You Learn Something New Every Day

From Hebrews 9:

6-10After this was set up, the priests went about their duties in the large tent. Only the high priest entered the smaller, inside tent, and then only once a year, offering a blood sacrifice for his own sins and the people's accumulated sins. This was the Holy Spirit's way of showing with a visible parable that as long as the large tent stands, people can't just walk in on God. Under this system, the gifts and sacrifices can't really get to the heart of the matter, can't assuage the conscience of the people, but are limited to matters of ritual and behavior. It's essentially a temporary arrangement until a complete overhaul could be made.

23-26That accounts for the prominence of blood and death in all these secondary practices that point to the realities of heaven. It also accounts for why, when the real thing takes place, these animal sacrifices aren't needed anymore, having served their purpose. For Christ didn't enter the earthly version of the Holy Place; he entered the Place Itself, and offered himself to God as the sacrifice for our sins. He doesn't do this every year as the high priests did under the old plan with blood that was not their own; if that had been the case, he would have to sacrifice himself repeatedly throughout the course of history. But instead he sacrificed himself once and for all, summing up all the other sacrifices in this sacrifice of himself, the final solution of sin.

I've just had one of those "aha!" moments.

I have never really gotten this until just now. I have always understood that the temple and all were needed for the sacrifice, and it all had to be done a certain way, etc.

But I never understood that these were simply earthly representations of what is in heaven. I never realised that the holy of holies, the place where the priest went in, was a representation of someplace that existed somewhere else.

So Jesus went not into hell, laden with all our sins, and just "dropped them off" -- He actually went into the real place in heaven -- represented by the holy of holies here -- and used His own, non-sin-contaminated blood to make the sacrifice for everyone, just like the Israelite priests used to do for the people using animal blood.

Never let it be said that the bible doesn't reveal a new truth every time you read it. Cool!

xoxox