"The heavenly life...made an appearance on earth"

“…another means of tracing the (Hebrews) author’s view of the relation between the heavenly world and the make-up of the Old Testament religion is afforded in the peculiar meaning he attaches to the predicate trans­lated in the English versions by “true,” but more adequately rendered by “veritable.” This is a predicate reserved for the things in heaven because, in contrast to the shadows of the Old Covenant, they constitute the solid reality, the veritable substance.

"In this characteristic use of the word veritable, Hebrews coincides with the Fourth Gospel. There the Evangelist speaks of the Logos as “the true light,” and our Lord calls Himself “the true vine,” “the true bread,” and defines the latter as “the bread that comes down out of heaven, the bread of God” (6:33). And even more closely approaching the viewpoint of Hebrews is the contrast drawn in the pro­logue between the law given through Moses, and the grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ. For here, it will be observed, the Christian reve­lation is characterized as “truth” in distinction from the Mosaic law, to which this predicate does not belong.

"The meaning is not, of course, that the Mosaic law is untrue or false in the ordinary sense of the word; in fact, this misunderstanding is carefully guarded against by the form of statement employed: the law was given “through” Moses, which implies that Moses in the lawgiving was only the instrument of God, from whom nothing false or untrue can come. “Truth” here means what it means in Hebrews; it expresses the heavenly character of the Christian realities of revelation and redemption in which the higher world directly communi­cates itself, and the opposite of “the true” is the typical, wherein the con­nection with the heavenly world is present only in a mediated, shadowy form.

"And Jesus, because He is the center and exponent of this great pro­jection of the supernatural into the lower world, is called “the Truth.” In the well-known answer to Thomas concerning the way to the place whither Jesus is going, our Savior declares that He Himself personally is the way. His way is into heaven, and through identification with Him the disciples can reach the same goal. But our Lord further explains this fact, that the way to heaven lies through Him, from His being “the truth”, and “the life,” which means nothing else than that the veritable higher world has come down in Him, and that particularly the heavenly life has made its appearance on earth in His Person." -- Geerhardus Vos, "Hebrews, The Epistle of the Diatheke", Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, pp. 201, 202