(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
The priesthood of the Anointed
- Now, the sum of the things being said is this: we have such a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;
- an official minister in the holy places and in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man.
- For every high priest is appointed in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices, so it’s necessary for this One to also have something that He might offer.
- Therefore if He was on earth, He indeed wouldn’t even be a priest since there are men offering the gifts according to the law,
- who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses – being about to complete the tabernacle – has been divinely admonished; for He says: “Behold, you shall make all things according to the pattern which was shown to you on the mountain.”1quotation/allusion to Exodus 25:40
- But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, insomuch as He’s also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted as law2“enacted as law” is one word in Greek. It properly means to legislate in the sense of enacting a law. upon better promises.
The Old and New Covenants
- For if that first covenant had been faultless, a place for a second wouldn’t have been sought.
- For finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming says the Lord, and I will bring a new covenant to fulfillment3“I will bring… …to fulfillment” is one word in Greek with that exact meaning. It focuses on an end which isn’t merely “termination”, but rather culmination or fulfillment. 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 took their hand in Mine to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they didn’t remain in My covenant and I disregarded them says, the Lord.”
- “Because this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; putting My laws into their mind and I will write them on their hearts. And I will be God to them, and they will be a people for Me.
- “And each man definitely won’t teach his neighbor or each man teach his brother saying: ‘Know the Lord’, because all will know Me; from the least of them to the greatest,
- “because I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and I definitely won’t remember their sins anymore.”4quotation/allusion to Jeremiah 31:31-34
- By saying “a new covenant“, He has declared the first obsolete; and the covenant growing old and aging is near disappearing.
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