IT has been preached out of it, and in the end it has been scorned and mocked, that Jesus is our Surety; nevertheless the Church has always maintained it, and every redeemed and freshly troubled soul, when permitted to gain her confidence, holds fast by it, looking unto her Surety.
A surety, who not probably shall pay, but who has paid our debt for us to the last penny, is for him who has known financial distress, and found no way of escape, the richest thought of deliverance from anxiety and uneasiness of soul.
He knows nothing of this who was always able to pay his bills promptly, and who in the anxiety about his debts has never felt his honor slip away from him. But the ordinary man, who is continually in financial straits, who has again and again paid out his last penny without knowing where the next pennies were to come from, knows this well. When provisions are scant in the household, and stock in business is low, and expenses increase and income does not enlarge. Then there is no rest by day, and in the hours of night anxious thoughts haunt you. And when things go on from bad to worse, so that there is not only nothing left to spend, but debt is inevitable, and debt increases, and no turn in business brings relief, an honest man feels bands tighten around his neck; they become to him at last as bands of hell. And should some one then come in, who is abundantly able to pay, and to pay promptly, and say to him: “Cease your anxieties, I shall be surety for you; if at the end of the week you still can not pay, I shall pay for you, and you need never pay me back,”—the troubled soul would revive; at once the cords of death would fall from him. And when at the end of the week the surety paid all the bills, and the receipt is brought home for full payment of debt received, the heart of him who has so been brought out of his straits leaps with joy, he is jubilant with delight and gladness, and among friend and neighbor he is voluble with praises of the goodness and kindness of his surety, who turned the darkness of his soul into light, and drew him out of the nethermost pit.
For this reason the class of people that has experienced such conditions of earthly need, is so much more devoted, than they that are better to do, to the praises of Jesus as our Avenger and Surety.
They understand that language. That name, that word Surety is to them so eloquent, is expressive of so much, above every other word so precious.
To have a Surety also for the soul, is their eternal peace with God.
What modern learning has asserted, that in Hebrew 7: 22 there is mention of a Surety for God with us, and not of a Surety for us with God, is therefore altogether untenable.
No, when it reads: “Of so much better a covenant Jesus is become Surety” (Dutch version), it points very definitely to a Surety Who appears before God for us, and executes our affairs with the Holy One. The connection shows this.
Aaron and Melchizedek stand one over against the other. Both are priests, but priests of a different, diverging order. Aaron by reason of birth, Melchizedek for ever. Aaron continually offering sacrifices; the priest after the order of Melchizedek with one offering making everything perfect.
But in whatever way Aaron and Melchizedek may differ, in this point they are one, that both fulfill the highpriestly office, and this office consists in this, that they do “the things which in our behalf must be made right with God.”
Only Aaron did this sacramentally, symbolically, figuratively. He offered a bullock, a ram, a goat. And that this blood of goats and of bullocks was able to bring peace to the believing Jew, was not due to that blood or to that goat, but exclusively to the sacramental appointment of God, Who had ordained that priest, and had given power to that priest, in this way to depict and to forecast the eternal offering of Christ, and the abiding priesthood of Melchizedek.
The spiritual power of his priestly office did not come from the offering by itself, but from the fact that God had so appointed him priest, had so ordained and sacramentally sealed him.
With that priestly service the Scripture puts the service of Jesus as Surety altogether on one line. What with Aaron is called priest, is here with Jesus called Surety. Read it in its connection: Heb. 7:22-24, “Of a so much better Covenant is Jesus become Surety, and they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death, but this (man) because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.”
Thus Surety here is the same as priest, but He is called the Surety, because the other priests have passed away. But He has this in common with the Surety, that the deliverance which He has brought about, ends the matter and forever dismisses and terminates it.
Hence Surety means. that Jesus is your real priest, Who has closed your account with God, and that He offers you the guarantee that it remains for ever ended.
The opponent therefore was so far right, that Jesus as our Surety is more and something altogether different, from an ordinary surety for debt among men.
This superficial, cold and calculating representation was not derived from Holy Writ, but had been borrowed from the heartless and inexorable Roman law.
In this hard, inflexible right (law) the fundamental error was, that it put man alongside of man, took each one by himself, and showed no appreciation of, nor feeling for the organic and social tie, which, according to the divine ordinance of creation, and according to the counsel of God’s grace, knits man to man, and unites people to people.
By transferring the significance of the surety according to this fanatic, individualistic right to Jesus, the representation gained ground of one’s own self, as bent under guilt; and over against this the self of Jesus, which took the place of our self. In addition to this it was reasoned out with hairsplitting distinctions whether Jesus was Surety ex promisso or ex fideiusso.
This fell short of the honor of God.
According to this view the sinner was the unfortunate individual who aroused pity, and Jesus was the kind Deliverer, Who helped a sinner out of his distress; while God was the angry, the inexorable Judge, Whose wrath contrasted unfavorably with the love of Jesus.
The soul indeed was saved, but fellowship between the soul and the Father suffered loss. It was Jesus Who had delivered us out of the hard hand of the Father.
This is entirely unscriptural.
According to the witness of Scripture, our salvation does not go out from Jesus, but from the Father. It is the Father Who appoints the Mediator, and the Father Who so loves the world, that atonement comes for sin.
Altogether differently indeed the Scripture teaches, that he who is saved, is an organic member of Jesus’ body, under Him as Head; that he who is redeemed is one planting with Jesus, living from His life; and that he who becomes free, becomes free on account of the Covenant, in which he is counted under Christ as his Covenanthead.
Thus the blessed sense, of having one’s Surety in Christ, does not rest upon the incidence that such a Surety took compassion upon us, but altogether differently upon God’s eternal purpose, to incorporate us in the body of Christ. Because He, the Christ, and with Him, His body, and in that body every member, that became one planting with it, is sanctified, and therefore the soul rests in her Savior with an eternal rest, and a far higher certainty still than a debtor finds in his earthly surety, the implanted soul finds in the Surety of the better Covenant, i. e., in Christ.
And that this Surety has paid, has no connection with an external, accidental, arbitrary bail, but is included in the fact that this Surety is a Priest for ever. That is to say, that this eternal Highpriest has brought the real offering, the offering once for all, and that He lives eternally with God, to make the fruit of that offering to shine forth gloriously, in that He lives, and in that He lives to pray for us.
So redemption does not come from a juridic bail, but from the holy priesthood, and that this priestly office of the Mediator obtains the character of bail, lies in the fact, that Jesus is not like Aaron a priest of a passing covenant, but in that He is priest in an enduring and eternally abiding covenant, and therefore offers the same perfection of peace, and discharge from debt, and blessed rest, which is enjoyed among men, when a surety appears, who disarms the creditor and sets the debtor free from his prosecutor.
SO it is not Jesus my Priest, and in addition to this my Surety.
No, it is Jesus your Priest, your Highpriest, your Reconciler by His own offering, and in this fact that He is your Priest, and in this bringing of His own offering, He is simultaneously your Surety. He is this solely and alone because His priesthood is not for a time, but endures eternally; and thus destroys all guilt; makes the atonement complete and ever enduring; and offers you a still more absolute certainty of escape and liberation, than embodies itself among men in the surety, who has paid, and can lay nothing to our charge.
And this is the form, the word, the expression, which Scripture itself lays upon our lips, to give utterance to that blessed sense of liberation and redemption.
He who understands and sees through Golgotha, and at the same time grasps what the office of Christ’s Priesthood is in the sanctuary above; and has plucked the fruit of it for his own soul, and by the Holy Spirit knows that it is applied to his own soul, so that with Paul he glories: “I, too, being justified by faith, have peace with God, not through myself, but through my Lord Jesus Christ, always comes back again therefore to this blessed confession: Jesus is my Surety.
He glories in Christ as his Savior, as his Mediator, as his Reconciler and King, but from all this there does not yet shine out to him that sure, that finished, that accomplished, that eternal rest-producing truth, in which as child of God he knows himself blessed.
There is more here than a vista that is opened; more than a medicine that is here offered; more than a way unto life that here discloses itself before his feet. He senses, he experiences, he feels, he revels in the fact, that the peace is there, that it needs nothing additional, that it is finished, that it is a securely closed account, and that it is for him an eternally guaranteed matter with God and before His holy angels.
This finished state of the case, which makes it impossible ever to be opened again, which keeps it from ever being made a matter of litigation again, which exhausts all depth, and this absolute certainty, which now and forever no longer guarantees the offering but the giving character of the salvation, which he possesses in Christ, this is what he confesses before God and men, when jubilantly he sings: Christ is my Surety.
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