The Great High Priest of the New Covenant

Since the author wrote to Jewish Christians immersed in Greek culture, it’s important to note the language of shadow. His audience probably would have been familiar with Plato’s parable of the cave. Plato (ca. 429–347 BC) argued that our knowledge is like that of a man who is kept in a fire-lit cave and only sees the shadows of real objects when he looks at the cave’s walls. Plato believed we only know things as shadows of the original; the real object cast the shadow in the firelight.

The Old Testament never presents the tabernacle as a shadow of something more real. The New Testament, however, emphasizes its shadowy nature. Repeatedly the author of Hebrews shows us how to read the Old Testament. In this instance, he’s showing us how to understand the Old Testament tabernacle. Like the Levitical priesthood, the tabernacle of old was inadequate. It displayed dimly the glory of God while pointing to something greater.

Verse 5b notes that a careful reading of Exodus reveals a “pattern” for building the tabernacle. This pattern helps us see that the earthly tabernacle was modeled after something else—namely, the heavenly tabernacle. God commanded the building of a tabernacle in which he would dwell among his people. Moses was to build the tabernacle in exactly the way God showed him (Exod 25:9,40). In Exodus 26 God issues remarkably detailed plans for the tabernacle. By using the language of shadows and copies, the author of Hebrews shows us that these detailed plans and specifications were meant to reflect deeper realities. The plans laid out in Exodus 26 were like plans for a replica of the real thing, which is the heavenly temple. As such, the earthly tabernacle was like a shadow dancing on the wall of a cave. But we have a great high priest who does not offer sacrifices in a shadow. Jesus ministers in the true tent that the Lord set up. The heavenly temple is his sanctuary.

Hebrews 8:6-13

As the writer will soon show us, Christ’s work allows us to directly and confidently enjoy God’s presence. We no longer have to come before God in a tabernacle made by human hands. Because Christ has fulfilled the tabernacle’s purpose, we can draw near to the very throne of God. Heaven is God’s true tabernacle. This great truth permeates the pages of the Old Testament. The King who ransoms his people from their iniquities and brings them peace with God has ushered in the new covenant by his blood. And that covenant is of far greater excellence than the first.

The old covenant wasn’t without fault. Its faultiness wasn’t like a machine in need of repair, though. Its faultiness was rooted in its incompleteness. The old covenant was faulty because it was not final. If it were the final covenant, there would have been no need for a better covenant.

Further, the old covenant came up short because it could not provide a priest who would make ultimate and full atonement for the sins of God’s people. The old covenant’s fault and failure to provide a final sacrifice for sin should have been obvious. After all, under the old covenant there remained an unrelenting need for constant sacrifices. This endless repetition of sacrifices demonstrated the covenant’s incompleteness and its inability to deal with sin once for all time. This makes Christ’s statement on the cross all the more breathtaking. When he cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he was announcing that the wrath of God toward the sin of his people was finally paid in full. Never again would there be a need for animal sacrifice, for Jesus paid it all.

Furthermore, even the high priest of the old covenant had to make unrelenting sacrifices for his own sins before he could make a sacrifice for the sin of his countrymen. In the light of the new covenant, that’s no gospel. But the author of Hebrews is now declaring that the final priest has come, not to atone for his own sins, but to save his people. Indeed, a better priest with a better ministry has come to mediate a better covenant enacted on better promises. Jesus’s ministry of inaugurating the new covenant is “superior” precisely because of these “better promises.” In the new covenant God will write his law on the hearts of his people (rather than on tablets of stone). As a result, all covenant members will know the Lord, and sins will be dealt with completely.

The new covenant promise is laid out in Jeremiah 31:31-34. The author of Hebrews leads his readers to this text in verses 8-12. Jeremiah wrote to show that the Lord had long ago foretold the day when his final priest would come. The covenant community should have inferred from the sacrifices of old that a final sacrifice and a final priest—who would not have to sacrifice repeatedly—were coming. Thus the author of Hebrews uses Jeremiah 31:31-34 to ask his readers, “Were we not told? Why did you not see?” This is similar to the way he uses Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 to show them they should have been anticipating a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. God spoke through Jeremiah to announce the need for and the coming of a new and better covenant.

The picture Jeremiah paints is one of eschatological peace. This peace would come through the mediator of a new and better covenant. The terms of this new and better covenant would bring a peace infinitely greater than what the old covenant could produce. The extraordinary promise of the new covenant was not that God would dismiss the old covenant but that he would be merciful toward our iniquities and remember our sins no more (Jer 31:34).

Our greatest problem is sin, for it severs us from the presence of God. Our sin and his holiness are incompatible, yet God promised to reconcile sinful people to himself through the mediator who would inaugurate the new covenant. He chose to do this through his Son, Jesus Christ, the mediator who established the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20). In him, the extraordinary promises and the better covenant were fulfilled. The Lord is merciful to his people because Christ suffered and died in their place, and they are now hidden in him forever by virtue of their faith and repentance. In Jesus all the new covenant promises belong to God’s people.