Translation
Christ entered
Go to footnote numberonce for all into the holy places and thus obtained eternal redemption, He did not do so by means of
the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood.
Paraphrase
Christ entered just once into the most sacred place where man is represented before God, and by doing so he purchased our redemption forever, but He did not receive authorization to enter there using the normal means which are physical representations of spiritual realities, rather His authority is based on the fact that He is the reality those physical copies were modeled after, and He proved it when He offered Himself as the only efficacious sacrifice for mankind.
Footnotes
1
“entered” is the primary verb of verses 11 and 12 which form one sentence; all of its other verbs or participles are secondary. The Holy of Holies that Christ entered was not the one made by hands but the true place where God meets with man, which can mean people’s hearts, or the system established by God for intimacy between God and man. We know that Jesus established a new system for connecting with God, but He also utilized God’s new system to enter into people’s hearts through the new system God had set up. It is hard to understand because, in the physical world we are accustomed to, one cannot use item A to make item A. The author is giving yet another example of how great Jesus Christ is. He is fulfilling everything about the Old Testament sacrificial system, yet He is replacing it with something better.