After two postings about the
anniversary of the coming of the Saviour,
I thought it would be appropriate have a post on Easter, in good time,
The three synoptic Gospels of
Matthew, Mark and Luke, each tell us that at the time that Jesus died,
the curtain (or veil) of the Temple in Jerusalem was rent in two, ‘from top
to bottom’ (Matthew, 27.51 ), Mark, (Mk.15.38) has ‘And the curtain of was torn in two, from top
to bottom’ and Luke (Luke 23.45) ‘And the curtain the temple was torn in two’. Two
of the accounts are placed close to the expiring of Jesus on the cross. In Mark with
Jesus uttering with a loud cry, and breathing his last. In Luke before
Christ’s ‘calling out with a loud voice, he said Father, into your hands I
commit my spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last’. So that
destructive event, the rending of the Temple curtain, is at the climax of Christ's torture, so it seems purposely closely associated with the Cross and with what it achieved,
and so intimately associated with Easter. Have you ever listened to an Easter
sermon that took the topic of the torn curtain and what it signified? In the
Gospels that event is associated with the darkening, and with what seems to have been a minor
earthquake, and with the resurrection of some from their graves. But what of its
greater effect?
If we have heard such a sermon it
will make the point about the significance of the curtain in the lay-out of the Temple. It is the
separation between the Holy Place and the Holiest Place. It was only to be
opened or pushed aside when the High Priest had to enter the Holy of Holies on
the Day of Atonement. As The Epistle to the Hebrews puts it,
The priests go into the first section [the Holy Place], performing their ritual duties but into the second [place, the Holies Place], only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for unintentional sins of the people, By this the Holy Spirit indicates, the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age. According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshipper, but deal with food and drink and various, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. (Heb, 9. 6-10)
These verses are part of a detailed
case the writer is making for the superiority of Christ’s priesthood over the Old Testament Levitical priesthood.
Christ is a priest of the order of Melchizedek (Ch. 7) superior to the
Levitical order which sprang from Abraham. He cites relevant texts……As a
consequence Christ is the mediator of a new covenant (Citing Jeremiah 31 in
Chapter 8) so those that are called [i.e. effectually called] may receive the
promised eternal inheritance. since a death
has occurred that redeems them from the first covenant…… (9.15) (Those
who are expert in covenant theology don’t seem to allude to Christ who is a
priest of Melchizedek, not of Levi, and so not of Abraham.)
Christ is our Mediator, a Mediator
of the whole world. He opened a new and
living way to enter the holy places through his blood, which he opened for
us through the curtain that is, his flesh. So…let us draw near with a true heart in
full assurance of faith, with our hearts
sprinkled clean from an evil conscience,
and our bodies washed with pure water. (10.19f.)
John Owen comments
And there is great
instruction given us, in this comparison of the type and antitype, into the way
and the nature of our access unto God in all our solemn worship. It is God as
he was represented in the holy place to whom we address ourselves peculiarly
[that is, especially]; that is God the Father as on a throne of grace: the
manner of our access is with holy confidence, grounded solely on the efficacy
of the blood or sacrifice of Christ,…we have our entrance into the holy place
by virtue of the flesh of Christ, which was rent in his sacrifice, as through the rending of the veil a way was laid open into the holiest.[1]
The Epistle of the Hebrews
is supplied with numerous Old Testament quotations but that inference, at the
heart of what it means to pray as a Christian, in 10.21, ’through the curtain, that is, through his
flesh’ is not from the Old Testament, but is an inspired inference that was
drawn by whoever the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was. What kind of
inference is it? That of a type and antitype within the birth of the New Testament
era. The rent curtain is a type of Christ’s rent body. When Christians pray,
they are not to forget the wounding and agony of Christ. The rent curtain tells
Christ’s offering of himself as we engage in prayer, to remind us that Christ procured this right
only by his own suffering. So we have seen that both the role of the Spirit, as
the replacement Comforter, and the Word of God incarnate as the Great High
Priest, are suffused with Christ’s sufferings.
For it came to pass on the death of the Lord Jesus, that ‘the veil of the temple was rent from the otp to bottom’. And that which is signified hereby is only this , that by virtue if the sacrifice, wherein hi flesh was torn and rent, we have a full entrance of into the holy place, so that it should as would have been of old upon the rending of the veil. This, therefore is the genuine of this place, \We enter with boldness into the most holy place through the veil; that is to say, his flesh’; we do so by virtue of the sacrifice of himself, wherein his flesh was rent, and all hindrances thereby taken away from us; of which the veil was an emblem, and principal instances, until it was rent and removed. (506)_
Easter and prayer. In the current understanding of
prayer, personal prayer is simply a case of talking with Jesus, a direct
consequence of ‘knowing Jesus’. And Easter is being taken over by rabbits and
daffodils. The Bible itself presents us with Jesus not as a companion to his New Testament people, but as a physically
absent Saviour, who is our Great High
Priest in virtue of his sufferings. His death, resurrection and ascension
formed one transaction between the persons of the Holy Trinity, the economic Trinity,
as a consequence of the physical vanishing of Jesus Christ’s resurrected,
ascended self. This was a loss to the church, a needy place in which the Holy Spirit
has become the assurer and encourager of God’s people, and our risen and
ascended became Christ the mediator of the covenant. Our worship is to be ‘solemn’, as
Owen tells us, because it is an activity, wherever and whenever it takes place that is validated only by the solemnity of the purchase
of Christ’s blood. Easter was never to be a once in a year celebration, and we are to remember the death of the Saviour in every prayer we engage in.
[1]
John Owen, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. W.H.Goold, (1855 repr. Baker,
1980), VI.507
