Hebrews: The Daily Discipline of a Devoted LifeSample

Please excuse this long reading, but this section about Melchizedek is where people tend to get bogged down in Hebrews! This is a complicated passage, but its teaching is core to the message of the book. Let’s remember the big picture of Hebrews: the writer is telling Jewish Christians, on the verge of giving up their faith and going back to Judaism, that Jesus is ‘better’ than all their Old Testament heroes and rituals. And this passage shows that Jesus is ‘better’ in three ways:  

1. He is a better priest. The Old Testament priesthood was built on the family line of Aaron, who was sinful like the rest of us. He had to sacrifice for his own sins before he could sacrifice for the people. His priesthood was limited. But another shadowy figure appears in the Old Testament called Melchizedek. He was a priest who offered bread and wine to Abraham and blessed the patriarch, from whom the Levitical and the Aaronic priesthood came (see Gen. 14:18–20). Melchizedek’s name means ‘king of righteousness’ (7:2), and he prefigures the priesthood of Christ. Jesus is our king of righteousness, and was able to offer the perfect sacrifice for sin because, unlike Aaron, he was free from sin himself.   


2. He is mediator of a better covenant. The old covenant was mediated by priests chosen on the basis of their family ancestry. But the covenant (the agreement between God and man) that Jesus has established is so much better because it is based on ‘the power of an indestructible life’ (7:16). When Melchizedek appears as a priest in Genesis 14, he has no genealogy (7:3); it is as if he lives forever. Psalm 110:4 says that the Messiah will be ‘a priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek’. Aaron could only serve God’s people for a generation. Jesus is a better priest because he represents us before God forever!   


3. This covenant is based on a better sacrifice. There was something incomplete about Old Testament sacrifices. You had to continually offer lambs and bulls and goats, which could only symbolically forgive people. But Christ did not have to offer repeated sacrifices: ‘He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself’ (7:27). This once-for-all sacrifice fulfills all that the Old Testament order was pointing to, but could not accomplish. 

Jesus is a better priest, mediator of a better covenant, based on a better sacrifice. Worship him today! 

Reflection

Thank God that all your sins, past, present and future, have been dealt with by the once-for-all sufficient sacrifice of Christ.