Hebrews 8:3-6

Hehe -- I finished Hebrews a week ago Friday, and my head was so full of stuff that I decided to go back through to decompress and unpack some of the ideas in the book. So I'm on Round Two of Hebrews now, and I'm pretty sure there'll be a Round Three. :-)

Anyway, today is Hebrews 8, and here's a passage that leapt out at me like a ravenous panther (vv. 3-6):

For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices; so it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.

Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law;

who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, "SEE," He says, "THAT YOU MAKE all things ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN WHICH WAS SHOWN YOU ON THE MOUNTAIN."

But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

One of the things that interests me most about the concept of offering both gifts and sacrifices to God is that, in human terms, it seems like you'd never get beyond the sacrifices.

What I mean is that, generally, giving meaningful gifts to someone can only happen if you're already in a relationship with that person. And since God is holy and righteous, our relationship with Him must constantly be mended through sin offerings, and we sin with such frequency that only perpetual sin offerings would suffice to keep us in a blameless relationship with Him. Moreover, if we're constantly having to offer sin offerings, there's no time to offer gifts, since we can't do more than one thing at the same time.

That's one of the reasons that Christ's work on our behalf was -- and is -- so necessary and so amazing. He was simultaneously a perpetual sin offering and an eternal gift offering to God. He was everything that God saw as valuable, and Christ's self-offering was therefore the perfect counterpart to our radically imperfect efforts to make atonement and gift offerings on our own behalf. The wonderful part is that Christ's sin and gift offering on our behalf is imputed to us by the Father, so all we need to do is remain in Christ, who also is the mediator who allows us to come into the Father's presence through the veil of His flesh!

Again, sorry that this hasn't been an especially coherent set of thoughts; I'm still a little overwhelmed by all the things in this passage. :-) But praise God for these marvelous truths... and for giving us His Holy Spirit to help us understand them.