Today in God’s Word

Today in God's Word—September 2023

East Tallassee Church of Christ

September 1, Hebrews 7

Shrouded in mystery, Melchizedek appears and disappears on the pages of Genesis. He resurfaces in Psalms in a reference to Messiah. He appears again in Hebrews as a crucial point of the author’s argument for the superiority of Jesus Christ over the Law of Moses and the Levitical priesthood. Some believe Melchizedek was an appearance of the pre-incarnate Christ—that the writer of Hebrews meant it literally, not metaphorically, when he said the mystery priest who met Abraham had no father or mother, beginning or end. Others take the reference to be about a human being, and that the human priest Melchizedek actually had parents, birth and death about which we know nothing.

Either way, Melchizedek stands in contrast to the Levitical priests the first readers of this book would have known. The argument is that Abraham, the father of the nation, honored this priest by paying tithes to him and receiving a blessing from him. By extension, the Levitical priests, as yet unborn when father Abraham met Melchizedek, also honored him and paid the tithe representatively through their ancestor. Thus the Levitical priests were inferior to Melchizedek.

Now Jesus is said to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek. By that connection he is superior to the priests from Levi who served God and the nation under the law. Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, so he could never have been a priest under the Law of Moses. He was a priest by God’s oath and decree, not by the regulation of the law. Since Jesus lives forever as the resurrected Son of God, he needs no successor, unlike

the Levitical priests who served, die and were replaced. And since he was sinless, he didn’t have to offer sin offerings for himself. Instead, he offered himself in innocence as the sin offering. He is better in every way than the Levitical priests, and his new priesthood announced a new covenant.

If that line of reasoning is not a big deal to you, consider it was a very big deal to the original readers who had come to Christ from Judaism, and were in jeopardy of returning to Judaism with its law and priests. The writer showed how such an idea made no sense, demonstrating the absolute superiority of Jesus and the new covenant to the Jewish priests and the Law of Moses. The law, originally given by God to Israel, was weak and useless compared to Christ. (So it’s also clear that Jesus is superior to any scheme or design of human origin.)

We may never in this life know all we’d like to know about this Melchizedek, whose name means “king of righteousness” and “king of peace.” But whoever he was, he points us to Jesus, the true king of righteousness and peace. We will never fathom all there is to know about Jesus, but we can know enough to trust him over every alternative.

Copyright © 2010 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.