"_We have_" Him. He has taken His
seat indeed "at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the
heavens." But this great exaltation has not removed Him for a moment out
of our possession; we have Him. He is now the great Minister, the
supreme sacerdotal Functionary, of the heavenly sanctuary, "the true
tabernacle," [Greek: tes skenes tes alethines], the non-figurative
reality of which the Mosaic structure was only the shadow; the true
scene of unveiled Presence and immortal worship, "pitched" by Him whose
face makes Heaven, and makes it all one temple. But this sublimity of
our Priest's place and power does not make Him in the least less ours;
we have Him.

The words invite us to a new and deliberate look upward, and then to a
recollection deeper than ever that He is held spiritually in our very
hands; that He is a possession, nearer to us than any other.

Then (verses 3 and following) the thought moves towards the sacrificial
and offertorial qualifications of this great and most sacred Person. He
is what He is, our High Priest, our Minister of the sanctuary above, on
perfectly valid grounds. For He is, what every sacerdotal minister must
be, an Offerer. And He is this in a sense, in a way, congruous to His
heavenly position. He has no blood of goats and calves to present, like
the priests on earth. Indeed, were He "on earth" (ver. 4), this greatest
of all High Priests "would not even be a priest" ([Greek: oud an en
hiereus]), an ordinary priest. For that function, says the Writer, is
already filled, "according to the law," by the Aaronic order, to which
He never belonged and never could belong (see vii. 13, 14). It is in
charge of the sacred servants ([Greek: latreuousin]) of the earthly
sanctuary, the God-given type and shadow (ver. 5) of the realities of
Heaven, but no more than their type and shadow, partial and transient.
No, His sacerdotal qualification is of another sort and a greater. What
it is which "He hath to offer" in the celestial Holiest is not yet
explicitly said; that is reserved for the ninth chapter, to which this
is but the vestibule. But already the Epistle emphasizes the truth that
"He _hath somewhat_ to offer," so that we may fully realize the
completeness of His high-priestly power.

It may be well to pause here, and to ask whether this passage reveals
that our Lord Jesus Christ is at this moment "offering" for us, in His
heavenly life. We are all aware that this has been widely held and