GOD HAS SPOKEN BY HIS SON
Meditations in Hebrews
Hebrews 5:1-4
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THE apostle Paul goes on to describe the office of a priest, and to show how Jesus fulfils this office in every part, but in a more excellent way. His purpose in this is to reassure the Jews that Christianity was not stripping them of what they held precious in their religion. Paul is showing that although the Jewish and earthly priesthood by human beings, which the Jews had lived with throughout the Old Testament, had passed away and was now redundant, yet this priesthood finds its fulfilment and continuation in the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was to assure the Jews that in Christianity, far from losing what they had before, they were gaining something much better and more effective. This has a message for all time in that it shows that all earthly priesthood has passed away, and the resurrecting of a human priesthood is not only to go backwards to something that is less than perfect, but it is dishonouring both to Christ, and to God. Introducing human priesthood, when Christ is our high priest, is to suggest that Christ's priesthood is not sufficient, or is inadequate. Christ's priesthood is perfect, and all-sufficient, and so needs no adding to in any way whatsoever by human hands.
Paul starts his teaching in verses one to three by describing the office of a priest as ordained of God under the old Testament economy, and is basic to the whole idea of priesthood. This is preliminary to him showing that Jesus fulfils this office completely and in a much more perfect way.
What then is the office of a priest? Firstly, a priest, and particularly the high priest, is selected from among men. Secondly, he is selected so that he may represent the people before God, and plead their cause before God. The main purpose of the priesthood in its original and pure sense, as we are told here, is to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. From this we can see that the priest's main duty is to exercise a ministry which provides atonement for sin before God, in order that the sins of the people may be purged away, and the people may be enabled to approach God without fear. The office of a priest was the office of a mediator between God and human beings to gain God's favour and acceptance.
Thirdly, the office of a priest is to care for the people. He must deal gently with those who are ignorant or going astray. For such a ministry it is important for the priest to be a human being, and so be able to identify with the trials and problems of those to whom he ministers. So a man is selected who has such qualities as these.
However, the ability to care in a priest is because, being human, the priest has the same failings as those to whom he ministers. Therefore the priest, not only has to offer sacrifices for the people, but also for himself. The priest is a sinner with human failings in the same way as all those to whom he ministers.
Fourthly, for such an important office it is essential that the right sort of person is selected. For this reason no one takes its honour upon himself, but he must be called by God.
What is absolutely essential is the need we have as sinful human beings for the office of a priest. Because we are all sinners before God, we have all fallen short of God's holy standards, and so are under God's judgement and condemnation. If left in this sorry state we are without hope and without God in the world. Throughout his life we are alone without the grace and help of an almighty God, and in the life to come we can only look forward to eternal death and misery. Most go through life without worrying about his condition, but if we have a sense of sin and of need we long to be reconciled with God. We see our need of forgiveness, and for cleansing, and to be accepted by God. When we try to gain God's favour by good works, and religious duties, we may at first feel that we are succeeding in our quest, but soon we realise that all we can do fails entirely to gain our desired end of gaining favour and acceptance with God.
We desperately need a mediator to take up our cause before God, and so we need a priest. However, if we rely on human priests we soon find that they drastically fall short of what is required in a priest. As priests they may well offer sacrifices for sin on our behalf, but we will soon realise that the sacrifices they are offering are totally inadequate to atone for our sins. From this we will realise that such human priesthood has nothing adequate to bring before God for our acceptance with God. This is exactly what was the case throughout the whole of the Old Testament. The sacrifices that the priests offered were ordained of God, but because they didn't really atone for sin they had to be repeated time and time again.
We desperately need the office of a priest in order that we may come to God without fear, but any human priesthood utterly fails to provide for our need. The apostle goes on to show us, and to those to whom he was writing, that although human priesthood fails, we have a perfect and all sufficient priest in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Having such a perfect priest as Jesus who meets all our needs before God, to rely on any human priesthood is not only endangering our souls, but dishonouring Christ, and is an example of terrible lack of faith. In our next meditation we begin to see how Jesus is all we need as a priest.