ose who wilfully
persist in sinning, as if from reckless bravado.[222] The special guilt,
too, of rejecting Christ is here painted in darker hues. For in the
earlier passage it is indifference; here it is contempt. In the former
case it is ingratitude to a merciful Saviour; in the latter it is
treason against the majesty of God's own Son. "To trample under foot"
means to desecrate. Christ is the holy High-priest of God, and is now
ministering in the true holiest place. Therefore to choose Judaism, with
its dead rites, and to reject the living Christ, is no longer the action
of a holy zeal for God's house. Quite the reverse. The sanctuary of
Judaism has been shorn of its glory, and its sacredness transferred to
the despised Nazarene. To tread under foot the Son of God is to trample
with revel rout on the hallowed floor of the holiest place. Further, the
Apostle's former warnings contained no allusion to the covenant. Now he
reminds his readers that they have been sanctified--that is, cleansed
from guilt--through the blood of the covenant. Is the cleansing blood
itself unclean? Shall we deem the reeking gore of a slain beast or the
grey ashes of a burnt heifer holy, and consider the blood of the Christ,
Who with an eternal spirit offered Himself without spot to God, unholy
and defiling?[223] Moreover, that eternal spirit in the Son of God is a
spirit of grace[224] towards men. But His infinite compassion is
spurned. And thus the Apostle brings us once more[225] in sight of the
hopeless character of cynicism.

_Second_, the punishment is partly negative. A sacrifice for sins is no
more left to men who have spurned the sacrifice of the Son.[226] Here
again we notice an advance in the thought. The Apostle told his readers
before that it is impossible to renew to repentance those who crucify
afresh the Son of God and put Him to an open shame. But the
impossibility consists in hardness of heart and spiritual blindness. The
result also is subjective,--they cannot repent. He now adds the
impossibility of finding another propitiation than the offering of
Christ or of finding in His offering a different kind of propitiation,
seeing that He is the final revelation of God's forgiving grace. Then,
further, the punishment has a positive side. After hardness of heart
comes stinging remorse, arising from a vague, but on that account all
the more fearful, expectation of the judgment. The abject terror is
amply justified. For the fury[227