Redemptive Finality:
The Atonement in Hebrews[1]
By
- Prescott Johnson
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Monmouth College
Monmouth, Illinois
Abstract
For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
μι_ γ_ρ πρoσφoρ_ τετελείωκεv ε_ς τ_ διηvεκ_ς τo_ς _γιαζoμέvoυς
—Hebrews 10:14
The text that this article considers, “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified,” is the crown jewel of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The verse encapsulates in a brief sentence the major themes of the Epistle, and does so by specifying three actions of Deity.
The article is a discussion of these three actions, which are: (1) the action of offering, (2) the action of perfecting, and (3) the action of sanctifying. Special attention is given, as these actions are considered severally, to the organic inter-relationship which they sustain.
The article concludes by indicating the bearing of the text on Wesleyanism.
For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
μι_ γ_ρ πρoσφoρ_ τετελείωκεv ε_ς τ_ διηvεκ_ς τo_ς _γιαζoμέvoυς
—Hebrews 10:14
This verse is the crowning verse of the Epistle to the Hebrews, gathering the major themes of the Epistle in one brief sentence. It registers the climax of the atoning work of Christ, as the redemptive work infinitely superior to the old covenant of types and shadows.
Both the writer and audience addressed are not stated in the Epistle. It is clear, however, that it was addressed to the Christian Jews of some community. They were in danger of misreading the material invisibility of the new faith and, consequently, of turning back to the old order, with its visible features that might provide a more tangible evidence and assurance. This, the writer urges, would be an irremediable error.
The text speaks of three actions, all the actions of Christ: offering, perfecting, and sanctifying. These actions are organic to each other; internally related as aspects of redemption. Those who benefit from these actions do so, not of their own purely human effort, but as recipients of a bestowed grace, albeit received in and through their faith in the provision.
(1) The Action of Offering.
The term offering is, in the original Greek, πρoσφoρ_ (prosphora). It derives from the verb πρoσφέρω (prospher_), which is a compound of the preposition πρός (toward) and φέρω (to bear or carry). The literal meaning of the term is a bringing to. In secular literature the term is used in this sense. In Jewish Hellenistic literature, the verb is not often used in this secular sense. Rather, it is used as a sacrificial term: to bring to the altar. This meaning corresponds with the Hebrew word ___ (qarab). This is a primitive root, from which is derived the term _ (qorbân), which means something brought near the altar, i.e., a sacrificial present.
_ (qorbân), a sacrificial present, is the sense in which πρoσφέρω (prospher_), offering, is used in Hebrews. There the Greek term is never used in merely its secular sense.
With an intensity unparalleled in the NT, Hb. makes use of the sacrificial theology and practice of the old covenant to develop the witness of Christ. This comes to expression in the frequent employment of the cultic term πρoσφέρω along with _vαφέρω. In Hb. the word always means “to accomplish the sacrifice” and not just to bring offerings to the altar or the priest (Kittel, ed., The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (9:67).
That the new covenant offering is but one offering is of decisive significance. It points up the contrast with the Levitical offering. That offering was continuously repeated, while the offering enacted by Christ was a single, once for all, offering. In the verses immediately preceding the text, the writer says:
And every priest standeth
daily ministering and offering
oftentimes the same sacrifices,
which can never take away sins:
But this man, after he had
offered one sacrifice for sins for
ever, sat down on the right hand
of God;
From hence forth expecting
till his enemies be made his
footstool.
The priests served daily at the door of the sanctuary, offering the same sacrifices. Exodus 29:38-42 gives the instructions for the daily burnt offering. Since this offering is a daily recurring offering, the priests are “standing priests.” The high priest offered sacrifices for himself and the people on the Day of Atonement. This was an annual event. At this time the high priest was permitted to enter into the inner sanctuary, the holy of holies. In that this was an annual occurrence, the high priest, like the priests, was a “standing priest.” Further, since both events, the daily and annual, were recurring events, they could not “divest of sins.” All they could do was bring to consciousness a remembrance of sins.
In contrast to the “standing priests,” Christ is a “sitting priest.” This is the significant contrast. “But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” Sitting is a sign of a work completed, in no need of being repeated. It is a sign of authority: the authority to administer the benefits of the sacrificial deed.
This means, finally, that Christ’s priesthood is of a new order. The writer of Hebrews designates that order in these words: “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (Heb. 7:17).
Melchisedec first appears in Genesis 14:18-20, where the meeting between him and Abraham is recounted. There Melchisedec is called “king of Salem,” “the priest of the most high God.” The name is a compound of Malchi and tsedek, and means righteous king. As the name Salem, which means peace, signifies, he is the king of peace.
The author of Hebrews tells us that Melchisidec is “Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually (7:3). Now, the author continues, “after the similitude of Melchisedec there arises another priest” (7:15). This priest is the new covenant priest, who has his priesthood, as did Melchisedec, without inheritance or descent (i.e., independently of the Aaronic order of priesthood), but in his own right. Melchisedec is the symbol of the eternal priesthood of Christ. His sacrificial deed over for all time, He “sat down on the right hand of God” with righteous and kingly authority to administer the benefits of this sacrifice.
Hebrews 9:25-26 presents another consideration reinforcing the thesis that the new covenant offering was a once for all offering. Were this not the case, Christ must over all times appear and reappear in His earthly existence and experience suffering and death repeatedly, without any closure and finality. And this, obviously, is not the case: Christ came, lived, and died on earth but once, and is, at the right hand of God, beyond any possibility of further sacrificial deed.
Nor yet that he should offer
himself often, as the high priest
entereth into the holy place
every year with blood of others;
For then must he often have
suffered since the foundation of
the world: but now once in the
end of the world hath he ap-
peared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself.
This passage points up another distinctive feature of the new covenant offering. The Levitical priests sacrificed the helpless beast. Christ, the new covenant high priest sacrificed, willingly so, his own life. He is both the offerer and the offering.
We have thus far pointed to significant differences between the old and the new covenant priesthood. There are also similarities, even in the sphere of the differences discussed above. But it must be emphasized that these similarities are not one-to-one similarities.
One such relationship concerns the high priest entering, at the price of shed blood, the holy of holies. On the day of atonement the old testament high priest removed his “golden garments,” which he wore on his daily routine activities, and put on the humbled and holy garments of fine linen. After offering the sacrifices for himself and for the nation, he parted the veil and entered the holy of holies and there sprinkled the blood before the mercy seat.
Hebrews 9 speaks of a heavenly tabernacle, “a greater and more perfect tabernacle,” in which “by his [Christ] own blood he entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 9:12). Here also the heavenly tabernacle, as was the earthly tabernacle, was purified by the shedding of blood.
The question comes up: what is the heavenly tabernacle, and why must it be purified?
Here any pictorial representation is inappropriate. Many of the church fathers believed that the heavenly tabernacle was the body of Christ. H. Orton Wiley subscribes to this view:
The view generally held by the ancient fathers, however, was that this holy place was Christ’s own body or human nature, the holiness of His life in the flesh being that through which he passed into the celestial sanctuary. This appears to be the more acceptable, for Christ’s body was known as a “tabernacle” or “temple (The Epistle to the Hebrews, 291).
Indeed, Christ did refer to Himself as a temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again” (Matt. 26:61). Hebrews 10:20 identifies the veil as the body of Christ. Here it may be observed that at the crucifixion, the veil in the temple was rent, exposing to view the holy of holies, emblematic of the fact that bodily death of Jesus is the rending of the new covenant veil that allowed access to the most holy place.
Both Lowrie and Lindsay believe that the heavenly tabernacle is heaven itself. They argue that this tabernacle is not a natural construction, i.e., “not made with hands (Heb. 9:11), and must, accordingly, refer to heaven itself. Lindsay writes:
The description plainly refers to something higher than this world; and doubtless, therefore, the greater and more perfect tabernacle, as a whole, must be viewed as denoting heaven. This is fully confirmed by the contrast exhibited in the 24th verse, where we are told that Christ entered not into the holy places made with hands, but into heaven itself. What, then, can the tabernacle not made with hands in the 11th verse mean, but heaven (Epistle to the Hebrews, 2:31).
What is the meaning of the heavenly tabernacle’s purification through Christ’s blood?
After speaking of the purification of the earthly tabernacle, the author of Hebrews writes of the purification of the heavenly (Heb. 9:23):
It was therefore necessary
that the patterns of things in the
heavens should be purified with these;
but the heavenly things
themselves with better sacri-
fices than these.
Exodus 30:22-29 gives the instructions for anointing with oil the tabernacle and its furniture. The passage closes (vs. 29):
And thou shalt sanctify them,
that they may be most holy:
whatsoever touches them shall
be most holy.
Now, it is quite obvious that the tabernacle and its furniture are not, per se, morally unclean and in need of cleansing. Why, then, are they in need of cleansing? The answer seems to be that they are in need of purification because of their association with sinful humanity, the priests and those who worship. This is explicitly stated in Lev. 16:16:
And he shall make an atonement
for the holy place, because of
the uncleanness of the children of
Israel, and because of their trans-
gressions in all their sins: and so
shall he do for the tabernacle of
the congregation, and remaineth
among them in the midst of their
uncleanness.
Certainly, it cannot be that “the heavenly things” that are with God are in and of themselves in need of cleansing. As in earth, so in heaven, the cleansing is necessitated because of the association with sinful humanity. The heavenly place of the meeting of sinful humanity with God must likewise, albeit with the better once for all sacrifice, be prepared by the cleansing of sacrifice. Lowrie’s comment is noteworthy:
For the tabernacle, and especially the holy place within the vail, was not cleansed as a thing that had been defiled, though the people were cleansed in that sense. The place where God would meet sinners (or the priests that appeared for sinners), was cleansed by sacrificial blood, because sinners were to appear there. There God would own them as His people, and they would enjoy His presence and favor. The place that was to become the sphere of this relation between God and His people, must be prepared by cleansing that would obviate the allowance or appearance there of sin, or of men as sinners. It is evident that this notion may be applied to the heavenly things themselves, without imputing to them any previous defilement, or anything that made them less purely holy than God Himself. It is not only unnecessary, but in itself inadmissible to suppose: (With Del and Alford) that “the supramundane Holy of holies, the eternal, uncreated heaven of God Himself, though in itself untroubled blessedness and light, yet needed cleansing, in so far as its light of love had been lost or transmuted for mankind, through the presence of sin, or rather had been over-clouded and bedarkened by a fire of wrath.” Men that are sinners are to approach God, and Christ as High Priest enters the heavenly sanctuary on their behalf. The place of that meeting must be prepared, (John xiv. 2) as the earthly copy was, by the cleansing of sacrifice (321-22).
There is much in favor of this view as to the nature of the heavenly sanctuary. To quote Lowrie again:
We infer that the heavenly things themselves are the new covenant, the people of God, the true tabernacle, and its belongings; (the Apostle mentions “an altar” xiii. 10).
It must be emphasized here that any realistic representation of the heavenly sanctuary is inappropriate. The physical nature of the old sanctuary cannot be transferred to the heavenly. Rather, this heavenly must be conceived in spiritual terms. Only these terms are effectual in conveying the sense of the intercourse between God and humanity.
The same consideration must be made with respect to Christ’s sacrificial blood. Here, too, it is inappropriate to represent the truth of the sacrificial blood of the heavenly High Priest in a realistic way. Hebrews does, indeed, attach significance to the blood of Christ. Hebrews 9:12 states:
Neither by the blood of goats
and calves, but by his own blood
he entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us.
And in Hebrews 13: 12 it is said:
Wherefore Jesus, also, that
he might sanctify the people
with his own blood, suffered
without the gate.
The phrase “blood of Christ” has a literal sense. But it does not have a mechanical or magical sense, as it did for the Semites, who drank the blood or let it flow over them. Indeed, the value of the blood in the Hebrew economy is not found in the animal blood per se, but in its anticipatory reference to the death of Christ, the great High Priest of the new covenant. After recounting the merits of the Old Testament faithful, the author of Hebrews says that they, “having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise,” and that “God, having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect (Heb. 11:39, 40).[2] Were the animal sacrifices not an adumbration of the sacrifice of Christ, “a shadow of good things to come,” they would be without merit. The Interpreter’s Bible (XI, 692) appropriately characterizes the significance of the blood of Christ: “The offering Christ made was in the realm of reality, as tangible and real as blood, as central and decisive as life (blood).” The significance of the blood of Christ is in relation to His death. The value is not in His material blood, but in His shed blood as the life offered for the redemption of humanity. The blood is a graphic term for the death of Christ. This means that the phrase “the shedding of blood” requires us to come to an understanding of the salvific significance of the death of Christ. That is the important issue.
- The Action of Perfecting.
The term τετελείωκεv (tetelei_ken), translated as perfected is the perfect tense of the verb τελειόω (teleio_) This verb, as well as the noun τέλoς and the adjective τέλειoς (teleios), stems from a primitive τελλω (tell_), which means “to set out for a definite point or goal; prop. the point aimed at as a limit, i.e., (by impl.) the conclusion of an act or state . . . (Strong, Concordance). This idea of fulfillment, a limit beyond which it is impossible to go, governs the meaning of these derivatives of the primitive.
The verb τελειόω (teleio_), as are all verbs ending in –όω (-o_) is factitive (i.e., the subject of the verb “causes an action to be performed or a condition to come into being.” It therefore means “to make perfect (τέλειoς, teleios). The verb means “to bring to completeness, wholeness.”
Aristotle defines the adjective (τέλειoς, teleios) as “complete” in compass, with no part outside, nothing which belongs left out. It is this result that the verb τελειόω (teleio_) produces. To quote Aristotle here:
‘The complete’ [τέλειov, teleion] means (1) that outside which it is not possible to find even one of the parts proper to it, e.g., the complete time of each thing is that outside which it is not possible to find any time which is a part proper to it.—(2 That which in respect of excellence and goodness cannot be excelled in its kind . . . . (3) The things which have attained a good end are called complete in virtue of having attained their end (Aristotle, Metaphysics V, ch. xvi).
We have noted that the verb τετελείωκεv (tetelei_ken), perfected, is in the perfect tense. This is significant.
The Greek perfect tense is a combination of the values of aorist and present tenses. The Greek tense deals with the time of action and the kind of action of the verb, “the kind of action being the chief idea involved, for time is but a minor consideration in the Greek tenses” (Dana and Mantey, 177). The aorist tense views the action of the verb as a single whole; The present tense views the action in progress; it is the linear tense. The perfect tense combines these two ideas. To refer again to Dana and Mantey (179):
There are really two fundamental ways of viewing action. It may be contemplated in single perspective, as point, which we may call punctiliar action (R. 823); or it may be regarded as in progress, as a line, and this we may call linear action (M. 109). The perfect tense is a combination of these two ideas: it looks in perspective at the action and regards the results of the action as continuing to exist; that is, in progress at a given point. Hence the perfect has both elements, linear and punctiliar. The aorist may be represented by a dot (·), the present by a line (__), and the perfect by the combination of the two (·__).
It is incorrect to define the Greek perfect tense in terms of the English perfect tense. If one were to say, in English, “I have closed the door” (which indicates that the action was complete at some time in the past), the door, for whatever reason, may still be open. Such a situation cannot occur with respect to the Greek perfect tense. The door, having been closed, must still be closed, i.e., the result of the action must still obtain.
This is the sense of the Greek perfect in our text. The perfection accomplished as the result the one offering of Christ continues to obtain after the act of offering has been made and finished as an event.
We have indicated in the above that verbs ending in –όω (-o_) causes a condition to come into being. The verb from which the perfect τετελείωκεv (tetelei_ken) is formed is such a verb (τελειόω (teleio_). What the perfect tense does is to state and insist that the condition produced decisively (punctiliar), namely, perfection (τέλειoς, teleios), continues in being, continues in progress.
Here the significance of the numeral one in the phrase one offering may be emphasized. It is the distinctive singularity of the offering that makes the perfecting, accomplished as a decisive event, continuously effective. And this, as we have seen, consists in the contrast of that perfect offering with the repeated offerings of old covenant priests that could never bring salvation. Only a single offering, a once for all offering, which is Christ’s offering, can secure a perfected result.
The perfecting is forever (ε_ς τ_ διηvεκ_ς – eis to di_neksis). The word διηvεκ_ς (di_nekes) is an adverb, and is a compound of the preposition δι_ (dia), through, and the verb φέρω (phero), carry, and means literally carried through. Ε_ς (eis) is a preposition meaning into. Thus the phrase he hath perfected forever, literally reads “he hath perfected into the carrying through. This literal translation is not idiomatic English, so the adverb with the definite article is rendered forever.
There is a significant relation between the perfect verb, τετελείωκεv (tetelei_ken), hath perfected, and the articular adverb ε_ς τ_ διηvεκ_ς (eis to di_neksis), or forever. The perfect tense of the verb to make perfect already insures that the result of the action be continued, made progressive in the future. The addition of the term forever serves to strengthen what has already been affirmed in the action of the verb. There can be absolutely no doubt but that the perfecting will be continuous, without end. It will, and does, extend to all perpetuity. The perfection is realized forever.
The Action of Sanctifying.
The object of the verb action of τετελείωκεv (tetelei_ken), of perfecting, is said to be “them that are sanctified” (τo_ς _γιαζoμέvoυς – tous hagiazomenous). But care must be exercised when specifying the relation between the one offering that perfects and the sanctification of the people of God.
While there is a linkage between perfecting and sanctification, it is not a direct causal linkage. Were that the case, the one offering that achieves perfecting would automatically achieve the sanctification of the people. That is, the people would be sanctified by the sole virtue of the offering of Christ, and so sanctified without any condition of their response to the atoning death of the great High Priest. And sanctification without the pre-condition of the appropriate human response to the divine offer is nowhere indicated in New Testament scripture. Indeed, after that pre-condition is met, then it is by virtue of the atonement that the people are perfected in sanctification. Thus the human response is the mediation between the perfect one offering and moral perfection. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, . . . the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
Lowrie expresses this thought:
Christ’s sacrifice does perfect. Having made it, he has perfected forever. This is expressed as a thing accomplished with reference to Christ’s performance, not with reference to our partaking of the effect of it. In other words, we may not regard: by one offering he hath perfected them that are sanctified, and: by one offering they that are sanctified were perfected, as a personal experience, scil. were, then, when the offering was made, as convertible expressions. They that are sanctified are perfected only when they have been sanctified personally, which must be an individual affair, and fall within the individual’s history. But perfection when attained is by means of what Christ did when he suffered. He then perfected all: he has perfected and does nothing more to perfect. He has done all that sacrifice does (355).
Now, the phrase “them that are sanctified” is, in the Greek, a present, passive, articular participle (τo_ς _γιαζoμέvoυς). Being in the present tense, which is a linear tense, it denotes progression, rather than action as a completed whole (the aorist). For this reason, many commentators argue that sanctification is a continuing process, never completed in this life, to be obtained as perfection forever “only when Christ comes again for salvation, and when the eternal inheritance is received” (Lowrie, 357). Only then are believers “perfected forever”.
Now the verb sanctify (_γιάζω – hagiaz_) regularly appears in Scripture in the aorist tense, which means that sanctification cannot be regarded as merely and only progressive, but must be regarded as a completed whole. The verb also appears in many places in the present tense. So the question becomes: How is this different tense usage to be reconciled?
Hebrews 2:11 reads “For he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one . . .” . Both terms are present articular participles, denoting progress. In Hebrews 10:10 the author writes: “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” The expression “we are sanctified” is the perfect passive indicative of the verb sanctify. It is more accurately translated as “we have been sanctified.” As a perfect passive indicative, it, like Heb. 10:14) represents a completed state, the condition of which is a continuing one. Hebrews 10:29, “. . . the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified . . .”, uses the verb in the aorist. Finally, Hebrews 13:12, “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate,” employs the verb sanctify in the aorist tense, specifying completeness.[3]
Now, it does not seem possible that sanctification can be both a completion and an unfinished process. Thus, how may the linear aspect of the verb be reconciled with the punctiliar aspect?
Now, it is correct that the present tense always indicates progress. It is a linear tense. But there are different aspects of the progress. One such use of the present is “the iterative present.”
Dana and Mantey say this about the iterative present:
The present tense may be used to describe that which recurs at successive intervals, or is conceived of in successive periods. It is sometimes called the present of repeated action (184).
We have already pointed out that the present participle _γιαζoμέvoυς, being sanctified, has the definite article prefixed to it. When this occurs, the time element that the participle displays, i.e., the present time, drops off, and the proper timelessness of the participle is shown forth.[4] This modifies the temporal continuity of the present. Moulton makes this point, in discussing the uses of the present participle:
Like the rest of the verb, outside the indicative, it has properly no sense of time attaching to it; the linear action in a participle, connected with a finite verb in past or present time, partakes in the time of its principle. But when the participle is isolated by the addition of the article, its proper timelessness is free to come out[5] (1:126).
Moulton also points out that with the prefixed article the present participle “become virtually a noun (1:127).” This reinforces the timeless character of the participle and serves to modify, or even eliminate, its durative character in favor of its iterative character.
Robertson writes: “With the Article. The present participle has often the iterative . . . sense” (892).
Thus the correct interpretation of the articular present participle τo_ς _γιαζoμέvoυς is iterative and not durative. It therefore indicates “. . . a timeless act repeated, and would then mean those who from time to time are sanctified by a definite act of faith” (Wiley, 325). Further, if, as the text says, Christ has perfected or completed those who are sanctified, then, in the interest of consistency, sanctification cannot be merely a process.
Lindsay has captured the iterative sense of the participle:
_Αγιαζoμέvoυς designates those who share the benefits of this all-perfect expiation; and it is put in the present tense, because, though the expiation was completed long ago, yet the application of it is continually going on. In every age there are men consecrated to God through virtue of the atonement made by Christ when He died (2:105).
Thus the perfection of those who in faith respond affirmatively to the perfect offering of Christ finds complete realization in this life in sanctification. But now the question is, “What, more precisely, is the nature of this perfection?
It is well here to consider Paul’s statement in Philippians 3:12.
Not as though I had already
attained, either were already perfect:
but I follow after, if that I may
apprehend that for which also I
am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
It is important to note the sense of the term perfect as employed in this particular context. The word is, to be sure, from the same verb, τελειόω (teleio_), from which hath perfected (τετελείωκεv – tetelei_ken) in Hebrews 10:14 is derived. In the text under present consideration, the term translated perfect is τετελείωμαι. It is not an adjective, as the English translation would seem to indicate, but a verb: the perfect passive indicative first person singular of τελειόω. The passage then reads literally: “Not that already I received, or already have been perfected . . .”.
The passage may be, and has been, used to argue for the thesis that perfection is a progress and not an attainment. However, the context in which the passage obtains does not support the durative, or the progressive, sense of Christian perfection.
In this passage Paul alludes to the Olympian games, with which the Philippians were familiar. A crown of victory was given to the runner who placed first in the contest. This crown signified that he was perfected. Indeed, secular Greeks used a variant of this very term to signify the perfection of the runner who finished the race victoriously.
It is helpful here to refer to the great Wesleyan commentator Adam Clarke:
Either were already perfect— Ή _δη τετελείωμαι: Nor am I yet perfect; I am not yet crowned, in consequence of having suffered martyrdom. I am quite satisfied that the apostle here alludes to the Olympian games, and the word τετελείωμαι is the proof; for τετελείωμαι is spoken of those who have completed their race, reached the goal, and are honored with the prize. Thus it is used by Philo, Allegoriar. lib. iii. page 101, edit. Mangey: Πoτε oυv, ω ψυχη, μαλιστα vεκρoφoρειv vικoφoρειv) σεαυτηv _πoληψη· αραγε oυχ _ταv τελειωθ_ς και βραβειωv και στεφαvωv αξιωθ_ς “When is it, O soul, that thou shalt appear to have the victory? Is it not when thou shalt be perfected, (have completed thy course by death), and be honored with prizes and crowns?”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
St Paul, therefore, is not speaking here of any deficiency in his own grace, or spiritual state; He does not mean by not being yet perfect, that he had a body of sin and death cleaving to him, and was still polluted with indwelling sin, as some have most falsely and dangerously imagined; he speaks of his not having terminated his course by martyrdom, which he knew would sooner or later be the case. This he considered as the τελειωσις, or perfection, of his whole career, and was led to view every thig as imperfect or unfinished till this had taken place (Commentary, 6:502).
This view is confirmed by a shortly following passage, Phil. 3:15, where Paul speaks of himself as among those who are perfect:
Let us therefore, as many
as be perfect, be thus minded:
and if in any thing ye be other-
wise minded, God shall reveal
even this unto you.
In this passage the term perfect is the plural adjective τέλειoι (teleioi). Surely Paul is not so careless or inconsistent that in one breath he claims that he is not perfect and in another breath that he is one among the perfect!
We now know that the term perfect connotes completeness and wholeness. These properties are the nature of perfection.
Olin Curtis, who taught at Drew University, has developed some considerations that bear on the subject of perfection. It is helpful to consider his views on the subject.
In his book The Christian Faith, he distinguishes between “the individual” and “the person.” The individual is the existing individual as a complex of physical and psychical characteristics. In their native condition they are, in Curtis’ terms, inorganic. That is, they are disorganized and are thus an assemblage of fragmented elements. The person is the individual become organic, i.e., whose characteristics are brought in ordered and coherent pattern. “And the ultimate man is . . . the individual personalized by the self-decisive rejection and endorsement of original traits” (200).
According to Curtis, the moral experience ultimately demands the achievement of organic personhood. But morality itself cannot realize this requirement. And this is due to the fact that the motivity of morality is the emotion of fear: fear of not meeting the moral demand and fear of the divine authority that lies behind the moral demand. Fear, he argues, is not an organizing principle, but a principle of disintegration (39-75).
He continues this line of thought:
No man can organize his individual life under the demand of conscience. He is totally unable even to start an organism. And the greater his development in moral personality the greater the impossibility of that adjustment which secures wholeness and peace in manhood (200-201).
A new motivity beyond morality is required to create the organic person. Curtis finds that new motive in the emotion of love. But it is not any emotion of love that proves effective. It must be a “perfect love.”
There is no fear in love; but
perfect love casteth out fear;
because fear hath torment. He
that feareth is not made perfect
in love (1 John 4:18).
Perfect love is the all-consuming love of God. It is holy love. Listen again to the words of Curtis:
Only one motive is there which is capable of organizing a man, and that one motive is holy love. We must have love. It is not enough to have “morality touched by emotion.” Many a moral man can take fire at bare thought of the supremacy of righteousness. It is not any emotion, it is not any great emotion which we need, but the one peculiar kind of emotion, the creative passion of love. This—love in the heart—is the organizer paramount. It will dominate every mood, make all idiosyncrasies coalesce, bring every wandering element of manhood into organic simplicity and beauty. It is not merely love’s power of fusion, the fire, the intensity of the passion by which other emotions are transformed into blended urgencies, all driving toward the same object; neither is it the fullness of love, its oceanic occupancy of self-consciousness; it is these, fusion and fullness, with the addition of psychic endurance, the staying-power of love in consciousness—it is these three qualities which make love the organizer it is. But, further, it is not any sort of love which can organize a man. He must have holy love. Man is a moral person, and he can be fully organized only under moral terms. The love must be just as ethical as that great fear which the moral loyalist has. You must not throw that fear away. You must take that very fear and make it over into a holy love, a boundless passion for all moral concern, a passion so ethical that it would be an awful fear were it for an instant to stop throbbing with the joy of personal fellowship. But how, pray, can this be done? how can moral fear be made over into moral love? In some way the moral law itself must be transformed into a personal Friend (Christian Faith, 73-74).
Curtis’ view is in line with the teaching of John Wesley. In fact, while Wesley defines the essence of Christian perfection as love, yet he does designate it in terms of organicism:
- 6. St. Paul, when writing to the Galatians, places perfection in yet another view. It is the one undivided fruit of the Spirit, which he describes thus: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace; longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity,” (so the word should be translated here) “meekness, temperance.” What a glorious constellation of graces is here! Now, suppose all these to be knit together in one, to be united together in the soul of a believer, this is Christian perfection (VI, 413-14).
Wesley’s great contribution was not the creation of a new doctrine, Christian Perfection, but the bringing of that doctrine into a practical relevancy into the lives of the people. We here quote two significant passages from his Plain Account of Christian Perfection:
“For he is ‘pure in heart.’ Love has purified his heart from envy, malice, wrath, and every unkind temper. It has cleansed him from pride, whereof ‘only cometh contention;’ and he hath now ‘put on bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering.’ And indeed all possible ground for contention, on his part, is cut off. For none can take from him what he desires, seeing he ‘loves not the world, nor any of the things of the world;’ but ‘all his desire is unto God, and to the remembrance of his name.’
“Agreeable to his one desire, is the one desire of his life; namely, ‘to do not his own will, but the will of Him that sent him’ . . . He hath a single eye . . . . God reigns alone; all that is in the soul is ‘holiness to the Lord.’ There is not a motion in his heart but is according to His will. Every thought that arises points to Him, and is in ‘obedience to the law of Christ’ (11).
Again:
“But whom then do you mean by ‘one that is perfect?’ We mean one in whom is ‘the mind which was in Christ,’ and who so ‘walketh as Christ also walked;’ a man ‘that hath clean hands and a pure heart,’ or that is ‘cleansed from all filthiness of flesh and spirit;’ one in whom is ‘no occasion of stumbling,’ and who, accordingly, ‘does not commit sin.’ To declare this a little more particularly: We understand by that scriptural expression, ‘a perfect man,’ one in whom God hath fulfilled his faithful word, ‘From all your filthiness and from all your idols I will cleanse you: I will also save you from all your uncleannesses.’ We understand hereby, one whom God hath ‘sanctified throughout in body, soul, and spirit;’ one who ‘walketh in the light as He is in the light, in whom is no darkness at all; the blood of Jesus Christ his Son having cleansed him from all sin’ (27).
We are now in a position to see just why it is that the “hath perfected,” the τετελείωκεv (tetelei_ken), of Hebrews 10:14 is creative, holistically and yet with continuing results, of organic selfhood. Perfection, we now understand, is organism, which, as Aristotle himself said in effect, no part necessary to the organism is missing. Organism has the quality of completeness. Now, the motivity that undergirds perfection is love, holy love. This emotion, this affection, is not a quantity to which must be added degrees ad infinitum in a never-completed continuum. No. The motivity of love is a quality. And there is no reason why that qualitative motivity may not be conferred, through Grace, holistically and completely. As regulative, therefore, of perfection, such perfection may be complete, and indeed must be complete. And it this idea that the aorist of the verb sanctify (_γιάζω – hagiaz_) sustains in its reference to the perfection granted to those who are sanctified.
Hebrews 10:14 is the crown jewel of Hebrews. We have attempted to visualize this wondrous gem. It is a gem of three facets, each a specific irradiation of a single light. Yet, as irradiations of a single light, they interpenetrate and coalesce. They are emblematic of the organic relationship of the three phases of divine activity in human redemption. The perfect offering (perfect because never repeated) brings the perfection of love and organic personhood, and this a personal bestowal in sanctification. This is the harmony of the wondrous jewel.
But there is also the harmony of the voice. For the divine activity of redemption is melody gathering its values into harmony. It is a melody whose phrases of offering, perfecting, and sanctifying, sound a symphonic beauty.
It is now the beginning of a new age. It is the time of earth’s sunset. And it is the time of heaven’s sunrise. It is, for the redeemed, the day-spring of eternity. The redeemed are gathered around the throne, in the midst of which “stood a lamb as it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6). This lamb is the very one who “after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:12). But now he stands, not as the standing high priest once again to offer himself as sacrifice, but as he who has overcome suffering and death and stands with the redeemed in the circle of glory as their high priest forever. Small wonder it is that the redeemed sing “as it were a new song (Rev. 14:3). It is a hymn of praise (Rev. 5:12):
Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain to receive power, and riches,
and wisdom, and strength, and
honour, and glory, and blessing.
Bibliography
The Holy Bible. The authorized version.
Aristotle. Metaphysica. Translated and edited by J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross. Vol. VIII, The Works of Aristotle. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1908.
Buttrick, George Arthur, ed. The Interpreter’s Bible, 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987.
Clark, Adam. The Holy Bible. 6 vols. New York: Carlton & Porter, 1857.
Curtis, Olin. The Christian Faith. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1905.
Dana, H. E. & Julius R. Mantey. A manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.
Kittel, Gerard, ed. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964.
Lindsay, William. Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 2 vols. Edinburgh: William Oliphant and Co., 1867.
Lowrie, Samuel T. An Explanation of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1898.
Moulton, James Hope. A Grammar of New Testament Greek, 2 vols. 3rd. ed. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1908.
Robertson, A. T. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. Nashville: Broadman Press, c1934.
Strong, James. The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. New York & Nashville: Abingdom-Cokesbury Press, c1890.
Wesley, John. “On Perfection.” In The Works of John Wesley, 12 vols. Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, n.d.
——. Plain Account of Christian Perfection. Chicago: The Christian Witness Company, n.d.
Wiley, H. Orton. The Epistle to the Hebrews. Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, c1959.
[1]Published May, 2008, by “The Wesley Center,” Wesley.nnu.edu.
[2]Italics mine.
[3]Other aorist uses of _γιάζω (sanctify) are: John 17:17, 1 Thess. 5:23, 1 Cor. 6:11. the perfect tense is found in John 17:19; Acts 20:32, 26:18; 1 Cor. 1:2; John 17:19; Rom. 15:16. Keep in mind the tense significance of the perfect.
[4]Keep in mind that, as the preceding discussion indicated, the most important aspect of verb action is the mode of action and not the time of action.
[5]Italics mine.