“Christians are Christians by virtue of certain acts of God which took place at a definite time in the past, but these acts of God have released a dynamic force which will never allow Christians to stick fast at any point short of that divine rest which in this life is always a goal to be aimed at and never a stage which has been reached. The faith once for all delivered to the saints is not something which can be caught and tamed; it continually leads the saints forth to new ventures in the cause of Christ, as God calls afresh…
To stay at the point at which some revered teacher of the past has brought us, out of a mistaken sense of loyalty to him; to continue to follow a certain pattern of religious activity or attitude just because it was good enough for our fathers and grandfathers – these and the like are temptations which make the message of Hebrews a necessary and salutary one for us to listen to. Every fresh movement of the Spirit of God tends to become stereotyped in the next generation, and what we have heard with our ears, what our fathers have told us, becomes a tenacious tradition encroaching on the allegiance which ought to be accorded only to the living and active Word of God.
As Christians survey the world today, they see very much land waiting to be possessed in the name of Christ; but to take possession of it calls for a generous measure of that forward-looking faith which is so earnestly urged upon the readers of this epistle. Those first readers were living at a time when the old, cherished order was breaking up. Attachment to venerable traditions could avail them nothing in this situation; only attachment to the unchanged and onward moving Christ could carry them forward and enable them to face a new order with confidence and power.
So in a day when everything can be shaken and is being shaken before our eyes and even beneath our feet, let us in our turn give thanks for the unshakeable kingdom which we have inherited, which endures forever when everything else to which men and women may pin their hopes disappears and leaves not a wrack behind.”
(F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), Rev. Ed.) p.392.)
First published in 1963, I bought F. F. Bruce's commentary on Hebrews in 1976 with money I received for the Duncan B. Herriot Prize in Church History. I didn't know it then, but in 1984 I became minister in Crown Terrace Baptist, the home church Dr Herriot. I have used Bruce's Hebrews ever since, and while scholarship on Hebrews has moved on in the 60 years since Bruce wrote it, this commentary remains a personal favourite. All of Bruce's exegetical common-sense is on display, built on deep learning in historical knowledge and skills in textual and classical criticism, showing Bruce's characteristic sympathy with the theology and spiritual experience of the New Testament writers.
The particular copy I now have was one of several volumes given to me in 1996. It came from the library of Dr Eleanor Walker, a gift from Eleanor's father, the late Dr David Walker, one of the leading educationalists of his generation. So I received it as a precious gift in memory of one of the finest medical missionary doctors I've ever had the privilege of knowing. I was Eleanor's pastor, and her friend. For most of her professional life Eleanor was an anaesthetist who also specialised in psychiatry at Nazareth Hospital, in Israel, working in an inter-faith environment, often enough while under threat from the hostility and at times violence that erupted in the region.
In 1992 Eleanor had come home after over 25 years of service to do theological study at New College, Edinburgh, to prepare her for ordained in ministry. In 1996 she graduated B.D. Honours with Merit, and was awarded best student of the year, and licensed to preach. Throughout her course Eleanor had been fighting a losing battle with cancer, and she was unable to move into that next stage and completion of her remarkable life.
She had asked me to speak of her at her funeral because she knew I would be honest and not make her out to be a saint! Which she wasn't, except she was! Not knowing then that I would receive her own copy of F. F. Bruce on Hebrews, I finished with words from Hebrews 12, about running with patience, surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, and looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of her faith.
The last page of Bruce's commentary, quoted above, is such a clear and succinct summary of why the message of Hebrews remains of first relevance for 21st Century Christians. Bruce's own background in the Christian Brethren provided a further layer of attachment and insight into the warnings and encouragements of this text, it being a favourite source of Gospel exposition and exhortation within that spiritual tributary of the evangelical tradition.
As a piece of writing for Advent, Bruce's conclusion turns us forcefully to the future urging upon us "a generous measure of forward looking faith...our only attachment to the unchanged and onward moving Christ..." Faith looking forward, looking to Jesus as the pioneer, refusing to play safe by staying where we are, persevering as people of faith in an age where such commitments are dismissed - Hebrews is a call to perseverance in running the race, and trust in the One who pulls us forward into a future to us unknown, but where He is ahead of us.
The tradition from which F. F. Bruce came was steeped in that form of biblical study that sees types of Christ in the Old Testament texts, and for that reason loved the contrasts of old and new, then and now, and Christ as the fulfilment of all God's covenant promises. The first verses of Hebrews, in the language of King James are distilled essence of that spirituality:
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high..."
Comments