Hebrews 10:22

22. Having so magnificent an access as stated in 19-21, our author now, in the following three verses, exhorts us with a let us thrice presented: namely, let us draw near, let us hold fast, and let us consider one another. The first regards our free access to God; the second, our firmness in profession; the third, our use of the communion of saints in maintaining the previous two, namely, our gracious access and our firm profession. The first let us is, let us gladly draw near. God in his holy place may be freely and boldly approached; who will not hasten to draw near? And so in this verse we have a delightful picture of the adorer in this new temple sweetly approaching a loving God. Heart, conscience, and body are all pure.

A true heart True in its freedom from all insincerity or wavering; true in its fidelity and firmness.

Full assurance Not only firmness, but exultant and aggressive assurance. The temple imagery is beautifully preserved throughout. It was by blood sprinkled upon them that the priests entered before God; that sprinkled blood implying their purification by atonement.

Exodus 29:21; Leviticus 8:30. And Aaron and his sons washed their hands and feet in the brazen laver. Exodus 30:20; Exodus 40:30-32.

On the great day of atonement the high priest washed his whole body with water. Leviticus 16:4.

Evil conscience As we say, “a guilty conscience;” that is, a personal consciousness of being guilty.

Bodies washed It is unexegetical, with Alford and others, to find here a distinct allusion to baptism. The thought is not of a material body, literally washed with water, any more than of a material heart, literally sprinkled with blood; or any more than the house of God (Hebrews 10:21) is a material house. The heart is here spiritually sprinkled, as the image of interior purity; the body, spiritually washed, is the image of external rectitude of life. This verse, both in the Greek and the English, is a fine specimen of rhythm.

It is a very important fact that our author ascribes this privilege of immediate access to every Christian. Each for himself approaches to, and communes with, God. No human substitute stands in his place before God, or stands in God’s place before him. No one offers a sacrifice for him, and he, offers no literal sacrifice for himself. The one priest is Christ, and the one sacrifice is that of himself, once for all.

The apostles, the ministers of the New Testament, as not performing sacrifice and as not being substitutes, are not priests. Yet all the leading institutions of the Old Testament Church have a modified continuity in the New. The high priesthood has its eternal continuity in Christ. The predictive sacrifices are shadowed in the commemorative Lord’s supper. Circumcision is represented by baptism; the sabbath by “the Lord’s day.” And so the priesthood of the Old Testament has its representative in the ministry, namely, the apostle, the bishop, the elder, and the deacon, of the New. While no form of government is prescribed in the New Testament with Levitical precision, and large freedom is left to the Church to frame its own organization, there are nevertheless forms, sanctioned by “the New Testament and the example of the primitive Church,” which are truly preferable, the absence of which, though not an invalidation, is yet a defect in a church organization.