Our priesthood, like Christ’s, is different from the Aaronic priesthood, not based on law but on grace.
Sandwiched between two lists of Levites, we’re introduced to the priests (1 Chron 24:1-19). Every New Testament believer should be vitally interested in this section since, by grace, we have been initiated into a far more glorious priesthood (1 Pet 2:5-10). More glorious? I’ll say! More glorious ethnically, “out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,… made…kings and priests to our God” (Rev 5:9-10). More glorious numerically, “a great multitude which no one could number” (7:9). More glorious graciously, for “remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh…being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise…now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:11-13). It is more glorious positionally, for we have access to “the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man” (Heb 8:2). And it is much more glorious experientially, for “we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens” (4:14) who never dies; a perfect sacrifice that needed only to be offered once-for-all (10:12); and “an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat” (13:10). Like Christ’s own linking of King and Priest, forbidden in David’s day, we are both holy and royal priests. No longer are we, as they were, “divided by lot” (1 Chron 24:5), but united in Christ. And no longer must we, as they, follow “the schedule of their service for coming into the house of the Lord” (v 19). The veil no longer blocks access, and every priest at any time may enter the Holiest. So then, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb 10:22).