Scottish Reformed theologian James Denny (1856-1917) wrote the following about the atonement and its effects in the Epistle to the Hebrews, even linking the Pauline concept of justification to the “sanctification” spoken about in Heb 10:10-14:
The Epistle, of course,
does not ignore the effect of Christ and His sacrifice upon men: it has,
indeed, a variety of words to describe it. Sometimes the word employed is αγιαζειν (to sanctify). The
priestly Christ and His people are He who sanctifies, and they who are sanctified
(ii. 11). Christians have been sanctified through the offering of the body of
Jesus Christ once for all (x. 10). By one offering He has perfected for ever
those who are being sanctified (x. 14). It was Christ’s object in dying to
sanctify the people through His own blood (xiii. 12).
There has been much
discussion as to what sanctification in such passages means, and especially as
to whether the word is to be taken in a religious or an ethical sense. Probably
the distinction would not have been clear to the writer. One thing is
certain, however; it is not to be taken in the sense of some Protestant
theology. The people were sanctified, not when they were raised to moral
perfection—a conception utterly strange to the New Testament as to the Old—but when,
through the annulling of their sin by sacrifice, they had been constituted into
a people of God and, in the person of their representative, had access to His
presence. In short, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the word αγιαζειν,
corresponds as nearly as possible to the Pauline δικαιουν. The
sanctification of the one writer is the justification of the other; and the προσαγωγη or access to God,
which Paul emphasizes as the primary blessing of justification (Rom. v. 2; Eph.
ii. 18, iii. 12), appears everywhere in Hebrews as the primary religious act of
‘drawing near’ to God through the great High Priest (iv. 16; vii. 19-25; x.
22). It seems fair, then, to argue that the immediate effect of Christ’s death
upon men is religious rather than ethical. In technical language, it alters
their relation to God, or is conceived as doing so, rather than their
character. Their character, too, alters eventually, but it is on the basis of
that initial and primary religious change. The religious change is not a result
of the moral one, not an unreal abstraction from it.
A similar result
follows if we consider another of the words used to explain the effect of
Christ’s priestly and sacrificial work upon men—the word τελειουν, rendered ‘to make
perfect’. It is widely used in the Epistle in other connections. Christ Himself
was made perfect through sufferings (ii. 10); that is, He was made all that a
High Priest, or an author of salvation, ought to be. It does not mean that
suffering cured Him of moral faults, but that, apart from suffering and what He
learned in it, He would not have been completely fitted for His character of
representing and succouring moral men. So again, when we read that the law made
nothing perfect (vii. 19), the meaning is that, under the ancient religion of
Israel, nothing reached the ideal. The Sanctuary was a worldly or material
sanctuary (ix. 1). The priests were sinful moral men, ever passing on their
unsatisfactory functions to their successors (vii. 23). The sacrifices were of
irrational creatures, ‘the blood of bulls and goats’, which would never make the
worshipper perfect as touching the conscience (ix. 9), that is, they could
never completely lift the load from within and give him boldness and joy n the
presence of God. The access to the holiest of all was not abiding. As
represented in the High Priestly ministry of the day of atonement, the way to
God was open only for a moment and then shut again (ix. 7 f.).
There was nothing
perfect there, nothing in that religious constitution which could be described
as τελειον or αιωνιον. But with Christ, all this is changed. By one offering He has perfected
for ever those who are being sanctified (x. 14). The word cannot mean that He
has made them sinless, in the sense of having freed them completely from all
the power of sin, from every trace of its presence. It means obviously that He
has put them into the ideal religious relation to God. Because of His one
offering, their sin no longer comes between them and God in the very least. It
does not exclude them from His presence or intimidate them. They come with
boldness to the throne of grace; they draw near with a true heart and in full
assurance of faith; they have an ideal, an unimpeachable standing before God as
His people (vi. 16, x. 22). In Pauline language, there is now no condemnation.
Instead of standing afar off, in fear and trembling, they have access to the
Father. They joy in God through the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom they have
received the atonement (Rom. viii. 1, v. 2-11). (James Denny, The Death of
Christ [Biblical Classics Library; London: Paternoster Press, 1997], 126-28,
emphasis in bold added)
While, as a Calvinist, Denny would argue that
the Pauline understanding of δικαιοω is to be understood in a purely forensic manner,
he is correct in tying it into the concept of “sanctification” in Heb 10 as
both are two sides of the same rope, so to speak. For a discussion of the transformative,
not merely declarative, nature of justification, including a discussion of δικαιοω, see Refuting
Christina Darlington on the Nature of "Justification".
Further Reading
Full
Refutation of the Protestant Interpretation of John 19:30 (includes a
discussion of Heb 10:10-14)
James
White (and John Owen) on Hebrews 10:29 (shows that Heb 10 refutes
Perseverance of the Saints and other formulations of Eternal Security)
