Reflections on Hebrews 8

Hebrews 08 (Contemporary English Version)


1. What I mean is that we have a high priest who sits at the right side of God's great throne in heaven.
2. He also serves as the priest in the most holy place inside the real tent there in heaven. This tent of worship was set up by the Lord, not by humans.
3. Since all priests must offer gifts and sacrifices, Christ also needed to have something to offer.
4. If he were here on earth, he would not be a priest at all, because here the Law appoints other priests to offer sacrifices.
5. But the tent where they serve is just a copy and a shadow of the real one in heaven. Before Moses made the tent, he was told, "Be sure to make it exactly like the pattern you were shown on the mountain!"
6. Now Christ has been appointed to serve as a priest in a much better way, and he has given us much assurance of a better agreement.
7. If the first agreement with God had been all right, there would not have been any need for another one.
8. But the Lord found fault with it and said, "I tell you the time will come, when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and the people of Judah.
9. It won't be like the agreement that I made with their ancestors, when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. They broke their agreement with me, and I stopped caring about them!
10. "But now I tell the people of Israel this is my new agreement: 'The time will come when I, the Lord, will write my laws on their minds and hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
11. Not one of them will have to teach another to know me, their Lord.' "All of them will know me, no matter who they are.
12. I will treat them with kindness, even though they are wicked. I will forget their sins."
13. When the Lord talks about a new agreement, he means that the first one is out of date. And anything that is old and useless will soon disappear.
    
    

    ---

    
    The topic of Christ as our High Priest continues into chapter 8, and the writer prepares to make a transition from the superiority of Christ's priesthood to the superiority of the new covenant He ushered in to replace the old covenant. The main point concerning Christ's priesthood he says is this: "we have this kind of high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle, which the Lord set up, and not man." (8:1-2) We see further significance of this point in verse 5 where the writer says, regarding the earthly tabernacle and priests: "These serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things." (8:5) Christ's priesthood is superior because it is in the heavenly tabernacle of which the earthly tabernacle was just a copy. Plus, Christ sits at the right hand of God's throne in heaven whereas the earthly priests entered a room, the Holy of Holies, in the earthly tabernacle to come into the presence of God. The point, then, is that Christ's priesthood is the real one of which the earthly priests only copied.
    
    Then comes the transition in verse 6: "But Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry, and to that degree He is the mediator of a better covenant." As Jesus' ministry is superior, so is the covenant He mediates. The first covenant, which God made with "the house of Israel and with the house of Judah" had failed because they did not continue in it. Its inferiority was in its external nature. By comparison, the new covenant was, and is, written on the minds and hearts of the people. It will be of an internal nature and the people will be motivated internally to keep the covenant. With the new covenant it will not be necessary for the priests to teach the people or for each person to teach others, "because they will all know Me, from the least to the greatest of them." (8:11)
    
    In the last verse of the chapter the writer points out that by speaking of a new covenant the implication is that the previous covenant is "old and aging" and "about to disappear." (8:13) The disappearance of the old covenant and the role of the earthly priests took place with the destruction of the temple sometime after the writing of Hebrews.