JESUS AS THE HIGH PRIEST
(Suggested Reading: Heb. 4:14-16)
Before we can understand the meaning of priesthood we must first understand the meaning of apostleship. We have briefly considered apostleship in the preceding chapters. Now we will consolidate our knowledge of apostleship and show how it contrasts with priesthood. It is important to do this because in Hebrews Christ is both the Apostle and the Priest. As Apostle God saluted Him "Thou art My Son"—as Priest He says "Thou art a Priest"—5:5-6.
The Difference Between Apostleship and Priesthood
In Scripture an apostle was a man sent from God with the Word of God. Since the apostle Paul completed the Word of God Col. 1:25 it was evident to the early Church that there could be no more apostles. When men claimed they were they were put on trial at Ephesus and proved to be liars Rev. 2:2. Apostles were sent out by each Person of the Godhead. God the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world and so Jesus is called an Apostle in 3:1. God the Son sent the twelve apostles out with the Word of God Matt. 10:5-7. God the Holy Spirit sent the apostles Barnabus and Paul out to preach the Word of God Acts 14:14. The reason why each Person in the Godhead sent out apostles is interesting for it reveals the universal scope of God's blessing for man. As an Apostle Christ was sent out by God the Father with a special mission the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Then God the Son sent out the twelve apostles to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to the Jewish part of that world. Finally, when they refused it God the Holy Spirit sent Barnabus and Saul to the Gentile part of that world Acts 13:2. Thus an apostle was a man sent by God to bring the Word of God to the world.
A priest on the other hand had to be called. As just demonstrated that is precisely the opposite of an apostle who is sent. If I am called I come to the person calling. That is one great idea behind priesthood approach to God. As Apostle Christ came from God but as High Priest He goes to God. At this point we would be going too far ahead of our subject to explain why Christ enters God's presence as our High Priest. The important thing is to see that only those who have appropriated Christ's services as Apostle can have them as High Priest. The whole scope of His birth, life, death and resurrection the message of the gospel will be found in His Apostleship. Those who deny that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world are not in living relationship to God and so have no High Priest to go to God for them. The man of the world must fight his way through the world. Believers are helped through the world by their High Priest.
The Compassion and Support of Our Great High Priest
The term "Great High Priest" here anticipates doctrine which will be found later on in Hebrews. But in brief the term "high priest" means the chief priest, as Aaron was over the other priests who served in the tabernacle. However the term Great High Priest means that He is alone in the office His is the lasting supremacy of a Great High Priest who lives forever in the Divine Presence. Aaron passed through the pattern of the heavens in the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement. But our Great High Priest has passed through the actual heavens. Does this awe us and make us say like Peter "depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord?" On the contrary one of the functions of His office is to remove things in our lives which would discourage us from coming to God in prayer. That is the thought in verse 15 "for we have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin." He is both the Son of God and Man. Had He remained Son of God without becoming a man how could He feel and sympathize for us? It takes a man to sympathize with another man's sorrows, troubles, etc. in life. And this Man, who is also Son of God has passed through the heavens. Such being the case we are to hold firmly to our confession. He can be affected when we suffer from human weaknesses. He suffered from hunger, thirst, fatigue of body in the days of His flesh just as we do. He suffered in spirit too at the grave of Lazarus, and wept there. Such is our Great High Priest.
Now the question is what does He do for us as we pass through a troubled world in a body of weakness. As High Priest He does not come to assist us if we sin. If that happens He may plead for us with God our Father as our Advocate. We must never confuse human infirmities i.e. weakness in the body with sin. "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous" 1 John 2:1. So if we sin He may plead our case with God our Father as our Advocate. Rather what we have to consider here is the role of our Great High Priest in helping us in our infirmities in the body.
Infirmities show up in the entire span of life from childhood to old age so that we need an "all the way home" high priest. They are things which we cannot control by our own efforts or the efforts of others, and very often they represent losses of things we once enjoyed. We may suffer physically from accidents, war, disease or constantly diminishing bodily function due to age. We may suffer mental stress from loss of property, money, income, bereavement, the greatest of all losses, which often happens unexpectedly. Children lose their brothers and sisters or their parents, married couples their partners, older people their friends. Bereavement is more than the lost of loved ones and their companionship, for in its train comes loneliness. Some people spend much of their lives in loneliness. They may never have married. They may be blind, crippled, or forgotten in nursing homes. Infirmities then are very real, very distressing. Most people experience them in varying degree and often the burden is too heavy for us. But we are not alone. These circumstances of life come under the eye of our great high priest. He evaluates our problems and in the light of what is best for us spiritually either relieves us or strengthens us while permitting the trial to continue. The desert of this world is God's university and what our High Priest does for us here is done with the light of eternity before Him. This often distresses us because we prefer a solution in time. But the Scripture says He is a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God. We are too much like Israel, not thinking of the Promised Land but complaining to God how difficult things are down here. Well, Christ was in this world too but unlike us He glorified God on the earth and all in view of the coming glory. Did it ever strike you, for example, that in the miracles Christ did in this world we get an intimation of the way He would help His people when He went back to heaven as their Great High Priest? In other words just as His miracles relieved and supported man physically while He was on earth so is He now performing the same works spiritually from His seat in heaven. These are works of relieving us when all seems hopeless (mercy) or sustaining us for a trial which He permits to continue (grace).
Mercy the relief given to the man who was beaten on the road to Jericho Jesus told "a certain lawyer" a parable about a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who was ambushed by thieves who stole his clothes and beat him so badly that he was half dead. However, a certain Samaritan traveling that way saw him and had compassion on him. To have compassion is to show mercy to do something positive about a need which the needy person cannot do for himself. The Priest and the Levite the official representatives of the law passed by the wounded man. Human priesthood could not help man for it has nothing man needs no dressings for his wounds, no medication, no shelter and no Christ for companionship. But the Lord for He was the Good Samaritan has everything that is needed. He dressed the man's wounds with the medication of the day oil and wine bandaged them, provided him with transportation to an inn and prepaid his expenses there until He should return.
There are two parts to this story. First the Lord undoes Satan's work beating and robbing man. This is Heb. 2:14-15. Secondly He uses His own power as High Priest to put us beyond further damage from Satan by sheltering us in this world until His second coming for us (though there was no room for Him in the inn when He was here). Such is the doctrine. Now we will provide one out of many illustrations of how it applies in practical Christian life.
Years ago I knew a faithful Christian, now with the Lord, whose name was Thomas Holliday. This man was an official of an important power company. In his leisure hours he went street preaching. He had a good voice and was a gifted evangelist. One day his manager called him into his office and told him bluntly that his street preaching activities brought discredit to the company in the eyes of the public and that unless he stopped them he would be fired. Holliday refused to do so. Certainly there was Scriptural precedent for his refusal when other rulers had commanded Peter and John not to speak at all nor teach in the Name of Jesus, they refused Acts 4:17-31. His manager then told Holliday that he was going away on a business trip and when he returned the first thing he would do was take steps to fire him. We may be sure that in the interval Holliday was at the throne of grace to receive mercy (removal of the trial) and grace (to support him in it while it lasted). On the day of his return Holliday's manager walked into his office no doubt intending to execute his promise to fire the Lord's servant. Shortly after he came out of his office on a stretcher for he had suffered a massive heart attack. Another man replaced him as manager and Holliday continued to preach the gospel in the street.
Grace the support given us by our Great High Priest in a trial He does not see fit to remove Since God is sovereign He can work His will toward us without explaining why. For example He allowed Herod to kill James with the sword but He sent His angel to deliver Peter. Since we know that all things work together for good toward those who love God we must not question His ways. Having said this we will now turn to John 11, for this passage is a foreshadowing of how our Great High Priest supports us (grace) in sickness and bereavement.
The question of sickness and bodily disability comes up first. In considering such trials in the body we are to understand cases which physicians and surgeons cannot alleviate and the Lord's sustaining grace is needed. Evidently that was the case with Lazarus' terminal illness in John 11. The sisters of Lazarus sent the Lord a message that their brother was sick, for they knew His curing power. The Lord, however, appears to ignore the message. Actually He received it but it was not His purpose to heal Lazarus. He stayed away from Bethany for two days instead of traveling to it. Before He went there He told His disciples that Lazarus was dead now. On arrival He is reproached by the two sisters of the deceased that if He had only come earlier their brother would not have died. How true to life this is. How often we pray to the Lord for something which in His wisdom He does not wish to give us. Then the tendency of our hearts is to reproach the Lord for unanswered prayer. But the Lord does not forget us any more than Lazarus. Sometimes He gives us dying grace and Lazarus got that sometimes living grace when life seems hopeless. I cite the instances of two crippled women I know who are very bright Christians. One is confined to bed the other to a wheelchair. Yet they radiate the grace which supports them in otherwise unsupportable positions. Such is the effect of the High Priesthood of Jesus.
But let us continue with the story of the raising of Lazarus. It is critical to the understanding of Christ's High Priesthood because it shows its acting in three ways the infirmity of sickness, the supreme infirmity of bereavement and a third thing which we will consider later in this book because it is out of place here. Well the Lord finally goes to Bethany, there to be virtually accused by Lazarus' two sisters that Lazarus wouldn't have died if He hadn't been so slow see John 11:21 and 32. Their bereavement was real. However their words had tinges of accusation in them. Spiritual as these women were they, like Israel in the desert, and we in this world, are slow to realize that as for God His way is perfect. Mary though goes to meet the Lord. She remains silent at the grave unlike her sister Martha and listens to the Lord's words which raise Lazarus from the dead. The result is that "many of the Jews who came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him." One of the things our Great High Priest does for us in the hour of bereavement is comfort us, not only as He comforted Mary on the way to the tomb but afterward with the consolation that the parting is not permanent but temporary. As He raised Lazarus so will He raise our loved ones. And so we sorrow not as others who have no hope. Grace strengthens us and the people of the world note this. The Mary's of our day who have walked with Christ display the superiority of Christianity to everything else in death's dark valley.
The Throne of Grace
This is our last consideration v.16. It is an allusion to the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle. But that was a throne of judgment. The people dared not come near that. Once a year only could Aaron the High Priest come in there with the blood of a sacrifice to sprinkle on it and a censer of incense whose rising fragrance hid his flesh, so to speak. The blood was a figure of the shed blood of Christ in Aaron's time that was future. But under grace, with the blood of Christ shed, the character of God's throne has been changed from a throne of judgment to a throne of grace. The "mercy seat" anticipated Christ's death hence its name the throne is called a throne of grace. That is why these two things are written in v.16. We come boldly to the throne of grace to receive mercy. Since grace characterizes the throne the measure in which it is dispensed is the measure of God's heart a work wrought inside us to strengthen us. Mercy is measured according to our needs as individuals in the hostile outside world.
A closing comment is that we must not confuse the throne of grace with the office of our Great High Priest. In Israel the high priest had two principal functions offering sacrifice outside and burning incense inside. But Christ was both the Priest and the Sacrifice. He offered one sacrifice outside in this world in figure the brazen altar thus ending that part of the Priest's work. Then He went into heaven to burn incense on the golden altar, so to speak. When we draw near to the throne of grace He makes our prayers efficacious provided they are in harmony with the Word of God and God's will for us. But it is to God we go with our prayers whether individually or collectively. And it is to God our Great High Priest goes for us. If our prayers are mistaken even an apostle had difficulty discerning the will of God Acts 16:6-10 He is understanding, being both compassionate and full of grace.
Summary of the Digression Chapters 3 and 4
Chapters 3 and 4 are digressions to make the Christian position understandable to professing Hebrew Christians who still thought in terms of an earthly Messiah found in the writings of the prophets and an earthly ritual the need for which had passed. Christ had come to them as an Apostle with the Word of God. In obedience to that Word He purged our sins. Then by His own death He disannulled Satan's power of death and delivered us from the fear of death. His work as Apostle finished, He passed through the heavens as our Great High Priest 4:14 He sat down on God's throne on High 1:3. Our calling now is heavenly for our High Priest is in heaven. To reach Him we must pass through the wilderness in His power dependence and obedience. God gave Moses and Aaron to His people to support them as they went through the wilderness. They came with the Word of God and the services of the High Priest. These are the same things we get. Only their fathers failed, for faith was not mixed with the Word of God 4:2 so that the impediments along the way became insurmountable. The priesthood suffered from human infirmity. But we have the full Word of God and a priesthood which cannot fail. He may either relieve the pressure if the circumstances of life become unbearable, or support us in the trials. He may help or guide us. He knows what we suffer for He suffered Himself. He also knows which of these courses will be most beneficial to us spiritually. In view of this we are encouraged to come boldly to the throne of grace. Israel could not come at all because they had a throne of law. Now that Christ's blood is shed we can approach that same throne in holy boldness because perfect love (as expressed in His death) has cast out fear. But we musn't confuse coming to the throne of grace with the priest's office. We go direct to God to receive mercy and find grace. Mercy delivers from a trial and is for individuals grace sustains in a trial. This applies to both individual and collective prayer this holy boldness in entering God's presence to supplicate Him. However we don't go to the Priest for these things rather we approach God direct for them. Similarly the Priest goes to God for us to relieve us of our infirmities. He does not want us to be dragged down by them but wants us to be happy in God's presence.
Thus three things take the Christian through this world and on to heaven the Word of God, the High Priesthood of Christ and the throne of grace. Our passage through this world is to bring us to glory 2:10. The glory is the rest which "remains" to the people of God 4:9. To anticipate doctrine slightly, Jesus has gone there before His people 6:20 for He is the Captain of our salvation. Like troops we follow where our Captain leads us.