Under the Mosaic law there was no provision for wilful sin, only for sins of ignorance was a sacrifice available, and the application of this is found in Hebrews 10, “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment…of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and has done despite to the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:26–29).
The wilful sin of which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks is not the backsliding of a Christian, but the apostasy of one who, having professed to be a Christian, has given up the truth of Christianity and returned to Judaism. It is a dreadful thing to profess to value the blood of Jesus as that which cleanses us from all sin, and sets us apart for God, then to tread that precious blood under foot as an “unholy thing.” This is what the apostate does in having professed then rejected the truth of the Gospel.
Another aspect of this wilful sin of apostasy is seen in Hebrews 6:4–8, and it shows how far a professed Christian can touch the things of God without really entering into the truth. Such have an intellectual apprehension of the light of Christianity without having the eyes of their heart opened by the work of God in their souls, and may, like Judas Iscariot, have been able to perform miracles. They have tasted of the heavenly gift, and of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, but having tasted these precious gifts have rejected them. For such there is no repentance, seeing “they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” Instead of taking sides with God against those who crucified His Son, the apostate endorses the wickedness of those who put God’s Son on a malefactor’s cross.
When the Jews crucified the Son of God, the blessed Lord, in the richness of His grace, interceded for them, saying, “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). On account of the Lord’s intercession, God treated this awful sin of the rejection and slaying of His Son as a sin of ignorance, and not as a wilful sin. This is seen in what Simon Peter said to the men of Israel in Acts 3, and where he brought home to them their guilt in what they did to Jesus. Peter said, “Pilate…was determined to let Him go, but ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:13–15).
After such an unequivocal condemnation of Israel we might have thought that it was all over with that nation, and that God would have come in to destroy them, but no, Peter went on, “And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers” (verse 17). Through Peter, God made known to the nation of Israel that, on account of the intercession of His Son upon the cross, He was treating their awful sin as a sin of ignorance, and not as a wilful sin.
Peter then called upon Israel to “Repent…therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out…and He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things” (verses 19–21). Had Israel repented, God would have sent them again Him they had rejected and crucified. This was the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the nation, telling them that God had glorified the One they had crucified, but that He was willing, on their repentance to blot out their sins, and send Jesus to them again.
Individuals from the nation benefited from the intercession of God’s Son on the cross. A great number repented, and received the forgiveness of their sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but alas, the nation was unrepentant. Instead of receiving God’s grace through the testimony of the apostles, the leaders of Israel “being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection of the dead…laid hands on them, and put them in hold…and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the Name of Jesus” (Acts 4:1–18).
In spite of their being commanded not to speak in the Name of Jesus, the apostles went on with their testimony to their Lord, being opposed by the leaders of Israel, who beat them and again commanded them “not to speak in the Name of Jesus” (Acts 5:40), in spite of being warned by Gamaliel that in taking counsel to slay the apostles, and in opposing their testimony, they might be found fighting against God (verses 33–39).
The attitude of the nation, as seen in their leaders, was fully exposed in their treatment of Stephen. Not being able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake…they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God”, and they caught him, and brought him to the council, and set up false witnesses against him (Acts 6:10–13). Full of the Holy Spirit, whose testimony he bore to a glorified Christ, Stephen charged the leaders of Israel with resisting the Holy Spirit, and with being “the betrayers and murderers” of the Just One.
Israel is no longer viewed as having sinned in ignorance. Their rejection of God’s testimony of grace, and to a glorified Christ, made it very plain that they were indeed the betrayers and murderers of God’s Son, and to make this plainer still, when Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, spoke to them of seeing “the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God, they stoned him to death, murdering the servant of the Lord Jesus as they had his Master.
It was all over with Israel now. There but awaited the fulfilment of what the Lord had spoken in His parable of Matthew 22, when He told of the rejection of the invitation to the marriage of the king’s son, and how “the remnant took His servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city” (verses 6-7). The history of the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus the Roman general literally fulfilled what the Lord had spoken. Israel had rejected the mercy of God; they had refused to be treated as the manslayer, so must bear their judgment as being guilty of the murder of the Son of God.
Although the nation of Israel was guilty of the murder of God’s Son, and was finally treated as a murderer, God, in His rich mercy, still treated the repentant individual of Israel as having acted in ignorance in relation to the death of His Son. To obtain God’s salvation and blessing, it was necessary that the repentant individual should separate himself from the guilty nation, and this is what Peter urged in Acts 2 when he said, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you…Save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:38–40).
Who would have thought that the mercy of God could have reached the young man whose name was Saul, at whose feet the men who stoned Stephen laid their clothes? Yet so it was! In wondrous grace the Lord laid hold of him, one who persecuted the servants of the Lord, and who, after he was converted and learned what the rich mercy of God is, called himself the chief of sinners. Paul realised that if God’s mercy could save him, there was no one that that mercy could not reach, and that God had saved him, the chief of sinners, that “Jesus Christ might show forth” in him “all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should afterwards believe on Him to life eternal” (1 Tim. 1:15-16). The intercession of the Lord on the cross had not been in vain, for Saul was one of those who though “a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious” obtained mercy because he did it “ignorantly in unbelief” (verse 13).
If the nation of Israel had rejected God’s mercy, refusing the refuge in a glorified Christ He offered them through the apostles after the coming of the Holy Spirit, there were many who accepted the divine offer of mercy. Like the manslayer of old, they “fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before” them, “which hope” they had “as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which enters into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (Heb. 6:19-20).
The city of refuge for those who had slain the Christ of God was not on earth, but in heaven. An earthly Messiah was no longer available to Israel for they had slain Him, but in the sovereign goodness of God there was something better prepared for those who believed in the Christ Israel had rejected, even a place in heaven with a glorified Christ. Having been refused on earth Jesus had gone within the veil of heaven, and while there He is a Priest for those on earth who believe on Him, and His presence there assures His own that they too will have a place with Him in heaven, for He has gone there as their forerunner.
Although it is all over with Israel after the flesh, how good it is to realise that there is a remnant of Israel who have fled for refuge to the heavenly Christ, and like the manslayer of old await “the death of the high priest” (Num. 35:25). The present remnant is in the church, but at the coming of the Lord Jesus, when His present priestly session on high will be over, there will be a remnant of Israel on earth waiting for His coming. This remnant will form the nucleus of the nation of Israel who shall be blessed under the new covenant, the old generation having gone in the judgment of God when the Lord comes “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and they obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:8).
The prayer of the Lord for the nation will not have been in vain, for the redeemed under the new and everlasting covenant will owe their part in the blessings of the millennial day to the work that He wrought upon the cross for their redemption, and to His intercession for them, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” What a day for Israel it will be when they see the One the nation rejected, when, in wonder, one shall say, “What are these wounds in Thine hands?” and when “He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends” (Zech. 13:6).
It will be a day of mingled sorrow and joy for Israel, first the sorrow, then the joy; sorrow when they realise what the nation did to Messiah, joy to realise His wondrous mercy and grace in their being forgiven and blessed of Him, in that day, the Lord “will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced” (Zech. 12:10). What a day of mourning there will be, for “the land shall mourn, every family apart.” the royal family of David, the prophets house of Nathan, the priestly house of Levi, and the peoples’ house, Simeon coming in for Reuben, for Reuben represented the nation as unstable and defiled (Gen. 49:4). Each family had been concerned with the slaying of a man: David with the death of Uriah, and Nathan with his conviction, but now he points the finger at himself for he too is involved in the death of Messiah. Simeon and Levi were jointly guilty, as Jacob recalled at the end of his days (Gen. 49:5-6), and though they excused themselves for their guilt at that time (Gen. 34:31), they have no excuse when they realise their part in the killing of Messiah.
R. 13.7.70