Hebrews 7:22 (NKJV) by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant.
In our last post we looked at Jerimiah 31:31-34. In this prophecy, Jerimiah says that a New Covenant was going to come to the relationship between God and man. Covenant has always been at the heart of what he has done to restore man’s relationship with himself. One of the most important manifestations of God’s covenant was the covenant he made with Abram that changed his name to Abraham. That covenant was based on a twofold promise. First, that God would be the “God of Abraham” and his descendants would be “God’s chosen people.” The second promise was that all nations of the earth would be blessed by “Abraham’s seed.” In Galatians 3 we find that this part of the promise was not “to seeds as many, but to seed as one, Christ Jesus.
The Mosaic law was added to the covenant of promise because the people of Israel could not keep it. God gave them the law as a manifestation of his grace. This system enabled God to push the penalty for breaking the covenant, death, to be pushed forward every year until the sacrifice of the true lamb, Christ. In Jerimiah 31 we see that the New Covenant will handle sin differently.
Under this New Covenant, God’s law will not be a code written on paper. It will be put into man’s inward parts and then written on their hearts. God is going to change the nature that came on man at the fall and then provide a way for him to manifest that change in his inward life. This “built in” law will cause man to keep the covenant from the “inside out” instead of trying to keep it from the “outside in.” This “New Covenant” prophesied in Jerimiah is the same covenant spoken of in Hebrews 7:22.
The New Covenant prophesied in Jerimiah 31 and fulfilled in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is a better covenant based on better promises (Hebrews 8:6.) In this covenant, God provided a complete payment, or remittance, for the sin that separated man from himself. Anyone can access this New Covenant by receiving Jesus’ sacrifice as the personal payment for their sin. When they do, they are “born again” and enter the covenant relationship made between Jesus, God the Son, and the Father God. Those who do are not joining a religious system. Their nature is changed according to 2 Corinthian’s 5:17-21. They become a new creation having been born again of the seed of the word of God (1 Peter 1:23.) The law is put in their inward parts and written on their emotions and intellect by the renewing of their mind (Romans 12:1-3.)
If they sin, they will experience a sense of separation from the covenant, and the sin brings death into their lives. That means an open door to the death that came at the fall. With sin came sickness, disease, poverty, fear, depression and all the other negative things in the human condition (Genisis 3.) If a “new creature” allows sin to remain in him, it will give the adversary of humanity, the devil, an opening to bring those things to his life. However, it does not cause him to become what Adam became after the fall. His nature is not changed back to what it was before salvation, but his sense of connection is hindered and bad things come to him because he has chosen to live outside of the covenant relationship provided by the new birth.
The solution under the Old Covenant was to bring sacrifices to the priests of the day as a payment. That, along with the Day of Atonement sacrifice, would put off the penalty for breaking the covenant for one year. These sacrifices would have to be made for every sin and for the nation every year. They had to be made in a specific way in a specific place. That was the best that God could do for man until Jesus paid the full price for all sin for all time (Hebrews 9:11-15.).
After this ultimate Day of Atonement sacrifice, the new creature had a different way of dealing with sin. His sin did not break the covenant because the covenant was between God and Jesus, he was part of it because he is in Christ. What a new creature must do to remove the sense of separation and close the door of death (Romans 6:23) is to take responsibility for his actions and ask God to forgive him.
1 John 1:8-10 (NKJV) 8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
All humans sin. Though we are new creatures we still live in unredeemed bodies in an unredeemed world. Our minds have been trained by the world system as well as by our life experiences. As we grow in Christ and to the degree that we work to renew our minds, we will come to a point where we will not be as susceptible to the influence of the world (Hebrews 5:14.) Nevertheless, we will sin as long as we are in these bodies. When we sin, we do not have to bring a specific sacrifice to a priest at a specific place. We do not need a high priest to offer a yearly atonement because we have a Great high priest who has, once and for all, offered his own blood as an eternal cleansing for all who come to him.
Instead of all that was necessary under the Old Covenant, we must take responsibility for what we have done. I cannot come to God saying, “I know I did something wrong, but it was not really my fault.” Fault is not really the issue. The fact of sin is the issue, and I must accept the fact that I sinned no matter the reason. I must then come to my Father and repent of the action asking his forgiveness. The Word of God promises me that he will forgive my sin and cleanse me of all unrighteousness. He will take away from me the sense of separation and the door to death will be closed because I will have come back under the “umbrella” of covenant protection.
Sometimes we may need to apologize to others. Sometimes we may need to make things right in some way. We may even have to deal with certain physical consequences of our actions. However, the moment we confess our sin, he forgives us and cleanses us. We can immediately come back into the close fellowship that the New Covenant has purchased for us and expect God’s help in dealing with whatever physical consequences may have come as a result of our sin. That is one of the many things about the New Covenant that is better than the Old.
In Hebrews 7 it is pointed out that the change of covenant necessitated a change of priesthood. Much is said about a man named Melchizedek. He is a priest who was not part of the Levitical priesthood that descended from Aaron. He is instead a priest by oath. This simply means he was a priest because God said he was, and his authority flowed from that. He had no beginning and no end. To some, this implies some supernatural manifestation surrounding him. Although this is possible, I think it simply means he had no beginning or end in scripture. The Bible tells us that Jesus was a priest in the “order of Melchizedek. What does this mean.
Jesus is not a priest by the law. He is a priest by oath. He is from the tribe of Judah, not the tribe of Levi from whom all the priests under the law descend. He is a priest because God made him the mediator between God and man. He is a priest who has no beginning and no end because he is the eternal God.
There is no longer a need for a different priest every generation because he is a priest forever. He is even now at the right hand of God making intercession for us (Romans 8:34.) He is a priest who does not need to offer sacrifice for himself, but himself offered his own blood for all humanity forever. Because of this he is able to save us to the uttermost (Hebrews 7:25.) Truly we live under a better covenant full of better promises. No wonder God has commissioned us to go into all the world and tell people what God has made available to them.
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