Hebrews 7:16

Hebrews 7:16

I. That Christ's life was and is "an endless life" needs no demonstration. He died but death is no cessation of life. At the very moment He was dying in the article of death His own mind was willing it, His own act was doing it, His own priesthood was presenting it; and the very moment He was dead He had converse with one who died with Him; and He went at once and "preached to the spirits in prison"; and it was His own hand and His own power that raised Himself out of His grave after three days. And we know how careful God has been to identify that one risen, crucified life on through the forty days, ascending before the same eyes that had been familiar with Him all along, seen by at least three, the very same Son of Man in His glory, and then distinctly heard saying in heaven, "I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen." So true is the prophecy, "Of the increase of His government and priesthood there shall be no end."

II. Now all the while that Christ was upon the earth He must have carried with Him the consciousness that everything He said and did was the beginning of its own eternity. Each thing had in it the germ of its own immortality. It was to go on and expand for ever and for ever. There is a deep, mystic sense in which the life that Christ lived in this world its birth, its infancy, its development, its temptations, its solitude, its conflicts, its sufferings, its miracles, its joys, its holiness, its love, its dying, its rising, its soaring: all is enacted over and over again in the soul and in the experience of every individual that lives in time, nay, beyond time into eternity.

III. But the efficacy of the power of Christ's endless life does not stop here. It is the marvel of His grace that whatever is united to Christ, by that union shares His power; and hence, it is not only His prerogative it is yours and mine "the power of an endless life." We are all learning a little of Divine truth. It is but the simplest elements we know; and we know them very poorly. But what we know is the beginning of knowledge. I shall hold it, I shall build upon it in another state; and every new lesson I get is another step of the ladder by which I go ascending in knowledge for ever and ever. We try, in our little way, to do something for God. What is it? Of itself nothing. But it is the actual commencement of those very exercises in the service of God which will occupy and fill our perfected condition for ever.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 205.

References: Hebrews 7:16 . Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 199; S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxv., p. 382.Hebrews 7:17 . Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 11; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 333.Hebrews 7:19 . E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 312.Hebrews 7:20-22 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1597. Hebrews 7:23-25 . Ibid., vol. xxxii., No. 1915; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 357. Hebrews 7:23-28 . Ibid., p. 358.