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Tuesday 1 August 2023

Hebrews 7:20-22 - The guarantor of a better covenant

7:20,21

No oath was given for the Levitical priesthood. I.e. there was no explicit oath given by God, This silence is taken as significant, indicating that the Levitical priesthood was not intended to last forever. Conversely, in Ps 110 there was an oath explicitly given by God, “The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind”. The writer is making the point that God is more committed to the priesthood of His Son, than He was to the Levitical priesthood.


7:22

“This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant”. There are two key points in this statement. One is that the new covenant is better than the old one. The old one led only to judgement, because of the inevitable failure of the people to live up to it. The new covenant leads to eternal life, and also changed lives. The second point is that Jesus is the guarantor of this new covenant. The old covenant depended upon the people keeping the covenant, living by the law, in order to reap its benefits. The new covenant is dependent upon Jesus, and He is far more reliable than we are! Now its being dependent upon Jesus, rather than us, does not mean that it doesn’t matter how we live, but that is not a point that we will dwell on just now.


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