CHRIST OUR PRIEST

 

CHRIST OUR PRIEST 

Westminster Shorter Catechism 25

Quest. How doth Christ exercise the office of a priest?

Ans. Christ executes the office of a 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.

Introduction

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During the time of the Spanish Conquests of Central and South America a people popularly known as the Aztecs was discovered in what is now Mexico. Apparently Aztec civilization was very, well, was very “civilized.” I don’t like to use the word “advanced” as it suggests advanced from so-called cave men of the Evolutionists. But the Aztecs were apparently great administrators, builders, and were also superior warriors. They were culturally well-developed, being into sculpture, metalwork, weaving and picture writing.

Like the Mayans, they had a complicated but accurate calendar system. And Aztec society was divided into three distinct classes: the Nobility, the Military, and the Priesthood.

Now, this kind of organized and civilized culture and society speaks volumes about God working His Common Grace in nations. It’s on account of God’s “Common Grace” that societies are able to function.

Now, having said that, even though God’s Common Grace may abound in pagan societies, the societies themselves are just that, “pagan,” which is to say that they invariably worship pagan or false gods. The Aztecs represented their creator god, Quetzalcoatl, as a serpent with feathers or plumes.

That old serpent, the Devil has been specializing in deceiving the nations from ancient times. Anyhow, all false religion is an aberration of true religion. All pagan religion is a distortion of the real thing. All false religion is counterfeit religion. All false religion is the Devil dressing himself up as God and getting people to bow down and worship and serve him.

Now, this should not surprise us, because our forefather Adam, when he rebelled against God, was siding with the Devil. We know that Satan was a liar, and a murderer from the beginning. But nevertheless, Adam entered into a covenant with Satan when he turned against God. The Aztecs, though civilized in many ways, clearly expressed fallen man’s covenant with Satan and death.

The Aztec Priest was apparently involved in a ceaseless stream of human sacrifices. They would constantly sacrifice God’s image and likeness to appease the wrath of their false god. Now, when you think about this, it’s not hard to see a faint outline of true religion. For, after the Fall God had promised to send One, the Seed of the Woman, i.e., One in human form, who would crush the serpent’s head.

According to Genesis 3:15 the One who would ultimately crush the serpent’s head would also be bruised in the process. As horrible as Aztec human sacrifice is, we do at least see remnants of true religion in it. The true Creator had promised to send His only begotten Son into the world. And He was coming as a Man to sacrifice Himself to satisfy Divine justice. The Old Testament animal sacrificial system unmistakenly pointed clearly to this fact.

So, what we’re looking at in the following is Christ’s office of Priest. We’ll look at His sacrifice and we’ll see that it was for our reconciliation to God. And we’ll see that Christ continues as Priest by continually interceding for us.

Christ Our Priest’s Sacrifice

In Hebrews we read that God has said to Jesus Christ, “The Lord has sworn and will not relent, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’” (Heb. 7:21). So, first off we see that Jesus is indeed a Priest. But what is a priest? A priest represents the guilty before an offended God. He seeks to reconcile the people he represents to the offended God. He does this by interceding through making sacrifice and speaking to God for the people.

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We see this in the Levitical priesthood. The High Priest wore an ephod on his shoulders. On this garment were twelve jewels representing the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle (and subsequently the Temple) with the blood of clean animals and sprinkle that shed blood on the seat of atonement on the ark of the Covenant.

But Hebrews says, “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin …But this Man, [i.e., Jesus] after He had offered up one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:4, 12). So, Jesus is the High Priest.

But He is a not a Priest according to the Levitical or Old Testament priesthood. Rather Jesus is our Priest according to the order of Melchizedek. You’ll remember that Melchizedek was the King of Salem who came out to meet Abraham with bread and wine after Abraham had defeated a bunch of pagan kings in battle. Abraham tithed his spoil to Melchizedek. He gave a tenth to this Priest. Well, Jesus is a member of this same priesthood – the order of Melchizedek.

Now, the order of Melchizedek is unlike the Levitical Priesthood. Levitical priests had to offer up daily sacrifices for themselves and for the people. But Jesus, being of a different priestly order, didn’t have to offer up sacrifices for Himself. No, as High Priest the perfect sacrifice Jesus offered up was Himself! So, we see then that Christ our Priest is different to the Levitical or Old Testament priests.

The Levitical priests offered up the blood of bulls and goats – animal sacrifice. But Christ our Priest offered up Himself – a human sacrifice! However, this human sacrifice wasn’t of the order of the pagan Aztec priests. This sacrifice wasn’t to appease some pagan deity. No, the sacrifice of Jesus was to satisfy God’s Divine justice.

Hebrews 2:17, “Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” I want to pick up on the meaning of “propitiation” in a moment under our second point. But for the moment I want us to stay focused on Christ our Priest sacrificing Himself.

There’s a brilliant book by Hugh Martin, if you can get it, called “The Atonement.” In that book Hugh Martin elaborates on the fact that Christ was the High Priest who offered the sacrifice as well as being the sacrifice itself. In that book Martin shows us that Christ was no “victim” when He was sacrificed on the cross. Rather, He was the Great High Priest offering up Himself.

Martin takes umbrage with Paraphrase 44 in the Revised Church Hymnary. “Behold the Saviour on the cross, a spectacle of woe! See from His agonizing wounds the blood incessant flow; Till death’s pale ensign o’er His cheek and trembling lips were spread; Till light forsook his closing eyes, and life His drooping head!”

Hugh Martin doesn’t like the picture of Christ on the cross with trembling lips! He thinks that this is to portray Christ as a pathetic “victim”. I agree with Hugh Martin here. Jesus could have called on twelve legions of angels to help Him. But instead, He willingly offered up Himself to appease the wrath of God on His people.

The children of the Canaanites who were passed through the fire into the hands of the false god Molech were victims. As were the ceaseless stream of human sacrifices at the hands of the Aztec Priests. But Jesus Christ was no trembling-lip victim! Even though lawless hands crucified Him, He was delivered to the cross by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23). Which is to say that though evil men nailed Him to the cross, this was Christ our Priest offering up Himself as a sacrifice to God.

Luke reports that Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). This was Christ our Priest offering up Himself to God. But why then did He offer up Himself as sacrifice? Well, Hebrews says, “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many” (Heb. 9:28). Well, Christ our Priest is not like those Levitical priests who had to keep on offering up sacrifices daily, first for their own sins, and then for the sins of the people.

Christ our Priest only had to offer up Himself once because He is holy, harmless, undefiled, and distinct from sinners. Christ therefore is the perfect sacrifice. And because He continues forever, He has an unchangeable priesthood (Heb. 7:24).

Jesus Christ is a Divine Person. Therefore, on account of Him also being God, His sacrifice is of infinite value, which means in the words of the writer Hebrews, “Therefore He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).

Christ Our Priest’s Reconciliation

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What does it mean to be reconciled to God? It means that you have been saved from the penalty you deserve for your sins. Reconciliation means that two warring parties have been brought back into friendship after a quarrel.

Mankind has been quarrelling with God – has been at war with God ever since Adam sinned. Enmity. God always had reconciliation in mind. Therefore, by His grace, He in time appointed priests as buffers, as go betweens, mediators of a sort, to go between Himself and those He was saving.

God is a holy God. He is a just God. His Divine Justice needs to be satisfied. He cannot let our sin go unpunished. If He let our sin go unpunished, He would not be a just God. So, God has a problem then, doesn’t He? How is He going to reconcile a people to Himself without punishing them for eternity as their sins deserve? Well, listen to this, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Do you see that in 1 John 4:10? – “God sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.” What does this propitiation mean? Who is propitiated – God or us? It’s easy to get tied in knots here, so let’s be careful.

Albert Barnes says that “The proper meaning of the word [propitiation] is that of reconciling, appeasing, turning away anger, rendering propitious or favourable.”[1] Barnes goes on to warn us about how we apply this to God. God doesn’t change. He is eternally unchanging.

Propitiation does not change the nature of God. However, “God sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.” Therefore, God’s holy wrath towards us as sinners has been satisfied by Christ’s sacrifice of Himself, which is to say that He has eternally punished us by pouring out His holy wrath upon His Son, the Godman, whose sacrifice is of infinite value.

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Christ is our Noah’s Ark in which we are saved from the Divine Justice of God. Christ is the One who shields us from God’s eternal judgment. We are covered by His blood – the blood He shed on the cross. That blood is the blood of the everlasting covenant that was made to save us from our sins. This is because Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8b). Therefore, God had it in mind from eternity that He would atone for our sins.

He did this by having Jesus Christ, who is God and Man in one Divine Person, offer up Himself as a sacrifice. So, we see then that God’s wrath towards certain sinners is appeased because His Divine Justice has been satisfied in the once for all time sacrifice of His Son. In simple language, Christ as our Priest represented us guilty sinners before the offended God. He has removed our offences and our offensiveness to God by sacrificing Himself for us. And because our offensiveness has been removed, we are now reconciled to God, which is to say that God is no longer angry with us and that we are no longer at war with Him. Like oil calms troubled waters, Christ’s poured out blood has assuaged God’s wrath. Thus, our enmity with God has gone. Christ our Mediator has purchased our reconciliation with God.

The quarrel between God and us and us and God is now ended for those represented by Christ our Priest in His sacrifice. This means then that God’s wrath towards our sin has been appeased. All this has taken place without any change to God.

Think about it, fallen man knows in his heart that God is angry at his sin. He knows that somehow God’s wrath must be appeased. Pagans such as the Aztecs and the Canaanites had the belief that God could be appeased by something that they could do – such as sacrificing a virgin! You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this is simply a salvation-by-works view of things.

Sacrifice a child or a virgin, i.e., a “pure” human being, and we will be saved from God’s wrath! That was their thinking. However, that’s not the thinking of the living and true God. But the Aztec’s ceaseless stream of human sacrifices could never appease God’s wrath. In fact, their murder of human beings was simply their storing up God’s wrath!

But the Good News is that God and sinners have been reconciled on account of what Christ our Priest has done, and not by anything we can do. It is God Himself who made peace and declares that peace between Himself and sinners, “For it pleased the Father that in Him [Christ] all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:19-20). Thus, reconciliation and peace with God has been made by God through the blood of Christ’s cross.

And again, “He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).  In other words, Jesus Christ must be your Priest in order for you to be saved. If Jesus Christ is not your Priest, then the wrath of God abides on you (John 3:36).

Only Christ’s sacrifice of Himself brings reconciliation between God and sinners. And if you have Christ as your sacrifice to God, then you have God as your friend. And if you have God as your friend, you now have a High Priest who is continually interceding for you before God.

Christ Our Priest’s Intercession

Christ our Priest always lives to make intercession for us. When you think about it, you can see God and Man reconciled in the two natures of Christ. He is God and Man in One Divine Person from the moment of His conception.

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Now that He has been sacrificed and raised again to live for evermore, He is our Priest forever. And because He cannot die, God and Man have been reconciled forever in the Person of Jesus Christ. And because the duties of a priest are to offer up sacrifices and speak to God for the people, this is what Christ our Priest has done and still is doing for us. He has offered the once for all time sacrifice of Himself.

And the writer to the Hebrews says that “we have a High Priest who has passed through the heavens” (Heb. 4:14). Hebrews 7:26 says that Christ our “High Priest has become Higher than the heavens.” With His own blood He has entered into the real heavenly Holy of Holies – Heaven itself! His is the shed blood that speaks better things than Abel’s shed blood.

The voice of Abel’s blood cries out from the ground to God for vengeance. So does the blood of the ceaseless stream of victims the Aztec priests sacrificed to the feathered serpent cry out from the ground for vengeance. So does the blood of Canaanite children sacrificed to Moloch cry out from the ground for vengeance.

However, Christ’s blood cries out to God from Heaven, but not for vengeance, but rather for reconciliation! Christ’s blood in Heaven enables Christ to speak as our High Priest on our behalf. Christ pleads for us before God. This means that Jesus Christ prays for us.

As High Priest He prayed for us as recorded in John 17:9, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.” And in John 17:20, “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word…” Therefore, Christ our Priest continually intercedes before the Father for those whom the Father has given Him.

Christ’s speaking to God for us doesn’t necessarily mean that He has to keep on uttering words to the Father on our behalf. His blood says enough! His blood says it all. His sacrifice is final – once for all time and eternity.

Abel’s blood cries out for Divine justice. Christ’s blood satisfies that Divine justice. Christ’s blood opens up the floodgates for God’s mercy because Christ’s blood covers a multitude of sins.

As hydrogen and oxygen join to make up water, so God’s mercy and Christ blood join to make up grace. God’s pours out His grace and covers those for whom Christ died with mercy and with Christ’s blood. His blood cleanses us of all our iniquities. His blood washes away all our sins. His blood commanded the windows of Heaven to open up for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It’s His blood that seals forever the everlasting Covenant. And, by this same blood we are sealed forever inside the everlasting Covenant of God’s grace.

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The God who dwelt between the cherubim looked down upon Christ’s blood sprinkled on the seat of atonement on the Ark of the Covenant. As He looked at that blood on the Mercy Seat on the Ark containing His broken Commandments, His Divine justice was satisfied.

When God looks at us covenant breakers, He looks at us through the blood of His Son’s cross. His blood speaks to God’s wrath on our behalf. The Father is well-pleased with His Son. He is well pleased with His Son’s sacrifice. Therefore, God is well pleased with those covered by Christ’s sacrificial blood.

Also, He is well pleased with those who have been reconciled to Him through Christ’s sacrificial blood. And His Son’s sacrificial blood continues to infinity to intercede for those for whom Christ died. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1).

Conclusion

We’ve seen that Christ our Priest offered up Himself once for all time for us. He did it to satisfy God’s Divine justice and thereby to reconcile or bring peace between God and sinners. And because He was raised from the dead and has ascended into Heaven, He intercedes there continually on our behalf.

We have a wonderful High Priest in Heaven! Only He can save us from our sins. Therefore, look only to Him for your salvation.

We’ve considered something of what Westminster Shorter Catechism 25 means where it asks: How doth Christ exercise the office of a priest? To which it answers: Christ executes the office of a 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.

Watch Sinclair Ferguson talk about the writings of Hugh Martin (The Atonement)

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[1] Albert Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament, (Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1962, Reprinted 1982), 1471.