Verses 1-13
Chapter 8
8:1-6 The pith of what
we are saying is this--it is just such a high priest we possess, a
priest who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of majesty
in the heavens, a high priest who is a minister of the sanctuary and of
the real tabernacle, which the Lord, and not man, founded. For every
high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. It is therefore
necessary that he should have something which he might offer. If then he
had been upon earth, lie would not even have been a priest, for there
already exist those who offer the gifts the law lays down, men whose
service is but a shadowy outline of the heavenly order, just as Moses
received instructions when he was about to complete the
tabernacle--"See," it says, "that you do everything according to the
pattern that was shown to you on the mountain." But, as things are, he
has obtained a more excellent ministry, in so far as he is also the
mediator of a better covenant, a covenant which was enacted on the basis
of superior promises.
The writer to the Hebrews has finished describing the
priesthood after the order of Melchizedek in all its glory. He has
described it as the priesthood which is for ever, without beginning and
without end; the priesthood that God confirmed with an oath; the
priesthood that is founded on personal greatness and not on any legal
appointment or racial qualification; the priesthood which death cannot
touch; the priesthood which is able to offer a sacrifice that never
needs to be repeated; the priesthood which is so pure that it has no
necessity to offer sacrifice for any sins of its own. Now he makes and
underlines his great claim. "It is." he says, "a priest precisely like
that that we have in Jesus."
He goes on to say two things about Jesus. (i) He took his scat
at the right hand of the throne of majesty in the heavens. That is the
final proof of his glory.
"The highest place that heaven affords
Is his, is his by right,
The King of kings, and Lord of lords,
And heaven's eternal light."
There can be no glory greater than that of the ascended and
exalted Jesus. (ii) He says that Jesus is a minister of the sanctuary.
That is the proof of his service. He is unique both in majesty and in
service.
Jesus never looked on majesty as something to be selfishly
enjoyed. One of the greatest of the Roman Emperors was Marcus Aurelius;
as an administrator he was unsurpassed. He died at fifty-nine, having
worked himself to death in the service of his people. He was one of the
Stoic saints. When chosen to succeed in due time to the imperial power,
his biographer Capitolinus tells us, "he was appalled rather than
overjoyed, and when he was told to move to the private house of Hadrian,
the Emperor, it was with reluctance that he departed from his mother's
villa. And when the members of the household asked him why he was sorry
to receive the royal adoption, he enumerated to them the toils which
sovereignty involved." Marcus Aurelius saw kingship in terms of service
and not of majesty.
Jesus is the unique example of divine majesty and divine service
combined. He knew that he had been given his supreme position, not
jealously to guard it in splendid isolation, but rather to enable others
to attain to it and to share it. In him the supreme majesty and the
supreme service met.
Now there enters into the picture a thought that was never far
from the mind of the writer to the Hebrews. Religion to him, remember,
was access to God; therefore the supreme function of any priest was to
open the way to God for men. He removed the barriers between God and
man; he built a bridge across which man could go into the presence of
God. But we could put this another way. Instead of talking about access
to God we might talk about access to reality. Every religious writer has
to search for terms which his readers will understand. He has to
present his message in language and in thoughts which will get home
because they are familiar or at least will strike a chord in the
reader's mind. The Greeks had a basic thought about the universe. They
thought in terms of two worlds, the real and the unreal. They believed
that this world of space and time was only a pale copy of the real
world. That was the basic doctrine of Plato, the greatest of all the
Greek thinkers. He believed in what he called forms. Somewhere there was
a world where there was laid up the perfect forms of which everything
in this world is an imperfect copy. Sometimes he called the forms ideas.
Somewhere there is the idea of a chair of which all actual chairs are
imperfect copies. Somewhere there is an idea of a horse of which all
actual horses are inadequate reflections. The Greeks were fascinated by
this conception of a real world of which this world is only a
flickering, imperfect copy. In this world we walk in shadows; somewhere
there is reality. The great problem in life is how to pass from this
world of shadows to the other world of realities. That is the idea of
which the writer to the Hebrews makes use.
The earthly Temple is a pale copy of the real Temple of God;
earthly worship is a remote reflection of real worship; the earthly
priesthood is an inadequate shadow of the real priesthood. All these
things point beyond themselves to the reality of which they are the
shadows. The writer to the Hebrews even finds that idea in the Old
Testament itself. When Moses had received from God instructions about
the construction of the tabernacle and all its furnishings, God said to
him: "And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is
being shown you on the mountain" (Exodus 25:40).
God had shown Moses the real pattern of which all earthly worship is
the ghost-like copy. So then the writer to the Hebrews says that the
earthly priests have a service which is but a shadowy outline of the
heavenly order. For shadowy outline he combines two Greek words,
hupodeigma (Greek #5262), which means a specimen, or, still better, a sketch-plan, and skia (Greek #4639),
which means a shadow, a reflection, a phantom, a silhouette. The
earthly priesthood is unreal and cannot lead men into reality; but Jesus
can. We can say that Jesus leads us into the presence of God or we can
say that Jesus leads us into reality; it means the same thing. When the
writer to the Hebrews spoke of reality he was using language that his
contemporaries used and understood.
In the highest that this world can offer there is some
imperfection. It never quite reaches what we know the thing might be.
Nothing we ever experience or achieve here quite reaches the ideal that
haunts us. The real world is beyond. As Browning had it: "A man's reach
should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Call it heaven, call
it reality, call it the idea or the form, call it God--it is beyond.
As the writer to the Hebrews saw it, only Jesus can lead us out
of the frustrating actuality into the all-satisfying real. So he calls
him the mediator, the mesites (Greek #3316). Mesites comes from mesos (Greek #3319), which, in this case, means in the middle. A mesites (Greek #3316)
is, therefore, one who stands in the middle between two people and
brings them together. When Job is desperately anxious that somehow he
should be able to put his case to God, he cries out hopelessly: "There
is no umpire, mesites (Greek #3316), between us" (Job 9:33). Paul calls Moses the mesites (Greek #3316) (Galatians 3:19)
in that he was the one between who brought the law from God to men. In
Athens in classical times there was a body of men--all citizens in their
sixtieth year--who could be called upon to act as mediators when there
was a dispute between two citizens, and their first duty was to effect a
reconciliation. In Rome there were arbitri. The judge settled points of
law; but the arbitri settled matters of equity; and it was their duty
to bring disputes to an end. Further, in legal Greek a mesites (Greek #3316)
was a sponsor, a guarantor or a surely. He went bail for a friend who
was on trial; he guaranteed a debt or an overdraft. The mesites (Greek #3316) was the man who was willing to pay his friend's debt to make things right again.
The mesites (Greek #3316) is the man who stands between and brings together two other parties in reconciliation. Jesus is our perfect mesites (Greek #3316);
he stands between us and God. He opens the way to reality and to God
and is the only person who can effect reconciliation between man and
God, between the real and the unreal. In other words, Jesus is the only
person who can bring us real life.
8:7-13 For, if the
first covenant, which is so well known to you, had been faultless there
would have been no need to seek any place for a second one. It is to
censure them that he says: "Look you the days are coming, says the Lord.
when I will consummate a new covenant with the house of Israel and with
the house of Judah. It will not be the same as the covenant which I
made with their fathers, when I laid my hand on them to lead them forth
from the land of Egypt; this must be so because they did not abide by my
covenant, and I let them go their own way, says the Lord. It will be
different because this is the covenant which I will make with the house
of Israel after these days, says the Lord. I will put my laws into their
mind and I will inscribe them upon their hearts. I will be to them all
that a God should be to them, and they will be to me all that a people
should be to me. And no one will teach his fellow-citizen and no one
will teach his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all will know me,
small and great alike, because I will graciously forgive their
iniquities and I will not remember their sins any more." In that he
calls the covenant new, he has rendered the first covenant out of date;
and that which is out of date and ageing into decay is near to final
obliteration.
Here Hebrews begins to deal with one of the great biblical
ideas--that of a covenant. In the Bible the Greek word that is always
used for a covenant is diatheke (Greek #1242)
and there was a special reason for the choice of this rather unusual
word. Ordinarily a covenant is an agreement entered into by two people.
It is dependent on conditions on which they mutually agree; and if
either should break the conditions the covenant becomes void. It is
sometimes used in that simple sense in the Old Testament. For instance,
it is used of the league that the Gibeonites wished to make with Joshua (Joshua 9:6); of the forbidden league with the Canaanites ( 2:2); and of David's covenant with Jonathan (1 Samuel 23:18).
But its distinctive use is to describe the relationship between Israel
and God. "Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the
Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 4:23). In the New Testament the word is also used to describe the relationship between God and man.
But there is a strange point which requires explanation. For all
normal uses the Greek word for an agreement is suntheke which is the
word for a marriage covenant or bond and for an agreement between two
states. Further, in all normal Greek diatheke (Greek #1242)
means not an agreement, but a will. Why should the New Testament use
this word for a covenant? The reason is this--suntheke always describes
an agreement entered into on equal terms. The parties to a suntheke are
on the one level and each can bargain with the other. But God and man do
not meet on equal terms. In the biblical sense of a covenant, the whole
approach comes from God. Man cannot bargain with God; he cannot argue
about the terms of the covenant; he can only accept or reject the offer
that God makes.
The supreme example of such an agreement is a will. The
conditions of a will are not made on equal terms. They are made entirely
by one person, the testator, and the other party cannot alter them but
can only accept or refuse the inheritance offered.
That is why our relationship to God is described as a diatheke (Greek #1242),
a covenant for the terms of which only one person is responsible. That
relationship is offered us solely on the initiative and the grace of
God. As Philo said: "It is fitting for God to give and for a wise man to
receive." When we use the word covenant, we must always remember that
it does not mean that man made a bargain with God on equal terms. It
always means that the whole initiative is with God; the terms are his
and man cannot alter them in the slightest.
The ancient covenant, so well known to the Jews, was the one
made with the people after the giving of the law. God graciously
approached the people of Israel. He offered them a unique relationship
to himself; but that relationship was entirely dependent on the keeping
of the law. We see the Israelites accepting that condition in Exodus 24:1-8.
The argument of the writer to the Hebrews is that that old covenant is
done away with and that Jesus has brought a new relationship with God.
In this passage we can distinguish certain marks of the new covenant which Jesus brought.
(i) The writer begins by pointing out that the idea of a new
covenant is not something revolutionary. It is already there in Jeremiah 31:31-34,
which he quotes in full. Further, the very fact that scripture speaks
of the new covenant shows that the old was not fully satisfactory. Had
it been, a new covenant would never have needed to be mentioned.
Scripture looked to a new covenant and therefore itself indicated that
the old covenant was not perfect.
(ii) This covenant will not only be new; it will be different in
quality and in kind. In Greek there are two words for new. Neos (Greek #3501)
describes a thing as being new in point of time. It might be a precise
copy of its predecessors, but since it has been made after the others,
it is neos (Greek #3501). Kainos (Greek #2537)
means not only new in point of time, but new in point of quality. A
thing which is simply a reproduction of what went before may be neos (Greek #3501) but it is not kainos (Greek #2537). This covenant which Jesus introduces is kainos (Greek #2537), not merely neos (Greek #3501);
it is different in quality from the old covenant. The writer to the
Hebrews uses two words to describe the old covenant. He says that it is
geraskon (Greek #1095), which means not only ageing, but ageing into decay. He says that it is near to aphanismos (Greek #854).
Aphanismos is the word that is used for wiping out a city, obliterating
an inscription, or abolishing a law. So the covenant which Jesus brings
is new in quality and completely cancels the old.
(iii) Wherein is this covenant new? It is new in its scope. It
is going to include the house of Israel and the house of Judah. One
thousand years before this, in the days of Rehoboam, the kingdom had
split apart, into Israel with the ten tribes and Judah with the two, and
these two sections had never come together again. The new covenant is
going to unite that which has been divided; in it the old enemies will
be at one.
(iv) It is new in its universality. All men would know God from
the least to the greatest. That was something quite new. In the ordinary
life of the Jews there was a complete cleavage. On the one hand there
were the Pharisees and the orthodox who kept the law; on the other hand
there were what were contemptuously called The People of the Land, the
ordinary people who did not fully observe the details of the ceremonial
law. They were completely despised. It was forbidden to have any
fellowship with them; to marry one's daughter to one of them was worse
than to throw her to a wild beast; it was forbidden to go on a journey
with them; it was even forbidden, as far as it was possible, to have any
trade or business dealings with them. To the rigid observers of the law
the ordinary people were beyond the pale. But in the new covenant these
breaches would no longer exist. All men, wise and simple, great and
small, would know the Lord. The doors which had been shut were thrown
wide open.
(v) There is one even more fundamental difference. The old
covenant depended on obedience to an externally imposed law. The new
covenant is to be written upon men's hearts and minds. Men would obey
God not because of the terror of punishment, but because they loved him.
They would obey him not because the law compelled them unwillingly to
do so, but because the desire to obey him was written on their hearts.
(vi) It will be a covenant which will really effect forgiveness.
See how that forgiveness is to come. God said that he would be gracious
to their iniquities and could forget their sins. Now it is all of God.
The new relationship is based entirely on his love. Under the old
covenant a man could keep this relationship to God only by obeying the
law; that is, by his own efforts. Now everything is dependent not on
man's efforts, but solely on the grace of God. The new covenant puts men
into relationship with a God who is still a God of justice but whose
justice has been swallowed up in his love. The most tremendous thing
about the new covenant is that it makes man's relationship to God no
longer dependent on man's obedience but entirely dependent on God's
love.
One thing remains to say. In Jeremiah's words about the new
covenant there is no mention of sacrifice. It would seem that Jeremiah
believed that in the new age sacrifice would be abolished as irrelevant;
but the writer to the Hebrews cannot think except in terms of the
sacrificial system and very shortly he will go on to speak of Jesus as
himself the perfect sacrifice, whose death alone made the new covenant
possible for men.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)