Hebrews 7:18 Commentary and Bible Study

The law had a deliberate weakness built into it, to teach the people that it was only an illustration and not the real thing, only a temporary institution of God for Israel, and not his permanent provision for the problem of sin. Something better must be looked for after it, something that actually accomplishes redemption and does not just symbolise it. That previous form of worship in the law had to be removed with the coming in of the true form of worship. The two could not coexist, because the situation would be too confusing. The continued existence of the law alongside the spiritual New Testament worship that Christ ordained would have taken away from what Christ did. The new covenant and the new priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ was sufficient in itself and did not need any help from something that went before it. The Jewish mind must let go completely of the old in order to embrace the new, and therefore the old must be disannulled, set aside, put away. The Greek word means displaced, unplaced.But as Christ said to the Pharisees, ‘No man … having drunk old wine straightway desireth new’ (Luke 5:39). The law had been given with great power and authority. It was ‘the word spoken by angels’ (Hebrews 2:2), and it was steadfast. It was hard for a Jew who had been taught the law from a child, and told that it was the correct way to worship God through physical sacrifices in a physical temple. No Jew would lightly let go of its ceremonies. It needed the hand of God to remove it, for without that it could not be changed or taken away. No human authority had the right to remove it. Therefore it was only removed through the coming of Christ and its removal had to be accompanied by indisputable miracles indicating that God was speaking with fresh revelation to the world. For those with spiritual eyes, of course, the types and shadows of the law were perfectly fulfilled in Christ. This was a strong confirmation that they could let go of the old. Christ was careful to honour the law in all he said about it, and to demonstrate that he was not willing that any single precept of the law should be set aside, except by means of fulfilment which itself honoured the law.The ceremonial law was weak in that it could not accomplish the things that it symbolised. It spoke of the removal of sin and guilt, of reconciliation and peace with God, of heaven being made accessible to man, but it failed to deliver any of these things. Although it was not unprofitable for the purpose that God intended it – it was a wonderful predicter and teacher of the coming of Christ and what he would do – it was unprofitable if measured in terms of what it actually accomplished. All those Old Testament sacrifices added together never purged away a single sin. For the reason that it was weak, it could not actually achieve the things that it so wonderfully pointed to, and that was entirely as God intended it to be. This inbuilt weakness was designed to make the people dissatisfied with the law itself and long for something better. There was a danger that an Israelite might think that because the law came from God and was ordained by him, that it was all that was ever needed. God had therefore to make it obvious that this was not the case by deliberately including these weaknesses within it. However, to see these weaknesses required a mind that was spiritual. It required a mind that understood the real obstacles to peace with God, and which honestly faced up to the fact that the provisions of the ceremonial law had not removed those obstacles. Even after all the sacrifices of the law, guilt remained, heaven continued to be closed, death was still in place.