. Cf. Casey, pp. 380-82.]

This sevenfold comparison (Heb 12:18-24) should motivate us to remain faithful and thereby realize the superior blessings of the New Covenant.

Mt. Sinai, a mountain that may be touched	Mt. Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem
Blazing fire	Myriads of angels
Darkness	The general assembly and church of the firstborn
Gloom	God, the Judge of all
Whirlwind	The spirits of righteous men made perfect
The blast of a trumpet	Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant
The sound of words	The sprinkled blood that is better than Abel’s

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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