In Proximity

Have you ever felt like your mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour? In fact, it’s racing so fast, that when you try to go to bed you can’t because all your thoughts seem to be blurring together like a cyclone, but you just can’t stop thinking about them? Then you woke up in the morning, and it felt like a cyclone has been racing through your head all night? I’m just hoping somehow my brain was smart enough to process this stuff while I was sleeping. Here’s hoping.

Today I want to share with you a passage that I’ve been reading that I think is so wonderful and poetic. If you’ve never read through the book of Hebrews slowly, to gain a sense of appreciation of the words that are used, the rhetoric that is built, I suggest you do so. Hebrews is seriously a piece of art. But the passages I want to talk about specifically are Hebrews 7:18-19.

There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual (for the law made nothing perfect); there is, on the other hand, the introduction of a better hope, through which we approach God.

What’s going on before this passage is the discussion of Melchizedek as being the greatest high priest. Then it breaks down into talk about how other priest were formed in this order, and that the priesthood eventually was established through the law. Here we see that the author states that there was an abrogation, an annulment, of the earlier commandment because it was ineffective. But that’s one aspect to it, because on the other hand, or in comparison, it was the first step in bringing us closer to God.

The function of the priest in Hebraic times was to be a mediator between God and His people. So here we are now, in the first century, where this establishment of the priest is dying. The author is saying this, look, we no longer need a mediator (which is really brought to the front in chapter 10 and beyond), because the old way of getting a priest was no good. He admits that the law did not bring anything into perfection, and thus these laws could be done away with. This parenthetical thought brings about the power of what this verse is all about.

Because the law didn’t bring about anything to perfection, it could be reworked. But because the law brought about the priesthood, it brought about the beginning of us to growing closer to Him. The author admits that while the system may not be perfect, it was the first step for humanity to draw closer to their Creator. So if the initial priesthood and the law was the first step to drawing us closer, then what does perfect this process? This sets up his argument for what is going to come in chapter eight, nine, and ten. Here the author slams it down, saying this was the beginning, but Christ was the perfection of all these things that the law was pointing to.

It’s such a poetic thought and such well through out rhetoric. I seriously love this book. That’s all for today, catch you back here Friday!