Hebrews 7:20-22, An oath of God

Our family has been blessed to be touched by the adoption process firsthand on several different occasions. A child can be born into a family and a child can be loved into a family but when an adoption takes place there is some legal hoops to jump through. A judge must decree what was not born as part of a family to become a forever part of that family. The judge’s statement or ruling doesn’t make you love the child any more it simply makes the process legal and binding. Under the law of Moses priesthood was determined by which family you were born into. If you were born into the tribe of Levi, then you were eligible to service and if you were not then you had no opportunity to serve as a priest. For someone to come from outside this family and be a part of this family an official would have to decree it, and this is exactly what God did with Jesus Christ. God declared Jesus to be the priest who will be in that position forever.

When God made this oath, it did away with the need for us to go to man to connect with God because now we have an intercessor in heaven. We don’t need to a man to make a sacrifice on our behalf because Jesus has already made himself the sacrifice for all sin. God’s proclamation of Jesus’s eternal priesthood ushered in what the author of Hebrews calls a better covenant. No longer a flawed people trying to reconnect with God through each other, now God has given us direct access to Himself through Jesus Christ. The position granted to Jesus doesn’t expire, have term limits, or come with a retirement date; He will hold this position for eternity.