The Earthly Sanctuary

Then indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service and the earthly sanctuary. For a tabernacle was prepared: the first part, in which was the lampstand, the table, and the showbread, which is called the sanctuary; and behind the second veil, the part of the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of All, which had the golden censer and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant; and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. (Hebrews 09:01-05, NKJV).

Maybe it's because life is inherently fragile and uncertain; fate and circumstances can change for the worse in an instant; no one anywhere no matter how advantaged, protected or privileged is guaranteed more than the moment at hand.

Or maybe it's because we are too broken as creatures to be able to comprehend what the Lord has in store for us for all eternity.

Whatever the reason(s), an earthly sanctuary is, at one time or another, on everybody's wish list.

Who doesn't want a place of safety and peace? Who doesn't want to be enclosed and protected within a place of unassailable power?

It is no accident, then, that God provided His people with detailed specifications for the construction of an earthly copy of the true heavenly sanctuary. He did it out of love and a desire to instruct His people. 

From the earliest history of the Children of Israel, God established a means (animal sacrifice), and a place (the Tabernacle - and later the Temple) where His people could come to meet Him. It was both a symbolic edifice, a picture of stunning and meaningful truths about the Promised Messiah, and a physical anchor, a concrete, tangible, and sanctified meeting place where sinners could draw close to their holy Creator.

It was an unprecedented gift, a noble condescension on the Father's part indicating, perhaps above all else, His ancient longing to reestablish fellowship with fallen mankind.

He designed it as a place of both awe and protection, judgment and mercy, incalculable glory and eminent approachability. This place of worship, this earthly sanctuary, became the central focus of Israel, and remains so to this day, even though the physical building was destroyed almost 2000 years ago. Astonishing!

Yet, the emphasis in these verses is not on the magnificent Temple built by Solomon, but on the humble Tent of Meeting in the wilderness, so far removed from the writer of Hebrew's experience that he felt unqualified to delve more deeply into its physical aspects beyond a summary description (Of these things we cannot now speak in detail).

His purpose, I believe, is to yet again highlight the superiority of the New Covenant over the Old by contrasting Christ, the Cornerstone of the Living Temple - the eternal church, with a portable, temporary construction made of badger skins, cloth, metal coatings and wood.

He is not in anyway denigrating the Old, but is again using it as a signpost that has always pointed to the New.

Everything about the Tabernacle represented a foreshadowing of the work and ministry of Christ, from the lampstand that was never to be bereft of flame (Jesus being the Light of the World), to the Showbread and Manna (Jesus is the Bread of Life), to the purposely hidden gold (His divinity cloaked in humanity), to the second veil separating the sanctuary from the Holiest of All (the veil being His flesh, as Hebrews 10 will tell us), and ultimately leading to the mercy seat, where the justice of God and the grace of God came together in complete harmony through the Cross of Christ.

That mercy seat, though adjacent to the earthly sanctuary, was only accessible to the High Priest once a year on the Day of Atonement (itself a pointer to Christ's atoning death), and then only after rigorous and diligent animal sacrifices were made for both the Priest and the people.

But the new Covenant has none of those restrictions. That veil of separation between us and the Mercy Seat has been ripped in two forever, and we are commanded to come not once a year, but always and boldly to the throne of grace to find mercy and help in time of need.

However magnificent and satisfying and gracious the earthly sanctuary was to the people of the Old Covenant, it is nothing in comparison to the New.

We who are in Christ are not restricted to a geographic location, or a calendar date to draw near to God. Nor are we dependent on the officiation of a priest, or even a king. We are His children who worship God in spirit and in truth anywhere and everywhere and anytime.

We are, ourselves, the Temple of the Living God through faith in His Son. 

Our sanctuary is incorruptible, always accessible, and is not a place, but a Person, who is our all-powerful, all-knowing Creator, Lord, King, Savior, Priest, and Friend.

There can be no greater safety.

Faultless

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah-- “not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the LORD. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 08:07-13, NKJV).

Christ is the Mediator of a better covenant established on better promises. In fact, that better covenant is the faultless replacement of the first covenant that was not kept by Israel throughout its long and checkered history.

It was during the time of the Exodus from Egypt that God through Moses gave the nation His Law. In effect, it was a contract: do these things and live; disregard these things and suffer the consequences. Israel repeatedly suffered the consequences.

But God - the two most encouraging words in Scripture - in His mercy gives that nation (and through them the world) a second chance, a second covenant not founded on frail human performance, but on the faithfulness and obedience of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Knowing beforehand that Israel would fail, God declared in the beginning, long before Abraham or Jacob, that He would send the Promised One to crush the head of Satan (Ge 3:15). Provision would be made for Israel's future failure, and in their failure, salvation would come to the whole planet.

And it was not the Law itself, but those under the Law that proved weak and insufficient. Fault was found with them again and again, and they did not continue in that first covenant. The result: God disregarded them - a truly horrible fate. But even as He did so, allowing Babylon to conquer them, He, through the prophet Jeremiah, declared that there would be a new covenant, a better contract, not founded on faulty human works, but on the magnificent and faultless Son of God.

That long ago promise of hope foreshadowed so many things; the reuniting of the Divided Kingdoms (the house of Israel and with the house of Judah); the radically different nature of the new covenant - written not on hard tablets of stone, but put in the minds and written on the hearts of the people; the abolition of the priesthood (“None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them."); and the incredible mercy and forgiveness of God through His Son (“For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” ).

So radically different and infinitely superior is this new covenant over the old, that it was possible only through the Savior's obedient death on the Cross.

The gospel of justification by faith is as far above the conditional promises of the law as the Heavens are above the earth, which makes the agent of that new covenant, Christ, far superior than Abraham or Moses or Joshua or angels or anyone.

Now, [in] that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete is also an important facet of the revelation of Hebrews, this obsolescence of the Old Covenant. That which is obsolete is necessarily incompatible with what replaces it. 

No rollback is possible. Reliance on what God has done away with, on what He has purposely abrogated, is merely another form of rebellion, as disobedient as any other sin, and even more so, since it is not just codices of law, but the Son of God who is being disregarded. It is not a matter of benign preference, but of belief and obedience. 

To believe that all roads lead to Heaven is to say that Christ did not have to die. To question whether or not God would condemn "good" non-Christians to the eternal punishment of Hell, is to question the veracity of God Himself, and to cast doubt on His judgment in sending His Son to die in the first place. In fact, to disregard this New Covenant is to declare that God's plan of redemption was faulty from the start.

It is saying that you know better than the Infinite Intelligence who designed your finite intelligence, and made your thinking anything at all possible. It is equivalent to you, a mere creature, placing yourself on the throne of your Creator and decreeing in your mortal foolishness what is right and wrong.

I can think of nothing more arrogant.

To reject this New Covenant on any grounds at all is to cement your rebellion against God, and ensure your eternal damnation. These are not just words, but an unthinkably hopeless destiny, the horror of which cannot be rightly conceived by the human mind.

One final thing to notice, indicative of the many treasures hidden in Scripture, and it's this: Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

When was the letter to Hebrew penned? Some say one date, others say another date, but to me this last phrase is a clue that it was written just a bit before 70 A.D., and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, making formal continuance of Jewish practice impossible.

In anticipation of that final closed door back to the old ways, God inspired this marvelous letter as a profound encouragement, and a solemn warning.

Truly we serve and worship a God who cares for us in ways we cannot fathom.

The Promised One

Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. (Romans 01:01-04, NKJV).

The amazing thing about the Father's plan of salvation is how unbelievably old it is, and how early he made it known to fallen man.

From Genesis 3 onward, the Bible speaks to us of the Promised One, the Seed of the Woman - the Messiah. Over and over again throughout the Old Testament He reminded us that the One Who Saves is coming, and His name will be called Wonderful, Mighty God, Counselor, Prince of Peace, and Everlasting Father.

Then in the gospels, we are told that His name will be called JESUS, which means God is Salvation.

There is nothing about the human condition that comes as a surprise to our God. He knew Adam would sin, and that mankind would need a Savior, and that the Savior would be His Son, and that Jesus would have to die on the Cross to save us from the penalty of sin. Yet, He created us anyway.

In Romans Chapter 1, Paul reminds of us of all these things in his introduction and greeting.

You see, His prophets in the Holy Scriptures wrote about Jesus long before He was born to Mary. Some of them may not have even understood all that they were told by the Holy Spirit about this Promised One, but a few, very easily proven things were written more than once so that we could believe it all.

Who His ancestors would be was one of these things. We were told that He would be a Jew and be descended from the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David. In fact, God chose Abraham, and made a nation out of his descendants so that the Jewish people would be recipients of His Word, and be the nation from which Messiah would come.

Paul also reminds us that Jesus would be the only God-Man in the universe, meaning that He would be a human Son of David according to the flesh, while at the same time being the Son of God. This is a great mystery the details of which are hard to explain and understand.

God knew that our smallish human minds would have trouble in this, so Jesus did many signs and wonders to prove who He really was, with power according to the Spirit of holiness. The Lord said many times that He did only what the Father told Him to do, and said only what the Father told Him to say. 

All the wonderful miracles He performed were done by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is God, just as Jesus and the Father are God (another mystery hard for our brains to understand). The Lord Jesus never did anything by His own power when He lived on the earth, even when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness to use His power as God to do things.

He needed to live and die as a Man in order for His death to pay for mankind's sins. Otherwise, we could not be saved.

But He did one thing, beyond all His other miracles, that proved that He was the Promised One - He rose from the dead. That's what Paul meant when he wrote that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

You see, because the Lord never committed any sin, death could not hold Him, because only sinners can die. Jesus voluntarily offered Himself on the Cross for us, dying in our place, so His sinlessness and death paid the death-debt for our sin.

He loved us very much to do that, even before we knew and loved Him.

Being resurrected from the dead is not the only thing Jesus did for us, but it is one of the greatest things that He did, and it showed that He was who He said He was: the Son of God, the Savior.

It is very important to understand that He was born exactly according to what was written about Him beforehand in the Scriptures, and that He died according to the Scriptures, and that He rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures.

All just as God had planned before the Universe and everything in it was created.

That is how great our God is, and that is what Paul is reminding us of here in the beginning of his letter to the Romans.

Separated to the Gospel of God

Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God (Romans 01:01, NKJV).

The Apostle Paul used to be the Pharisee Saul.

That's interesting in that the name, Saul, means "Desired One", while the name, Paul, means "Small" or "Little".

When he was Saul, he was a rising professional LawKeeper, taught by the most prestigious teachers of Judaism, including the famous Gamaliel. His career path was a pure trajectory upward, receiving promotion and acclaim far beyond his years.

When Christianity first became known as a rival to Judaism, at least in the Jewish ruling counsel's (the Sanhedrin) collective wisdom, Paul was appointed bounty hunter by the High Priest himself, and was instructed to go about the cities and towns and arrest the first Christians for the crime of blasphemy.

On the road to Damascus one day, in fulfillment of his new job description, the Risen Lord knocked Saul off his high horse (literally) and opened his eyes to the truth by blinding him for three days, during which time Christ changed his name to Paul, and told him what the truth really was - that Christianity was what all of Jewish history was really pointing to.

So, from "Desired" to "Little", from bounty hunter to blinded fugitive, Paul went from an up and coming religious ruler to a bondservant of Jesus Christ.

That is also a very interesting transition, especially since the word translated bondservant is duolos, which means slave, and brings us back to the ancient Israelites during the time of Moses, some 1400 years before Jesus walked on the earth.

Back then, Jewish household slaves were to be set free after a certain time of servitude unless they chose to remain with the family. In that case, voluntarily and out of love and gratitude to the master of the household, the slave would have his or her earlobe pierced, and be given a golden earring. This signified willing service for life.

And a willing slave of Christ for the rest of his life is how Paul introduces himself here in Romans; such an astounding transition, from arresting Jesus' followers to becoming one of the Lord's most significant church leaders!

Next, the Apostle writes that he was called to be an apostle. That word, called, is like being invited to a banquet or feast, rather than being commanded to go someplace or do something. And Paul was more than happy to accept the invitation. In fact, in another letter to believers, he tells us that he would be full of woe and sadness if he could not go out and preach about Jesus to people. 

In other words, if the Lord had not sent him out, which is what apostle means - to be sent out, Paul's life would have been empty and without purpose in comparison.

Finally, he tells us that he was separated to the gospel of God. 

You see, his mission was very specific. All that Paul was, from beginning to end, from being knit together in his mother's womb, to his growing up as a Roman citizen in Tarsus, to his being trained in the Old Testament writings in Jerusalem, to his brilliant and scholarly mind and his extremely logical and persuasive way of communicating, all this was entirely for the purpose of preaching the gospel of God. 

It was the package the Lord had put in him, the boundary of his life and energy, in order for him to be able to carry out that one vitally important purpose God had planned for him from before the foundation of the world.

Now, gospel means good news, the good news of God sending His Son, Jesus, to die for forgiveness of our sins, to pay the penalty on the Cross that we could never pay. He died so that we could live. And rather than earn our way into heaven by our own measly and faulty works, something we could never do, we must believe that Christ died for us and rose again from the dead on the third day, and now sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.

That is the gospel of God - that we are forgiven of our sins if we believe in the work of God's Son on the Cross. Telling people all about that was Paul's life and love.

It is why he wrote this marvelous letter that we call Romans.

A More Excellent Ministry

For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this One also have something to offer. For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law; who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.” But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. (Hebrews 08:03-06, NKJV).

Revealed as more worthy than angels, as having more glory than Moses, as being more of a conqueror than Joshua, as a member of a better priesthood than Aaron, as a bearer of a better hope of drawing near to God, and as a greater High Priest than any before or after Him, we are now informed that Jesus has obtained a more excellent ministry, and is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.

The superlatives are of an endless supply, all lovingly presented so that we are given irresistible weaponry to fight any temptation to leave the pure and simple faith of the gospel for something we may have believed in the past, or something that appears outwardly more compelling.

This is as effective for us today as it was for the original audience two millennia ago.

Jewish priest served in the things of God as temporary pilots on an endless sea of sacrificial blood. Their ministry was one of conditional blessing based on human performance. The hereditary High Priest was a shaky bulwark against national calamity and corporate spiritual decline, inasmuch as he, too, was a frail sinner in need of cleansing.

He ministered in the earthly place of worship, modeled precisely after, but only a faint copy of, the true heavenly tabernacle. He was the necessary mediator of the Old Covenant of works that provided conditional promises that could be forfeit by human sinfulness.

Our Savior, a fulfillment of what the old priesthood foreshadowed, much like a full-colored photograph fulfills a quick pencil sketch, now sits and intercedes on our behalf at the right hand of the throne of God with command-level access to the true Tabernacle not made with hands, that is not of this creation.

Without doubt then, His ministry is more excellent.

But there's more. As the High Priest was mediator of the contract between God and man based on Law, Christ is Mediator of the new contract based on the Law of Faith. This contract is not dependent on mere human works, but on the singular work of the Son of God Himself, beginning on the Cross, and continuing eternally through His indwelling each one of us who believe on His name, sanctifying us and conforming us to His glorious image.

The old promises of once-yearly fellowship with God and blessing were founded on ritual animal sacrifices that must be repeated daily. The new promises of eternal life and intimate every-moment intimate relationship with God are founded on the once for all offering of Christ Himself.

So that all things were done in orderly fashion and in accord with the Father's magnificent plan of redemption, Christ's ministry must align with the prophetic pictures embodied in Judaism. Therefore it is necessary that this One also have something to offer. And that offering was not the blood of bulls and goats that could never take away sin, but it was His own blood on the Cross - the sinless Son of God becoming sin for us that we may become the righteousness of God in Him. 

This momentous, unparalleled offering was so vastly superior to all the millions of ceremonial offerings that had gone before, that it did away with the requirement that any future blood sacrifice be made. It removed the stain of sin, rather than merely covering it over.

Everything that had gone on before that moment was only a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, providing both forewarning and confirmation of a far more excellent ministry.

Rejecting Christ, or turning away from Christ to something inferior is a reenactment of the rebellion in the Garden, but with this one solemn and terrifying difference.

Adam's sin, though one of the most tragically significant events in all universal history, and resulting in severe and long-lasting punishment, could be forgiven in Christ.

Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:29, NKJV).

Unlike the many disqualifying acts that would forfeit the promises of the old covenant, there is only one sin that will abrogate these better promises of the new, and it is the sin of unbelief.

God died on the Cross to take away our sin. Willfully, stubbornly denying that truth removes all possibility of hope or remedy.

To die in unbelief is to activate the default destiny for everyone in this life.

Do nothing about Christ and suffer eternally. Do this one thing about Him - believe - and become the undeserved, yet guaranteed, recipient of the glorious promises of everlasting life in God's Presence that He purchased on your behalf.

The choice is up to you.

Seated at the Right Hand of the Throne

Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man. (Hebrews 08:01-02, NKJV).

No High Priest throughout Israel's long history could sit down in his service of the Tabernacle or Temple. There were no seats in the Sanctuary, save for the Mercy Seat reserved for God Himself.

To sit in the Presence of the Most High was considered the height of blasphemy.

To sit would indicate that the work of the ministry was done.

To sit was to presume equality with the One who rightfully sits on the Throne.

No sane High Priest would dare.

But Christ, our Great High Priest, is now seated in that very place, the place of co-regency and of power, and the writer of Hebrews wants us to know this because this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.

He is now not only Priest, but Minister, in the sense of governmental responsibility. And His rightful place is in the sanctuary of the true Tabernacle, designed and built by God Himself, and not that earthly copy built by men.

This is of the highest significance, particularly to those who fear coming to Christ because of a previous fealty to some lesser faith. The logic is simple and profound.

Christ is in the place of ultimate authority, except for the Father Himself, and reigns as co-regent of the Universe.

Do not fear leaving all remnants of the old system of works-salvation behind, whatever its name or venerability, for it is a hopeless prison purposely destroyed by the One who died to make men free. It is a leap not of faith or recklessness, but of the utmost reason, since the work of redemption has been completed for us - that work that could never be done by us.

In the face of this knowledge, to stay behind, to remain imprisoned by dead works, is to reject what God Himself has made clear in both prophecy and history about His beloved Son. It is a blasphemous act of rebellion worthy of eternal condemnation.

And this is precisely the stumbling block that Christ is to the world.

Many believe that Christianity is arrogant and bigoted, and that it is the epitome of intolerance and fanaticism for its adherents to condemn non-Christians to Hell forever. But they get this wrong in so many ways, starting with their myopic view of Christ and His work of redemption, and ending with the mistaken assumption that it is Christians who do the condemning.

God forbid that we who follow the Christ should think we are in a condition to condemn anyone for anything in this present age. Those who love and follow the Lord know His greatness and our lowliness and depravity. If we are not actually guilty of all that we could be, we are certainly guilty of failing to do all that we should. And many of us are guilty of far worse than we even know.

The more you know of Him, the less inflated view you have of yourself, and the more value you place on who He is and what He has done. It is not saved sinners who condemn those who reject Christ, it is the Father who does so, and it is perfectly just for Him to do so given what He has done to save us by sending His Son to expiate our guilt.

To reject that is to say that Jesus needn't have died on the Cross to cleanse us of sin.

Given the immensity of that cost, it becomes evident why nothing less than full acceptance of that sacrifice provides an escape from everlasting torment.

To believe otherwise is to put yourself in God's place, which is far more arrogant and presumptuous than any tenet of Christianity.

Perfected Forever

For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever. (Hebrews 07:28, NKJV).

The Book of Hebrews perhaps reveals more about Christ than any other portion of Scripture, and it does so provocatively.

While presenting a soaring and lyrically compelling argument for Christ's unprecedented superiority, it simultaneously shocks us with the Son of God needing to learn, and to be perfected (Heb 5:8,9; 7:28).

How can Deity lack knowledge or perfection?

By raising and answering these questions, the writer illuminates even more of the glories of Jesus and His immeasurable love for the Father and for us.

What experiential knowledge could all-powerful Deity lack? 

Obedience through suffering.

Contemplate the wonder of this for a second. Incomparably authoritative Godhood, for the first and only time in all eternity, and solely for our benefit, learned obedience by the things which He suffered.

He subjected Himself cooperatively, lovingly, to human life and all human temptation, so that He could demonstrate for us the way back to God. I believe the suffering in view encompassed not only the Cross and the misery of life in a fallen world, where hunger and illness, deformity and death ravaged frail existence, but also the endless pain of temptation itself.

And the obedience subsequently learned was in that striving against sin, not as God who cannot be tempted, but as Man, surrendering His will to the Father, and endlessly battling the enemy's enticement to rebel. Only as Man, could God learn such painful surrender. 

This is difficult for us to understand, since, though we may think we battle mightily against sin, in reality we succumb to its subtleties and covert attacks on a daily basis. For we have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. (Hebrews 12:4, NKJV). But He has. For us. And, unimaginably, in doing so, He learned to obey. In one sense, this is a mystery as deep as the Triune Godhead itself.

How then was He perfected?

He became for us the complete and perfect remedy for sin by voluntarily offering Himself as the complete and perfect sacrifice required to take away the sin of the world. He was thus perfected as both Offering and Mediator, Man and God in mysterious tandem, Priest and King, Suffering Servant, Savior and Lord.

And one of the final contrasts between merely human priests who have weakness, and the Son who has been perfected forever, is a reminder of both the before, and after, prefigurement of God's redemptive plan, and Christ's absolute and perfect fulfillment of that plan.

Foreshadowed in the person of Melchizedek, typified in the establishment of the ritual sacrifices, and confirmed by the oath recorded by David which came a thousand years after the Mosaic Law, Jesus is the embodiment and the pinnacle of perfected redemption.

He is the only way back to the Father; the Door, the Good Shepherd, the Torn Curtain that flings open for us the way into the Holiest of All and to the Throne of Grace.

He has bridged forever that uncrossable gap between God and Man through His perfect work on the Cross of Our Salvation.

And all this sublimely revealed to us in Hebrews so that we can know for certain that the bridge into eternity during this present age will never fail.

Until one day, there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth. 

“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4, NKJV).

Once for All

For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever. (Hebrews 07:26-28, NKJV).

In regard to Christ's propitiatory sacrifice for sin, the phrase once for all appears 4 times in the New Testament (Ro 6:10; Heb 7:27; 9:12; 10:10), and 3 of those 4 are in Hebrews.

It is a phrase which contrasts the repeated ceremonial animal sacrifices with the sublime, ultimate sacrifice of the Son of God. It is a phrase that speaks to the complete efficacy of that sacrifice in taking away the sin of the world. It is a phrase that again points us to the ineffable superiority of Christ to any and all  that came before.

The priests of old officiated at the altar of blood. Their role can be likened to a ritualistic butcher, killing the offered animal, carving up the anatomy in accord with the proscribed regulations handed down by God through Moses.

It was an intricate and detailed job description, that encompassed not only desired results but required attitude and apparel. It spoke of God's micromanagement of the entirety of Judaism, and it was for one ultimate purpose: to sanctify the LORD God in the hearts of the priests and the people.

It's graphic dismemberment represented the heinousness of sin, and the holiness of God and repeatedly emphasized the necessary shedding of blood to atone for rebellion against God's goodness and graciousness.

In Western culture today, the majority of people have nothing to do with this bloody aspect of either religion or nourishment. For the most part, our meat is pre-butchered, pre-packaged and sanitized. We are far removed from the lowing of the livestock, the pouring out of the blood, or the thud of the expiring beast gasping its last, and collapsing under its own dead weight.

Not so the ancient Israelites. They saw the death, heard the rasping expiration of air, and smelled daily the offal and the coppery aroma of blood. And for centuries, in and around the focal point of their worship - first the Tabernacle, and then the Temple - these indelible sensory perceptions were purposely associated with the wages of sin.

It was blatant and overt conditioning, planned and executed by God Himself, for the sole purpose of revealing in as graphic and as effective manner as possible, the seriousness of sin.

We are removed from this, as well, in our Western prefabricated way of life. So much so that in our world, the word sin itself is in disfavor, fallen out of use, and diluted in its original catastrophic meaning.

And in losing this, we lose also the inherent level of awed appreciation for what our once for all High Priest has done on our behalf.

He not only officiated over the attenuated altar of blood, the Cross, speaking forsakenness and forgiveness while Himself impaled on the blood-blackened wooden beams, but He, as both Priest and sacrifice paid the incurred and future sin debt, once for all when He offered up Himself.

Don't overlook the blood-soaked magnificence of this one act, nor its epoch-shattering ramifications. It was a completing of the Father's long-awaited resolution for sin. It was a shutting of the door on further sacrifices, not unlike God Himself shutting the door of the Ark as the Flood of Judgment descended upon a God-hating world.

Yet, unlike the millions, perhaps billions, of human casualties from the flood, this time there was only One - the Son of God Himself.

What is a human soul worth?

Popular and cynical wisdom would declare that life is cheap.

Popular wisdom is worthless and inaccurate in this and so many other areas of knowledge.

The truth is that eight human souls were worth a planet to their Creator and Judge.

And now we know that your soul, and my soul, and each and every one of us, is worth far more than we can conceive - the death of God Himself as our substitute, individually and collectively.

Christ put Himself in our place and voluntarily took upon Himself the sin of the world, to wipe the slate clean, to cancel the debt which each one of us owe by paying it Himself.

Once for all.

And forever.

Fitting for Us

For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever. (Hebrews 07:26-28, NKJV).

For sinners like you and me, it is necessary in the economy of God's redemption to have as our Great High Priest a Man whose essential humanity is of a superlative quality so that in every way He satisfies our desperate need. He must be fitting for us.

As a contrast between what we are and who Christ is, and what He did to save, this passage should fill our hearts with humble gratitude and overwhelming joy. To counteract before the Father our fundamental sinfulness, our Mediator had to be holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.

He had to be holy, which in this context means free from all wickedness. This is a quality which we can think about but not fully understand, since we are by nature, and inclination, steeped in wickedness. It is the brew from which our fetid aroma arises before Heaven. Everything about our fallen nature, our unregenerate selves, obscures from our view what it means to be wholly free from that which is debased and evil.

The stuff and atmosphere which is our natural sinful habitat, like water to a fish, can only be seen for what it is when we are lifted out from the midst of it. Until then, it is impossible for us to conceive of life lived without our inherent depravity. Unregenerate man is blind to true goodness. In fact, as Paul writes in Romans 3, we are so debased that without the Law handed down from Mount Sinai we would have no conception of what sin is. 

This is a perverse twisting of how we were made, a perversion of our nature brought about by the heinous rebellion of our forefather Adam in the garden. So bent are we in this regard that most of us look upon the first human sin as a moral and ethical failure, rather than the holocaust that it really was. In our depthless and specious view, we see Cain's murder of his brother as the first recognizably criminal act, but we could not be further from the truth.

Murder and murderous intent were the natural offspring of Adam's action, less in that they are derivative evil, and not the corruption of human nature itself. It was Adam who was capable of not sinning. It was Adam who, with the potential for wisdom beyond any except for Christ Himself, chose to willfully misuse those incalculable gifts of life and will and intelligence given to Him by God, and who thus destroyed for all his descendants the ability to be good. And the full knowledge of what good is.

So Christ, to free us, had to be our holy High Priest absolutely unsullied from and by wickedness.

Furthermore, as an infinite counterweight to our natural inability to be good, our High Priest also had to be harmless, meaning Jesus must be without guile or fraud, free from guilt, fearing no evil from others, and distrusting no one. Again we can barely imagine such a Person. Whatever shallow picture we might conjure up in our sin-darkened minds can not begin to compare with the radiant fulfillment of these qualities in Christ.

At our natural best, if we are ever any of those things embodied in the word harmless, it is because it serves our own selfish and corrupt purposes, or feeds our malignant and cancerous pride. Even the most apparently innocent among us, young children, are only innocent in regard to their inability to conceive of greater evil due to lack of life experience. In fact, an "innocent" child's true motivation is purely selfish until the mitigating factors of moral instruction and human politics tempers that purity with a kind of ruthless practicality.

Undefiled is the next requirement for our Savior. In order to cleanse us and make us new in Him, Jesus must be unsoiled and free from that by which the nature of a thing is deformed and debased, or by which its force and life-energy are impaired. 

Sin is a fatal ailment, robbing the afflicted of everything and anything beneficial. At its most elementary level, it is entirely negative, consuming the gift of life itself and excreting in its place a fundamental defilement that is more toxic and irremediable than any conceivable man-made substance.

Only something, or more precisely, Someone, who is the antithesis of such defilement can cleanse us from it. There are no halfway solutions. No lesser solvent.

And finally, because of the depths to which we have fallen, only Someone completely separate from us, and from our naturally toxic character, can stand on the firm ground necessary to provide us with the means of escape. No sinner could possibly save us. It would be like a man mired in a pit himself trying to lift another man out. Both would merely sink further down.

All these characteristics point us once more to the superiority of our Savior. He is so much more than we can conceive of; so beyond our current ability to comprehend, that it will take an eternity in close fellowship with Him to glimpse His complete reality.  And it is only through His immeasurable and eternal superiority that we can hope to have life through His once for all cleansing of our sin when He offered up Himself.

For us.

Do you see what all this means?

We can take pride in nothing about ourselves, and can and should boast in every true thing about Him.

Without Him being precisely who He is, in all His magnificent humility and incomparable superiority, we would remain hopelessly doomed to a fate far worse than mere death.

Without Him as our High Priest, without us coming to Him for that cleansing and renewing work that only He can accomplish in us, it would truly be better that we would never have been born.

Saved to the Uttermost

Also there were many priests, because they were prevented by death from continuing. But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 07:23-25, NKJV).

Saved completely, perfectly, utterly; that is what uttermost means - no area untouched or left in the darkness. No shackles of our imprisonment left unshattered. We are free beyond any remnant of our prior condition of slavery, and freed because of Him who loved us and gave His life for us.

This is the deepest cry of the human heart, expressed in as many voices as there are humans born on this benighted world. From the weak simpering of a helpless old man looking for hope and a meal, to the collective  bellow of rage from a ravaging mob, we humans want something that cannot be properly articulated, but plagues our souls each waking and sleeping moment.

This unnameable thing that we seek entails a desire for peace and safety and warmth, and a place to call home. It involves an ephemeral, yet all-encompassing longing to be loved so deeply, so utterly that it is as the air we breathe. This thing, whether we know it or not, is salvation.

Look, inherent in each thinking being is the inescapable knowledge of the futility of life under the sun. Its most minimal outline is the simple fact that nothing of value lasts. No sweet and poignant relationship of parenthood, no passion and commitment of the most profound romantic love survives the ravages of time under the sun. All ends in the grave.

Cemeteries are filled with these reminders of endpoints. Edifices to the once-alive abound. But it all emphasizes, rather than obscures the oncoming emptiness of death.

Given this, it is a wonder that those without knowledge of Christ carry on day to day; that more do not succumb to the inevitable unspoken futility.

As I write these words sitting on a dock overlooking a peaceful lake on a beautiful late August morning, the longing, not for time to stand still, but for it to continue to flow as it is now invokes that wordless desire for something not possible in this life, however I might frantically search for its substitute.

And that's the thing. Without God to fill that void, we will act on our own understanding and seek in this world that for which it was bereft at the Fall - His all-satisfying Presence.

We were built to be in fellowship with our Creator - to walk in the cool of the evening in infinitely sweet communion with our Heavenly Father who delights in ways and to a depth that our delight in our own children is but the faintest shadow.

Our sin, the milieu into which we were born, separates us by an impossible chasm from the Person who we were made for, and who made the universe for us. Of all conceivable tragedies, this is the single greatest, and the hope-crushing fountainhead of all others. 

And it is from this ensuing darkness that human beings blindly seek to escape with all their might until, with a silent scream lasting forever, they enter into a cold eternity of solitude and suffering.

I only wish these bleak words were a hyperbolic overstatement, but they are instead a woeful understatement. Each soul, born alive on this world has an unthinkable default destination into a horrifying eternity. Our desire for that something, that salvation, is by God's infinite mercy, the means He puts in our hearts to goad us to seek the only thing that will satisfy - His Son.

To be once again in His Presence, as intended from the beginning, is the uttermost goal of our existence, yet we are helpless to bridge the gap that exists. We need the Savior, our Great High Priest, the One who, in the fullness of time, made that ultimate intercession for us on the Cross, and who now lives forever to continue to make intercession for us.

He gives us the only hope in the face of our own hopelessness. He serves as our continuing High Priest - His ministry on our behalf unending, transforming, enlivening, unstoppable.

Where before Him we were helplessly defeated without chance of victory, through Him we are more than conquerors.

The contrast could not possibly be more stark: unrequitable longing versus everlasting satisfaction - all in Him.

There are no human superlatives to adequately convey these magnificent truths. That is why I believe the divinely inspired writers of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul especially, were frequently overtaken by worship and adoration as they wrote God's word, and were compelled by the gratitude of their own hearts, to write soaring doxologies and benedictions to the One for whom are all things, and by whom are all things.

Our Savior is beyond compare.

Surety of a Better Covenant

And inasmuch as He was not made priest without an oath (for they have become priests without an oath, but He with an oath by Him who said to Him: “The LORD has sworn And will not relent, ‘You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek’”), by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant. (Hebrews 07:20-22, NKJV).

In a very real sense, the Old Testament Jewish priesthood consisted of men who were priests by accidents of birth. They "happened" to be born of a certain lineage at a certain time, and if they met the minimum qualifications of not having any physical or mental disabilities or infirmities, and if they maintained a certain level of ceremonial righteousness, they became priests. Then they died. 

In this way, oftentimes, the office of priest was held by worthless, evil, or incompetent men, who were malfeasant representatives of God to the people and of the people to God.

Some of these were outright scoundrels and thieves. Others were merely apathetic or unskilled, or lazy. It was only when good men fulfilled these priestly roles well that the nation prospered, and the Mosaic covenant between God and the Jews reaped blessings upon the people. When that was not the case, misery and disaster was the rule of the day.

As such, the Covenant of the Law, being dependent on sinful men who often failed, was a conditional contract that, while never broken by God, was frequently broken by the priests or the kings or the people. For the average child of Israel, the whole prospect was an unsure, risky business.

Even if it went well for any length of time, the transition from one generation of priests to the next was always of uncertain result. An unstable priesthood or an an unstable High Priest was calamitous.

This then was the bottom line of performance-based Law. It was established on the basis of heredity and dependence on fallible and frail men; shaky and easily shaken.

Jesus, in utter contrast to this, was made Priest, not by any genetic provisions, but by an oath of the Father Himself, as prophesied in Psalm 110 by David a thousand years before Christ's birth. And note the citation above - not only that the LORD has sworn, but that He will not relent, ‘You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.

Clearly it is by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant.

By so much more than ancestry. 

By so much more than conditional performance. 

By so much more than fallible and fallen men. 

By so much more than the imperfect activities of unreliable and weak mortals. 

By so much than the uncertainty of time and circumstance. 

By so much more than all that ever was or is or will be. 

By that much and more so, Jesus ensures that the New Covenant in His blood is unbreakable, inviolable, and beyond negation. 

Heaven and earth may pass away, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

For those of us who have entered into this covenant through faith in Christ, our eternal destiny is assured.

We have a High Priest empowered by an endless life and confirmed in His office by an oath from Heaven itself.

A greater level of certainty there cannot be.

There is no conceivable loophole.

Nothing has been overlooked. No contingency unforeseen or left unhandled.

We can rest in the knowledge that all that needs to be done has been done, and will continue to be done.

Forever.

Bringing in of a Better Hope

For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law. For He of whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no man has officiated at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord arose from Judah, of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood. And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest who has come, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life. For He testifies: “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.” For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God. (Hebrews 07:12-19, NKJV).

The Mosaic Law established the ancient Jewish Priesthood. The Law and the Priesthood are interdependent. If one changes, so must the other.

That is the writer's opening point in this passage, as he continues his argument that Christ is better than all that came before, including the Levitical Priesthood begun with Aaron.

Throughout the long ages of Jewish history, the deepest heart-longing of faithful Jews was to draw near to their God. They, more than any, and all, other people groups, understood the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. Their entire origin and purpose was founded upon God's revelation of His perfection, and man's iniquity.

God established a temporary remedy that atoned for, or more precisely, covered sin, via the shedding of innocent animal blood in anticipation of the shed blood of His Son that would take away the sin of the world.

Christ's Advent as Priest, King and Suffering Servant was foreshadowed in the establishment of the Law of Moses and the ceremonial sacrifices officiated by the Jewish Priests. Once He arrived in the fullness of time and completed the work that the Father gave Him to do on the Cross, the temporary sacrificial system was abrogated by a new, superior Priesthood - that which was prophetically symbolized by the historical episode involving the mysterious Priest-King Melchizedek.

The message: Rejoice O Israel! That which you have hoped for all your long history is now possible - drawing near to God through the Mediator, Jesus Christ, the realized Priest-King of Israel… and the world.

The Lord's superiority aligned perfectly, and superseded, all that went before. As King, He must come from the line of Judah, yet no King of Israel was permitted to act in the role of a Priest according to the order of Aaron. The prohibitions against that were explicit and the consequences severe, both for the man and the nation.

Yet, in accord with the prophecies outlined in the Old Testament, Messiah would fulfill all three specially ordained offices of Judaism: Priest, King and Prophet. Thus, woven throughout the exquisitely crafted tapestry of redemptive history was signpost after signpost pointing to our incomparable Lord.

Do not overlook the precision and consistency of God's plan, and its meticulous execution over the course of millennia. Melchizedek had to be who, what and when he was, as did Moses, Aaron, Levi, Israel, the Law, and all the other countless details of human history worked out in advance. And in becoming the glorious culmination these details, Christ demonstrated incontrovertibly His absolute, and prophesied, supremacy.

Christ's commission as High Priest changed the Law. As a physical descendant of Judah, He could not act in the role of Priest, UNLESS the Law was changed. His being called as Priest according to the order of Melchizedek, preceded the establishment of Aaron's office, and was thus of higher and more venerable precedence. His priesthood was not based on genetics and the Mosaic Law's heredity of mortal flesh (fleshly commandment), but was based on the power of an endless life.

Aaron and all his priestly descendants died. Christ lives forever to make intercession for us, and is thus immeasurably superior, as eternal life is immeasurable in comparison to mortality.

The Law, which by necessity was changed when Christ assumed His role as High Priest, was thus annulled because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect. No flesh could be justified by the works of the Law. It was a tutor that taught sinful man his helplessness and need of a Savior.

In it's place was the Law of Faith, which no longer covered sin temporarily through the letting of animal blood, but, through faith in Christ's sacrifice, removed sin forever.

Now, the barrier between God and man was broken down, and what was only the faintest of glimmers in all the long centuries before, now burst forth brightly in all God's holy radiance - the way into His presence was thrown open.

And that better hope of mankind, reconciliation with his Creator, was brought in by our Messiah, and made available for all time.

Beyond All Contradiction

And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham; but he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. Now beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better. Here mortal men receive tithes, but there he receives them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives. Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. (Hebrews 07:05-10, NKJV).

Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek some 500 years before the Mosaic Law.

Abraham was the recipient of God's unconditional promises; that he would be the father of many nations, that he would prosper, that those who blessed him would be blessed and those who cursed him would be cursed, that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed, that the Promised Land would be his and his descendants forever, that his faith was accounted to him for righteousness.

And yet, the Patriarch Abraham, the founding member of the Jews, paid tithes and received a blessing from an otherwise unknown Priest in the desert. Thus, if the progenitor of the Levitical priesthood was inferior to the priestly Melchizedek, then the Levitical priesthood, descended from Abraham, itself is also inferior. 

And since Christ was made a Priest according to the order of Melchizedek, and not according to the order of Aaron, the first Levitical priest, then Christ's priesthood is by that precedent is also superior, because beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better.

Hammering this point home, the author of Hebrews further reasons that Levi, who is the recipient of lawful tithes now, and pays no tithes himself, paid tithes then for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.

Further, the payments to the Levitical/Aaronic priests were from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham, but Melchizedek, whose genealogy is not derived from them, meaning he was not even descended from Abraham, received tithes from Abraham, and even symbolically from Levi himself.

So long before the Law, long before the Jewish priesthood was established, the first Jew's actions confirmed the superiority of Melchizedek's role, and by extension, Christ's own singular royal priesthood.

Christ's every aspect is thus superior to all that came before or since.

Parenthetically, notice that receive, rather than take is the operative verb in these matters. Levi and his descendants received the priesthood and tithes. They did not pursue nor take either.

Likewise Melchizedek received tithes, as Abraham both received blessing and the earlier promises.

There is no taking in the redemptive economy of God, with the one exception of the proffered cup of salvation (Ps 116:13).

So we see from the writer's finely woven argument regarding Melchizedek, Abraham and Levi presented that Christ is superior beyond all contradiction in every way.

Jewish history itself portended His superiority, extravagantly decorated as it was with these prototypical foreshadowings, these venerable precedents, pointing prophetically to the exclusive and ultimate conclusion.

Christ's inheritance, His authority, His name, His character, His privilege, His everything, is beyond all compare and beyond all contradiction.

There is none like Him.

Nor will there ever be.

Accept and worship Him, and Him alone. Nothing less.