The Greatest High Priest

"My Soul Is Sorrowful Unto Death" by James Tissot
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Every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.

   So also Christ did not exalt Himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by Him who said to Him,

      “You are My Son,
              today I have begotten You”;

as He says also in another place,

        “You are a priest forever,
              after the order of Melchizedek.”

In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:1–10).

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

From the CPH bulletin cover, we read this summary of the theme of our service for this Fifth Sunday in Lent:

In humility, Jesus has been exalted as our High Priest. He intercedes for us with the Father as the one who can sympathize with our weakness, though He Himself is without sin (see Hebrews 4:15). We have confidence that our prayers are heard because He is both our perfect High Priest forever and the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Jesus is the Greatest High Priest.

Before we consider the authority and the work of Jesus as the Great High Priest and what that means for you and me, we need to look at the authority and work of the high priest in the old covenant.

In the old covenant, every high priest was “chosen from men” and “appointed “to act on behalf of men” to deal with “the things for God.” The high priest was appointed by God “to offer gifts and sacrifices,” which included all the public offerings presented each day for God’s people (Hebrews 7:27) and each year on the Day of Atonement (Hebrews 10:1-3) “for sins” (Hebrews 5:1).

In one respect, Israel’s old covenant high priest was well-suited to make offerings for sins because he himself was “beset with weakness,” the weakness of sin and its debilitating effect on sinners (Hebrews 7:27-28). His own sin put him in the same place as all other people since he was tempted just as they were. Because he himself had sinned, he was in no position to condemn those who were “ignorant and wayward.” He could deal with them as lost, like everyone who had lost their way on earth. Yet, as God’s representative, he could also “deal gently” with them. He could feel for them and suffer with them without either coldly distancing himself from their plight or identifying with them so closely that he excused their sin to minimize his own guilt.

Needing to deal with his own guilt first so that he could minister to the people with a good conscience, the high priest was obliged to make an offering for himself on “account of sins” (Hebrews 5:3). While this was first done at his ordination (Exodus 29:10; Leviticus 8:14-17), it was also repeated each year on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:6, 11-14). Having been cleansed of his own sins, he could then make offerings for the people's sins.

A weak sinner himself rather than a strong spiritual hero, the high priest could not under any circumstances claim this high position before God and the people as an “honor” for himself that he rightly deserved. But he received the honor only as a weak man who, like Aaron, had been “called by God.” That divine call authorized him to do what he could otherwise not do by his own authority, virtue and power: to offer sacrifices to God on behalf of sin.

Like the high priests at the old covenant temple, Jesus did not claim the office of High Priest for Himself in His own right. Instead, God Himself glorified Him by placing Jesus in that office, which happened at His exaltation (Psalm 110:1; Hebrews 1:3, 13; 8:1-2; 10:12).

Yet despite that similarity, Jesus also differs from all previous high priests in five respects.

First, unlike all other priests, Jesus is without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

Second, unlike them, Jesus is not a son of Aaron but the Son of God.

Third, unlike them, Jesus was not appointed by another man but by God Himself as God’s anointed Priest.

Fourth, Jesus did not become High Priest by the enactment of God’s Law in the rite of ordination but by God’s decree. Just as God had spoken the words from Psalm 2:7 that acknowledged Him as His Son, God says the words from Psalm 110:4 that make Him High Priest.

Fifth, God’s decree, announced prophetically in Psalm 110:4 and fulfilled at His exaltation, does not make Him a temporal priest like Aaron and his successors but “a Priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”

The appointment of Jesus as High Priest was a process that began with God’s acknowledgment of Jesus as His Son and was completed at Jesus’ enthronement with God. Since He was acknowledged as God’s Son at His conception (Luke 1:35; cf. Matthew 1:20-23), the preparation for His vocation as High Priest covered His whole earthly life. And since He was acknowledged as God’s Son at His Baptism (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22; John 1:34), His whole earthly ministry prepared Him for His priesthood. The reference to what Jesus did “in the days of His flesh” indicates Jesus’ entire earthly life as His training for that eternal vocation.

The use of the divine oracles from Psalm 2:7: “You are My Son, today I have begotten You” and Psalm 110:4: “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” are not to be just taken as prophetic announcements that have now been fulfilled, but, as words spoken directly by God to His Son, part of His eternal conversation with Him. They allow us to listen in on that conversation and hear God addressing His Son with words that make Him an eternal Priest and acknowledging Him as such.

In Hebrews 5:7-8, we see the Son’s preparation for the office of High Priest. Even though He was God’s eternal Son before His incarnation, He had to experience the full extent of human weakness to be a truly sympathetic High Priest. So, like the Israelite priests, Jesus experienced human weakness and suffering to prepare Him to present offerings to God on behalf of the people.

The picture here is of the Son as a student, an apprentice, and God as His teacher and wise Mentor. The period of His apprenticeship, His human training for the priesthood, was “the days of His flesh,” His human life on earth from His conception to His death. His preparation for His vocation as High Priest involved a life of obedience to God. He was educated in practical piety marked by “right reverence” for God (Hebrews 5:7).

That lesson in obedient piety had two sides: a passive and an active side. The passive side was His “obedience” in suffering. Jesus suffered all kinds of abuse, culminating in His trial and crucifixion. He endured the penalty for sinners and the effects of their sins on their victims. Even more than that, He suffered under the threat of “death” that lay so heavy on all humanity.

Here, as in the Old Testament and particularly the Psalms, “death” is not envisioned just as an event that occurs at the end of human life but as a dark power that blights the whole of human life, a tyrant that terrifies and enslaves humanity (Hebrews 2:15). This enemy is closely allied with the devil and his life-threatening cronies (Hebrews 2:14).

The human experience of suffering from the threat of death all too often leads to disobedience and rebellion against God. The suffering of Jesus, however, trained Him in faithful obedience to God. Thus, Jesus was “tempted in every way” as we are but “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Jesus’ passive obedience in suffering death was matched by His active obedience in prayer. Since only God was “able to save Him out of death” (Hebrews 5:7), He, as a man, learned to pray for His deliverance from death and for all those who would be delivered from it through Him (Hebrews 7:25). His whole life was a life of prayer, something that was mostly hidden even from the eyes and ears of His disciples but was manifest to them privately in the Garden of Gethsemane and publicly to the world as He hung on the cross.

By claiming that Jesus “offered prayers and supplications” to God throughout His human life, the teacher surprisingly describes His praying as a sacrificial act by which He offered Himself to God. He pictures Christ’s whole earthly ministry as prayerful, priestly service. The terms used for His praying, “prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears,” covers all kinds of human needs, from the necessities of life to refuge from enemies, from help in trouble to relief from deep distress. They also cover all kinds of praying, from spoken petitions to full-bodied supplication, from vehement cries to heartbroken tears.

The use of the language from the psalms of lament implies that Jesus learned obedience in prayer by making the Psalter His prayer book. As the perfect student of God’s Word and the perfect man of prayer, Jesus was exemplary in His piety. He learned right reverence for God in suffering. God, therefore, “heard” His prayer (Hebrews 5:7) and accepted it by raising Him from the dead (Hebrews 13:20).

By offering prayers to God in His suffering and being “heard” by God (Hebrews 5:7), Jesus “learned obedience through what He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). This does not refer just to His passion and death on the cross (Hebrews 2:9); it includes all the evil that He suffered in His life on earth (Hebrews 12:3). His suffering was part of His training, His preparation for the high priesthood. Jesus’ lesson in passive obedience and the practice of active obedience prepared Him well for His priestly office, which now revolves around His intercession for the salvation of all people (Hebrews 7:25).

God raised Jesus from the dead and enthroned Him as High Priest, bringing Jesus to the goal of His earthly journey. The Son, sent from God as His envoy, comes back to God as the High Priest of humanity.

The completion of Jesus’ journey reverses the situation in Hebrews 5:7-8. The obedience that He had learned on earth He now requires of His disciples; the deliverance from death that He had sought from God He now grants to those who follow Him; the perfection that He had gained by His obedience He now offers to those who obey Him.

By His deliverance from the realm of death, Jesus “became the source of eternal salvation” for all His disciples (Hebrews 5:9). The “eternal salvation” that God had promised to the Israelites in Isaiah 45:17 is available not just to them but to “all who obey” Jesus. That Jesus is “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him " (Hebrews 5:9) is a startling claim since the accent in the Scriptures is usually on obedience to God and His Word. As High Priest, Jesus now speaks the Word of eternal salvation to His disciples (cf. Hebrew 2:3; 12:25); they come near to God through Him as their High Priest (Hebrews 7:25). What’s more, God Himself put this stamp of approval on Jesus’ priestly work of mediation. God designated Jesus a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Jesus’ perfect obedience makes Him the perfect mediator between God and man. His entire person, with both His divine and human natures, is involved in our salvation, His divinity in making perfect satisfaction for the sins of the world and His humanity in mediating between God and us. By His whole life of perfect obedience, He undoes the ravages of original sin on our whole lifetime.

His perfect obedience as both God and man is reckoned to us as our righteousness before God when we trust in Him. So, through Him and His perfect obedience, we receive pardon and reconciliation, adoption as God’s children and eternal salvation; through Him, we share in God’s righteousness and holiness.

Jesus is the greatest High Priest. He prays for you—intercedes for you—even there in the Garden before He sacrifices Himself on the cross for you. And He sacrifices Himself on the cross so that He might rise and intercede for you before His Father forever. He is the author, the source of your salvation because He has completed it on the cross.

For Jesus’ sake, you are God’s child.

For Jesus’ sake, God wills only good for you.

For Jesus’ sake, God hears your prayers and promises to answer them.

For Jesus’ sake, you are forgiven for all your sins

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

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