articles that apply the doctrines of Scripture, touch the affection or stir the spirit. Such is

not our mission, but we do earnestly pray that none will contemplate either the great

Offering or its marvelous results without heartfelt thanksgiving and desire for fuller

practical consecration.

Doctrine has held sway over the reader of this epistle for a long period, but however

involved the argument may be, and however multiplied the proofs, it must certainly

somewhere before the close, give place to practical teaching and exhortation. To that we

have arrived, and it is introduced by the words of verses 19-22, "Having therefore . . . . .

Let us". The exhortation "let us" is valueless without the "having therefore", but so also

is the "having" without the practical issue. What does the apostle say these believers

Boldness to enter into the holiest. Under the law this was restricted to the high priest,

and to the day of atonement. "The high priest alone once" (9: 7). "With the blood of

others" (9: 25). The case is now different. Boldness to enter is the privilege of all

believers by the blood of Jesus.

By a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us. The legal way was old.

"Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away" (8: 13). This way

is new. Prosphatos means primarily "newly slain"; the legal way was dead. "Priests . . .

. . were not suffered to continue by reason of death" (7: 23). The entrance is "by the

blood of Jesus" (10: 19) and "His flesh" (10: 20). The New Covenant demands a new way.

The Lord's flesh is likened to the veil. Of all the many and wonderful suggestions that

have been made by commentators as to the meaning here of the veil, none seem worth a

second thought that have no place for that historic fact that "the veil of the temple was

rent in twain from the top to the bottom" (Matt. 27: 51) when the Lord Jesus died. The

second veil barred the entrance to the holiest of all, "the Holy Ghost thus signifying that

the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest". The newly-slain and living

way means a rent veil.

And having an High Priest over the house of God.  As chapter 8: puts it, New

Covenant believers have a seated Priest in a heavenly sanctuary. So far the summary of

the doctrine, what they "have". Now follows the summary of the practice "let us".

Let us draw near with a true heart.  To draw near expresses the full privilege of

those who are sanctified. It is a word used nowhere else in the epistles of Paul except

I Tim. 6: 3 where "consent" translates the word and shows an entirely different usage.