Hebrews 8:3

‘For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices, wherefore it is necessary that this high priest also has somewhat to offer.’

And just as every High Priest on earth is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices, so is it right that this heavenly High Priest has something to offer. What it is that He has to offer is not immediately stated, but that is what the writer intends to go on and show us. We will soon learn that it is the mediation of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 9:15), the application of His own blood from the offering of Himself (Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 9:14), and His perfect intercessory service in both (Hebrews 10:5-18). He is there in Heaven, among other things, as the slain Lamb (Revelation 5:6), and the perfect Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), as well as being there as our intercessor. What He has to offer is Himself as Lamb of God and Saviour of the World, the sacrifice offered once for all but ever visible in Heaven, the salvation continual but here seen as complete.

The Heavenly Ministry Is Now Contrasted With the Jew’s Earthly Ministry (Hebrews 8:4-5).

But while all this has been going on the earthly ministry of the levitical priests has continued. The Temple still stands. The priests still carry out their activities. What then of them? What is the position of their ministry? In answer he will now make the point that while their ministry has been valid in the past it is pointless going back to them, because all that they minister in are copies and shadows, once fully valid, but now empty since the Great Reality has come. A shadow is something that reflects something real, but is not in itself real. It is a vague outline. It is insubstantial.

Indeed he especially stresses that Moses made everything as copies of a pattern shown to him in the Mount. Here then was not the reality. It was a copy of the reality, produced by Moses and Israel under God. He wants his readers to recognise that with them he does recognise the past validity of that ministry but that he sees it as a validity that has been superseded because its copies and shadows have been fulfilled.