Hebrews 7:23-28 Commentary

In the United States, this is a season of campaigning and electioneering. On top of all the uncertainty that elections ordinarily create is the fact that the incumbent president, Joseph Biden, is not running for re-election. America’s next president will be different from the current one.

This means that there will be a transition between presidents. Whether America’s next president is the sitting vice president or a former president, things are going to change in Washington D.C. and the White House. These kinds of changes almost certainly accompany transitions within parliamentary systems as well. Because transition can be so fraught with peril, American leaders-elect often establish transition teams for the express purpose of making the changeover as smooth as possible.

But no matter how well people, groups or organizations handle transition, it almost automatically produces anxiety. We naturally wonder what change will bring to things like our families, workplaces and countries. For example, both Americans and the world’s nations wonder whether America’s ways of dealing with the United States as well as the world will change with a new president. We realize, after all, that campaign rhetoric doesn’t always match actual presidential policy.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson speaks of another transition – that of Israel’s high priests. Its verse 23 notes how “there have been many … [high] priests, since death [thanato*] prevented them [kolyesthai] from continuing [paramenein] in office.” Quite simply, God’s Old Testament people had many different high priests because the former priests just kept dying. So while the priest’s job description didn’t change, the priests did. We can only imagine the kind of anxiety that was produced among God’s Israelite people. After all, among other things, different priests had different personalities and gifts.

On top of that, those priests were all morally flawed. Verse 27 basically repeats Hebrews 5:2-3’s assertion of their need to “offer [anapherein] sacrifices [thysias] day after day [kath’ hemeran], first for” their “own sins [idion hamartion], and then for the sins of the people [ton tou laou].” So while priests changed, their sinfulness never changed.

Verse 28 even explicitly refers to Israel’s high priests’ weakness. It notes that “the law [nomos] appoints [kathistesin] as high priests men in all their weakness [eschontas astheneian].” While the Greek word astheneian allows for either physical or moral weakness, the context of its use in verse 28 implies moral weakness – while also at least hinting at the physical weakness that eventually killed all of Israel’s high priests. Those priests, as The Message paraphrases this verse, are “men who are never able to get the job done right.”

At this point preachers might, under the Spirit’s leading, talk about their own experiences with leadership, weakness and transition – always being very careful not to make ourselves the heroes or the focus of the anecdote. Preachers’ stories may sound at least a bit like my own.

I recently retired as the pastor of the church I’d served for 27 years. While God had graced me with some strengths for pastoral ministry, I am a morally flawed person. I repeatedly fail to love God above all and my neighbor as myself. What’s more, I was able to minister to some people more effectively than others.

The time of transition in leadership was a time of real anxiety in some members of the church we’d pastored. People wondered what the new pastor would be like. Some people still wonder what the church will be like under the Spirit-empowered leadership of a new pastor.

Earlier this month the church we’d pastored celebrated the arrival of its new pastor. The congregation is learning what the church’s leadership team had already recognized: God has given this person outstanding gifts for ministry. But he too is morally flawed. What’s more, he also will be able to minister to some people better than others.

What’s true of churches and pastors is true of all sorts of human relationships and situations. Because change is hard, it creates anxiety. Whether it’s a new parent, head of school, CEO, or prime minister, changes in leadership often have a mighty impact on those they lead. By the amazing grace of God, those changes can be very good. But they’re always at least somewhat difficult.

That’s a reason why this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offers such great gospel. While high priests (as well as other human leaders) change, our Great High Priest never changes. He is, in fact, the same yesterday, today and forever (cf. Hebrews 13:8). While all of Israel’s high priests eventually died, Jesus, verse 24 reminds his friends, “lives [menein] forever [eis ton aiona].” While the Romans collaborated with religious leaders to execute Jesus, God raised him from the dead. He can no longer die.

As a result, we rejoice with verse 24b, Jesus has a “permanent [aparabaton] priesthood [hierosynen].” Israel’s high priests’ “term in office” could only be temporary. Those priests, after all, continued to die. In fact, only the destruction of the Second Temple in a sense ended their dying because it ended their priesthood.

The priesthood of Jesus, God’s Temple among God’s people, is totally different. He literally “abides to the age,” in other words, lives forever. God’s dearly beloved sons and daughters will never need to experience the transition to a new high priest. It’s now Jesus’ job forever. Until he graciously ushers his followers into the new earth and heaven, he’ll never “leave office.”

Because neither sin nor death can ever touch him, Jesus is, according to verse 25, “able to [dynatai] to save [sozein] completely [eis to panteles] those who come to [proserchomenous] God through him.” Jesus breaks sin, Satan and everlasting death’s stranglehold on his adopted siblings who respond to God’s amazing grace by approaching him in faith. Since change is a constant feature of life in God’s world, it comes to everything, including the church and its leadership. Amid all that change stands one gracious constant: Jesus completely and for all time saves God’s dearly beloved people.

In fact, Hebrews 7:25 makes what seems like a startling statement about Jesus’ saving power. He doesn’t just live forever. Jesus also “always [pantote] lives [zon] to intercede [entynchanein] for” his adopted brothers and sisters. Here is one of the central doctrines of the faith to which the Church seems to pay relatively little attention. Jesus didn’t just live, die and rise again to rescue God’s people from our sins. He didn’t just ascend to God’s right hand where he awaits his return to judge the living and the dead as well as usher us into the new creation.

Verse 25 reminds Hebrews’ readers Jesus always also lives to speak on our behalf before the Father. I sometimes wonder if we underplay this amazing grace because we’re not quite sure how one member of the Trinity can actually speak to another. But the mysteriousness of Christ’s intercession on our behalf ought not diminish its startling beauty.

Hebrews invites us to imagine how especially when we sin against God and our neighbor, God the Son steps before God the Father to remind God that we’re precisely the people whom God loves so much that God sent God’s Son to live, die and rise again from our sins. In fact, Jesus never tires of speaking up for us. He always lives to intercede for us. As The Message lyrically paraphrases verse 25, Jesus is in the heavenly realm “from now to eternity to save everyone who comes to God through him, always on the job to speak up for them.”

Jesus is our perfect High Priest whose intercession is effective because he was perfect. Unlike Israel and all others’ high priest, he is “holy [hosios], blameless [akakos], pure [amiantos], set apart from sinners [kechorismenos], exalted [hypseloteros] above the heavens” (26).

Though the Spirit inspired Hebrews’ author, we sense he struggled to find the words to adequately describe Jesus’ exceeding greatness and moral perfection. It’s almost as if he simply piles adjective upon adjective to try to begin to elucidate our Great High Priest’s superiority to all other priests.

Jesus was, in fact, so great that he didn’t have to offer either multiple sacrifices for others or sacrifices on his own behalf. He, verse 27 rejoices, “sacrificed for their sins once for all [ephepax] when he offered [anenenkas] himself [heauton].” Jesus didn’t need to offer up animals or anything else as sacrifices on behalf of God’s adopted sons and daughters. In offering up himself at Calvary’s cross, he was the sacrifice that was so perfect that it will never need to be repeated.

Christians have become perhaps more sensitized to the violence of the cross. That violence makes some of us squeamish about talking about the sacrificial nature of Jesus’ saving work on our behalf. Of course, there are all sorts of elements to that rescuing work. The Church needs to do a better job of talking about all the ways that Jesus acted to save God’s dearly beloved people. But though it’s hard to think and talk about, preachers do God’s people no favors when we simply ignore that to which the Bible gives such a prominent place: the sacrificial nature of Jesus’ saving work on our behalf.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson reminds Christians that the Triune God loved God’s people so unconditionally and completely that God gave up nearly everything to rescue us and adopt us as God’s children. God the Father let powerful political, military and religious figures do their worst to God the Son to strip the evil one of its abilities to do its worst to Jesus’ followers.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Ian McEwan’s Atonement is named for an incident that points to both the desperate need for atonement and the shortcomings of human atonement. It describes 13-year-old Briony’s glimpse of her older sister Cecilia in a passionate embrace with Robbie, the son of a family servant. She later reads an aggressive letter Robbie writes but doesn’t send to Cecilia.

When someone sexually assaults Briony’s cousin Lila, Briony concludes it must have been Robbie. She even falsely claims she saw his face. The claim gets Robbie imprisoned and breaks Cecilia’s heart. As she matures, Briony comes to understand the damage she’s done and tries to atone for it. But she also discovers a terrible truth: you can’t give back the years you destroyed. Briony (and her family) learns the hard way that attempts at atonement are often what one reviewer calls “partial and flawed.”