Let Me Sum Up - Hebrews 8

8:1-4 - Chapter 8 is a summary of chapter 7 because it was pretty deep and covered a lot of information. First Paul again refers to Jesus as “an high priest” like he did in the previous chapters. But he adds another part here, “who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” I didn’t think anything of this phrase, but the article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com says, “Romans testified that Christ was ‘at the right hand of God’ making ‘intercession for us’ (Romans 8:27, 34). And Hebrews unfolds the Atonement with the same picture of the Lord ‘on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty of the heavens,’ living in eternity ‘to make intercession for them.’” I think it’s interesting that Paul is using some of these same things in multiple epistles. Not that it really matters because it could be explained as simply this being a part of Paul’s writing patterns. Continuing with Jesus as the ultimate high priest, Paul continues that the duty of the high priest is to “offer gifts and sacrifices.” Interestingly, when read as it is, verse 4 makes it sound like during Jesus’ time of earth, he didn’t preside in the temple because there were already people doing it, which suggests that Jesus is a void filler at most, not the ultimate priesthood authority who’s rightful place was presiding. It’s great though because there is a JST for verse 4 which indicates that instead of Jesus deferring to the already appointed high priests, during his mortal ministry, Jesus “offered for a sacrifice his own life for the sins of the people.” Jesus didn’t defer, he fulfilled. He didn’t just allow other Aaronic priesthood holders to perform the ordinances to which he was entitled, he offered the ultimate sacrifice, the only one that really has ever mattered, and the one that only he could carry out, no one else could have. So basically, where multiple people could perform non-saving ordinances, Jesus was the only person qualified to perform the only sacrifice that ever made the real difference. 8:5-7 - There’s an interesting bit about the tabernacle and Moses making it after the pattern that the Lord commanded, and then that now Jesus is the ‘mediator of a better covenant.” I don’t really see how this fits together, but the thought occurred to me that maybe Paul’s trying to set up an understanding, like Moses had to create the tabernacle after a pattern showed to him by God, maybe that’s similar to how the law of Moses was created as a pattern for the coming of the Messiah. 8-8-13 – Verses 8-12 are basically just a reiteration of Jeremiah 31:31-34. This is Paul calling back to the ancient scriptures to tie together for the Jewish Christian converts that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been prophesied for hundreds of years. Now that Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice “he is the mediator of a better covenant,” which is the “first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.” If the law of Moses was able to save people, then there would have been no reason to need a second. This need for a second covenant was prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31 which says, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant 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 tool them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” Instead of the new “laws” being inscribe in stone like the first ones were, with the second covenant, God is going to inscribe “my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts.” The chapter ends with the explanation that the previous “covenant” was made “old” by Jesus “which decayeth and waxeth old and is ready to vanish away.” The IM had a short but concise explanation of chapter 8 saying, “In Hebrews 8, Paul summarized the ideas of the previous chapter and explained that because Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice was superior in every way to the temple offerings made by Levitical priests, He became ‘the mediatior of a better covenant’… Paul also called this ‘better covenant’ a ‘new covenant,’ quoting from Jeremiah 31:31-34 to show his Jewish-Christian readers that the Lord had revealed to Old Testament prophets that He would someday make a new covenant with Israel that would supersede the old.”