Hebrews 8:4–5

He does not say that the Lord was not a Priest on earth. He has set Him before us as Minister of the true tabernacle. So if He were on earth, there would be no room for Him in the earthly one. There the sons of Aaron fill everything according to the law.

The Lord Jesus is not a priest of Aaron's order. Yet in many ways He carries out His ministry after the pattern set out in Aaron. So He must have something to offer in the presence of God. That something cannot be a gift of the kind the law required. Had He been on earth He would have been no priest at all, for He did not come from Levi or Aaron. His priesthood is of a heavenly order.

Christ carries out this priestly work in heaven, and for a heavenly people. If He were on earth He would not be a priest. On earth, the law appointed the only human priests God ever approved as a distinct class among His people. They served as "a copy and shadow of the heavenly things"… Now that Christ has come, that copy and shadow has served its purpose.

Now to be High Priest He must first have died. He was not, He could not have been, High Priest while on earth. Scripture is precise on this… God never replaces an order of priesthood. Aaron's order was for earth and for the house of Aaron… And He ministers only in the heavenly sanctuary. Hebrews 9:12 tells us that He entered it once for all by His own blood.

The apostle does not say that when Christ was on earth He was not a priest, but that "if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all." He is plainly speaking of One who is not on earth. He is not looking back to the time when He was here. He is speaking of Christ as the glorified High Priest, "the Minister of the true tabernacle," and the reason he gives settles it.

There is no ground at all for doubting that Hebrews 2:17 refers only to atonement for sins… its true meaning is "to expiate," or make propitiation for, "the sins of the people." That was not the work of the priest in the sanctuary, which is the one point in Hebrews 8:4. It was the high priest's own work on the day of atonement, and in that work Christ was both the Victim and the High Priest who offered it.

As Christ did not come from Aaron's family He could not be a priest after that pattern. His priesthood is wholly different, for it is heavenly and exercised in glory… These Hebrew believers needed to take hold of this truth, because the earthly tabernacle was still standing and its priests were still going through their empty and meaningless duties… Ritual religion within Christianity copies a priesthood that has died out, and models its worship more or less on Israel's. It is the shade of the departed shadow.

He does not say that the Lord was not a Priest on earth. He has already set Him before us as Minister of the true Tabernacle, the real one that the earthly tent copied. So he says that if He were on earth there would be no room for Him in the earthly one. There the sons of Aaron fill everything according to the law.

The word "example" here can rightly be translated "representation." God gave Moses no small or casual task. He was not allowed to change the pattern God gave him by one bit. It made no difference how the people of Israel felt about it, or whether they thought some things could be improved.

The legal system was a representation, but it was also a "shadow." It had no solid substance of its own. That is found only in Christ. The actual substance is heavenly, and the shadow of it was cast on earth, in anticipation of the substance.

That tabernacle was, after all, only a copy, answering to the type or pattern which was in heaven. The true tabernacle had never been on earth; it was always in heaven. In time the structure Moses put up gave way to the Temple of Solomon. But the true tabernacle existed before it, and exists still. It abides. No power can overthrow it. Neither man nor devil can reach it.

The people thought he was going to get the law. Not that alone. He had gone to get God's mind, and to see lovely pictures of Christ. He received the tables of stone, but far better than that, he saw many shadows of Christ. He walked through God's picture gallery. The tabernacle and all its furniture spoke of Christ in some aspect or other. I do not say that Moses grasped the full meaning of all that passed before his eye. But before he came down from the mountain God said, "And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain."

It was to be a real "example and shadow of heavenly things." So there was no room for human thoughts or imaginations. The part of Moses was obedience, and faithfulness in carrying out the heavenly design. God asks the same of believers today in His church: faithfulness to the word of God, and obedience to every part of it. Let in human rules and human authority, and the church stops being a true witness for God.

To argue for ritual forms in Christian worship is to lose sight of what the ancient ritual really was: a picture. "The example and shadow of heavenly things" is God's account of it all in Hebrews 8:5. Christ has come and redemption is accomplished. So the reality is ours, and the shadows pass away.

Now the shadow can never equal in importance the thing it is a shadow of. Would the Jews glory in their ritual and their sanctuary? There was something far better than that. The blessing would be to have a place, and the right of entry, into the true tabernacle, the sanctuary on high.