8 What we are saying is this: Christ, whose priesthood we have just described, is our High Priest and is in heaven at the place of greatest honor next to God himself. ² He ministers in the temple in heaven, the true place of worship built by the Lord and not by human hands.

³ And since every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, Christ must make an offering too. ⁴ The sacrifice he offers is far better than those offered by the earthly priests. (But even so, if he were here on earth he wouldn’t even be permitted to be a priest because down here the priests still follow the old Jewish system of sacrifices.) ⁵ Their work is connected with a mere earthly model of the real tabernacle in heaven; for when Moses was getting ready to build the tabernacle, God warned him to follow exactly the pattern of the heavenly tabernacle as shown to him on Mount Sinai. ⁶ But Christ, as a Minister in heaven, has been rewarded with a far more important work than those who serve under the old laws because the new agreement that he passes on to us from God contains far more wonderful promises.

⁷ The old agreement didn’t even work. If it had, there would have been no need for another to replace it. ⁸ But God himself found fault with the old one, for he said, “The day will come when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and the people of Judah. ⁹ This new agreement will not be like the old one I gave to their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; they did not keep their part in that agreement, so I had to cancel it. ¹⁰ But this is the new agreement I will make with the people of Israel, says the Lord: I will write my laws in their minds so that they will know what I want them to do without my even telling them, and these laws will be in their hearts so that they will want to obey them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. ¹¹ And no one then will need to speak to his friend or neighbor or brother, saying, ‘You, too, should know the Lord,’ because everyone, great and small, will know me already. ¹² And I will be merciful to them in their wrongdoings, and I will remember their sins no more.”

¹³ God speaks of these new promises, of this new agreement, as taking the place of the old one; for the old one is out of date now and has been put aside forever.