The epistle to the Hebrews was written to Jews who had become Christians, but through persecution and great suffering were sorely tempted to go back to the old Jewish faith.  They seemed to be saying that Jesus filled out neither the kingdom plan, nor the Mosaic scheme of sacrifice.  The writer of the epistle is showing with a masterly sweep and detail the immense superiority of what Jesus did over the old Mosaic plan.  Read backward, these provisions are seen to be vivid illustrations of what Jesus did do, not in form, not actually, but in fact, in spirit, in a way vastly ahead of the Hebrew ritual.  The truth underneath the old was fully fulfilled in Jesus, though the form was not.

One needs always to keep sharply in mind the difference between God’s plan and that which He clearly saw ahead, and into which He determined to fit in carrying out His purpose.  There is no clearer, stronger statement of this than that found in Peter’s Pentecost sermon:  “Him being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hands of men without law did crucify and slay.”  God knew ahead what would come.  There was a conference held.  The whole matter talked over.  With full knowledge of the situation, the obstinate hatred of men, the terrific suffering involved, it was calmly, resolutely advised and decided upon that when the time came Jesus should yield Himself up pliantly into their hands.  That is Peter’s statement.

This in no way affects the fact that Jesus dying as He did is the one means of salvation.  It does not at all disturb any of Paul’s statements, in their plainest, first-flush meaning.  It does explain the kingdom plan, and the necessity for Jesus finishing up the kingdom plan some day.  For though God’s plan may be broken, and retarded, it always is carried through in the end.  It explains too that evil is never necessary to good.  Hatred, evil never helps God’s plans.  The good that God brought out of the cross is not through the bad, but in spite of the bad.

The preaching of the Acts is absorbed with the astounding, overshadowing, appalling fact of the killing of the nation’s King.  But through it all runs this strain of reasoning:  the kingdom plan has been broken by the murder of the King.  He has been raised from the dead in vindication of His claim.  This marvellous power that is so evident to all eyes and ears is the Holy Spirit whom the killed King has sent down.  It proves that He is now enthroned in glory at God’s right hand.  He is coming back to carry out the kingdom plan.  Now the thing to do is to repent, and so there will come blessing now, and by and by the King again.

When the first church council is held to discuss the matter of letting non-Jewish outsiders into their circle, the clear-headed, judicial-tempered James, in the presiding chair, puts the thing straight.  He says:  “Peter has fully told us how God first visited the outside nations to take out of them a people for Himself.  And this fits into the prophetic plan as outlined by Amos, that after that the kingdom will be set up and then all men will come.”