Better promises
“But Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry, and to that degree He is the mediator of a better covenant which has established on better promises”
When this letter was written, this new covenant the writer speaks of was a big deal. Up until then, the Jewish people had only known the Law. This new covenant was a radical change and the author of Hebrews wanted new Christians to know that the covenant with Jesus was far better than what they had previously known.
For us modern Christians, this new covenant he speaks of is the only covenant we’ve ever known. Maybe we don’t think we need someone to explain why Jesus is the better covenant...after all, we were never under the Old Testament law. In fact, as Gentile Christians, we were excluded from the promise under the law. We were adopted into the faith by this new covenant. However, we don’t need to have been under the old covenant to see how significant, how wonderful, how gracious, how lavish, and how incomparable this new covenant is.
But Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry, and to that degree He is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been established on better promises.
A superior ministry
Now the main point of what is being said is this: We have this kind of high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and now man.” (Hebrews 8:1-2)
God reigns from heaven and I think we can all agree that heaven is far superior than earth. But God wanted to dwell among His people, so He commanded Moses to build a tabernacle where His presence could dwell. The tabernacle had to be built exactly as God commanded because it was a shadow of the one in Heaven, where God sits. But it was still built by a man, and only priests had access to certain parts of the tabernacle, and only after offering sacrifices (Hebrews 8:4-7).
During His ministry on earth, Jesus was not a priest. But after His death, the sacrificial offering for our sins, and His resurrection, God seated Him at His right hand in the heavens and made Him our High Priest. His sacrifice and offering was at the sanctuary and true tabernacle set up by the Lord.
As previously stated in Hebrews, “because He remains forever, He holds his priesthood permanently, and because of His sacrifice, He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, since He is able to intercede for them.”
Jesus is our High Priest in heaven. He is not an earthly priest, with earthly limitations. His priesthood is in the heavens and He operates in the supernatural. His sacrifice, 2,000 years ago, was able, is able, and will always be able, to atone for our sins because His priesthood is not bound by time.
The Mediator of a better covenant
Jesus as High Priest acts as the go between for us to God. Since sin had made us enemies of God, Jesus is our mediator to reconcile us with God. And He does so under a new covenant, since He is not a priest of the old covenant, but of the order of Melchizedek. Under the new covenant, God only requires us to believe in Jesus. Our belief in Jesus is credited to us as righteousness. We are not required to uphold the law; all that is necessary for us is to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and that He died for our sins. I was reading in a commentary, and Griffith Thomas’ explanation is better than I could explain:
“The covenant is “better” because it is absolute, not conditional, spiritual not carnal, universal not local, eternal not temporal, individual not national, internal not external.1”
Established on better promises
What are the promises of the New Covenant?
We have eternal life in heaven through faith in Jesus Christ. “The wages of sin is death” but through Jesus’ one sacrifice, “anyone who believes, shall not perish but have eternal life.”
He “forgives us our wrongdoing, and He will never again remember our sins” (Hebrews 8:12). Under the new covenant, we do not have to continually offer sacrifices on a regular basis to atone for our sins. Jesus’ perfect sacrifice washes us clean and the Bible says that “as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12).
In William MacDonalds Believer’s Bible Commentary he explains,
“The covenant of the law promised blessing for obedience but threatened death for disobedience. It required righteousness but did not give the ability to produce it. The New Covenant is an unconditional covenant of grace. It imputes righteousness where there is none. It teaches men to live righteously, empowers them do do so, and rewards them when they do.” 2
When I was reading God’s prophetic words about His new covenant, the words that stood out the most to me were “I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people...they will all know me.”
One of the better promises in the new covenant is we as believers carry God’s presence in us. When Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the tabernacle, separating man from God’s presence, tore in half, symbolically showing that man is no longer separated from God through Jesus’ sacrifice. Not only do we have access behind the veil in the heavenly realms, the spirit of God lives in us while we are here on Earth.
While Jesus was here on Earth, He was the perfect example of man as God intended. “He entered human flesh to be like us, but also to be something more—humanity as we were designed to be, unfallen and filled with the presence of God.” 3
Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit would come and help us. Under the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit might come upon someone for a brief moment for a specific purpose. But as believers under the new covenant, we have the privilege of God’s spirit living in us everyday: leading us to live righteously, opening our eyes to His Word, producing spiritual fruit in our lives, and allowing us to live victoriously here on Earth.
I think so many of us still live under the law of the old covenant where we believe our works produce a righteous life. But Jesus came so we could live under a new covenant that contains beautiful and better promises than just salvation. His new covenant is so we can live the lives God always intended, filled with His presence and knowing Him completely.
1 Thomas, W. H. Griffith. Hebrews: A Devotional Commentary. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1961.
2 MacDonald, William. Believer’s Bible Commentary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc., 1995
3 Tiegreen, Chris. The Wonder of Advent Devotional. Carol Stream: Tyndall House Publishers, Inc. 2017
