Imagine the following scenario for a moment. As you back your car down the driveway tomorrow morning on your way to work, a local police officer pulls up behind you and gets out. The officer comes to the driver's window and says, ""Don't worry, nothing's wrong. I'm just here to escort you to work, to help make sure you don't violate any traffic laws on the way. It's a new service we're offering our citizens to help them obey the law.""

If that happened to you, you'd look around for the friend who was playing a bad practical joke on you. Or you might look for the hidden TV camera--anything that would prove it wasn't real. You would know something was up, because the law simply doesn't work that way. Obedience depends on you. The officer shows up only after there has been a violation.

That's the problem with the law. It can only do two things: command and condemn. It has no power to help you obey. Even so, we respect the law. To an even greater extent, a first-century Jew would have respected the Law. Therefore, the readers of this letter must have been startled when the author called the Mosaic regulations ""weak and useless"" (v. 18). The writer, however, was not attacking God's Law; he was simply pointing out the temporary nature of those legal statutes.

Since the Law could not make anyone perfect in relationship to God (vv. 11, 19), a change was necessary--specifically, a change in the priesthood. Why was this change necessary? For a number of reasons.

First, the Levitical priests were themselves sinful men who had to offer sacrifices for their own sins. They had no power to help the people obey and no authority of their own to forgive sins.

Second, the Levitical priests died out and had to be replaced in each new generation. Although the human priesthood could not be truly permanent in nature, Jesus' priesthood is built on ""the power of an indestructible life"" (v. 16).

A third reason change was needed is that the sacrifices of the Law covered sin only temporarily. God never meant for the blood of animals to make permanent atonement for sin.

What a blessing it is to know that the death and resurrection of Christ have decisively addressed every inadequacy of the Law! The Hebrews needed to understand that, instead of turning back to the Law, their hope lay in going forward with Christ.

The freedom from the Law that we enjoy in Christ (see Rom. 6:14) should become even more precious to us after a study like this.

Given the finality of Christ's sacrifice, it would be a shame for us to fall into the trap of trying to earn God's favor by our performance. Yet even sincere Christians can do this to themselves and to others. Are you judging yourself, or someone else, by a performance standard you have created? If so, make this a day of release.