The continuing city.
The two previous verses express, in a thoroughly Hebraistic way, an invitation to be crucified together with Christ. At the same time, these Hebrew Christians are reminded of the wilderness and tent life which their forefathers led for forty years. What they experienced in the outward reality let us experience by the inward spirit. We belong to the future more than to the present.
I. OUR VIEW OF PRESENT SURROUNDINGS. We have cities, but not continuing ones. It would be very foolish in us, knowing all we do and hoping for all we do, to look upon the states and governments of this world as do those in whom nationality is the very strongest feeling. We must pray to be preserved from that narrow and one-sided idealism which so glorifies fatherland as to make it the chief object of one's enthusiasm and effort. Our hearts must not be deceived by the outward splendors of capital cities. And yet, while the pilgrim spirit is in us, let it not be a restless and a carping one. No one should be more interested in the life, prosperity, and good government of a state than the Christian.
II. OUR OUTLOOK TOWARDS THE FUTURE. An abiding city, a city where there is true stability and true glory, is no dream. We have it not yet, but we shall have it if we seek for it. What an interest the Christian is exhorted to have in abiding, continuing things! Faith, hope, and love are to abide; all abiding things will be manifested after the great shaking; and they will cohere into the true dignity of the heavenly state. Never has the human imagination been more nobly employed than in bodying forth the conditions and appearances of a perfect state. But those indulging such imaginations had no definite way of reducing them to fact. Here, however, the Christian is spoken of as seeking for the coming city in a very definite way. True, our present life is as it were a camp-life, but not for all that like the life of savage or gipsy. Our camping-places are all stages in the journey to the new Jerusalem.—Y.
The sacrifices with which God is well pleased.
Vain is any attempt of ours to take in the full significance of this exhortation. We have not to turn away from any literal altar or any literal sacrifice. But the injunctions in themselves, apart from the special aspect of them, are permanently important.
I. OUR CONSTANT AIM MUST BE TO PLEASE GOD. Literal sacrifices had degenerated into a traditional safeguard against displeasing God. The ordinances of Sinai with respect to sacrifice had aimed to lift it into a great teaching and self-revealing institution. But probably only a few in every generation had grasped the spiritual significance of sacrifice. Though, doubtless, many too, because their motive was sincere as far as it went, were accepted, as was the woman with her alabaster box, and the widow with the two mites. The illuminating gospel of Christ leaves us without excuse as to what will please God. We know that the old sacrifices never could have pleased him in themselves. He could not eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats. But now no offering can please unless it be in itself helpful to men or glorifying to God.
II. INTELLIGENT PRAISE PLEASES GOD. Praise which comes from overflowing heart-experiences must always be acceptable to God. For the fruits from outward possessions are substituted the fruits from an inward life. The habitual acknowledgment of God's Name means an habitual consciousness of all the services he renders in supplying all our needs from the highest down to the lowest. It is not enough that there be praise; it must be praise abounding in the right elements. Mere words of the lip can give no more pleasure to God than the mere slaying of animals.
III. THE DOING OF GOOD PLEASES GOD. Praise cannot stand by itself. Real doing of good shows that God's Spirit of love, direction, and power is working in us. Work must not stand instead of praise, nor praise instead of work; going together, they are as the sacrificial body and the smell proceeding from it. Note the significant injunction not to forget. How much easier it is to go through a round of praise than to muster the self-denial needed for a course of practical good!
IV. FELLOWSHIP PLEASES GOD. Christians must associate. Real Christians coming together cannot but associate. God delights in the process of mutual giving and receiving observable in every Christian community. Making up for each other's defects, bearing each other's burdens, having fellowship as the eye has with the hand, the head with the feet, let this be the sight God ever sees when he looks upon his people. So shall the carcasses of all beasts slain in sacrifice be glorified when we think of the real offerings which they typified, and towards which they iF, some manner prepared.—Y.