New Testament
Hebrews 8
Overview
Having established that Jesus is a priest like Melchizedek (chapter 7), the writer now states the "main point" (8:1): we have such a high priest who is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven, ministering in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man. Because every high priest must have something to offer, Christ too must have a ministry, but a more excellent one, since He serves a heavenly sanctuary of which the earthly was only a copy and shadow (8:5, citing Exodus 25:40). The writer then grounds the superiority of Christ's ministry in the superiority of His covenant, quoting at length the longest Old Testament citation in the New Testament: the new covenant promise of Jeremiah 31:31-34. In that covenant God writes His law on the heart, grants knowledge of Himself to all, and remembers sin no more. The chapter closes with the decisive verdict (8:13): by saying "new," God has made the first covenant obsolete, and what is obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
1Now in the things which we are saying, the main point is this: we have such a high priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,
2a servant of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man.
3For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.
4For if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, seeing there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law,
5who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, even as Moses was warned by God when he was about to make the tabernacle, for he said, “See, you shall make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.”
6But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which on better promises has been given as law.
7For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.
8For finding fault with them, he said, “Behold, the days are coming”, says the Lord, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah;
9not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they didn’t continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord.
10“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 into their mind; I will also write them on their heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
11They will not teach every man his fellow citizen and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from their least to their greatest.
12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more.”
13In that he says, “A new covenant”, he has made the first obsolete. But that which is becoming obsolete and grows aged is near to vanishing away.