The investiture of the Priesthood, laid down in the two following chapters (Ex. 27, 29), is deeply interesting, though both clothing and consecration have scanty measure dealt out in the “Typology.” Aaron had to be clothed with special vestments for drawing near to the Lord, as representing the people whose names he bore: the type of what Christ does for us in heaven, hidden in God, like the high priest in the most holy place on the great day of atonement. A priest supposes miseries, infirmities, failures; he is a mediator to intercede for and represent the people before God. By this gracious provision our wretchedness becomes the occasion, not of judgment, but of the display of God's compassion and tenderness, while our great High Priest presents us to God in His perfection. The detail of this appears in these types. Redemption is supposed as the ground. Priesthood is not to redeem, but to maintain those redeemed in spite of failure. The garments, &c., figure that which is real in Christ, exercising His priesthood for us.
The Ephod was characteristically the priestly garment. It was made of the same materials and colors as the veil, save that no cherubim are here, for it was the emblem of Christ's essential purity and varied graces, apart from His judicial rights. Gold, too, was here, not in the veil—the emblem of divine righteousness, which has its appropriate place, when the veil was rent in Christ, the heavenly priest. It had two shoulder-pieces to it, and stones of memorial, which bore the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There was an embroidered girdle which accompanied it, the sign of service, and a breastplate, which was to be carefully secured to the ephod, and which also bore twelve precious stones, each inscribed with the name of a tribe. Thus, if Aaron drew near to God, the weight of the people was upon his shoulders. So our government is upon Christ, in the presence of God. His glory there, His nearness to God, cannot be separated from us. He is there for us. Nor is it merely a question of His strength bearing us up before God, but in Him we find all the precious reality foreshown by the breastplate of judgment. If a ray of God's goodness and glory shines on Christ, it shines also on us, who are carried on His heart; for the heart of Christ presents us before God. It is not some special things on our part, but ourselves that He presents, according to the love which reigns between the Father and the Son. We are continually before God, who never hides His face from us. He may chastise us for our faults, that we may not lose communion with Him, nor be condemned with the world. But if His face were hidden from us, it would be hidden from Christ: it is hidden now from Israel under law and the guilt of rejecting the Messiah. When we fail, it is a cloud that rises between God and us. Our will or our weakness is the cause, not the sovereignty of God. Nor is it that we require to be redeemed afresh, or that the blood-sprinkling needs to be repeated; but we have One who acts for us, and represents us worthily before God. He has the true Urim and Thummim in the breastplate of judgment. The blessing is given according to the lights and perfections of God; and our judgment is borne upon His heart before the Lord continually; for it was a question, we must always remember, not of acquiring righteousness, but of maintaining before God the cause of a failing people, and this, in our case, according to divine righteousness, which we are made in Christ. The consequence is most blessed and sure. Grace is exercised, not merely because we return to the God we had slipped or wandered from, but to bring us back. Hence John does not say, “if any man repent,” but “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The love Christ exercises about us springs from Himself. Thus we see, in Peter's case, it was not after his restoration, nor even when hiding for shame, that Christ said, “I have prayed for thee.” It was before he fell. Christ's intercession was going on all the while. It is exercised because of our getting wrong, not because we are right. Our feebleness calls out the grace that is in Him. It may be an answer in the way of strength, or chastening, or warning, and then chastening is not needed. But in whatever way, it is of grace; and He obtains the needed blessing for us, according to the favor which God bears Him. Christ looked upon Peter, and this before Peter wept. It was just at the right moment, wrong as Peter had been. We know not what Peter might have done next; but the look sent him outside to weep. Much more is this true now for all saints; for the atonement is finished, the righteousness is accepted on high, and Christ is there to keep or set us right. He has undertaken our cause through the wilderness, where a merely righteous power could not bring us through, but rather consume us by the way. He keeps us for a “memorial before the Lord continually.” He sustains us according to the power of inward grace before God. He bears us all and each in a detailed way, each by name engraved on His heart. According to our particular individuality He sustains us, and God looks upon us in the fullness of the complacency He has for Christ; just as we receive a child that is sent to us, according to the affection we have for its father.
This is precious; and the rather as it is the positive and divinely given provision for us in remembering, and yet counteracting, our individual imperfectness. Viewed as one with Christ, as members of His body, we are perfect: but this is a totally distinct thing from His representing us before God as priest, which is expressly to meet our failures. In the one case we are seen in Him; in the other He acts for us on the footing of a righteousness which never changes nor fails, in order to reconcile our practical state and circumstances on earth with the standing which faith has in Christ above.
In these beautiful garments, then, was the high priest called to represent Israel, and neither shoulder pieces nor breastplate could be loosed from them, that their names and their cause might be in perpetual remembrance. Aaron could not be thus with God, save as representing Israel. Equally impossible is it for Christ to stand in God's presence apart from us.
His value in God's sight is thus drawn down on us.
He became a servant when He took the form of man. He might have asked twelve legion of angels, and gone out free; but He chose to be a servant forever. He did the will of God in His life, and in His death He bound Himself anew and eternally, and will thus manifest the grace of God, even in the glory, when He will gird Himself, and make His own servants sit down to meat, and come forth and serve them.
Such is our position by virtue of the priesthood of Christ. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” If a fault is committed, is there condemnation? No: but this is not because the gospel is less holy than the law (which is quite the contrary of the truth), nor is it because God thinks lightly of the sins of His children (which are, indeed, incomparably more grievous and dishonoring than the evils of others), but because Jesus Christ the righteous is there for us. But then He does deal according to His own light and perfection, even when He feels for us in all our need and weakness. It is the same in learning things of God, as in our daily judgment. It is according to Urim and Thummim that He instructs and guides us. What under law would be my ruin becomes by His grace the occasion and means of instruction. It is not only when we have outwardly failed that Jesus intercedes, but when in holy things we go to worship God, how often something comes in which cannot suit the holiness of God, distracting thought, human feeling, admiration of fine tones in singing, &c.! God would not have us to think lightly of such a thing, for it is through want of habitual communion with Him; but He comforts us with the assurance that we have got in Christ the reality of Aaron's miter, with its golden plate and inscription—HOLINESS TO THE LORD. Thus when we worship, we may bow down and look up, not in lightness indeed, but in happy, holy liberty. We ought not to be satisfied without the full tide of affection going up to Him from us; but let us ever bear in mind that we are accepted because of His holiness. Hence in a new and higher strain may we take up that ancient oracle: “Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.” The iniquity cannot be accepted, but it never goes up. We may always go to God because of Christ's constant appearing in His presence for us. He bears our failures that they may be judged—our weakness and ignorance, that strength and instruction may be given; but His heart is always engaged for us; His love is drawn out by our very and every need. It is not, on the one hand, that the evil is not corrected; nor, on the other, that we are put out of God's sight and memory for it, but that it is remedied because of Christ's all-powerful pleading—the same One who is the propitiation for our sins, and in whom we are accepted. This gives us courage to apply unsparingly the divine light and standard to our ways—not as if the question were of expecting condemnation by and by, but, emboldened by His grace, to judge ourselves thoroughly now. Our privilege is to increase in the knowledge of God Himself. We sin if we walk not in the light we have received. There is holiness in God's presence, but there is unfailing grace also. Our enjoyment is in the measure that we, by the Spirit, realize what we are in Christ before God. Our prayers rise in holiness before Him, because Christ is there. The taints and soils in our holy offering disappear through His mediation. While this makes us feel the extent of the love of which we are the objects, may it fill us with thanksgiving, and our joy be full! “Such an high priest became us.”
But we must allow ourselves to quote an admirable passage from the “Synopsis.” “The ground-work of the priesthood, then, was absolute personal purity—what we may call human righteousness—every form of grace interwoven with it; and divine righteousness [typified respectively by the fine linen and the gold]. It was service, and He was girded for it, but service before God. The loins were girt, but the garments otherwise down to the feet. This was especially the robe all of blue Introduced into the presence of God, according to divine righteousness, in the perfection of Christ, our spiritual light, and privileges, and walk, are according to this perfection of Him into whose presence we are brought. Christ bearing our judgment takes away all imputative character from sin, and turns the light, which would have condemned it and us, into a purifying, enlightened character, according to that very perfection which looks on us. This breastplate was fastened to the onyx stones of the shoulder above, and to the ephod above the girdle below. It was the perpetual position of the people, inseparable from the exercise of the high priesthood as thus going before the Lord. What was divine and heavenly secured it—the chains of gold above, and the rings of gold with lace of blue to the ephod above the girdle beneath. Exercised in humanity, the priesthood and the connection of the people with it, rests on an immutable, a divine and heavenly basis. Such was the priestly presentation of the high priest. Beneath this official robe he had a personal one all of blue. The character of Christ, too, as such, is perfectly and entirely heavenly. The sanctuary was the place of its exercise; so the heavenly priest must himself be a heavenly man; and it is to this character of Christ, as here in the high priest, that the fruits and testimony of the Spirit are attached—the bells and the pomegranates. It is from Christ in His heavenly character that they flow: they are attached to the hem of His garment here below. His sound was heard when he went in and when He came out; and so it has been and will be. When Christ went in, the gifts of the Spirit were manifested in the sound of the testimony, and they will be when He comes out again. The fruits of the Spirit, we know, were also in the saints. But not only were there fruits and gifts: worship and service, the presenting of offerings to God, was part of the path of the people of God. Alas! they also were defiled. It formed thus also part of the priest's office to bear the iniquity of their holy things. Thus the worship or God's people was acceptable, in spite of their infirmity, and holiness was ever before the Lord in the offerings of His house—borne on the forehead of the high priest, as His people were on the one hand presented to Him, and on the other, directed by Him, according to His own perfections through the high priest.”
There is nothing particularly calling for notice in the remarks of Dr. F. on the ceremony of consecration. He does not appear to distinguish the two anointings of Aaron, though he sees the fact of course, and objects justly to Mr. Bonar's view as unsatisfactory. The truth is that the first unction of Aaron is a beautiful allusion to the Lord Jesus, who needed not blood as a prerequisite, but without sacrifice, and by reason of His own inherent and perfect holiness, was capable of being anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power. Such we know was the fact. But thus He was necessarily anointed alone. Therefore was the necessity of a second unction, if others were to share it—the true sons of Aaron, whom God gave Him. Risen from the dead, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, He received the Spirit afresh (Acts 2:3333Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. (Acts 2:33)), and shed it on the disciples, who were now constituted His priestly house. They were sinful men, and the blood was essential as a preparation for the holy anointing oil, which represented, not the operation of the Spirit in cleansing (already set forth by the washing of water), but His presence in the way of power. They were now endued with power from on high. Nor is it wonderful that a writer, who holds such views as Dr. F.'s, should be incapable of appreciating the deeply interesting scene which preceded the fire that consumed Aaron's offering in Lev. 9:2424And there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces. (Leviticus 9:24). First, Aaron blesses the people on coming down from his various offerings; then he, with Moses, goes into the tabernacle, and both come out and bless the people, when the glory of Jehovah appears, and the fire of divine judgment burns the offering, in token of plenary acceptance and favor; and this on the eighth day, the day of resurrection-glory. The application is obvious, save where a false system blinds the eye. First, there is Christ, as priest, blessing in virtue of sacrifice; and then Christ, as king and priest, goes for a short season into that which typifies the heavenly places, and coming out blesses the people, and the display of glory and acceptance takes place in that day. It is a beautiful witness of the millennial kingdom and worship—not of the Church within, but publicly manifested glory.