Article  XXXI^[9]

OF THE ONE OBLATION OF CHRIST FINISHED UPON THE CROSS

The Offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sinof the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone.  Wherefore the sacrifice of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

It will have been noticed on reading the Articles that sometimes authority for the doctrine contained in them is given in a phrase like, ‘As St. Paul saith’, ‘as the Apostle confesseth’, or ‘as St. Augustine saith’.  For this Article it might be claimed with even greater force: ‘as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saith’.  Both in language and idea the positive teaching of the first part of the Article is all there, and from it the concluding condemnation of ‘the sacrifices of Masses’ follows.  Again it is a corruption of the Roman Church, based on the belief in Transubstantiation, which is rejected.

Under Article XV we saw that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews tries to present the Christian Faith from the standpoint of one of the great schools of Greek philosophy, that of Plato.  Central in Plato’s thought is the theory of two worlds, one of which is the invisible, eternal, unchanging order of perfect things, and the other the movement and striving of all that is incomplete and imperfect in our world of sense and time.  ‘The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal’;^[1] this statement of St. Paul’s conveniently expresses the dual view of existence in Platonism.  But the two worlds are not entirely unrelated; on the contrary, the present scene depends upon the higher world for whatever order and meaning it has: the eternal realm is ever seeking to penetrate and embody itself in the things of time.  Yet it never altogether succeeds; if it did, then that which is perfect would have come, with its emotional accompaniment of utter satisfaction, and the reason for change and effort would be removed.  So everything in experience and history is imperfect; only in a measure does it contain the full Reality to which it is a pointer.

It is, therefore, on the strength of his faith in the Person of Christ, and not on his Platonism, that the writer of the Epistle affirms that perfection has appeared.  As the Son of God, Jesus is the Mediator of the eternal order; being who He is, He is the perfect office‑bearer, and all the functions of His once are completely performed and achieve their ends.

The aspect of Christ’s work most fully discussed in the Epistle is our redemption.  He is everything par excellence relating to salvation, the perfect High Priest, the perfect Mediator, and the perfect Sacrifice; in a word, Christ is the faultless expression of the principle of sacrifice which runs through religion.

This superiority of Christ’s Person and Work is brought out in a series of comparisons.  The mysterious royal and priestly figure of Melchizedec, who is ‘without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life’, – and remains for ever a priest, is the highest type of Christ in the Old Testament.  Whereas the Law authorized the Levitical priests to take tithes from the people, Abraham, to whom God’s promises to His people were first made, and the ancestor of the old priesthood, gave tithes to Melchizedec and received his blessing, and truly ‘the less is blessed of the better’.^[2]

A parallel is drawn between the Aaronic priesthood and that of Christ.  The former was changing and passing; but God’s oath to Israel's ruler and High Priest in Psalm 110:4 is transferred to Christ; it is He who is ‘named of God a High Priest after the order of Melchizedec’, and ‘because He abideth for ever, he hath a priesthood that doth not pass to another’. ^[3]  And further, the Jewish high priest went once every year on the Day of Atonement into the Holy of Holies, and there offered sacrifices with animal blood for his sins and those of the people; but Jesus, ‘undefiled, separated from sinners’, has passed through the heavens having obtained eternal redemption for us by the offering of Himself.^[4]  The heart of the argument of the Epistle is put in Platonic terms: the Law and its sacrificial system, being a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of them, ‘can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh’.^[5]  By their unreality and ineffectiveness the Jewish sacrifices suggested another and true Sacrifice sufficient for the need they could not meet.