God spoke through the great prophet Moses when He gave that old rule about priests coming only from Levi and Aaron. What about the other laws given through Moses? Are they also “set aside”? The very same words are used in Hebrews chapter 10.
He does away with the first in order to establish [begin] the second (Hebrews 10:9).
This passage teaches that Christ’s new sacrifice replaces the old sacrifices. The two kinds of sacrifice could not continue together. The book of Hebrews uses the word “better” thirteen times to show how Jesus’ way is greater than any other way.
The new way of Christ is so much better that there is no longer any need for the old way given through Moses. Moses was the first mediator. But just as Moses himself promised, God sent a second Mediator. Now we must listen to the new Mediator, Jesus Christ.
That is why the New Testament tells us that Moses’ laws about circumcision no longer rule us (Acts 15). Anyone trying to put us under those laws again will have serious trouble from God (Galatians 5:1-6). For the same reason, no one can judge us now about Moses’ special days and Sabbaths (Colossians 2:16). Colossians 2:17 describes those old days as “a shadow of the things to come.” Hebrews 8:5 and Hebrews 10:1 also describe matters of the Law as “a copy” and “shadow”. Imagine a man walking along behind a hanging sheet. People on the other side of the sheet see his shadow. They know he is coming. But they only have a little idea of what he might look like. In the same way, the Law was a “shadow” that came first so that people could get an idea of what was to come. The shadow helped to picture the coming reality. As Colossians 2:17 says, “the substance belongs to Christ.”
Even the Ten Commandments were a part of that old shadow. Romans 7 shows this because it quotes from “the Law.” Using the very words of the Ten Commandments (Romans 7:7), it plainly says we “died to the Law” and “we have been released from the Law.”
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God… But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:4,6).
ERV: In the same way, my brothers and sisters, your old selves died and you became free from the law through the body of Christ. Now you belong to someone else. You belong to the one who was raised from death. We belong to Christ so that we can be used in service to God… In the past the law held us as prisoners, but our old selves died, and we were made free from the law. So now we serve God in a new way, not in the old way with the written rules. Now we serve God in the new way, with the Spirit.
We see the same teaching in many other scriptures (Romans 3-4; 6:15; 10:4; Galatians 2-3; 5:1-4; Hebrews 9:15-17; 12:18-24). Perhaps the passage that sums them up best is Galatians 3:25:
But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
ERV: Now the way of faith has come. So we don’t live under the Law now.