Speaking for God--Christ the Priest
Speaking for God–Christ the Priest by Rev. L. John Gable
November 27, 2022
If you were to look for an answer to the question we’ve been asking recently, “Who is Jesus Christ and what did He come to do?” my guess is you would begin by looking in the New Testament, perhaps starting with the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). And the answer you would get there would be accurate to be sure, but not necessarily complete, even they suggest that there is something more to be said about Him. Kind of like the five blind men who were asked to describe an elephant. Since none of them could see the whole, each was able to describe only what they could touch: the side, the trunk, the tail, the massive legs. Each correct, but incomplete.
Remember, we are people of the Book, both the New and the Old Testaments, often referred to as the Hebrew Bible, which was in fact the Bible Jesus would have known and used as a practicing Jew. The New Testament’s answer to our question about Jesus most likely will be that He is the Promised Messiah, our Savior and Lord. Using Old Testament terms to describe the coming Messiah, He would more likely be referred to as “prophet, priest and king”, as we have heard Him described in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Is one true and the other not? No. Let us rather say that the one answer fulfills the other as we believe the New Testament fulfills the promises of the Old. Remember Jesus Himself said that He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.
In recent weeks we have seen that Jesus, our Savior and Lord, fulfills the role of prophet by being THE One who speaks for God and that He is THE King whom God has anointed to introduce and rule over His eternal Kingdom.
What then does it mean when we say that Christ is the “priest?” The 25th question of the Shorter Catechism asks, “How does Christ execute the office of priest?” The answer is given, “Christ executes the office of priest in His once offering up of Himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, and in making continual intercession for us.” So what does that mean for us today?
Think with me for a moment, what is your deepest heart’s desire for your spiritual life? Most of us would say, it is to enjoy an intimate, authentic relationship with God; to live our lives in accordance with His will and purpose; to be able to worship Him in truth and confidence; and for our family members and friends to enjoy this same kind of relationship with God as well. It is safe to say that this is what people of faith have desired through the ages. The problem is, there is a barrier which keeps us from enjoying this kind of an intimate, authentic relationship with God called sin. By sin, we mean a fundamental brokenness or disharmony in our relationship with God that impacts all of our other relationships, and try as we may, there is nothing we can do to heal that brokenness. Sure, we can “try to be good as we know we should”, but we know all too well that our feeble efforts at self-help merely deal with the symptoms of this life-threatening disease not its source. Unable to heal ourselves, we need something or someone to fix what is broken within us. We need something or someone to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, namely, to restore us in to a right relationship with God.
In the Old Testament, the means established to deal with human sinfulness was the system of the sacrifice, and it focused on the work of the priests, most specifically the high priest. We are, at least somewhat, familiar with how the system of sacrifices worked. The people would confess their sin to the priest, who would then require of them a prescribed sacrifice, a bull, a goat, a dove, depending on the severity of the transgression. He would then sacrifice the animal on the altar before the Lord for the forgiveness of their sins. The priest, in effect, served as the mediator or intercessor between God and the people. He faced toward God on behalf of the people, offering their sacrifices, and toward the people on behalf of God, as he pronounced the forgiveness of their sins which only God can grant.
That was the daily function of the temple priest, but then there was one designated as the high priest, who had a special responsibility. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest representing not any one individual but the whole community, would enter into the most sacred place in the temple, an inner sanctum called the Holy of Holies, the place where it was believed God lived among His people. From the time of Moses and the 40 year sojourn in the wilderness on, no one was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies save the high priest and him only once a year. Prior to his entering, he was required to perform an elaborate ritual of sacrifice and purification, for he was carrying not only all of the accumulated sins of the whole community, but also his own sins, into the presence of a Holy God. Every year on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would take two perfect animals. In the presence of all the people, he would sacrifice the first to the Lord as a “sin offering”, believing that there was life in the blood and the shedding of blood was the means of forgiveness. He would then lay his hands upon the head of the second animal, generally a goat, and he would confess all the sins of the people, and transfer their guilt to this animal which was then marked and driven out into the wilderness away from the community. That animal came to be called the “scape goat.”
This was the high priest’s function in the community and he performed this service once a year, year in and year out, as the means to deal with the sin problem of the people and to restore them into a new and right relationship with God. The problem was, it was temporary. It was provisional. It was only effective for a brief time, until the people, or even the high priest himself, sinned again. I always thought it would be ironic, and self-defeating, if the high priest was to walk out of the Holy of Holies after offering the sacrifice and think to himself, “I did that really well this year” only to realize that pride is a sin in and of itself, and the clock would start again until the next year.
While we may not fully understand or appreciate this solution to the problem, and certainly find it gruesome and distasteful, we do understand their need. We know what it feels like to be cut off from God because of our sin-sickness. We know that we, too, need a means by which we can deal with the brokenness and disharmony in our lives, but we need it to be more permanent than this. As John Stott writes, “We don’t need rules, we need deliverance. We don’t need education, we need a change of heart. We need power, not advice. We need spiritual power. We need a Savior.” Enter Jesus Christ, who came, not to abandon this ancient system of dealing with our sinfulness, but to fulfill it, to perfect it, to make it complete and lasting. Jesus came to be our Great High Priest.
Turning to our lessons from the Book of Hebrews we discover three ways in which Jesus becomes our Great High Priest.
First, He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. Just as the sinful people could not enter the Holy of Holies but needed the high priest to act on their behalf, neither can we, as sinful people, stand before a Holy God. So, Christ has gone before us as our representative and intercessor. He has paved the way for our salvation. In our faithful imagination, we can picture Jesus, standing before the throne of God, offering up our broken human condition and making intercession on our behalf. He faces God on our behalf for, as we read in Hebrews, “He understands all of our weakness. He has been tested as we are, yet is without sin.” And at the same time He turns toward us, as the very Son of God, offering us the free gift of God’s love and forgiveness as we turn to Him in faith.
Do you remember the Gospel writers telling that when Jesus was crucified, the “veil in the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom”? (Matt 27:51) Do you know what curtain they are referring to? The veil that hung in the inner sanctum of the temple as the entrance to the Holy of Holies, the veil that separated the people from entering for themselves in to the presence of God. Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He has borne our sins and torn the veil which allows us to enter in to the very presence of God.
Second, we see that He has done this “ONCE AND FOR ALL.” Where as the sacrifice of the old covenant had to be repeated annually, the sacrifice of the new covenant in Christ is established “once and for all.” We read in Hebrews 9, “He entered once and for all in to the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood, thus obtaining eternal salvation.” Whereas the old covenant was temporary, provisional and transitory, the new covenant in Christ is timeless, permanent and eternal.
I wonder with you, what of what we do here is temporal and what of it is eternal? Everything around us is passing away, this building, this sanctuary, even these people. These are not the things we are to hold on to. The only thing around us here that is eternal and timeless is our worship of God. So we must follow our Great High Priest into the sanctuary that will never decay and join in the fellowship that will not pass away, in order to worship the God Whose mercy is never-ending.
Third, Jesus, the Great High Priest, secured our salvation with His own blood, not the blood of animals. The ancient system of sacrifices established that there is life in the blood. Something or someone had to die to deal with the brokenness of our sin. So Jesus fulfilled the old covenant when He assumed the part of the sacrificial lamb, the perfect sacrifice, and willingly laid down His life for our sakes, in order to restore us to a right relationship with God. Remember the very first time John the Baptist publicly recognized Jesus, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” This is the answer to our question as to Who He is and why He came. “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.”
Why did He do it? Because of His great love for us. We read in Romans, “God proves His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (5:8) He did it because, even more than we desire it, God desires to have a pure and unbroken relationship with us, not just for a moment or even for a lifetime, but for eternity. But, in order for that to happen, this problem of our sinfulness had to be dealt with, once and for all. God knew that there was nothing we could do to fix the problem, so He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He came to us in Jesus Christ, the Great High Priest, and by His own blood, made the eternal sacrifice for our sin. The veil separating us from God was torn in two from top to bottom, the veil covering the entrance to the Holy of Holies, the veil of sin covering each of our hearts. As the hymn tells us, He “opened the life gates that all may come in.”
So, then let our hearts’ desires of being restored in to a right relationship with God be fulfilled. Using the words of the writer of Hebrews, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, and there receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” For the way has been opened for us by Jesus the Christ, our Savior and Lord, our great Prophet, Priest and King.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN