The priesthood of the Anointed
- Now, the sum of the things being said is this: we have such a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;
- an official minister in the holy places and in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man.
- For every high priest is appointed in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices, so it’s necessary for this One to also have something that He might offer.
- Therefore if He was on earth, He indeed wouldn’t even be a priest since there are men offering the gifts according to the law,
- who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses – being about to complete the tabernacle – has been divinely admonished; for He says: “Behold, you shall make all things according to the pattern which was shown to you on the mountain.”
- But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, insomuch as He’s also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted as law upon better promises.
The Old and New Covenants
- For if that first covenant had been faultless, a place for a second wouldn’t have been sought.
- For finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming says the Lord, and I will bring a new covenant to fulfillment 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 that I took their hand in Mine to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they didn’t remain in My covenant and I disregarded them says, the Lord.”
- “Because this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; putting My laws into their mind and I will write them on their hearts. And I will be God to them, and they will be a people for Me.
- “And each man definitely won’t teach his neighbor or each man teach his brother saying: ‘Know the Lord’, because all will know Me; from the least of them to the greatest,
- “because I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and I definitely won’t remember their sins anymore.”
- By saying “a new covenant“, He has declared the first obsolete; and the covenant growing old and aging is near disappearing.