by Christ as a will, by which Christians are become possessors of the covenant promise, which, according to § 115, a, comes to fulfilment only in the New Covenant (ix. 15). Now, as when a will comes in force, the death of the testator must first be confirmed (vv. 16, 17), so the death of Jesus is necessary in order that Christians may really take possession of the promise bequeathed to them by the New Covenant. By means of this argumentum ad hominem, the author wishes to make manifest, on the analogy of a human relation, the fact as natural, that the death of Christ was necessary for the realization of the highest end of the covenant. The special need of this, that a covenant sacrifice belongs to the setting up of a covenant, he explains by a reference to the setting up of the Old Covenant, which was done not without blood (ver. 18), in that the people and the holy things had to be sprinkled with the blood of the covenant sacrifice.1 As, moreover, the sacrifice of institution of the New Covenant was at the same time the sacrifice of the great Day of Atonement, which the high priest brought into the Holiest (§ 121, c, d), so the archetypal holy things of the heavenly Holiest into which (ver. 23) Christ has gone, appear to be such as must be first cleansed from the stains of guilt. If the heavenly city of God, with its Holy Place, is conformably with the promise destined for the covenant people, that they may there attain to perfect fellowship with God (§ 117, d), then their guilt has defiled these holy things as well as the earthly, and they must be purified in the same way as the typical law appointed for the latter, only not by the blood of an imperfect, but of a perfect sacrifice (KPEITTOσW θυσίαις).

1 If, as the object of this, the cleansing required by the law is given, ix. 22, then the idea lying beneath this is, that even the holy things were stained by the guilt of the people (Lev. xvi. 16-19; comp. viii. 15); and before the holy God could dwell in the Holy Place, and have fellowship with the people, this impurity had first to be taken away by the cleansing blood of sacrifice. It is by this method of representation that the objective need of an atonement for sin on the part of God, who, as the Holy One, can have no fellowship with unclean men, is pictorially set forth; and this Pfleiderer, p. 342 [E. T. ii. 70], as well as Gess, p. 476, overlooks.

2 The Mediator of the New Covenant cannot therefore be thought of as in the heavenly city without the blood of sprinkling, which, louder than the blood of Abel, cries for vengeance (Gen. iv. 10), proclaims that through its sprinkling the uncleanness produced by guilt is taken away (xii. 24). While

(b) But as to how far sacrificial blood has cleansing power, ix. 22 shows, when it is said, parallel with the statement, that without shedding of blood there is no remission. The whole atoning institute of the Old Covenant depends indeed upon the thought that, according to the gracious appointment of God, the blood of animals given to the people for sacrifice (Lev. xvii. 11) atones for sin, i.e. makes it capable of being forgiven. If the blood of animal sacrifices could not yet remove sin (x. 4, 11: ἀφαιρεῖν, περιελεῖν ἁμαρτίας), then that arose not from the impossibility of an atonement really removing sin by means of sacrificial blood, but only from the imperfection of the Old Testament means of atonement, which was only shadowy and typically prophetic (§ 115, c, d). Through the offering of Christ there is an actual αθέτησις ἁμαρτίας (ix. 26) effected; sin has lost the right and power to stain men from guilt, and thus to separate them from God, because it is atoned for. Even on that account must Christ be made like to His brethren, and in particular must He take their flesh and blood (ii. 14), in order by the outpouring of His own blood to atone for the sins of the people (ver. 17: iλáoкeolaι τὰς ἁμαρτίας), and by the presentation of the same in the heavenly Holiest make this atonement valid before God (§ 121, c).3

(c) If the guilt contracted through sin, on the one hand, prevents God from establishing full fellowship with men, it, on

Paul accounts for the need for the death of Christ by the demand of the divine righteousness given in his fundamental presuppositions (§ 80, c), to our author it seems prefigured in the legal ordinance, according to which the sin-stains which separate God from men can be removed only by the blood of sacrifice. That the blood of Christ is the perfect means of atonement, our Epistle teaches in harmony with Paul (§ 80). But while with the latter the atonement effected by the death of Christ reconciles God, as with the removal of guilt the cause of His anger and hostility is removed, here the atonement removes the uncleanness of the heavenly Holy Place arising from guilt, an uncleanness which prevents God having fellowship with men (note a). Both modes of representation proceed from this, that without an atonement for sin, guilt is not taken away, but their difference rests ultimately on this ground, that with Paul every sin is regarded as worthy of death, because positively stirring up the wrath of God; with our author, on the contrary, every sin, for which atonement generally can be spoken of, is regarded as the stain of a sin of infirmity, which even in the Old Testament prevented the perfect realization of the covenant relation, whose forgiveness was even there intended, but on account of the imperfection of its atoning institute could be realized only in the New (§ 115). As to the

the other hand, prevents men from receiving the salvation promised in this fellowship. The latter thought lies evidently in ix. 15, according to which death is required for the redemption of the sins contracted under the first covenant, in order that its members may receive the covenant promise. It rests on this, that guilt makes punishment necessary, and the execution of the punishment stands in the way of obtaining the promise. But Christ has even thus become the Mediator of the covenant, that He, in virtue of His own blood, has entered into the Holiest, having obtained a redemption eternally valid (through the shedding of His own blood, ver. 12). For if, according to the context of x. 26, 27, where there is no θυσία περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν, only a terrible expectation of judgment remains, it is clear that that sacrifice, because it atones for sin, at the same time delivers men from guilt, and removes the punishment which threatened them in the judgment. The Epistle to the Hebrews, moreover, by this punishment can only have referred to the death by which, in conformity with ordinary Bible teaching (comp. § 50, d; 57, d; 66, d), the divine punishment for sin was executed; and if it now, ii. 9, emphasizes the fact that Christ tasted death (in all its bitterness; comp. also § 124, a, footnote 3) for the good of each, there is then involved the thought that He has freed the others from this bitter consequence of sin, and therefore there is the idea of substitution. But sin-bearing, ie. the

formula idonistas 7. àμapr., which, according to Greek usage, translates the Hebrew, comp. Ritschl, ii. p. 209; Gess, p. 473. Yet the former accords, if, according to viii. 12 (after Jer. xxxi. 34), God in the New Covenant is gracious (ss) to unrighteousness, and remembers sins no more, with which, according to x. 17, 18, the pious T. àμaprav is given, and with that every need for a ποσφορὰ περὶ ἁμαρτίας is taken away.

* Here then, in any case, it is an objective necessity for the death of Christ that is spoken of, the reason of which lies evidently enough in the context, and this Pfleiderer, pp. 340-342 [E. T. ii. 68-70], overlooks. Actually it is deliverance from guilt which is meant by aroλúrparis, quite as, with Paul (§ 80, c), a guilt occasioned by the apaßárus, threatened as they have been with the divine anger. One can admit, with Ritschl (ii. p. 221), that there is nowhere indicated in the Epistle to the Hebrews any reference to a λúrpov by which this is brought about; and therefore the Petrine redemption (really different otherwise) from the slavery of sin (§ 49, d; comp. § 108, b, footnote 5), and also the passage (which as a matter of fact points to the same thing) Mark x. 45 (§ 22, c), cannot be here compared. But in fact it here remains, that this self-surrender to death must be considered as an act which works this ἀπολύτρωσις (ix. 12).

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removing of the severest consequences of sin, is expressly, ix. 28, indicated as the object of the sacrifice of Christ.5

(d) But the author undoubtedly, who regards death, ix. 27, with the judgment following immediately, as the general fate of men, has thought of death not as such, but in the results which it occasions to the sinner; and these, according to ii. 14, consist in this, that the devil is he who has power over death, and uses it as a means to deliver sinners over to the destruction under which he has himself fallen; but no notice is at the same time taken of the arraignment of the devil in the judgment (Gess, p. 476). It is certainly indicated by Sià TOû laváтov that the death of Christ as the guiltless One made him that had the power of death powerless, only in so far as the guiltiness of men, which drew death on them, gave to the devil the power to use it as the means for exercising his power over men to bring destruction on them. But this He could do, not only because He forms an exception to the law of the kingdom of death (Ritschl, ii. p. 254), but because this innocent death freed men from the guilt and punishment of sin (note c). Hence the redeemed are delivered, not from death, but from the fear of death, which kept them in lifelong bondage, so far as they need no more fear falling by death under the power of Satan (ver. 15).

5 The expression εἰς τὸ πολλῶν ἀνενεγκεῖν ἁμαρτίας, on the ground of the Old Testament usus loquendi, and in particular on that of the passage Isa. liii. 12, coinciding with it, as also in accordance with the practice of Peter (§ 49, b), can be taken only of the bearing of the punishment allotted to sin. The idea of an assumption of punishment, to be sure, is originally as foreign to the idea of sacrifice as is that of deliverance from punishment; but the author might make such a combination (to him quite peculiar), because he looked on Christ not only as sacrifice, but also as priest, who by giving Himself to the bitter suffering of death, not only offered the sacrifice for the atonement of sin appointed by God, but also took on Himself the punishment of sin in order to bear it in the room of sinners. There is no need, therefore, of the somewhat artificial explanation of Ritschl, ii. p. 285, who, moreover, mistakes the significance of sin-bearing.

This view is essentially distinct from the doctrine of the Palestinian theology (comp. Riehm, p. 654), according to which the devil, if he is permitted by God, takes away life from those who have transgressed the law, even though it is perhaps allied to it. The devil is in no sense here looked at as the angel of death, as even Hahn, p. 373, assumes. But the Pauline view also, according to which the power of the devil is broken by the redemption wrought by Christ's death, is quite different; for this victory refers, according to § 104, b, to the dominion which the devil already wields over those confirmed in sin, and not to

§ 123. The Effects of the Sacrificial Death of Christ. When the covenant people were sprinkled with the atoning blood of the covenant sacrifice, they were purified from the stains of guilt, and their consciences were delivered from the consciousness of guilt (a). This purification put them into an estate of holiness, in which alone man can become God's possession, and in which he has constantly to keep himself (b). But therewith is the perfection reached, which the complete realization of the covenant requires (c). Hence, also, the way into the Holiest is now opened, and that approach to God is made possible which is the condition of the true worship of God (d).

(a) If even the purifying effect of the blood of the New Testament covenant, ix. 23, is referred but to the heavenly things, which, after that sin has been atoned for by that blood, are purified from the stains of guilt clinging to them (§ 122, a), then the purification wrought by the sacrifice of Christ may also naturally be referred to the sinner himself; nay, on the supposition of the former cleansing, there is brought into view only the objective necessity in particular of the latter subjective cleansing. But as, ix. 22, Kalaρíçeтaι is made identical in the parallel member of the sentence with γίνεται ἄφεσις, it is clear that the thought can be only of a deliverance from sin, a cleansing from the stains of sin, not a cleansing from its unholy power. In conformity with this, purification from

that power of his to which they are subjected in death. Death as the doom of God's wrath, especially with Paul, conformably to the peculiarity of his doctrine of sin, referred to footnote 3, is even in itself, and without this co-operation of the devil, regarded as the punishment of sin, so that the judgment which follows it can only determine who abide in death, and who have been delivered from it; comp. Pfleiderer, p. 350 f. [E. T. ii. 78 f.], who goes wrong only in this, that he narrows the objective effect of the death of Christ only to this, while our statements present it rather in the sense of note c.

1 The usus loquendi of the LXX. corresponds with this, to which the phraseology of our author conforms (comp. Riehm, p. 56), as also that of Paul, with whom xalapiuos appears as the effect of baptism (Eph. v. 26; comp. § 101, a). In Acts xviii. 6, xx. 26, also, zabapós means clear from guilt. Pfleiderer, p. 339 [E. T. ii. 67], has acknowledged this signification of xalapós, and he, moreover, strikingly points out how the (moral) worship of God, mentioned ix. 14, as the result of a cleansed conscience, proves nothing to the contrary; while Gess, p. 474, mixes up again the moral cleansing; and Schenkel, p. 326, exclusively insists on it. If he, p. 337, footnote b, makes the cleansing referred to in ix. 14