t from[188]
sin. God will pronounce that Christ's blood has been accepted, and that
His work has been finished. His acquittal will be the acquittal of those
whose sins He bare in His body on the tree.

Nor will His appearing be now long delayed. It was already the end of
the ages when He first appeared. Therefore look out for Him with eager
expectancy[189] and upward gaze. For He will be once again actually
beheld by human eyes, and the vision will be unto salvation.

We must not fail to note that, when the Apostle speaks in this passage
of Christ's being once offered, he refers to His death. The analogy
between men and Christ breaks down completely if the death of Christ was
not the offering for sin. Faustus Socinus revived the Nestorian doctrine
that our author represents the earthly life and death of Jesus as a
moral preparation for the priesthood which was conferred upon Him at His
ascension to the right hand of God. The bearing of this interpretation
of the Epistle on the Socinian doctrine generally is plain. A moral
preparation there undoubtedly was, as the Apostle has shown in the
second chapter. But if Christ was not Priest on earth, His death was not
an atoning sacrifice. If He was not Priest, He was not Victim. Moreover,
if He fills the office of Priest in heaven only, His priesthood cannot
involve suffering and, therefore, cannot be an atonement. But the view
is inconsistent with the Apostle's express statement that, "as it is
appointed unto men once to die, so Christ was once offered." Of course,
we cannot acquiesce in the opposite view that His death was Christ's
only priestly act, and that His life in heaven is such a state of
exaltation as excludes the possibility of priestly service. For He is "a
Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord
pitched, not man,"[190] The death of Christ was a distinct act of
priestly service. But it must not be separated from His entering into
heaven. Aaron received into his hands the blood of the newly slain
victim, and immediately carried the smoking blood into the holiest
place. The act of offering the blood before God was as necessary to
constitute the atonement as the previous act of slaying the animal.
Hence it is that the shedding and the sprinkling of the blood are spoken
of as one and the same action. Christ, in like manner, went into the
true holiest through His death. Any other way of entering heaven than
through a sacrificial death woul