Priesthood and Life

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 3 - Our Great High Priest

Reading: Heb. 4:14-15; 5:1-6; 7:26-27; 8:1-3.

"Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus" (Heb. 3:1).

For a few minutes, I want to come back to this great dominant thought of priesthood. I would just ask you to allow your minds to stand back and view in quite a general way this whole matter as in the Word of God, that is, to realize anew what a large place the Word of God gives to the matter of priesthood. In both Testaments, from beginning to end, this is something which is kept almost continuously in view, and realizing that fact, just to ask one comprehensive question. What does priesthood therefore mean, or what is a priest? Especially now thinking of the High Priest, what is the divine thought in the High Priest?

The Person of the High Priest

We will begin by considering the man himself, the High Priest. What is he? What is it that constitutes him a priest? When you look into the Word for the answer to that question, you will see that the High Priest is a double or a two-fold person. On the one side, there is God; on the other side, there is man. "He is taken from among men" is the word we have read; taken from among men, but he is also appointed of God. There is the God-ward side and there is the man-ward side of the High Priest. And in his own one indivisible person, we find God and man brought together and, inasmuch as it is priesthood, that union is brought about by means of shed blood, the blood of an offering without spot, without blemish. And offering in the Old Testament which, being spotless, is taken to represent in its blood an incorruptible life, a life without corruption, and that blood is the ground which makes the priesthood capable of functioning. When we speak of the priesthood functioning, we simply mean this: making the union between God and man a living thing, a vital thing, something that is not just formal, not just theoretical, but actual and real; God and man verily and truly in living fellowship, in living communication. A tremendous thing! And when you see what the man-ward side means and speaks of, and when you see what the God-ward side represents, this priesthood becomes a marvellous thing.

We think of Job's cry when he said, "He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment. There is no umpire betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both" (Job 11:32-35).

Job's cry for an umpire who is a man, is answered in the Lord Jesus as High Priest. Here, on the one hand, is the great Judge, the God of infinite holiness and righteousness, a God who must uphold truth and integrity and perfection, who cannot come down for a moment from His high, His exalted place of perfect holiness to condone, to recognise, to accept anything evil or wrong. There He is in the perfection of His unassailable righteousness. On the other hand, here is a man, a man accused and rightly accused, a man who has fallen from that divine standard and who is actually and positively contrary to that standard and guilty before that great Judge in holiness and righteousness. There he is accused and under condemnation, and these two can have nothing in common, they cannot even look at one another. What is going to happen is deadlock, there is no way out.

This is God, very God; this is man, very man; and the difference is not only the difference of God and man, but of state, and by reason of the difference of state, inward state, they can have nothing to do with one another. There is deadlock. And yet, and yet, God's great purpose and hope is centred in that man, and how is He to realise it? And that man's only hope of life and of purpose is centred in that God. Here is this deadlock, they are at variance. What is going to happen? Job said, "He is not a man, as I am; that puts us apart". The answer is in the High Priest in whose very Person the two are made one, the umpire, the Man. The Lord Jesus comes into the breach, into the gap.

Try to picture the great chief Lord Justice of the land in all his pomp, in all his glory, his robes of office. There he is enthroned with all his dignity and authority, and here is the poor sinner, the criminal in his presence, the despised law-breaker. And imagine someone coming into that hall and putting his hand on the shoulder of the great Chief Justice and his other hand upon the shoulder of the poor criminal and saying to the great administrator of the law, "I am going to clear up your case for you!" - and to the other man, "I am going to clear up your case for you, and when I have done my work, you two will be gripping hands and be one forever". Imagine something like that happening. But that is exactly what the Lord Jesus has done and that is exactly the meaning of His High Priestly work, because in Him there is very God on the right hand and very man on the left hand. And by virtue of His precious Blood, He has dealt with the cause, and the case, and the condemnation, the sin and the guilt, and all that is done with and dismissed. And the great God and the great sinner are brought into everlasting fellowship in the Person of the Lord Jesus who is both God and man. That is a simple summing up of what we have read in those passages in the letter to the Hebrews. That is priesthood, priesthood in virtue of blood which represents a Life which is without corruption or sin, offered to God for His satisfaction.

You see, beloved, the fact remains that you and I have got to satisfy God, and the only thing that will satisfy God, being what He is, is a life without corruption, a life without any sin in it at all, a life in which you cannot trace iniquity. God demands sinless perfection as His irreducible minimum, but we can never provide that in ourselves. That will never be found in us, but God has found a Way, and in virtue of His own Blood, His own sinless perfect life without a trace of corruption, sin apart, He has satisfied God as man. God is satisfied with that offering. That is our offering, and it is in the High Priestly Person and work of the Lord Jesus that we come into the place of divine satisfaction. God is satisfied. That is priesthood in a word.

The Function of the High Priest

And we are led from the person to his function. What is the function of a priest? The function of a priest is to bring into rest, rest of heart. The Lord Jesus is set before us as the High Priest. I would suggest to you that you read your Gospels again with this in view and trace the priestly line or feature through the Gospels in the Person of the Lord Jesus. You will find that it is a new clue, a new revelation. When He said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls" He was speaking as the priest, as the High Priest. Rest unto your souls; "I will give you rest."

The letter to the Hebrews in its early chapters is occupied mainly with that question of rest. You know that whole chapters are given up to it: "They could not enter into His rest", "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God" - Israel failing to enter into God's rest.

The interesting thing is, here in these chapters 3 and 4, you have a strange interchange. You begin, "Consider the apostle and High Priest". You begin with the High Priest and before you get very far you have gone from the High Priest to Joshua. Suddenly, without warning, you find Joshua is brought onto the scene, and then again, without any warning, you change back to the priest again. And in between the first mention of the priest and then the continuation regarding the priest, there is just this - "if Joshua had given them rest...". If Joshua had given them rest, but Joshua could not give them rest, he did not bring them into rest. Why?

Now, we believe that Joshua in the Old Testament is a type of the energies of the Holy Spirit to bring the people of God into their full inheritance: all God's thought for them, to God's rest. And if we keep to that type we are going to say this tremendous thing, that just as Joshua failed to bring them into rest, the Holy Ghost Himself is incapable of bringing anyone into rest without the priestly work of the Lord Jesus. Joshua became dependent entirely upon the priest. And when the priestly work failed, Joshua's whole work broke down as leader of the people concerning His rest, and when the priestly work fails, the Holy Ghost is helpless in the great purpose of God. We are not brought into God's rest by the Holy Spirit apart from the High Priestly work of the Lord Jesus, but because of it. The work of the priest is to bring into rest.

My time is so limited that I do not know what to say and what to leave out, but let me leave a good deal of the middle out and get at once to the end, the summing up. Beloved, the High Priestly work of the Lord Jesus is that by which through faith the whole of God's purpose is going to be realized in you and in me, the whole of God's purpose by reason of His High Priestly work. And what is revealed here is just this: that not only is the priestly factor the means of bringing us out of Egypt, out of the world, out of the power of darkness, out of the realm of satan and sin to be God's people, but the High Priestly work sees us through the whole journey in the wilderness and takes us right over into the ultimate fulness. It is the High Priestly work which lies behind the whole course from beginning to end.

The Order of Melchizedek

Now, all this in the letter to the Hebrews, which brings it into the eternal realm and out of the time realm entirely, is the change from the Aaronic priesthood to the order of Melchizedek, the Melchizedek order of priesthood. What is that order? Oh, not as we talk about priestly orders here! No, an order. What is this order? It is a spiritual order. In certain ecclesiastical realms and systems you have this order of priests and this order of monks and so on. Not that sort of thing. It is the order of Melchizedek as a spiritual order. What is it? Look again:

"Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life... after the power of an endless life."

"He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever lives (or lives for ever)."

And that word 'uttermost', as you know, does not mean 'down to the bottom', though it includes that, but 'unto the end, forever'. Able to save right on forever them that draw near unto God through Him. Why? Because this is an eternal thing, a timeless order, is the order of Melchizedek. It is the power of an endless life. This priesthood has to do with life forever.

What you and I have got to get back upon is this: that there is a High Priest now in the heavenly sanctuary performing His ministry in relation to us here which bears right down upon the whole, the full, the entire course of God's thought concerning us. Put that another way. Upon what do we depend for the realization of God's full thought? Our effort, our struggles, our knowledge? No, nothing like that at all. We depend upon what He is doing in the presence of God now. We depended upon that to save us at the beginning, to deliver us from condemnation and guilt with all its consequences, but we rest upon that just as much every day of our lives and we rest upon that for all that is to come. And we can rest upon it, and oh, if only you and I had a more lively apprehension of the wonderful High Priestly work of the Lord Jesus now, we would have more rest unto our souls. You are afraid of what is going to happen to you, afraid that you may fail, afraid that you may fall and not get through. That is not with you, that is with Him. Am I to be careless? Oh no! The apostle gives us our place in Gal. 2:20, "That life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me."

What is it? Faith in the High Priest; that is all. That is enough day by day. He is going to do the rest. He ever lives to do this. Do you think that He will fail? Not while you trust Him. He will not fail. It will be you who fail if you do not trust Him. He abides faithful even if we are faithless.

His High Priestly work, beloved, is complete, eternal, comprehensive, and goes right on to the end from the very beginning; faith in the Lord Jesus as our High Priest who is now active on our behalf in the heavenly sanctuary, who has passed through the heavens and is engaged upon this work there before God. That High Priestly work is the basis, not just of our conversion, our salvation, as we think of it in those more elementary terms of coming to the Lord, but of the full salvation right on to glory. That is what He is doing for us now, securing it in virtue of His precious Blood.

Eternal Life, with all that is wrapped up in it, is ours by reason of this work that the Lord Jesus is doing now for us. He ever lives, He lives ever to make intercession for us. I do not think we know, or realise, I do not think we have the real joy that might be ours, the real peace that might be ours, the rest. If only we can grasp this, if only we were alive to the fact that while Jesus as the Son of God is enthroned on the right hand of the Majesty on high and occupies every other capacity in heaven, He is there as High Priest.

You know, on that low, base and of course, entirely wrong level, the Roman church has something to teach us. I wish that you and I had in the right realm of the proper kind the same condition of detachment that Roman Catholics have in their wrong realm. They simply go to their priest and put the whole thing on him and that is the beginning and end of it. They go and put the thing on him, and he has got to take the whole responsibility. They do not bother any more about it. You find they are people without very much trouble, as a rule, as to sin. Now, I say that is all wrong in their realm. There is no vital link between them and the Lord which means progressive holiness, but you must say that they are people who are not very much bothered about questions along that line. But there is something that is right in the right realm that you and I need to get hold of, that the Lord Jesus, while faith is fastened upon Him as the High Priest, while we live this life in the flesh by faith in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus is taking responsibility for us now and forever. He is taking responsibility there in His own blessed wonderful Person. We have no need, no reason whatever, to ask one question as to our standing, as to our acceptance, as to our fellowship with God.

I do not know how you have grasped this. I see here the key to so many problems. I see here the secret of rest. I see here the answer to satan. You see, satan was the accuser in the days when Joshua had his garments filthy, when the priesthood was in a bad state satan stood at his right hand to accuse him, but when they took away the filthy garments and clothed Joshua with clean garments and put a fair mitre upon his head, the great word went out - "The Lord rebuke thee" (Zech. 3:2). The answer to satan's accusation is in the High Priest.

Who shall say His garments are not white and spotless and His mitre fair? Yes satan has no power when the High Priest who is right is over us. It was Israel which was suffering because of the priesthood, and we come into the good of the High Priest who is right before God. Ask the Lord to lead you into this: rest unto your souls when once you have grasped the significance of Jesus passed through the heavens. "We have such a High Priest". The Lord teach us more about it!