Today’s reading: Hebrews 7-10.

The Jewish Christians who received the Letter to the Hebrews had grown up under the Mosaic Law and were in danger of abandoning Christ and returning to their former practices. The letter exhorted them not to do so, since in Christ God had given them a better way, a better hope.

A forever priest

And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. For it is declared: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 7:15-17

The Mosaic Law established the Aaronic priesthood, but that ancestral priesthood failed to solve the problem of sin. Melchizedek, the priest and king in Abraham’s day, existed before and outside of…