What are the strange doctrines of Hebrews 13:9?

"Be not carried about with divers and strange doc­trines. For it is a good thing that the heart he established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein" The revelation of God in Christ is certainly infinitely better than the forms and laws of Judaism; but after such revelation, advance or improvement is impossible. Men may introduce new and diverse doctrines, but they are an insult to the blessed Person of Christ, and strange in the sense of being foreign to God's revelation. Unstable souls may be beguiled by them, but as we have seen, stability is found in the Person of Christ. The heart must he estab­lished with grace. May we know more fully and purely the sweet significance of that grace which has met the claims of a broken law, delivered us from bondage, and provided a liberty wherewith to serve God with wholehearted, voluntary devotion. How much more than con­scientiousness is this! Not indeed that conscience is ig­nored, but rather that, being exercised by the Word of God, the soul gladly acquiesces in that which conscience approves. Thankful affection for the Lord thus becomes the motive, not a mere sense of duty. The legal prin­ciple is banished, as are its forms and ceremonies. "Not with meats" is a word added here to insist that mere temporal instances of selfdenial must be no object in a believer's life. They are good indeed if practiced hon­estly for the Lord's sake, with no thought of spiritual merit in them; but refraining from certain meats will make a soul no better or no worse. "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats, but the Lord shall destroy both it and them" (1 Cor. 6:13). A believer ought to be able to give up his rights easily, whether eating of meat or anything else, without attaching any sanctimonious virtue to it, or considering it a legal imposition. Let grace reign in it, and it is very simple and honorable, as well as profitable. But those who occupy themselves with those things rather than with the grace of God, do not find profit for their own souls.

"We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle." The Person of the Lord Jesus is the altar that sanctifies the gift, that is, which gives value to His work of sacrifice. The believer partakes of this altar, as the offerer was privileged in Israel to eat of the peace offerings. But one who serves the tabernacle, that is, clings to Judaism (which was but a temporary order of things), by that very fact ignores the glory of the Person of Christ and the efficacy of His sacrifice.

Now just because the One in whom our faith centres is the same, there must be a certain kind of sameness in all the truth that also centres in Him. He can never be the Centre and Theme of doctrines which are various and strange. There is no place for that unsatisfied restlessness of the human mind that is for ever running after notions, however contradictory they may be. Now the real knowledge of Jesus establishes the heart with grace, and mere variety and novelty cease to attract. The danger immediately threatening the Hebrews was the importation of strange doctrines from their own former religion, as is indicated by the allusion to "meats."

A certain proportion of the meats consumed by the Jews reached them through their sacrifices. Leviticus 7 shows us that not only the priests, but also in some cases those who offered were privileged to eat parts of the things offered: that is, they ate of the altar. How often must unbelieving Jews have flung the taunt at their believing brethren that they now had no altar in which to claim their share! But the fact is, "We have an altar"! And of the Christian's altar the proud orthodox Jew had no right to eat, having shut himself out by his own unbelief.

An Altar. — Needful was this reminder, for busy was the enemy, desirous if possible to draw back some from the faith by carrying them away with divers and strange doctrines. Jewish teaching he refers to, which cannot really establish the heart. Meats will not do that; grace alone will. And all such teaching as he here deprecates profited not them that were occupied with it. In the nature of things, in the presence of Christianity, and as opposed to it, such teaching could not profit. And would any seek to draw away the Hebrews by taunting them with having forsaken the altar before which they once stood, and with worshipping without one? The patriarchs had their altars. The law recognised one. The Christians seemingly had none. Now they were taught to answer all such taunts and to meet any objection of that kind with the bold declaration that they had an altar, but one whereof they had no right to eat which served the tabernacle. A privilege was theirs as Christians, debarred the priests under the law. Again Judaism pales before Christianity.

What was the privilege? Under the law the sin offering, whose blood was brought into the sanctuary for sin, was burned without the camp, carried forth by the priests to a clean place, and there consumed by fire (Lev. 4:11-12, 6:30, 16:27). Of those sin offerings, however, whose blood was not brought into the sanctuary the priests were commanded to eat. It was part of their portion as ministering at the altar, being partakers of, or in communion with the altar. The former sin offering was expressly withheld from them. Now it is of that sin offering whose blood was carried into the heavenly sanctuary (9:12) we can and do partake. We feed on Christ, and our altar is the cross on which He died. Here is the only place where an altar for Christians on earth is mentioned. And the use we make of it is plainly stated. We stand not at it. We offer not on it. We eat that which has been offered upon it. But we eat not at it. No priest under the law made the brazen altar his table. It was Jehovah's table (Mal. 1:7, 12), for there was His portion consumed by the fire which came from heaven. It was not the priest's table, though he ate of certain things which had been offered upon it; but he did not eat at it. A visible altar, then, we Christians have not; nor had these Hebrews. Their altar and ours ever remains in remembrance — the cross on which our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified for us. Any altar men may now erect would not be the cross on which He died. It would be another altar, and a needless one, because the Lord cannot die again. He lives to die no more (Rom. 6:9-10). One altar we have, and in the nature of things it cannot be multiplied.

So we are not to be "carried about with divers and strange doctrines." For the Hebrew Christians their special danger was in the familiar doctrines of Judaism which he had been dealing with in the body of the Epistle. They at one time had God's sanction, as His revelation for the time that then was; but they were only the "shadow of good things to come." Now the shadow is only a worthless husk if it is used as a substitute for Christianity. They have become "divers and strange doctrines" an intrusion upon those who have "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever."

So, "it is good that the heart be established with grace," — the grace that is centered in Christ. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." It is good to be so firmly rooted in the divine principles of redemption that "meats," and "clean and unclean," as connected with Judaism, will have no attraction; such as "touch not, taste not, handle not." These things "have not profited those who have been occupied therein."

This bastard Judaism, as we see it in Romanism and kindred systems today, is evidence of the need of such decisive separation from the Jewish camp as the apostle presses here. In his warning against diverse and strange doctrines it is plain that he has this almost wholly in his mind, as it is, indeed, in some of its forms, the one religious scheme that men naturally accept and approve. "For it is good," he says, "that the heart be established with grace, not with meats, which have not profited those that have been occupied therewith." The adoption of the legal system means the substitution of law for grace, the earthly for the heavenly, the carnal for the spiritual, the degradation of an assembly called out of the world into a mere heterogeneous gathering together, the "synagogue of Satan." For the believer entangled in it, it means uncertainty for certainty, doubt for peace, bondage for liberty; instead of communion with God the hiss of the serpent. Grace is the only thing that can dismiss fear, conquer sin, and establish the sovereignty of God over the human heart. No wonder, then, that every kind of travesty should be made of it, every form of opposition exhausted against it. But the appeal which the apostle makes here to experience will be justified by every honest and exercised soul.

The apostle at once proceeds to his point. "We have an altar of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." He is opposing now the substance to the shadow, and he naturally uses the language of the tabernacle in his insistence that the reality is not in the shadow. "We have an altar," he says, which the tabernacle cannot furnish; and an offering, of which they who serve it have no right to partake. It is the peace-offering of which he is speaking, as that was the only offering in which all Israel could have communion with the altar; but the peace-offering at once suggests all the difference for which he has been contending. Peace! was it ever made by these continual sacrifices? Communion with God, how far could it be enjoyed by those for whom God was behind an unrent veil, dwelling in thick darkness? The altar itself, the altar that sanctifieth the gift, was the figure of Christ in Person. What else could sanctify His gift but what He was who offered it? Where, then, had the men of the tabernacle put Christ? and how could they have communion with the altar, who had refused the very Altar itself?

This bastard Judaism, as we see it in Romanism and kindred systems today, is evidence of the need of such decisive separation from the Jewish "camp," as the apostle presses here. In his warning against "divers and strange doctrines," it is plain that he has this almost wholly in mind, as it is indeed in some form the one religious scheme that men naturally accept and approve.

"For it is good," he says, "that the heart be established with grace, not with meats, which have not profited those that have been occupied therewith." The adoption of the legal system means the substitution of law for grace, earthly for heavenly, carnal for spiritual, the degradation of the assembly "called out" of the world into a mere heterogenous "gathering together" — "the synagogue of Satan." For the believer entangled in it, it means uncertainty for certainty, doubt for peace, bondage for liberty, instead of communion with God, the hiss of the serpent. Grace is the only thing that can dismiss fear, conquer sin, establish the sovereignty of God over the human heart. No wonder then that every kind of travesty should be made of it, every form of opposition exhausted against it. But the appeal which the apostle makes here to experience will be justified by every honest and exercised soul.

And what is the divine remedy? It is just that which the Holy Ghost here uses - "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." We must not sever this verse from the succeeding one: "Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines," etc. The Holy Ghost would guard these Jewish believers against that which, compared with our own proper Christian blessings, is mere trash, earthly priesthood, holy places, offerings, tithes, etc. These things, after all, were but novelties compared with the old thing, which is Jesus.

It is the active grace of Christ that establishes and sustains the soul, and not divers and strange doctrines, which appear to be very intellectual meat, but only minister to the mind, and therefore do not profit those occupied with them. The vanity of the flesh has a craving after that which is new, and seeks to exalt itself by presenting truth in a way that is different to all that has been taught before, the result being that the leaders who have gone before are belittled, Jesus Christ loses His place as the unchanging Object before the soul, and we are “carried away” by strange doctrines.

Then there comes a corollary — a conclusion to that: "Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines," doctrines foreign to Christ. You have got everything in Christ; take care to hold fast by Him. Then if I get Christ as my religion I get grace. "It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace." The Lord is set before you and me as the sum of our religion, and that religion is a religion that breathes grace to the poor sinner.

Now do not read verse 9 as if you could to some extent establish your heart with meats. Observe the punctuation; a semicolon after "grace" cuts it off from the close of the verse. Meats do nothing for you; as he tells you in another place — "touch not, taste not, handle not." They bring neither profit nor honour to you. Suppose you accumulate carnal religious observances. If Colossians 2 tells me there is no honour in them, this tells me there is no profit in them. When probed and searched out they are all to the satisfaction of the flesh. The moment I get the Lord brought in, I get the heart established in grace. Did you ever hear it remarked that not a single religion on earth takes grace as its secret but the divine religion? It is keeping God quiet, if you can, with them all. God's religion is the only religion ever thought of that takes grace for its basis. This is exactly contemplated here. Do not be carried about by doctrines foreign to Christ.

Then the apostle goes on to speak of the One who is ever the same. I believe the contrast is between Hebrews 13:8 and 9. "Jesus Christ, the same; yesterday, and today, and for ever." Then he turns to the saints and says, "Be not carried about by divers and strange doctrines." The One who is immutably and eternally the same, and you, who believe on His name, are not going to be blown about by every wind of doctrine.. No, the stability and changelessness which marks the Lord Jesus is the character which is to be seen and followed in His people.