(Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 7:23-8:13)
The problem with reform movements and revolutions is that they don’t change people, just structures. Which makes sense, because structures can actually be changed relatively quickly without direct divine intervention—but structural change by itself really doesn’t mean much. I forget who it was who observed that there has never been a constitution that could withstand the people responsible for implementing it, but it’s true; words on a page are meaningless unless everyone is committed to abiding by them. Indeed, more than that, everyone needs to be committed to the principles underlying those words, not simply to twisting the words themselves however they need to in order to get what they want. If you change the system but people’s hearts are the same—even if it happens to be different people in charge—well, what you’ll get will be, as the old camp song says, “second verse same as the first, English version and a whole lot worse.”
Which is why it’s not enough for Hebrews to argue, as we saw in last week’s passage, that the priesthood of Christ is better because it has a better foundation; a better structure doesn’t mean much without a better leader. The author also has to show that Jesus himself is a better priest, and better suited to be a priest, than those whom he is replacing. He made a comment in that direction in the first part of this chapter, but here’s where he really dives in to make his case, and he says two things about that.
First, Jesus is a better high priest because he’s permanent. Human priests, like human pastors, come and go; some are better, some are worse, and whatever else may happen, all of them eventually die. This necessarily limits the work they can do; any minister who is merely human is temporary, and thus cannot offer permanent salvation. Jesus, by contrast, is eternal and immortal, and so he truly stands as our great high priest forever; he can offer us permanent salvation because no matter what, he is always there, interceding for us and drawing us to God.
Second, and most important, Jesus is superior in character to any merely human priest, because he alone is free of sin. It’s not just that he never did anything wrong, he never yielded to temptation in any way, even in his innermost thoughts; he never did the right thing for the wrong reasons, and never put his own desires ahead of the will of his Father in heaven. He faced every temptation, and never once chose to do anything except what the Father called him to do, and so he is perfect and perfectly good beyond even the imagined possibility of imperfection—he is perfect life incarnate, in whom all is perfectly right and as it should be. As such, he did not need and does not need to offer sacrifices for himself, because there was nothing of which he was even the least bit guilty; he could do everything for us. Equally, there is nothing in him that mars his work, nothing that could interfere, and nothing that could cause him to do less or worse for us than he has promised; because he is perfect, he is perfectly faithful.
Because of all this, Hebrews is able to declare without reservation that Jesus has brought us into a better covenant, one which is superior to the covenant made through Moses because it is the fulfillment and completion of that covenant. The Old Testament law set up a copy and shadow of the heavenly reality, preparing the way for Jesus to come and replace it with the reality; now that the reality has come, the copy is no longer needed. It has served its purpose—we must learn from it, but we no longer live under it. And if we can say that of the law of Moses, which was given directly by God to his people, how much more must we say that of all other human ideas, and especially religious ones? This isn’t to say that behavior doesn’t matter, but it is to say that we aren’t saved by behavior; it isn’t to say that there aren’t wiser and more foolish ways to live, but it is to say that we aren’t saved by human wisdom. It isn’t to say that human leaders don’t matter, but it is certainly to say that there is no salvation to be found in any of them, and that the best any of them can do is make things a little easier on the journey. Our salvation is in Christ alone, and we do not live by laws, principles, precepts, or rules; though we make use of all of them along the way, we live by grace, and grace alone.
The reason for this is made clear as the author of Hebrews quotes this passage from Jeremiah: outward law cannot change us, it can only change the ways that our sinful attitudes and desires express themselves. We might look better to the world around us—as long as they don’t look too closely, anyway—but we won’t really be any better. In truth, we might be worse. Law might only make us better liars, to cover up our sins, or better manipulators, to find other ways of getting what we want; or if we choose, as some do, to use the law to find our validation—if we choose to find satisfaction in keeping the law better than others so that we can feel superior to them—then the law can nurture spiritual pride, which is a subtle, deadly sin. The root problem is our tendency to idolatry, to direct our love, trust, and worship to people or things other than God, and the law can’t do anything about that, because the law is outside us and our idols are beyond its reach. Something else is needed if we are to become the people God made us to be.
This is why, back in the Old Testament, God repeatedly told his people that something new was coming. It’s why he promised through Jeremiah that he would make a new covenant with his people which would give them more than just external laws to follow—it would be a covenant that would change them from the inside out, as God would write his law on their hearts and fill their minds with his truth, and enable all of them to know him, rather than having to approach him through the priests. It would be a covenant that would enable God to declare, “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will remember their sins no more.” It would be a permanent solution to human sin, and it would be a real solution, not just treating the symptoms by forbidding some things and demanding others, but healing the root disease in the human heart, replacing the rebellion and idolatry in our hearts with the truth and love of God.
This is the promise Jesus came to fulfill. He was the final prophet who proclaimed the deliverance God had promised from sin and death; he is the final high priest who offered the final, perfect sacrifice of his own life to pay the price for that deliverance, and who brings us into the presence of God to speak with him at the throne of grace; and he is the final king who has authority over all things because of the victory he has won. He has satisfied every requirement, and so he eternally guarantees God’s eternal covenant of grace with us; and because his sacrifice was of infinite value and the victory of his resurrection was of infinite scope, so the covenant he makes with us is infinite in its power and reach. There is no sin too big or too unimaginable, no sinner too great or too far from God, to be included and redeemed within this new covenant. This is the scandal of grace: it is truly free, and it is truly for everybody, no matter how unworthy. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, and all are welcome, if they will only come.