NOTES for Heb 7:15-28
In speaking in today’s reading about the enduring priesthood of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul draws our attention to an important feature of the law. He says that the law, a body of prescriptive and prohibitive rules and ordinances, is a strictly functional thing. The apostle emphasizes that the law is powerless to perfect human nature. For this reason, in his view, a commandment of the law can be set aside because of its weakness and uselessness. Even after two thousand years of the Christian Church, human religious psychology rebels against such freedom. It seems that a commandment must be an image of the truth so that we can rely on it. The apostle, however, emphasizes that in the New Covenant a greater and better hope is introduced for us: to be guided by the One who Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. On this basis, the apostle concludes that the New Covenant is superior. For us in practice, this means above all that there can be no universal ready-made solutions in the Christian faith, and that whatever resembles law in the life of Christians testifies to our hardness of heart and our inability to obey the Holy Spirit.