Hebrews 7 explained: A Priest Who Never Dies

Who Melchizedek was (vv. 1-3)

In Genesis 14 the king of Salem (usually linked with Jerusalem), who was also a priest, blessed Abraham, and Abraham gave him a tenth of what he had won in battle. The story gives him no parents, family line, birth or death, and the writer reads that silence as a picture of a priesthood with no beginning or end.

Greater than Abraham's descendants (vv. 4-10)

Israel's priests came from the tribe of Levi and collected a tenth from their fellow Israelites, yet their ancestor Abraham paid a tenth to Melchizedek and was blessed by him. The writer argues this makes Melchizedek's kind of priesthood the higher one, as though Levi himself paid it while still in Abraham's body.

A new kind of priest (vv. 11-19)

Psalm 110:4 speaks of a priest who serves for all time in the line of Melchizedek, not of Aaron, and Jesus came from Judah, a tribe that never supplied priests. The writer concludes that God was starting a new arrangement, based not on family descent but on a life that death cannot end.

Backed by God's oath (vv. 20-22)

The old priests took office simply by birth, but the psalm says God swore an oath about this priest and would not take it back. For the writer, that oath makes Jesus the guarantee of a better covenant, meaning a better binding agreement between God and people.

Always alive to speak up (vv. 23-25)

Ordinary priests died and had to be replaced, one after another. Because Jesus lives on, the writer says he can save people completely and always pleads with God on their behalf.

One sacrifice, once for all (vv. 26-28)

Israel's high priests offered animal sacrifices again and again, first for their own wrongs and then for the people's. The writer says Jesus, holy and blameless, offered himself once, and that was enough for all time.

Key verse: Hebrews 7:25

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on how far the change of law in verse 12 reaches, some seeing the whole Old Testament law as fulfilled and ended in Jesus, others seeing only its rules about priests and sacrifices as replaced while its moral teaching still applies.

Something to think about

Has anyone ever spoken up for you when you could not speak for yourself, and what difference did that make?