The Perfect Priest
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2024 · 25 August 2024
The design of Hebrews is to present the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Judaism was replaced by Christianity. There are also through the book of Hebrews warnings to unbelieving Jews to know that Jesus Christ is greater than all of the Old Testament figures. The New Testament, the new covenant is much greater than the Old Testament, the old covenant.
For to tell a Jew that the New Testament is greater than the Old Testament, says something about the priesthood of the old covenant. For the Levitical understanding in Judaism, is based on priests taking men's messages to God. And the first question a Jew would ask if this new covenant is better, where is your high priest? Where is the mediator that takes mankind to God?
Christianity, the new covenant, is not without a high priest. We have a great high priest. Now having stated that tremendous fact that there is a mediator between men and God. And that there is not 24 different ranks of them as there was in the Levitical priesthood. There is only one mediator, one great high priest, having stated the proof that Jesus is that great high priest.
And this takes the heart of Hebrews from Hebrews 5:1 to 10:39. The largest portion dedicated to any theme in Hebrews is strategically located in the middle of the book, around which everything else revolves. It is the proclamation that Jesus Christ is the great high priest superior to Aaron or to any other high priest. And that Christianity does have a high priest who takes men to God.
This is the real key to the supremacy of the New Testament to the Old Testament. Jesus sacrificed Himself so that He's the priest and the sacrifice at the same time, providing a way for man to God. And we see in the death of Jesus, the veil of the temple was ripped from the top to the bottom and the holy of holies is exposed to men, because Jesus has opened it by a new and living way.
And so Jesus Christ in one act in history accomplished what millions of sacrifices by multitudes of priests could never accomplish. That is to open the way to God permanently so that any man at any time by faith in Christ might enter into God's presence. And as a result of what Christ did, (Hebrews 4:16), "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace.”
And consequently there are no more sacrifices. There are no more priests. Jesus Christ now sits at God's right hand interceding for us. He is our living mediator. He is the only priest needed. The thing that the Jews held high was the Aaronic priesthood. Aaron was God's choice that started the priesthood. And that is what captured the minds of the Jews to the Old Testament.
And now Jesus comes along and says forget it all. It just is not that easy for some of them. Those patterns are hard to break. And so in writing to the Hebrews, God must show them that we have a high priest who once for all offered a sacrifice and obliterated the need for the rest of them. There must be an atoning sacrifice offered by a priest and Jesus has done exactly that.
First look at what God does in the first four verses of Hebrews 5, He gives the qualifications for a priest and these are standard Jewish qualifications. And in verses 5 to 9, He says, now let me show you how Jesus meets every one of them. And this is a very important question for them to have answered because in their mind, Jesus wouldn't fit any qualifications for a priest.
So God must show Jesus Christ fits the qualifications. The first qualification for a high priest was he had to be selected by God from men. Verse 1 says, "For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for the people, to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” Now He's chosen by God in verse 4, “No one takes this honor on himself; instead a person is called by God, just as Aaron was.”
God didn't choose angels to be priests. It had to be a man who was subject to the temptations of men. It had to be a man who had experimental acquaintance with suffering like people have in order that they might minister in a merciful way. And only Jesus could rightly minister for men. But the Jews could not understand the incarnation. They did not understand the cross.
They couldn't understand either why a Messiah would have to die. And here the Holy Spirit simply answers the problem of the incarnation in just one way. God had to become man or He never could have been the great high priest of men. Unless Christ feels what men feel and goes through what men go through, then He has no basis experimentally to operate as a high priest for men.
So Jesus Christ did not keep himself aloof, transcendent, and separate from sinners. He entered into the world of men and felt everything that men will ever feel in order that He might be a sympathetic, merciful and faithful high priest. And so the incarnation wasn't an option. It was an absolute necessity. It was an imperative if salvation of people was to be accomplished.
And only a priest who was one of them could on their behalf minister before God. And so Jesus Christ as we saw in our last study, having accomplished His great sacrifice, passed through the heavens and entered into the holy of holies in heaven and left the way wide open for us. And not only does He enter in for us, but we can enter in on the basis of His merits, and that's a first.
The word appointed means an authoritative appointment to an office. Priests were not arbitrarily selected, nor were they selected on the basis of their own will, but by God. Appointed, and the appointer is God. Now this is the first key characteristic of a true high priest. He had to be appointed by God directly. Nobody elected him, he had to be appointed by God Himself.
So the true high priest must be called from men by God. Secondly, the true high priest must be sympathetic with men. He must be able to get inside and feel with men. Now this takes us a step passed omniscience. Omniscience knows everything, sympathy feels everything. Now Christ needed to learn feelings by His incarnation so that He could be sympathetic beyond being omniscient.
Verse 2, “He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he is also clothed with weakness.” A person who is non-compassionate could care less about anybody else's pain. A priest must feel with them. It just means to bear gently because you feel it like they feel it. Christ had to deal with a weakness of human nature that makes temptation a real issue.
There's a third characteristic that a priest had to have. And that was sacrificing for people. Verse 1, "For every high priest taken from among men is appointed in matters pertaining to God, to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins." Verse 3 says essentially the same thing, "Because of this, he must make an offering for his own sins as well as for the people.” His work was to offer gifts and sacrifices.
Now what are gifts? Well, this could include all of the money that the people gave and all of the various things that they brought to the priest. But I suspect that the direct reference is to the meal offering. Now remember that in Leviticus there were many offerings, but there were five key ones. Only one of those offerings was a bloodless offering and that was the meal offering.
But He also offers not only gifts, but also sacrifices for sins. Now the priest had to offer for sins himself, because he had the same problem the people had. Hebrews 9:7 says, "But the high priest alone enters the second room, (that is the holy of holies), once a year and never without blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance."
Isn't it wonderful that when Jesus went in, He went in without sin. He never had to offer a sacrifice for Himself. That in itself makes Him a greater high priest than any other priest. Now I want to just discuss the nature of the sacrifices for sin. The sacrifice is meant to restore that relationship between God and mankind, but sacrifices for sins could only atone for the sins of ignorance.
Do you get that? Only for the sins of ignorance. For the sins of presumption there is no sacrifice. This is defiant breaking of God's laws and it's no different than today for a man who rejects God's patterns, for a man who rejects the law in terms of the law as it's revealed in faith in Jesus Christ. If a man rejects God's provision for sin, he openly defies sin, he defies God and there's no sacrifice.
But for those who sinned in ignorance, there were really two sacrifices. For the sins that the person knew he committed, the daily sacrifices. For the ones that he didn't know he committed, the Day of Atonement took care of all of those. And then Numbers 15:30 says, “But the person who acts defiantly, whether native or resident alien, blasphemes the Lord. That person is to be cut off from his people.”
But for any man or woman, whoever they may be, who comes to God and repents of their sin, there is forgiveness. But for that one who defiantly rebels against God, who by his own will disobeys and continues to disobey there is no more sacrifice for sins. So the high priest then is qualified by being selected by God, sympathetic with men, and sacrificing for men.
Let us see how Jesus meets every qualification. Verse 5, “In the same way, Christ did not exalt himself to become a high priest, but God who said to him, You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Who chose Jesus to be a high priest? God did. And what's the qualification? Had to be chosen by God. That's a quote from Psalm 2:7, "You are my Son, today I have become your Father."
The Holy Spirit throughout the book of Hebrews continues to repeat quotes from the Old Testament because He's writing to Jews and He wants to put it in context. John 8:54 says, “If I glorify myself,” Jesus answered, “my glory is nothing. My Father—about whom you say, ‘He is our God’—He is the one who glorifies Me.” And the Bible says He made Himself of no reputation.
Verse 6, “also says in another place, You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” The same God that said "You are my Son," is the same God that said "You are a priest." Well who is Melchizedek? Melchizedek is spoken of in Psalm 110 because there the Psalmist is prophesying the coming of Messiah. And He uses Melchizedek as an example of a type of Jesus.
Because Melchizedek was more than the average priest. He had a higher priesthood order than did Aaron. He lived in Genesis 14:18 before Aaron ever got on the scene. His priesthood superseded the priesthood of Aaron. We'll get into Hebrews 7 and find out about it. He's a great type of Jesus Christ in many ways. In Psalm 110, the Messiah is presented as a king priest.
So Jesus is after the order of Melchizedek and the Jews knew that this must be some great individual, because Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. And Abraham was a lot higher up than Aaron. So the Holy Spirit says this priest, Jesus Christ, was typified by Melchizedek, who was a king priest forever. Psalm 110 said that God chose Jesus as a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Verse 7, “During his earthly life, He offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to God who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His status.” Does that remind you of the Garden of Gethsemane? Sure, that was the greatest climax of His suffering for there He began to bear the sins of the world. He went into the Garden to pray and He sweat great drops of blood.
Jesus Christ couldn't have been a fully sympathetic high priest if He did not feel what we feel. He felt the temptation we will never feel. Because we succumb long before we reach the climax of temptation. So He ran temptation to its fullest at every point because He had nothing in His nature that could succumb to sin so He just took ever temptation to its extreme without sin.
He knew it in His omniscience, but He also knows it now in His experience, which fitted Him by all of the earthly qualifications to be our high priest. So the point then that Spirit makes is that Jesus is qualified to be a sympathetic high priest by His agony, by His tears, His prayers, His suffering, and all of that. He went through every bit of it. He knows when it's real and He knows when you're faking.
Verse 8, “Although he was the Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered.” In other words, you learn when you suffer. That's the only way you learn experimentally. You can say fire burns but until you've felt it burn, you really can't be sympathetic to someone who's burned. That's the kind of high priest I want. I want a God who feels like I feel and knows what I'm going through.
Verse 9 says, “After He was perfected, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” That word perfect means complete. Jesus went through everything He had to go through so He could be complete. The perfect high priest. Perfected doesn't mean His nature changed. It doesn't mean his person changed, it just means He was perfectly qualified as the High Priest.
There's only one other qualification. Besides being chosen by God and being sympathetic and understanding, the third thing was He had to make sacrifice for sins. Did Jesus do that? Look at the end of verse 9, "He became the source of eternal salvation." And what was it that gave Him the right to be that author? His own death. By His death He opened the way of eternal salvation. Let us pray.