The Christadelphian, August 1930, C. C. Walker

“Holy Harmless Undefiled” 

(Heb. 7:26)

W.—It is one of the miseries of controversy that the truth concerning Christ is tortured to extremes in both directions. Some exalt the Lord Jesus to co-equality and co-eternity with the Father, and some make him a mere man. The late brother John Bell wrote concerning the Lord Jesus in the days of the flesh that he was “undefiled in every sense,” which really would make him “immaculate” in “this corruptible” (1 Cor. 15:53). But surely this was not what was meant? Paul was not speaking here of the days of the flesh, but of the heavenly estate of the Lord Jesus. It is gloriously true that Jesus was in the days of the flesh morally, in character, “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners”; but he had not then been “separated from sinners and made higher than the heavens . . . perfected for evermore” (R.V.), which is what the text here says concerning him. We ought to be very careful in our quotations of the apostolic writings, that we really endeavour to convey the ideas that were before them in what they wrote. Jesus was in eternal life when these things were written of him (verse 25).