A New Nature
…the new High Priest is heavenly, and He came to raise man’s life, behavior and worship to the heavens. He raised us to the heavenly matters, with no retreating to the darkness. He offered us Himself as a new High priest, new Sacrifice, and made us enter into His new temple for a new work on our behalf.
Commentary on The Epistle to the Hebrews, by Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Hebrews 8: 1 Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens
The Lord Jesus, this new High Priest on the order of Melchizedek, has made unnecessary the Levitical priesthood – it now disappears. “We have” – yes, for the Jews (although He is High Priest for the Gentiles as well). What the Christian of Hebrew origin knew only by a shadow, he now knows in full.
Regarding the Levitical priests…
5 who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
St. John Chrysostom:
“The Church is heavenly! It is heaven itself! … The heavens became instead ours of the temple, after He led us into the heavens. These matters were symbols for what has become a reality. Through them, the ministry of the New Testament was glorified and the (proper) glory of priesthood appeared. … Also our citizenship is in heavens (Phil. 3:20), even while we live here on earth.”
We enter into this new heavenly temple through the leadership of the new High Priest – this is the New Covenant for which the prophets were longing.
7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.
After Adam fell, God made a covenant with him; after the flood, God made a covenant with Noah; God further made a covenant with Abraham and later with Moses.
What was the fate of that covenant? The people worshipped the golden calf before Moses went down from the mountain, for he heard God’s voice saying: “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves” (Exod. 32:7).
In fact, at each stage the people failed. This is what made the subsequent prophets look forward to a New Covenant, one with the possibility of changing men’s hearts.
Jeremiah 31: 31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.
33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
This passage from Jeremiah is repeated in this chapter of Hebrews, offering us the proper understanding and interpretation of just what is meant by the house of Israel.
Ezekiel 37: 26 Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore. 27 My tabernacle also shall be with them; indeed I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
There is only one way to make an everlasting covenant, one that will last forever. That is, a heavenly covenant, where God the Father, through His Son and the Holy Spirit, make in us a new nature.
Conclusion
St. Athanasius of Alexandria (in his articles against the Arians):
“If we are not created in Him, then the Lord is not inside us, and He becomes just a teacher whom we accept from Him the teachings. If this is the case then sin does not lose its dominion over the body, as an heir to it and not rejected from it. But the Apostle objects to this teaching for he says, “We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus...” (Eph. 2:10)
The idea that Jesus is merely a good and wise teacher is not only incorrect, it is categorically in error.
He becomes the commandment, life, resurrection, and righteousness inside us!
In this New Covenant, the Lord Jesus does not come to us as some sort of teacher of commandments. He is inside our lives, changing our nature, renewing it through the Holy Spirit.