The Book of Hebrews

Greek Study

Explanation

"This is the sum" — the writer pauses to gather everything into one point: "we have such an high priest." Not merely that such a priest is possible or promised, but that He is ours, right now, "set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." He ministers not in a tent of skins but in "the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man" — the real sanctuary of heaven itself, of which Moses' tent was only a copy. Our High Priest serves in the presence of God, and He is seated, His work complete.

Gospel Focus

The old high priest ministered in a tent and then went home; our High Priest is "set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." That He is seated declares His atoning work finished, and that He is at "the right hand" declares His supreme authority, sharing God's own throne. The "right hand of God" is not a second chair for a second deity, but the place of highest power and rule; the exalted Jesus is the one God reigning in the glorified humanity in which He purged our sins. And He ministers in "the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man", the real sanctuary in heaven, of which every earthly copy was only a picture. Our worship is no longer aimed at a building on earth but united to a Priest in heaven.

Old Testament Source

The quotation is Exodus 25:40: "See... that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount." When Moses built the tabernacle, he was copying a heavenly reality shown to him on Sinai. So the earthly tabernacle and its priests "serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things." The whole Old Testament sanctuary was a scale model, pointing to the greater realities in heaven that Christ has now entered.

Greek Study

Explanation

A priest must have something to offer, and Christ does, His own self, offered once (7:27). But the writer notes that "if he were on earth, he should not be a priest," because the earthly priesthood was already occupied by the Levites under the law. Christ's priesthood belongs to a higher realm. The earthly priests "serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things", their whole ministry was a shadow cast by the heavenly reality. The tabernacle Moses built was a copy of the true sanctuary. So Christ does not minister in the shadow but in the substance, in heaven itself, before God.

Gospel Focus

A shadow is proof that something solid is casting it. The whole earthly system — priests, tabernacle, sacrifices — was "the shadow of heavenly things," and shadows exist only because a substance stands in the light. Christ is that substance. He does not minister in the copy but in the reality; He is not one more priest at the earthly altar but the true Priest in the true sanctuary. So there is no going back to the shadow once the substance has come — to cling to the copy is to turn from the very thing it was always pointing to.

Greek Study

Explanation

The measure of Christ's superior ministry is the covenant He mediates: "by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises." A mediator's greatness is bound to the greatness of the agreement he brings. The old covenant promised blessing for obedience but gave no power to obey; the new covenant, whose better promises are about to be quoted, writes God's law on the heart and forgives sin outright. A better covenant means a better Mediator — and Jesus is both.

Gospel Focus

Christ's ministry is "more excellent" because He mediates "a better covenant... established upon better promises." How does He mediate it? Not as a third party negotiating between God and us, but as the one God who took our nature, so that in Himself He joins God and man. The mediator of the new covenant is "the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5), God manifest in flesh, the meeting-place of heaven and earth. And the covenant He mediates rests on "better promises," which the next verses spell out: not law engraved on stone but written on the heart, not sins remembered but sins forgiven forever. A better Priest brings a better covenant, and a better covenant brings us better, everlasting promises.

Old Testament Source

This begins the longest Old Testament quotation in the New Testament, Jeremiah 31:31-34. Six centuries before Christ, God announced through Jeremiah that He would make "a new covenant," different from the one made at the exodus, which Israel had broken. The very fact that God promised a new covenant proves the first was not the final arrangement. The fault, the writer notes, was not merely in the covenant but "with them", the people could not keep it, so a covenant that could change the heart was needed.

Greek Study

Explanation

The reasoning is plain: "if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second." The very fact that God promised a new one proves the old was never meant to be final. Yet the defect was not in the law's holiness but in its power over a rebellious people — "because they continued not in my covenant." So through Jeremiah, six centuries before Christ, God announced a wholly different arrangement: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel." The old was a schoolmaster for a season; the new would do what it never could.

Gospel Focus

This is the longest quotation of the Old Testament anywhere in the New — and it is God Himself, through Jeremiah, declaring His own former covenant temporary and pledging a new one. The same one God who thundered at Sinai is the God who promised to replace it, and who fulfilled that promise in the blood of Jesus. There are not two Gods, an old and a new; there is one God unfolding one plan of redemption, moving His people from shadow to substance, from stone tablets to a covenant written on the heart.

Greek Study

Explanation

The new covenant surpasses the old in four glorious ways. First, an inward law: "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." The old law was written on stone outside us; the new is written within, by the Spirit, so that obedience flows from a changed heart. Second, a personal God: "I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people", a real, belonging relationship. Third, universal knowledge of God: "all shall know me, from the least to the greatest", not merely knowing about God through a priestly class, but knowing Him personally. Fourth, and the ground of it all, complete forgiveness: "their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." God does not merely overlook sin; He blots it out so fully that He remembers it against us no more.

Gospel Focus

"I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people." This is the heart of the covenant, and it is deeply personal: the one God binds Himself to His people and makes them His own. And notice the foundation on which the whole thing rests: "I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." Everything in the new covenant, the indwelling law, the personal knowledge of God, the belonging, stands on the forgiveness of sins. And that forgiveness is complete: God remembers our sins "no more." This is the fruit of the once-for-all sacrifice of our High Priest. The new covenant is not law demanding that we change ourselves, but grace changing us from within, on the basis of a forgiveness so full that God will never bring our sins up again.

Greek Study

Explanation

The conclusion is drawn from a single word: "new." By calling the second covenant "new," God declared the first "old", aged, obsolete, "ready to vanish away." The writer, likely writing before the temple's destruction in AD 70, sees the old order already fading, its sacrifices soon to cease. For his wavering readers the message is clear: do not cling to a system God Himself has retired. The shadows are passing; the substance has come. To go back to the old covenant now would be to embrace what God has declared obsolete and to turn from the better covenant sealed in the blood of Christ.

Gospel Focus

The instant God said "new," He hung the label "obsolete" on the old. The entire sacrificial system was already fading as Hebrews was written, and within a few years the temple itself would be destroyed and its sacrifices cease forever. But that is no loss for the believer — the shadow vanishes precisely because the substance has come. To turn back to a dying, disappearing system is to abandon the living Christ it foreshadowed. The old grows old so that the new, sealed in His blood, may stand for ever.