His Judgment

What does Jesus’s role of judgment have anything to do with His role as priest? Isn’t judgment an aspect of His role as king? Yes, it is, but not exclusively. There’s great comfort, and great conviction, that we can discover when we see the priestly aspect of His judgment.

Clean or unclean

One of the main themes of the Mosaic law was the idea of holiness. God is holy, set apart from evil, and those who come to Him must be holy too. Holiness is a hard concept for us to grasp; it’s not a tangible, visible thing since it’s a condition of our hearts.

To help the Jewish people understand the idea of holiness, God prescribed that those who were ready to enter His tabernacle to worship Him were considered ceremonially “clean” while those who were not were considered ceremonially “unclean.”

This is helpful. We know what these terms mean. It’s easy to understand how something clean can become unclean, and that you don’t want unclean things to contaminate clean things. This is the idea of holiness and unholiness made visible and practical.

To be sure the people understood when they were clean or unclean, God gave specific guidelines for determining if they were ready to enter God’s presence to worship Him.

Sometimes people would become unclean through things they could control, such as touching a dead body or eating an animal they were forbidden to eat.

Other times, people could become unclean due to nothing they did, such as when a person would contract a disease or even when a woman would give birth.

The priest’s job

Who was the one who would determine if someone was clean or unclean? God gave that job to the priests. They were the ones who were required to understand the law and make a judgment on if a person was clean or unclean.

What made the priests qualified to determine if someone was clean or not? Their judgment was based on God’s word. They would review the law and judge based on what it said.

• If the person was clean, the priest would permit him to participate in the ceremonial worship that God commanded.
• If the person was unclean, the priest would describe the way the person could become clean and gain access back to true worship.

Often the path to becoming clean again was to wait a certain amount of time, take a good bath, and wash the soiled clothes. Other times, the priest didn’t have anything to offer the unclean person. If their uncleanness was a result of a sickness or condition for which there was no cure, they were hopeless to ever be able to enjoy worship in God’s house again.

Toward God

As we look at Christ’s role of judgment, let’s remember that His role as priest is a role as a mediator, a go-between. How does His job of declaring who is clean and unclean apply to His Father?

It may seem obvious, but let’s not move past this point without addressing it. The very fact that Jesus has this role is because God is clean; He is holy. Christ can attest that He has seen His Father and declared Him to be the Holy One. Because God is immutable, never changing, His holiness doesn’t change either.

His actions

One of the most striking parts of Jesus’s earthly ministry was His tendency to make startling claims about someone’s cleanness, wholeness, and standing before God.

Jesus would declare the religiously, ceremoniously “clean” to be filthy, unwashed, and in need of forgiveness. He called the spiritual leaders the “blind leading the blind” and “sepulchers full of dead men’s bones.”

To the lepers, He declared them healed. Those with palsy or withered limbs He declared whole. To harlots and thieving tax collectors, He declared their sins forgiven. Not only did Jesus declare it: it happened! Every time, when Jesus told a person they were healed, or clean, or forgiven, they were immediately what He declared of them.

His qualifications

What makes Him qualified to make these declarations, these judgments? His judgment is based on His Father’s word.

John 5:30 “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.”

John 8:26 “I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.”

John 12:49 “For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.”

Toward us

Just as Jesus declared while He was on the earth who was clean and unclean, holy and unholy, so now He retains that authority. In His priestly role, He judges the earth, comparing them to God’s perfect standard. God’s word tells us that we are all sinners; we’re all unclean without Jesus. We must be made clean before we can worship God and experience His life.

Just like the Jews in the Old Testament, we’re unclean through a combination of our own choices and through things we had no control over. We’re all sinners, both because we choose to sin and because this world we’re born in is full of sin. We’re contaminated. We need cleaning, healing, but there is no cure for sin on the earth. We can’t clean ourselves.

Although there were many who were unclean that the priests could not help, Jesus is able to declare anyone who comes to Him in faith to be clean. Why? Because that is what God the Father has said.

Romans 10:13 “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

John 1:12 “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:”

If we’ve trust in Jesus, His role of judgment should not make us afraid. We should find great comfort in His judgment as a high priest for us. When He looks at those who place their faith in Him, He does not see them as unclean, just as He didn’t see the tax collectors or the blind or lame or sinners as unclean. He declared them clean, and He also declares us clean who trust Him! We’re holy, because He says so!

Pictured Rightly

Jesus’s role of high priest gives Him authority to judge who is clean and unclean.

Toward God, Jesus judges His Father to be the Holy One, perfect and pure.

Toward us, Jesus judges that the world is unclean in sin, but those who trust in Him are clean. When Jesus judges that we are clean or unclean, we cannot argue. He is right. If we are unclean, we must listen to how He says to become clean. If we are clean, we must believe His judgment and rest in His word.

Praise God for Jesus, our judging high priest!

<– Previous – Article 3 – Jesus, Our High Priest – His Ministry

His Ministry

This is third in a series of article about Jesus and His role in our lives as our high priest. This article is going to address how Jesus ministers to us and God.

As we’ve discussed in previous articles, the main function of a priest is a go-between, a mediator. We often look at how Jesus ministers to us, but He also ministers for us. In His role as mediator, He ministers to us and also to His Father.

Priestly ministry to people

All the way back in Genesis 14, we see the very first person called a priest in the Bible: Melchizedek. This priest came to Abraham (called Abram at the time) after he had won a battle to rescue his nephew.

Genesis 14:18-20 “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.”

We see Melchizedek ministered to Abraham in three ways:

1. He provided for his needs (“…brought forth bread and wine…”).
2. He blessed him (“And he blessed him…”).
3. He led him in worship to God (“And blessed be the most high God…”).

This is the main ministry in the scripture of all priests toward the people. They are called to show God’s gracious character to people in need, to bless them as God wished to bless them, and lead them in worshipping God who delivers them.

Jesus’s ministry to us

When Jesus ministers to us, this is His exact ministry.

First, He is compassionate, meeting our needs. He called us to pray for our daily bread. While on earth, He healed the sick and provided for the poor. We’ve already looked at His empathetic role, which aligns very well with this piece of His ministry. This takes His empathetic role a step further, ministering to us based on His ability to understand and feel our needs and weaknesses.

Second, He blesses us:

Ephesians 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:”

His blessings are in the name of His Father. God desires to give us good things. Again, this aligns well with His empathetic role and takes it into action. This is a prayer of protection, of an open way for God’s good things to flow to us. It’s a prayer for our happiness and joy in God and all His good will toward us. This refers to His role of interceder and advocate, which we’ll discuss in a future article.

Third, he leads us to worship God. In fact, we could not come to God without His death on the cross to pay for our sin. It is His life, death, and resurrection which most vividly communicate to us His Father’s grace and love. Because of this, Jesus leads us in worship to the God who delivers us.

Priestly ministry to God

The priest’s role did not just stop at ministering to people. In the law of Moses, God provided clear and specific instructions on how His people were to worship Him. Much of this worship required sacrifices that the people would bring, but some of it was done in the tabernacle where only the priests could go. In the tabernacle, the priests would attend the various articles such as the candlestick, the table of shewbread, and the altar of incense.

Even still, one task was reserved specifically for the high priest. He would minister on the day of atonement by entering the holy of holies once a year and sprinkling the blood of a lamb on the ark of the covenant.

What we see is that God called His people to minister to Him in specific ways, but then prohibited some of them from doing so. Why?

Jesus’s ministry to God

We saw in our first article in this series how the tabernacle and its way of worship were shadows of the true things. The priest and high priests of the Old Testament system were pictures, types of the true priests and high priest to come.

Hebrews 8:1-2 “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.”

Jesus is God’s high priest. We are like both the people and the priests of the Old Testament. There are some things that God allows us to do in serving Him, but some things we can’t do at all. Jesus ministers for us.

Just like the people couldn’t go into the tabernacle and relied on the priests to serve God, so we are unable to complete the righteousness that God has called us to do. We can’t do enough good to fulfill God’s righteous requirements. In our place, Jesus completed God’s work. He satisfies God’s righteous requirements. It’s His ministry toward God, not our works or failures, by which God is satisfied.

The Bible also calls those of us who have trusted in Jesus a “royal priesthood.” We are now able to serve God in ways we couldn’t before He saved us. But even now, we can’t atone for our own sins. Thank God for Jesus, our high priest and intercessor, who has already entered the holy of holies in heaven and paid for our sins! He went where we could not and paid what we could never pay! Even today He intercedes before His Father to continually allow His once-for-all sacrifice to leave the way to God open and clear for all who come to Jesus.

Pictured rightly

Jesus’s ministry is just like His role as mediator: it works toward us and God.

To us, Jesus meets our needs from His compassion, blesses us, and leads us to worship God.

To God, Jesus fulfills the requirements of righteous service and has paid for our sins.

There is no work needed, no more price to pay, to appease God’s will. Jesus did the work. Jesus paid the price. He cares for us, blesses us, and leads us.

Praise God for Jesus, our ministering high priest!

<– Previous – Article 2 – Jesus, Our High Priest – His Empathy

His Empathy

This is the second of a series of articles about Jesus and His role in our lives as our high priest. This article is going to address Christ’s empathetic role toward us and God and how important that is to our daily lives.

Saying that Christ has a high priestly role of empathy means more than what we might think at first glance. As we look, we’ll see that Christ is able to know, feel, and respond to our deepest needs and desires, and to God the Father’s deepest needs and desires as well.

The role of empathy

First, what do we mean by empathy? The dictionary defines it this way:

“the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”

This is more than sympathy.

To be sympathetic is to feel for someone. To be empathetic is to feel with someone.

When we speak of Christ’s empathetic role, we speak of His ability to feel with us, and as Mediator, with His Father as well. He is the go-between of our needs, emotions, delights, and pains, bringing them to God the Father. In turn, Jesus is also the go-between of God’s needs, emotions, delights, and pains, bringing them to us.

In the Bible

Christ’s empathetic role is perhaps best seen in Hebrews 4:15-16. We’ll look at both sides to His empathetic role in the rest of the article. Try to spot both sides as you read the verses:

Hebrews 4:15-16 “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Toward us

Christ’s role toward us is special and intimate and explained in verse 15:

Hebrews 4:15 “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

When we think of a high priest, we may have images of someone in white robes, perhaps with a large religious hat, who is clean and pure and apart from the common people. This isn’t a bad picture if we’re trying to think of the high priest in the Old Testament.

But Jesus is much greater. In His role as high priest, He became one of the common people. Hebrews says our high priest isn’t one that is far removed from our pains and weaknesses; He has felt them all. He knows what it is like to be sick, to be tired, to be sick and tired of being sick and tired. And in case we didn’t get it, we’re told He was tempted like we are tempted, yet without sin.

Do we understand that? Jesus knows, not in a hearing or far away knowledge, but in a feeling knowledge, a close knowledge. He has experienced our weaknesses; He feels our pain. Jesus even knows what it’s like to deal with sin and its struggle.

In His role as high priest, Jesus delights in understanding us. He considers it a joy to carry our cares and understand our wounds. This isn’t a job to Him; it is His nature. It pleases Him to serve us in feeling our feelings and knowing our cares.

Toward God

As Mediator, Jesus not only carries our feelings to God His Father, but His Father’s feelings to us as well. We learn what those feelings are in verse 16:

Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

See the “therefore” in the verse? What we see is an invitation, knowing that Jesus ministers to us through His ability to know and feel our deepest feelings. This invitation is to come boldly to the Father’s throne. Why?

Jesus is telling us His Father’s deepest feelings and desires toward us is to shower us with grace.

Jesus, in His empathetic role, sees our suffering and weakness and begs us approach His Father’s throne! He has seen His Father’s heart for us, a heart that wants to lavish us with grace and mercy for our needs.

God’s needs?

Does God have needs that Jesus would need to mediate? No, at least He doesn’t have needs like we do. He doesn’t need food or clothing. He doesn’t even need our praise. His “need” is to act in His nature. He must act in His nature. In theology we call this His “immutability,” the fact that He is unchanging, always the same.

Normally when we think of God’s unchanging nature, we think of it in a static, unmoving form, like how a statue doesn’t change. But God’s immutability is greater than that. The great comfort of His unchanging nature is that He acts on it. He does what He is. What we know of God from His testimony of Himself is that His nature is loving and merciful toward those who place their faith in His Son Jesus, and that will never change.

Notice God’s testimony of His own nature when declaring His name to Moses:

Exodus 34:6-7 "And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."

What do we see about Jesus’s empathetic role toward His Father? He mediates God’s nature of mercy and grace. He calls us to His throne because He desires to give us the goodness that His nature moves Him to give us.

Pictured rightly

This is Christ’s empathetic role as high priest.

Jesus feels our weaknesses and responds by moving toward us, not away.

Jesus feels His Father’s loving heart toward us and calls us to Him.

Christ is the mediator, the high priest, between us and His Father. In His empathetic role, He feels our needs, and calls us to come to the Father who wishes to fill our needs.

Praise God for Jesus, our empathetic high priest!

Next – Article 3 – Jesus Our High Priest – His Ministry –>

<– Previous – Article 1 – Jesus Our High Priest – His Role

His Role

This is the first of a series of articles about Jesus and His role in our lives as our high priest. This article is going to address Christ’s role as mediator toward us and God. This will help set the stage as we learn about His role as high priest going forward.

The priests

In the Old Testament when God saved the Jewish people from slavery to the Egyptians, He told Moses how the people should worship Him. This worship involved sacrifices, holidays, washings, rituals, and work in God’s holy tabernacle. God declared that only a certain group of people could perform the most holy functions in the tabernacle area.

God called this special group of people who could work in the tabernacle the priests. The priestly function, above anything else, was to act as a go-between, also called a mediator. They represented the people before God, and they represented God before the people.

There was one priest that was above the rest. God called him the high priest. The high priest had all the normal duties of the regular priests but were also responsible for some unique functions. If the regular priests functioned as mediators, the high priest was the true and greatest mediator.

Why priests?

What do we learn from the fact that God established the priests? After all, when God sent Moses to Pharoah to tell him to let the children of Israel go, it was so they could serve the Lord in the wilderness (Exodus 7:16). When they enter the wilderness, they’re told only one small group of them is allowed to do the normal worship of God. Why?

We learn that we need a mediator. God didn’t arbitrarily give us a go-between because He didn’t want to deal with us anymore. This isn’t God’s way of getting a secretary that tells us His schedule is always booked. We must have someone to help us get to God.

Since the very garden of Eden when the world, the cosmos, was plunged into the effects of sin, we were separated from God’s presence. And the reason for this separation is very clear: sin. God is holy, set apart from sin. If we sinners wish to come to Him, we need a go-between. We need help.

Shadows of the true

A lot of what we’ll discuss about Jesus as our high priest comes from the book of Hebrews. The author of Hebrews explains in detail how Jesus has become our high priest. God has declared that Jesus has fulfilled the requirements of the Old Testament system of laws for worship. He also declared that those laws and systems were a shadow, a type, of the true worship of God.

Hebrews 9:24 “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:” [bold added]

What we learn is that God wants to learn about how He created the role of the priests to teach us about how Jesus works for us today as our high priest.

A true Mediator

The first thing we see is that Jesus is our mediator.

1 Timothy 2:5“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;” [bold added]

Hebrews 8:6 “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.” [bold added]

Hebrews 9:15 “And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” [bold added]

Jesus Christ serves us by being our go-between before God. He also represents God to us.

Luke 14:7 “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.”

Jesus has made the way clear for us to approach God. In His duty as high priest, we have direct access to God’s holy throne, and we have access to His word.

Article 2 – Jesus, Our High Priest – His Empathy –>