Heb. 7:20.  And inasmuch as it is not without the taking of an oath  21. (For they indeed had become priests without an oath ; but he with an oath by him that saith of him,

The Lord aware and will not repent himself,

Thou art priest for ever) ;

22. By so much also has Jesus become the surety of a better covenant.

 IN chap. 6 the deep meaning of God’s oath was set before us. On His side it is a proof of His unchangeable purpose concerning something which He binds Himself faithfully to perform. On our side it points to something in which there is special need of faith, and calls us to the exercise of full and unhesitating confidence as to the certainty of God’s fulfillment of the promise. In the words of the appointment of Christ as High Priest we have already found three significant expressions—there is a fourth one we are now to notice. The Lord aware and will not repent Himself: this oath of God is a new proof of the glory of Christ’s priesthood and its superiority to the old. God confirmed His blessing to Abraham with an oath; that blessing is eternal and unchangeable. Aaron was made a priest without an oath: his priesthood was only temporary, a shadow of what was to come. At the first announcement of a priest after the new order, God again interposed with an oath: inasmuch as it was not without the taking of an oath, by so much hath Jesus become the surety of a better covenant. The oath points us to the covenant, to its being a better covenant, to Jesus being its surety, and to the priesthood as that in which the covenant and the suretyship have their power.

A better covenant. The object of a covenant is to define and settle the relation between the two parties who enter into it, and to give security for the faithful fulfillment of their engagements to each other. The old covenant which God made with Israel had proved a failure. At its establishment they were most ready to promise, All that the Lord hath said will we do and be obedient. But how soon was the covenant forgotten and the promise broken. They had undertaken what they could not perform; the vow and the purpose availed nothing without the strength. In course of time God promised to establish a new covenant, and in it to provide for what had been wanting, for the power to obey, and so to keep the covenant. It would be a covenant of life—giving that new life into the heart, out of which obedience would naturally spring. Of this better covenant, established on better promises, we shall hear in the next chapter.

 The surety of a better covenant. It is this Jesus has come to do, to give the covenant its security, and to undertake that its engagements shall indeed be fulfilled. He is surety of the covenant on both sides. Surety to us that God will keep His promise, and give us His life and law and Spirit in our heart; surety to God for us, He will ensure our obedience and our keeping the covenant.

 Become a Priest with an oath. It is in the priesthood of Jesus that the covenant and the suretyship have their power. It is the Priest for ever who deals with sin and takes it away in the power of an endless life. It is the Priest for ever, the Son of God, perfected for evermore, who has opened a new and living way, a new state of life, and works all in the power of an endless life, in whom we have a divine surety that every promise and every obligation of the better covenant will be fulfilled by God and by us.

 It is to give us a living and most complete assurance that all this will be so, that the installation of Jesus in the Priest’s office was announced by an oath from heaven. God. does so long that we should in very deed become to the full partakers of the eternal redemption His Son has obtained for us, and because He sees it is impossible for Him to work out His will in us except as our hearts open to Him in faith and expectation, He is ready to do anything He can, to awake our confidence and compel us to trust Him perfectly. And so His Spirit reminds us that the priesthood of Jesus, and all the blessings which come from it in the power of our eternal life, are absolutely sure and certain. As if it is not enough that we know that as the Son of God He is the Almighty One, as Son of Man the merciful and faithful High Priest, as the exalted One, a King upon God^’s throne, God calls us to consider the oath He took. He swears by Himself. He points to Himself and His honor as God, to Himself as the Eternal and Almighty God and charges us to believe that this Priest for ever He has given us does indeed save with an everlasting salvation, with a salvation in which the power of eternity works.

 When God confirmed by oath to Abraham His promise of blessing, Abraham, though he knew but little of what that blessing would yet be, believed God: he was strong in faith, giving glory to God. And we, who know the Son in whom God has now revealed Himself, and in regard to the efficacy and eternal life-power of whose work for us God has now sworn His oath to us, shall we doubt or hesitate? God forbid! Oh that our hearts were opened to understand! The one thing God asks of us, is the faith that sees what He has promised to do, and that sinks down before Him to let Him work what He has undertaken. The one thing we have to strive after, as we move on in the path the Epistle opens up to the inner sanctuary, is that our faith stand not in the wisdom of men, in our own thoughts of the way or the measure in which God will fulfill His promise, but only and entirely in the power of God. What needed an oath of God to assure us of it, needs and has the power of God to work it.

1. Do hold fast these two things. Faith must see what God promises, and then allow God to fulfill the promise in us. Pray for the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, to pet delivered from all partial and defective views of what our High Priest can work in ma, and then regard as your highest work, to wait upon God and yield to His operation In adoring trust.

2. The content and substance of the oath of God Is, the living personal Christ, as Son and Priest ; that is, as Priest In the power of the divine and eternal life which He Imparts. He that clings to Christ will be led on to know all that God has promised in Him.