The Rent Veil

Horatius Bonar

PREFACE

The Epistle to the Hebrews was written by the eternal Spirit for the whole Church of God in all ages. It shows us on what footing we are to stand before God as sinners; and in what way we are to draw near as worshippers.

It assumes throughout, that the present condition of the Church on earth is one continually requiring the application of the great sacrifice for cleansing. The theory of personal sinlessness has no place in it. Continual evil, failure, imperfection, are assumed as the condition of God's worshippers on earth, during this dispensation. Personal imperfection on the one hand, and vicarious perfection on the other, are the solemn truths which pervade the whole. There is no day nor hour in which evil is not coming forth from us, and in which the great bloodshedding is not needed to wash it away. This epistle is manifestly meant for the whole life of the saint, and for the whole history of the Church. God's purpose is that we should never, while here, get beyond the need of expiation and purging; and though vain man may think that he would better glorify God by sinlessness, yet the Holy Spirit in this epistle shows us that we are called to glorify God by our perpetual need of the precious bloodshedding upon the cross. No need of washing, may be the watchword of some; they are beyond all that! But they who, whether conscious or unconscious of sin, will take this epistle as the declaration of God's mind as to the imperfection of the believing man on earth, will be constrained to acknowledge that the bloodshedding must be in constant requisition, not (as some say) to keep the believer in a sinless state, but to cleanse him from his hourly sinfulness. [1]

Boldness to enter into the holiest is a condition of the soul which can only be maintained by continual recourse to the blood of sprinkling, alike for conscious and for unconscious sin: the latter of these being by far the most subtle and the most terrible,--that for which the sin-offering required to be brought.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." The presence of sin in us is the only thing which makes such epistles as that to the Hebrews at all intelligible. When, by some instantaneous act of faith, we soar above sin, (as some think they do) we also bid farewell to the no longer needed blood, and to the no longer needed Epistle to the Hebrews.

"Through the veil, which is His flesh," is our one access to God; not merely at first when we believed, but day by day, to the last. The blood- dropped pavement is that one which we tread, and the blood-stained mercy-seat is that before which we bow. In letters of blood there is written on that veil, and that mercy-seat, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by me": and, again, "Through Him we have access, by one Spirit, unto the Father."

Every thing connected with the sanctuary, outer and inner, is, in God's sight, excellent and precious. As of the altar, so of every other part of it, we may say, "Whatsoever toucheth it shall be holy" (Exodus 29:37). Or, as the Apostle Peter puts it, "To you who believe this preciousness belongs" (1 Peter 2:7, i.e., all the preciousness of the "precious stone").

Men may ask, May we not be allowed to differ in opinion from God about this preciousness? Why should our estimate of the altar, or the blood, or the veil, if not according to God's, be so fatal to us as to shut us out of the kingdom? And why should our acceptance of God's estimate make us heirs of salvation? I answer, such is the mind of God, and such is the divine statute concerning admission and exclusion.

You may try the experiment of differing from Him as to other things, but beware of differing from Him as to this. Remember that He has said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Say what you like, He is a jealous God, and will avenge all disparagement of His sanctuary, or dishonour of His Son. Contend with Him, if you will try the strife, about other things. It may not cost you your soul. Dispute His estimate of the works of His hand in heaven and earth; say that they are not altogether "good," and that you could have improved them, had you been consulted. It may not forfeit your crown. Tell Him that His light is not so glorious as He thinks it is, nor His stars so brilliant as He declares they are. He may bear with this thy underrating of His material handiwork, and treat thee as a foolish child that speaks of what he knows not.

But touch His great work, His work of works,-- the person and propitiation of His only-begotten Son, and He will bear with thee no more. Differ from Him in His estimate of the great bloodshedding, and he will withstand thee to the face. Tell Him that the blood of Golgotha could no more expiate sin than the blood of bulls and of goats, and He will resent it to the uttermost. Depreciate anything, everything that He has made; He may smile at thy presumption. But depreciate not the cross. Underrate not the sacrifice of the great altar. It will cost thee thy soul. It will shut thee out of the kingdom. It will darken thy eternity.

The Grange, Edinburgh, October 1874

I intended to have said something more upon this point; but room fails me. I meant to have noticed the Seventh of the Romans in connection with some recent opinions. But I content myself with the following letter, which appeared in the London Record of October 19th, to show the extreme lengths to which some are prepared to go in advocating their tenets. Rather than reconsider their own opinions, they will affirm that the Apostle Paul fell from grace, went into heresy, and that the Seventh of the Romans is the confession of his fall and heresy. An English Clergyman thus writes to the London Record:-- "I am surprised that in dealing with Mr. Pearsall Smith's errors, no one, so far as I know, has yet called attention to his tract, 'Bondage and Liberty,' on the Seventh of Romans. "He asserts that St. Paul 'fell from grace,' and became entangled in the Galatian heresy! That there may be no kind of mistake, I give his own words:-- "'But having begun in the Spirit, he had sought to be made perfect by the activities of the flesh, the consequences of which were that sin revived and "he died," or lost his full communion with Christ, and victory through faith over sin. "'You have had now to travel along with Paul in the Seventh of Romans, in this passage which is manifestly the experience of a Christian, though not a true Christian experience. After having once exclaimed, "How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" you have been deceived, mistaking your own efforts to keep God's law for the walk of faith; and the result has been that sin has been--not conquered, but to a sad extent manifested. "'It is this agonising experience of yours of failure in your inward and outward walk that was shared by Paul in this parenthesis--following his declaration of the death of believers to sin and to the law--to which he here limits the pronoun "I," as the acknowledgment of how a Christian may fail, rather than as belonging to the proper experience of a Christian. It was this experience that made him so zealous in warning the Galatians against legalism in their walk. It was the agony of this "falling from grace" and coming "under law" in his practical ways that brought out the cry of despair, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" "'But, brother Paul, thy agony is ended when, as in a moment, and with a sudden joy that precludes explanation, thou again beholdest Jesus dawning on thy soul as a Deliverer, not only from wrath, but from sinning. "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."' "As may be supposed, there is much nonsense and confusion in the little book from which the above is taken, but I submit whether there is not something worse, and which calls for vigorous treatment at the hands of faithful, sensible, Evangelical men?"

Chapter 1

Open Intercourse with God.

It does not seem a strange thing that the creature and the Creator should meet face to face, and that they should hold intercourse without any obstructing medium.

We may not understand the mode of communication between the visible and the invisible, but we can see this, at least, that He who made us can communicate with us, by the ear or the eye or the touch. He can speak and we can hear; and, again, we can speak and He can hear. His being and ours can thus come together, to interchange thought and affection: He giving, we receiving; He rejoicing in us, and we rejoicing in Him: He loving us, and we loving Him. He can look on us, and we can look on Him; He "guiding us with His eye" (Psalms 32:8), and we fixing our eye on His, as children on the eye of a father, taking in all the love and tenderness which beam from His paternal look, and sending up to Him our responding look of filial confidence and love. Not that He has "eyes of flesh, or seeth as man seeth" (Job 10:4); but He can fix His gaze on us in ways of His own, and make us feel His gaze, as really as when the eyes of friends look into each other's depths. "He that formed the eye shall He not see" (Psalms 94:9). He who made the human eye to be "the light of the body" (Matthew 6:22),--that organ through which light enters the body,--in order that He might pour into us the glory of His own sun and moon and stars,--can He not, through some inner eye which we know not, and for which we have no name, pour into us the radiance of His own infinite glory, though He be the "King invisible" (1 Timothy 1:17),--He "whom no man hath seen nor can see" (1 Timothy 6:16),--the "invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). He can touch us; for in Him we live and move and have our being: and we can lay hold of Him, for He is not far from any one of us; He is the nearest of all that is near, and the most palpable of all the palpable. It would seem, then, that open and free and near intercourse with the God who made us arose from His being what He is, and from our being what we are: as if it were a necessity both of His existence and of ours.

That He should be our Creator, and yet be separated from us, seems an impossibility; that we should be His creatures, and yet remain at a distance from Him, seems the most unnatural and unlikely of all relations. Intercourse, fellowship, mutual love, then, seem to flow from all that He is to us, and from all that we are to Him.

We can conceive of no obstruction, no difficulty in all this, so long as we remained what He has made us. There could be nothing but the sympathy of heart with heart; a flow and reflow of holy and unobstructed love.

Unhindered access to the God who made us seems one of the necessary conditions of our nature; and this not arising out of any merit or worthiness on the part of the creature, but from the fitness of things; the adaptation of the thing made to Him who made it; and the impossibility of separation between that which was made and Him who made it. The life above and the life below must draw together; heart cannot be separated from heart, unless something come between to put asunder that which had by the necessity of nature been joined together. Distance from God does not belong to our creation, but has come in as something unnatural, something alien to creative love, something which contravenes the original and fundamental law of our being.

The tree separated from its root, the flower broken off from its stem, are the fittest emblems of man disjoined from God. Such distance seems altogether unnatural. The want of vital connection, in our original constitution, or the absence of sympathy, would imply defect in the workmanship, of the most serious kind,--and no less would it indicate imperfection on the part of the Great Worker.

God made us for Himself; that He might delight in us and we in Him; He to be our portion and we His; He to be our treasure and we His. He made us after His own likeness; so that each part of our being has its resemblance or counterpart in Himself: our affections, and sympathies, and feelings being made after the model of His own. We are apt to associate God only with what is cold and abstract and ideal; ourselves with what is emotional and personal. Herein we greatly err. We must reverse the picture if we would know the truth concerning Him with whom is no coldness, no abstraction, no impersonality. The reality pertaining to the nature of man, is as nothing when compared with the reality belonging to the nature of Him who created us after His own image. In so far as the infinite exceeds the finite, in so far does that which we call reality transcend in God all that is known by that term in man. We are the shadows, He is the substance. Jehovah is the infinitely real and true and personal: and it is with Him as such that we have to do. The God of philosophy may be a cold abstraction, which no mind can grasp, and by which no heart can be warmed; but the God of Scripture, the God who created the heavens and the earth, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a reality,--a reality for both the mind and heart of man. It is the infinite Jehovah that loves, and pities, and blesses; who bids us draw near to Him, walk with Him, and have fellowship with Him. It is the infinite Jehovah who fills the finite heart; for He made that heart for the very purpose of its being filled with Himself. Our joy is to be in Him; His joy is in us. Over us He resteth in His love, and in Himself He bids us rest. Apart from Him creaturehood has neither stability nor blessedness.

Free and open intercourse with the God who made us, is one of the necessities of our being. Acquaintanceship with Him, and delight in Him, are the very life of our created existence. Better not to be than not to know Him, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Better to pass away into unconsciousness or nothingness, than to cease to delight in Him, or to be delighted in by Him.

The loss of God is the loss of everything; and in having God we have everything. His overflowing fulness is our inheritance; and in nearness to Him we enjoy that fulness. He cannot speak to us, but something of that fulness flows in. We cannot speak to Him without attracting His excellency towards us. This mutual speech, or converse, is that which forms the medium of communication between heaven and earth. Man looketh up, and God looketh down: our eyes meet, and we are, in the twinkling of an eye, made partakers of the divine abundance. Man speaks out to God what He feels; God speaks out to man what He feels. The finite and the infinite mind thus interchange their sympathies; love meets love, mingling and rejoicing together; the full pours itself into the empty, and the empty receiveth the full.

The greatness of God is no hindrance to this intercourse: for one special part of the divine greatness is to be able to condescend to the littleness of created beings, seeing that creaturehood must, from its very nature, have this littleness; inasmuch as God must ever be God, and man must ever be man: the ocean must ever be the ocean, the drop must ever be the drop. The greatness of God compassing our littleness about, as the heavens the earth, and fitting into it on every side, as the air into all parts of the earth, is that which makes the intercourse so complete and blessed. "In His hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind" (Job 12:10). Such is His nearness to, such His intimacy with, the works of His hands.

It is nearness, not distance, that the name Creator implies; and the simple fact of His having made us is the assurance of His desire to bless us and to hold intercourse with us. Communication between the thing made and its maker is involved in the very idea of creation. "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me: give me understanding, that I may learn Thy commandments" (Psalms 119:73). "Faithful Creator" is His name (1 Peter 4:19), and as such we appeal to Him, "Forsake not the work of Thine own hands" (Psalms 138:8).

Nothing that is worthless or unloveable ever came from His hands; and as being His "workmanship," we may take the assurance of His interest in us, and His desire for converse with us. [5]

He put no barrier between Himself and us when He made us. If there be such a thing now, it is we who have been its cause. Separation from Him must have come upon our side. It was not the father who sent the younger son away; it was that son who "gathered all together and took his journey into the far country" (Luke 15:13), because he had become tired of the father's house and the father's company.

The rupture between God and man did not begin on the side of God. It was not heaven that withdrew from earth, but earth that withdrew from heaven. It was not the father that said to the younger son, Take your goods, pack up and be gone; it was that son who said, "Father give me the portion of goods that falleth to me," and who, "not many days after, took his journey into the far country," turning his back on his father and his father's house.

"O Israel! thou hast destroyed THYSELF" (Hosea 13:9). O man! thou hast cast off God. It is not God who has cast off thee. Thou hast dislinked thyself from the blessed Creator; thou hast broken the golden chain that fastened thee to His throne, the silken cord that bound thee to his heart.

Yet He wants thee back again; nor will He rest till He has accomplished His gracious design, and made thee once more the vessel of His love.

1. It is interesting to notice the way in which the negative particle is used in the different designations of God. He is called invisible,--He who cannot be seen, He who cannot lie (Titus 1:2) incorruptible (Romans 1:23; 1 Timothy 1:17) He who cannot be tempted (James 1:13): He who only hath immortality (1 Timothy 6:16). In connection with the things of God, and of Christ, we have a similar use of the same negative particle:--Thus, "His eternal power and Godhead" (Romans 1:20); unfading (1 Peter 1:4); immutability (Hebrews 6:17); without repentance (Romans 11:29); undefiled (Hebrews 7:26); past finding out (Romans 11:33); unchangeable (Hebrews 7:24). These instances will illustrate the truth that very much of what we express of God, is expressed in the form of a contrast to the things of man.

John Howe thus writes on this point, in his treatise on "Delighting in God":--"The most excellent portion, in whom all things that may render Him such do concur and meet together; all desirable and imaginable riches and fulness, together with large bounty, flowing goodness, every way correspondent to the wants and cravings of indigent and thirsty souls. How infinitely delightful is it to view and enjoy Him as our portion...every way complete and full, it being the all-comprehensive good which is this portion, God all-sufficient...making His boundless fulness overflow to the replenishing of thirsty longing souls."

"How pleasant to lose themselves in Him; to be swallowed up in the overcoming sense of His boundless, all-sufficient, everywhere flowing fulness! By this dependence they make this fulness of God their own. They have nothing to do but to depend; to live upon a present self-sufficient good, which alone is enough to replenish all desires. How can we divide the highest pleasure, the fullest satisfaction, from this dependence! 'Tis to live at the rate of a god; a godlike life; a living upon immense fulness; as He lives."--Howe's Blessedness of the Righteous, Chapter 8.

"God's excellency, His wisdom, His purity and love seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water, and all nature-- which used greatly to fix my mind."--Jonathan Edwards

Chapter 2.

How There Came to Be a Veil.

There was no veil in Paradise between man and God. There were three places or regions; the outer earth, Eden, and "the Garden of Eden," or Paradise; but there was no veil nor fence between, hindering access from the one to the other. There was nothing to prevent man from going in to speak with God, or God from coming out to speak with man.

It was not till after man had disobeyed that the veil was let down which separated God from man, which made a distinction between the dwellings of man and the habitation of God.

Before God had spoken or done aught in the way of separation, man betrayed his consciousness of his new standing, and of the necessity for a covering or screen. He fled from God into the thick trees of the garden, that their foliage might hide him from God and God from him. In so doing he showed that he felt two things,-- 1. That there must be a veil between him and God; 2. That, now, in his altered position, distance from God (if such a thing could be) was his safety.

Even if God had said "draw near," man could not have responded "let us draw near," or felt "it is good for me to draw near to God." For sin had now come between, and until that should be dealt with in the way of pardon and removal, he could not approach God, nor expect God to approach him.

There was a sense of guilt upon his conscience, and he knew that there was displeasure on the part of God; so that fellowship, in such circumstances, was impossible. Any meeting, in this case, could only be that of the criminal and the Judge; the one to tremble, and the other to pronounce the righteous sentence.

God did come down to man; but not to converse as before; not to commune in love as if nothing had come in between them. He came to declare His righteousness; and yet to reveal His grace. He came to condemn, and He came to pardon. He came to show how utterly he abhorred the sin, and yet how graciously he was minded toward the sinner.

Something then had now come in between the Creator and the creature, which made it no longer possible for the same intercourse to be maintained as before. Man himself felt this, as soon as he had sinned; and God declared that it was so.

How was that "something" to be dealt with? It was of man's creation; yet man had no power to deal with it.

Shall it be removed, or shall it stand? If it stands, then man is lost to God and to himself. For the sentence is explicit, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." If it is to be removed, the barrier swept away, and the distance obliterated, God must do it, and He must do it immediately, before the criminal is handed over to final execution, and He must do it righteously, that there may be no uncertainty as to the thing done, and no possibility of any future reversal of the blessing or any replacement of the barrier.

God, in coming down to man, said, "Thou hast sinned, and there is not now the same relationship between us that there was: there is a barrier; but I mean to remove it; not all at once; and yet completely at last." Man was not to be lost to God, nor to himself. He was too precious a part of God's possessions to be thrown away. He was too dear to God to be destroyed. "God loved the world" (John 3:16).

Yet there must be a shutting out from God; and this was intimated from the beginning. God shuts Himself out from man; and He shuts man out from himself: for the way into the holiest for a sinner could not be prepared all at once. Not man only, but the universe, must be taught long lessons both in righteousness and in grace, before the new and living way can be opened.

Law had said "The soul that sinneth it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4); Grace had said "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11); Righteousness had said "The wicked shall be turned into hell" (Psalms 9:17); Mercy had said "How shall I deliver thee up?" (Hosea 11:8). In what way are these things to be reconciled? Condemnation is just: can pardon be also just? Exclusion from God's presence was righteous, can admission into that presence be no less so?

The solution of this question must be given on judicial grounds, and must recognise all the judicial or legal elements involved in the treatment of crime and criminals. For law is law, and grace is grace. The two things cannot be intermingled. What law demands it must have; and what grace craves can only be given in accordance with unchanging law. "The reign of grace" must be "the reign of law"; and the triumph of grace must be the triumph of law. The grace which alone can reach the case of the sinner is the grace of the LAWGIVER, the grace of the JUDGE.

These were truths which man could not fully comprehend. They were new truths, or new ideas, which could only be thoroughly understood by long training, by ages of education. The method of instruction was peculiar, and such as suited man's special state of imperfect knowledge. It was twofold, consisting of a long line of revelations extending over four thousand years; and a long series of symbols increasing and becoming more expressive age after age.

That there was free love in God for the sinner was a new truth altogether, and needed to be fully revealed, "line upon line." Reasoning from God's treatment of the angels, man would conclude that there was no favour to be expected for the sinner; nothing but swift retribution, "everlasting chains." God's first words to man were those of grace; intimating that the divine treatment of man was to be very different from that of the fallen angels: that where sin had abounded grace was to abound much more. Forgiveness, not condemnation, was the essence of the early promise.