1The former system had instructions as to how to worship, and an earthly sanctuary.

2The first room in the Tabernacle housed the candlestick, the table, and the sacred bread. This was called the Holy Place.

3Past the second veil in the Tabernacle was the room called the Most Holy Place.

4This contained the golden altar of incense, the gold-covered “agreement chest.” ⁴¹Inside this were the golden pot containing manna, Aaron's rod that had produced buds, and the stone inscriptions of the agreement. ⁴²

5Above this were the glorious angel cherubim covering the place of reconciliation. We can't discuss all of this in detail now.

6Once all of this had been set up, the priests would go in regularly to the first room of the Tabernacle to perform their duties.

7But only the high priest went into the second room, and only once a year. Even then he had to make a sacrifice involving blood, ⁴³which he offered for himself and for the people's sins of ignorance.

8By this the Holy Spirit indicated that the way into the true Most Holy Place hadn't been revealed while the first Tabernacle still existed. ⁴⁴

9This is an illustration for us in the present, showing us that the gifts and sacrifices that are offered can't make the worshiper's conscience clear.

10They're just religious regulations—about food and drink, and various ceremonies involving washing—which were put in place until the time of God's new way of relating to him.

11Christ has come as a high priest of all the good experiences we now have. He went into the greater, more complete Tabernacle that wasn't made by human hands—not part of this created world.

12He didn't enter through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood. He entered once, for all time, into the Most Holy Place, setting us free forever.

13For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a cow sprinkled on those who are ritually unclean make the body ceremonially clean,

14how much more does the blood of Christ—who offered himself in his sinless life to God through the eternal Spirit—clean your consciences from your past sinful lives so you can serve the living God?

15This is why he is the mediator of a new agreed relationship. Since a death has occurred to set them free from the sins committed under the first agreed relationship, now those who are called can receive the promise of an eternal inheritance.

16For a will to be implemented, the person who made it must be dead.

17A will is only valid when there's been a death—and is never applied while the person who made it is still alive.

18That's why the first agreement was established with blood.

19After Moses had given all the commandments of the law to everyone, he took the blood of calves and goats, and together with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, sprinkled the book ⁴⁵itself and all the people.

20He said to them, “This is the blood of the agreed relationship that God has told you he wants with you.” ⁴⁶

21Moses sprinkled the blood in the same way on the Tabernacle and everything used in worship.

22According to ceremonial law, almost everything is made clean with blood, and without shedding blood nothing is made ritually free from the stain of sin.

23So if the copies of what is in heaven needed to be cleansed in this way, the things in heaven needed cleansing by better sacrifices.

24For Christ hasn't entered a Most Holy Place constructed by human beings that is only a pattern of the original. He has entered heaven itself, and now appears on our behalf, speaking for us in God's presence.

25This was not to repeatedly offer himself, like a high priest has to enter the Most Holy Place year after year, offering blood that is not his own.

26Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. No: just this one time at the end of the present age he came to remove sin by sacrificing himself.

27Just as human beings die only once, and then are judged,

28so too for Christ—having been sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people, he will come again, not to deal with sin, but to save those who wait for him.