Hebrews

Every high priest is “taken from among men” and “called of God, as was Aaron” (5:1–4). Christ was made priest by an oath: “The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (7:21; Psalm 110:4). Yet he “sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood” (7:14). The Levitical priests “were not suffered to continue by reason of death” (7:23); this priest “ever liveth to make intercession for them” (7:25). He is also near. He was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (4:15), so those who come to God by him may “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (4:16).

Under the law the high priest went into the holiest “once every year, not without blood” (9:7), and the repetition was itself a confession: “in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year” (10:3). Christ’s offering is not repeated. He is priest and sacrifice in one, offering “himself without spot to God” (9:14), and “by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (9:12). He “was once offered to bear the sins of many” (9:28), as the servant of Isaiah 53:12 “bare the sin of many.” Then he sat down (10:12); the Levitical priest “standeth daily ministering” (10:11).

The writer quotes Jeremiah’s promise whole (8:8–12). God finds fault with a people who “continued not in my covenant” (8:9), and promises, “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (8:10). The same word means a will, and the argument uses both senses: “where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator” (9:16). Moses sprinkled the people with “the blood of the testament” (9:20); the new is made by Christ’s death, “the blood of the everlasting covenant” (13:20). The argument rests on its last promise, “their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (10:17): “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (10:18).

Habakkuk’s “the just shall live by faith” (10:38) leads into chapter 11, where faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (11:1). It is trust in God’s word before the thing is seen, held with patience. Noah was “warned of God of things not seen as yet” (11:7), Abraham “went out, not knowing whither he went” (11:8), and Moses “endured, as seeing him who is invisible” (11:27). “These all died in faith, not having received the promises” (11:13), and the reason is given: “God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (11:40).