3:1 Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession: Jesus
In the light of all that he has said about Christ in the preceding chapters, the writer now invites us to think more deeply about Him. From now on he will be comparing Christ, not with the angels, but with Moses and the whole of the Old Covenant system.
He invites us to this consideration as “holy brothers” (this of course also includes “sisters”). In using this term of common lineage, he was speaking to his readers both as Jews, sharing a natural bloodline, and as Christians, sharing the bloodline of Christ. By the word “holy” he is referring to three things: (1) The imputed righteousness of Christ, received at our new birth, by which the Father sees us “in Christ” as holy; (2) The fact that we are sanctified – set apart – for the Kingdom of God; and (3) The fact that we are called to so walk in Christ that the righteousness which has been imputed to us is also manifested in our lives.
The “heavenly calling” is beginning to speak of the comparison of Christ to Moses. When God sent Moses to the Israelites in Egypt, He called them to go out of Egypt (the “type” or foreshadowing of the old life of sin and bondage) into the promised land (the “type” of the Kingdom of God.) Our call is the fulfillment of that ancient shadow: we are called out of a place not of natural bondage, but of spiritual bondage; and we are called not into a natural land, but into the spiritual land of the Kingdom. Already, without even mentioning Moses, the writer has shown that what Christ brings is far greater.
The writer refers to Christ as “Apostle and High Priest”. The word “apostle” does not appear in the Old Testament. However, the meaning of the word is “sent one.” At Moses’ first encounter with the Lord in the burning bush, God said to him, “Come now therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.” (Ex. 4:10) This is confirmed in verse 14, “Thus shall you say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” In fact verses 10 to 15 of this chapter contain five statements that God was sending Moses. He most certainly was a “sent one” – in New Testament terms, an apostle.
Of course, the Jews considered Moses to be the single most outstanding character in their entire history. After all, he had led them out of Egypt and overseen the establishment of the nation. He had been instrumental in receiving the Law from the hands of God, and in enforcing that Law in the life of the nation. He had overseen the building of the Tabernacle and the establishment of the priesthood and the sacrificial system. Under his leadership, a rag-tag bunch of exiles with no vision or unity had become a nation and a force to be reckoned with. No other leader in Jewish history had held the position or the authority of Moses.
If the writer to the Hebrews wants to show that the system established by Christ is superior to that established by Moses, he must first show that Christ is greater than Moses. To do that, he must show common ground between Christ and Moses (remember, you can’t compare apples and oranges – much less apples and railway locomotives!) Like Moses, Christ was a “sent one” – an apostle. Unlike Moses, Christ can be called the Apostle. Over the centuries, there had been many sent by God, though none considered as great as Moses. Jesus Himself had those He had appointed as apostles during His earthly life, and others, like Paul, who were apostles sent as resurrection gifts to the church (cf Ephesians 4). Only Christ, however, had been sent directly from the throne of God. The others were on earth, sent by God to other people on earth. Christ alone had been sent from heaven to earth. His human life was in itself the fulfillment of His apostolic call.
The writer also refers to Christ as “High Priest”. This relates not directly to Moses, but to the priestly and sacrificial system instituted through him. Moses was not the High Priest, Aaron was. It was the beginning of God’s Old Testament version of the “separation of church and state.” The leader of the nation (in later days the king) could not be the High Priest. In fact, after the establishment of the Kingdom, the King and the priests did not even come from the same tribe. (The Word of God does not tell us why this was so, but my guess would be that it was because God well understood the nature of the human heart, and knew the potential danger that would have been in giving both political and religious power into the same hands.) In Christ, however, the two come together. He is not only the sent one, but also the spiritual leader.
Again, whilst there were many High Priests throughout the Old Testament and right up to the time when the Book of Hebrews was being written, only of Christ could it be said that He was the High Priest. As the writer will show later in the book, this was because His was a different order of priesthood, one which by its very nature was greater that that of Aaron.
It is a good point to consider that we now have just one High Priest – one “priest over the priests.” Since the Word makes it clear that all God’s people are priests (1 Peter 2:9, Rev. 1:6), this totally rules out the idea of the ministry as a “priesthood.” Ministers in the New Covenant must never assume the role of standing between God and the people as the Old Covenant priests did. (It also rules out the totally unbiblical concept, promoted by many in the church today, of the husband as “priest” of the household. The husband’s headship never places him between his wife and God. To do so would make him her “high priest”, a role that belongs only to Christ.)