Hebrews 8:4Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

If He is a priest, as indeed He is, then He had to be in another place. While on earth, He would not have been a priest. Why? He did not offer sacrifices or perform priestly rites, and rightly so, because there were priests here. The Apostle proves that it was impossible for Christ to be a priest on earth. Why? Because otherwise, he says, there would not even have been a resurrection. Here one must concentrate and enter into the Apostle's thought. Again he shows the difference between the Old Testament priesthood and Christ's.

He further confirms that, although He does not have His tabernacle on earth but in heaven, this does not prevent Him from being a priest. Notice the wisdom.

Someone might especially claim that He is not a priest on the ground that He has no place on earth where He performed priestly service. Yet by this very point he most strongly confirms that He is Priest.

He says that He is Priest precisely because He had no place on earth. If He remained on earth, He would not be a priest, for there were other priests on earth, and this circumstance would have seemed an objection.

But now, having heaven as His place, and having raised His own body there, He intercedes for us before the Father. Therefore, since He is in heaven, He is preeminently Priest.

For if He were on earth, one must think that He would not be a priest, since here there were priests who offered gifts according to the law. Understand this as meaning according to the commandments of the law.

The Apostle said this in defense of the law. He teaches that he does not condemn the law, but acknowledges that it too is worthy of honor, since it serves as a type of the heavenly.

For this reason he said that it would have been superfluous to call Christ Priest while He lived on earth, when the priests according to the law were performing the service under the law.

Therefore, if the priesthood under the law has come to an end, and the High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek has offered sacrifice and made other sacrifices unnecessary, why do the priests of the New Covenant perform the mystical service?

For those instructed in divine things, it is clear that we do not offer another sacrifice. Rather, we make remembrance of that one saving sacrifice.

Since they object, "How does the Apostle say of One who died that He performs priestly service?" he refutes this objection thus: "For if," having risen from the dead and not ascended into heaven, "He were on earth" as one dead, He would not be a priest. "There being priests" means while they are alive. But since He rose and ascended into heaven and remains alive, He performs the higher heavenly priestly ministry. Pointing out how His ministry differs from that of those priests, as shadow differs from truth, he says:

"If He were on earth, He would not be a priest." Why could Jesus not be a priest on earth? Because here He did not possess what the other priests possessed: neither the rights of birth, nor consecration, and so forth. If He had become a priest by His higher rights, we would have seen two priesthoods on earth and concluded that both were imperfect. Therefore the Apostle assigns Jesus another place, in heaven, in the true Tabernacle.

By these words the Apostle does not mean that it is generally impossible for men living on earth to be priests. If so, every human priesthood would be denied here. He means that Christ in particular, who came from the tribe of Judah and not from Levi, could not be high priest on earth among the Jewish people. He manifested His high priesthood only when He ascended into the heavens and there, in God's heavenly chamber, stood before the Father so as always to intercede for us.

Why, then, if Christ had remained on earth, would He not have been a priest alongside the priestly service of the Levitical priests?

The Apostle points the way to resolving this question by noting that those priests offer gifts according to the law. By implication, Christ would not have had this legality, and no one would have acknowledged His priestly rights.

Indeed, He had neither Levitical descent nor consecration. Besides this formal and, so to speak, juridical reason, there was another reason in the very essence of the two priesthoods, Christ's and the Levitical. The Apostle speaks of this in the following verse.

That Christ had to become minister of the archetypal sanctuary is proved by the Apostle from this point: Christ could not be a priest on earth.

Here the most important duty of priests, the offering of sacrifices, was already being performed by priests appointed according to the law from the line of Aaron.

At the same time, the Apostle makes clear that one should not regret that Christ did not become minister of the earthly tabernacle. That tabernacle, he says, is only a shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, τῶν ἐπουρανίων; compare τῶν ἁγίων.

But what is this heavenly sanctuary, the pattern, τύπος, which Moses saw on Mount Sinai and which the Apostle now has in mind?

Now is precisely the time to show that the ancient prophets, men who loved God, honored the names Jesus and Christ.

Moses was the first to understand how majestic and glorious the name of Christ is. He gave images, symbols, and mystical representations of heavenly realities, according to the Lord's saying: "See that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain" (Ex 25:40).

To honor the high priest in the highest way available to man, Moses calls him Christ. The high-priestly rank, in Moses' thought, surpasses every human title in dignity. Yet the name Christ gives it greater honor and glory.