Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Hebrews 10:22

Hebrews 10:22. Let us draw near every hindrance created by God's holiness and our own sin is removed the way is opened let us come to God in loving trust and holy service; and so worshippers are called ‘comers' (unto God), Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 10:1; Hebrews 11:6 with a true heart free from hypocrisy and double-mindedness and in harmony with the realities of the Gospel (John 1:9), being what we seem and seeming what we ought to be, ‘the perfect heart' of Isaiah 38:3 in full assurance of faith, i.e without any diffidence as to our right of approach or our acceptance through the entrance and presence of our priest Hope and love come afterwards (Hebrews 10:23-24), ‘these three,' the usual Pauline triad (1 Corinthians 13:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 1 Thessalonians 1:8; Colossians 1:4). The three assurances of Scripture, of understanding (Colossians 2:2), of faith, and of hope, are great blessings which all Christians should try and perfect. All the errors and doubts, the discomforts and fears, of Christian men are traceable to the defectiveness of these graces. Israel's right of access is not comparable to ours. They were sprinkled with blood at Sinai (chap. Hebrews 9:19); the priests washed hands and feet before every sacrificial service (Exodus 30:29), and the high priest washed his body twice on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16); but these were external sprinklings of blood and external washings, while ours are operations of grace. We are sprinkled as to our hearts, so as to be cleansed from an evil conscience an inward justifying through sprinkling of the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:2) which was shed for this very purpose, and is therefore called the blood of sprinkling (chap. Hebrews 9:14): and our bodies washed with pure water, with reference still to the divers washings of the Law (see chap. Hebrews 9:10), whereby both people and priests were purified for approaching to God, but with deeper significance. The blood under the Law typified the cleansing of priest and people from the guilt of sin, and the washing typified the cleansing of them from the pollution and defilement of it; so our justification through the blood of Christ is inseparable from that inward renewal which we call a new and regenerate nature. The faith that justifies is always the beginning of a holy character: both are essential to acceptable service and to acceptable fellowship with God (for the need of this double work, see Titus 2:14; Titus 3:5). Some commentators understand by the washing of the body the rite of baptism (Delitzsch, Alford, etc.), and it is not improbable that this may have been in the writer's mind; but it is not consistent with sound interpretation to make one rite the antitype of another. Antitypes are spiritual realities, and if baptism is implied at all it must be baptism in closest connection with the grace it symbolizes; in short, it must be the spiritual significance of the ordinance rather than the mere ordinance itself.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Hebrews 10:22

Old Testament

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