7:23-24 The Levitical priests had to succeed one another because they kept dying, but Christ needs no successor because He will not die.
7:25 The fact that Christ will not die and need replacement by another priest means that He can see His work of delivering His people through to the end. He can deliver completely (better than "forever,"v. 25) in the sense of seeing us through to the realization of our full salvation, our rest (inheritance) in God's presence (cf. 1:14).
"Here the author is not referring to His saving work as the salvation of sinners from judgment and death, but rather using the words to savein the sense of to bring to God's desired end' . . ."225
Our trials and temptations need not separate us from our inheritance since Jesus Christ can continue to support us by providing mercy and grace (4:14-16) all the way to our ultimate reward. What a comfort and assurance it is to realize that Jesus Christ Himself is praying for us constantly!
This verse is not talking about eternal security but about remaining faithful to the Lord and as a result receiving our full reward. Our eternal security does rest on the intercessory ministry of Jesus Christ, but that was not the writer's point here (cf. Rom. 8:33-34).
"It is important to emphasize this, for the character of our Lord's intercession has at times been grotesquely misrepresented in popular Christian thought. He is not to be thought of as an orante, standingever before the Father with outstretched arms, like the figures in the mosaics of the catacombs, and with strong crying and tears pleading our cause in the presence of a reluctant God; but as a thronedPriest-King, asking what He will from a Father who always hears and grants His request.'"226
"Despite these exhortations to faithfulness and warnings against unfaithfulness [in 6:4-6], Hebrews does not base the believer's assurance on works. The basis of ongoing assurance is Christ's high-priestly work of intercession."227
"In Hebrews salvation' is presented as a future eschatological inheritance (1:14; 5:9; 9:28). There is, nevertheless, a definite sense in which the community has already begun to participate in salvation as a result of the obedience and sacrificial death of Christ and his subsequent exaltation (cf. 2:3-4; 6:4-5, 9)."228
"Just as Christ's priesthood is permanent, so is the salvation which he makes possible."229
