Our Eternal, Perfect Priest
On Saturday, April 15, around 6:45 in the morning, over in the conference room, there were about 30 men meeting as part of The Cities Institute. It was our fourth session together on Christian Formation; Pastor Mike Schumann was leading the session, and he was talking about how we think about what it means to follow Jesus.
Mike said that when it comes to our growth in Christlikeness — or when it comes to just the basic meaning of the Christian life — we all have some kind of vision for that. We all have some kind of idea or image in our minds.
And Pastor Mike said that he suspects that for many Christians in our country that vision for the ideal Christian life is to pursue the American Dream as much as possible without losing your soul. He said that we tend to aim for that place of maximum permissible worldliness and minimum permissible Christlikeness — How can I be worldly enough to fit in with those who hate God, but still Christian enough to be considered a Christian?
Basically, this thinking wants to be a Christian in a “just-get-your-foot-in-the-door” kind of way. That’s how some people think.
But now in your case, beloved, we are convinced of better things, things that belong to salvation! Because we know that salvation in Christ is much more than just getting your foot in the door. The Book of Hebrews definitely shows us that salvation is something much deeper. Salvation means to have fellowship with the living God.
And I want to just show you this right away in the language of Chapter 7. Just look at verse 19 and verse 22.
Verse 19,
“… for the law made nothing perfect, but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.”
Do you see that? There’s a better hope, and what does this better hope get you? It gets you nearness with God.
Look at verse 22,
“Consequently, he [Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him…”
So salvation to the uttermost — the whole hog of salvation, which is what Jesus is able to give us — it means we grow closer to God. This is not just getting your foot in the door. This is living in the same room; it’s being seated at his table; it means calling the very presence of God your home.
That is salvation in Christ.
And any lesser idea about what salvation means is less than Christian; it’s less than biblical; it trivializes the glory of Jesus and it’s unworthy of our time. So that’s not what we’re doing here.
We want more of God.
We want to live closer to God.
We want Edenic movement (remember that from the Book of Leviticus?)!
We want the presence of God and the power of God and ways of God to overcome us.
We want to reorient everything in our lives to be about God because that is the salvation that Jesus gives us.
It’s the hope of the new covenant, which is a better hope, a better covenant, a better salvation. And now in this passage I want to show you how Jesus gives us this. I’ve got three points here from verses 20–28 and they’re all connected together like this. Here’s the first.
1) Jesus gives us a better salvation because by God’s oath he is our high priest like Melchizedek (vv. 19–22).
Let’s pick up in verse 20. To summarize the writer’s argument in verse 19, he is saying that the Levitical priesthood — and Mosaic law overall — has been ‘set aside’ because of its “weakness and uselessness” (verse 18). Basically, the law made nothing perfect. The law was powerless to completely cleanse people so that they are able to draw near to God. The law could not do that, but this better hope can! This better hope means we can draw near to God and it’s been introduced, it’s been brought into effect, by this: the Melchizedekian high priest.
And so now the writer of Hebrews is combing two things here. Our better hope (better covenant, better salvation) is because of this high priest like Melchizedek. That’s a package. Better high priest, better covenant — they come together.
And that’s what he’s talking about in verse 20 when he says:
“And it was not without an oath.”
The “it” is referring to this package of the better hope we have through our high priest.
We have that because of an oath. But now what is this oath? Well the oath mentioned in verse 20 was when God the Father swore that Jesus is our high priest like Melchizedek. That’s Psalm 110:4.
And we should just memorize this verse. It’s a really important verse to the writer of Hebrews. We’ve seen that over the past several weeks, going back to Chapter 5, and it’s still a big deal here. You can see the word “oath” mentioned in verses 20 and 21, and then it’s mentioned again in verse 28. This oath actually bookends the passage. So listen to it again. Psalm 110:4,
“The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’”
That’s the oath that God the Father swore to God the Son, the Messiah, which means this: Jesus’s high priestly ministry is distinctive. It’s not like the Levitical priesthood — they were priests without an oath. But Jesus is our high priest like Melchizedek — not because of genealogy, not because of the law, but because God himself swore it.
That’s what Psalm 110, verse 4 means. And it hits different. Look at verse 22:
“This [Psalm 110, verse 4] — makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.”
And look, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never in my life used the word “guarantor” in a normal sentence. (I’d rather say guaranteer) But we can get what he’s saying here. As a result of this oath in Psalm 110, verse 4, because Jesus is our Melchizedekian high priest, he guarantees or secures a better covenant, a better hope, a better salvation.
That’s what Jesus guarantees, but in what way does Jesus guarantee this? This is the question that sorta rises to the top here in this passage: in particular, how does Jesus as our Melchizedekian high priest guarantee a better salvation?
That’s what the rest of this passage explains. Here’s the first explanation, second point:
2) Jesus as our Melchizedekian high priest guarantees a better salvation because he is our eternal high priest (vv. 23–25)
And by this, we’re just following along with what the writer is saying in verse 23.
The former priests, under the Levitical priesthood, were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but Jesus holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.
That is true of the Melchizedekian high priest. That’s what Psalm 110:4 says, and that’s the writer’s focus. Notice in verse 21 when the writer quotes Psalm 110:4 he abbreviates the quote. The full quote, the full oath, is “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” but the writer stops it short in verse 21 and just says “You are a priest forever.”
That’s his emphasis. Jesus as our Melchizedekian high priest means that he never clocks out. He never stops being our high priest because he never dies. Unlike the Levitical priests, Jesus has defeated death. He has been raised from the dead; he will never die again; so he continues forever.
What We’re Not Waiting For
We saw this a couple weeks ago, but it’s worth saying again: Jesus as our Melchizedekian high priest is directly and deliberately connected to his resurrection. In fact, I think the writer of Hebrews wants us to know that this connection is of the highest degree. One way to think about this is to say that: because Jesus is raised from the dead he therefore qualifies as the Melchizedekian high priest.
But it’s actually more than that: it’s that because God swore to Jesus that he is the Melichizekian high priest, that’s why God raised him from the dead. The resurrection was in fulfillment of the Psalm 110:4 oath.
So you better believe that oath was a big deal. And it’s already been fulfilled by the resurrection such that right now, in this moment, Jesus continues forever. He is not waiting on anything else to happen for him to fulfill this priestly ministry.
And oh, we should just sit here for a minute.
Many of y’all know my story, that I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home, but it wasn’t until I was 18 that God really began to change my life. I never thought I hated God before then, but I was probably a good example of someone trying to find that place of “minimum permissible Christlikeness,” but then the gospel truly confronted me and everything was different. It didn’t mean that I had arrived, it meant that I was starting a journey.
And the journey metaphor of the Christian life has been really helpful to me. It’s the main metaphor of John Bunyan’s classic book The Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan wrote that book in 1678 and it’s still so relevant today. I’ll read it again this summer if some of you want to read it with me.
But the idea is that as Christians we are pilgrims on a journey — we’re going somewhere, but we’re not there yet. That’s so much of our faith. It’s out there, ahead of us. And I don’t know about y'all, but I’ve been on this journey for at least 20 years and it still feels like a journey to me. And sometimes it feels like I’m a long ways from home. Waiting. Just waiting.
But, you know what we’re not waiting for?
A high priest.
The Psalm 110 word of oath, that Jesus is our high priest like Melchizedek, that’s already been fulfilled and it’s active right now.
Look at verse 25.
Consequently, because Jesus is raised and continues forever, because he’s our priest like Melchizedek, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
Jesus is our eternal high priest now. He continues forever now.
Jesus lives right now — and what’s he doing?
He’s making intercession for us. Intercession is another word for prayer.
For us who trust in Jesus, for us whom the Father has given Jesus, he prays for us. And it’s not just to get our foot in the door, but it’s to save us to the uttermost. It’s to bring us all the way home. And I’ll come back to this in a few minutes, but that’s one way Jesus guarantees a better salvation. Because he’s our eternal high priest.
Then there’s another explanation we start to see in verse 26. This is our third and final point.
3) Jesus as our Melchizedekian high priest guarantees a better salvation because he is our perfect high priest (vv. 26–28)
So verses 23–25 tell us that Jesus is our eternal high priest who always lives to make intercession for us; now verses 26–28 are meant to confirm that it is indeed intercession that Jesus continues to make, not sacrifice.
Track with me here:
There are two things necessary for Jesus to “always live to make intercession for us.” First, he has to always live. He has to live forever.
But second, he has to be perfect. Otherwise — if he was not perfect he would not be able to keep interceding for us, because he would also have to keep offering sacrifice for us, both for his sins and ours.
That’s what the Levitical priesthood had to do, but not Jesus. He’s different. Verse 26 tells us this. Look at verse 26: For it was fitting.
For it was indeed as it should be that we have this kind of Melchizedekian high priest. And it’s not just that he’s priest forever, but it’s that he is holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
These five characteristics at the end of verse 26 is what makes Jesus not have the same sacrificial needs as the Levitical high priests. Because they were sinners everyday they kept accumulating sins that demanded sacrifice. Same thing for the people.
But Jesus was — look at these three words in verse 26: “holy, innocent, unstained.” Some translations might say: “holy, blameless, pure.” The idea is comprehensive moral perfection. The meanings for each of these words are pretty much the same. The reason the writer stacks them back-to-back-to-back is for emphasis. One scholar on the Book of Hebrews says that “taken together, these three adjectives forcibly describe the sinlessness of the high priest.” That’s an understatement!
Jesus was and is morally perfect and sinless beyond what we can understand. There’s no example to point to. Every comparison falls short. The moral perfection of Jesus is sight-blinding, mind-bending perfection … which is what these last two characteristics are getting at. Look at verse 26 again.
Jesus, holy, innocent, unstained, has been “separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens.” And the main idea here is not moral, figurative separation, but literal, spatial separation.
Because Jesus is a real person, he occupies actual space-time reality. And in that reality he physically, spatially, removed himself from sinners in this world when he ascended into the heavenly dimension where he currently is. In other words, Jesus left here and went there.
I think what the writer is highlighting in this description is not just where Jesus is now as our high priest, but it’s that he’s where he is now having first been here. He was in this world. He really did walk in our shoes.
Which means that his holiness and innocence and purity is not something that he possesses because he’s in some heavenly, glorified state way out there. No.
Jesus was holy and innocent and unstained while he lived on this earth. Jesus was holy in your office on Monday morning. He was innocent watching your TV when no-one else is around. He was unstained in your most stressful of conversations.
It’s like the writer has already told us in Chapter 4, verse 15, Jesus our high priest is
“one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
That perfection is what Jesus realized here, and that’s what he has carried into his high priestly ministry there. It’s a holiness tested to the extreme in this world. He doesn’t need a sacrifice. He’s not like the Levitical priests. He has no sin of his own.
He’s perfect.
The All-Sufficient Sacrifice
Look at the last line of verse 27. Jesus didn’t offer a sacrifice for his own sins because he had none, but Jesus offered a sacrifice for the sins of the people once for all when he offered up himself.
This is a new theme we’re going to see in Hebrews. It’s not just that Jesus is our high priest, but that he is also our sacrifice. He is both. As high priest, he is the one who has entered the heavenly Most Holy Place to sprinkle the blood of sacrifice; as the sacrifice, it means the blood he sprinkled was his own.
And because he is the eternal, perfect high priest and the sacrifice is one of sight-blinding, mind-bending perfection, it was once for all. The sacrifice was such a glorious event that it was absolute, definitive, and unrepeatable.
Christian, because Jesus has done this, you are more forgiven and free from condemnation than you could ever fathom.
Jesus is not a weak high priest like the priests of the Old Covenant — verse 28. Remember Jesus was made the Melchizedekian high priest by God’s oath, Psalm 110:4. We can draw near to God, we have a better salvation — because our high priest, Jesus the Messiah, God the Son, has been made perfect forever. He is eternal and perfect. He has made the once-for-all sacrifice in offering himself, and therefore now he always lives to make intercession for us. One way to say it is that:
Because Jesus is eternal, he always lives to make intercession for us.
Because Jesus is perfect, it is intercession he makes, not sacrifice.
In a nutshell, that’s Hebrews 7:20–28.
But then there’s a question: if Jesus always lives to intercede for us, what exactly is Jesus interceding for us about?
What Remains for Jesus to Do?
This is an important question. Think about this:
If Jesus’s sacrifice was gloriously all-sufficient, once for all — like this book tells us — what is left for Jesus to pray for us about?
First, let’s say what it’s not.
Because the cross really was sufficient, Jesus is not constantly pleading with the Father to make the cross count. He’s not begging God the Father that the blood stick. He’s not saying, “Please don’t condemn them! Please accept them! Please! Please! Please!”
No. At the cross it was finished. That’s how the Book of Hebrews starts, Chapter 1, verse 3:
“After making purification for sins, Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
We are, right now, in God’s eyes, as definitively righteous as we ever will be.
So then what’s this intercession about? What’s Jesus praying about?
Well, think about the repeated theme we’ve seen in these previous chapters, in 3 and 4 and 6. The constant exhortation to the readers, to us, has been to endure in faith, to hold fast to our hope, to keep believing. And I think that’s what Jesus is praying about.
We get a picture of this in Luke 22, in Peter’s story. Remember there were two disciples who betrayed Jesus. There was Judas, but there was also Peter. We use the word “denial” to talk about what Peter did, to distinguish it from Judas, but it was a boldface denial, three times. So the real difference between Peter and Judas is what Jesus tells us about in Luke 22:31-32. Jesus says to Peter,
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, [which is wild. Imagine this: Satan wanted Peter. He wanted to crush him. But why didn’t he? Jesus says, Peter:] but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”
This moment in Luke 22 reminds me of how fragile life is. We are always stepping into the unknown. I’ve had these moments when we’ll be having dinner as a family, and all my children are crowded around the table, and Melissa is here, and my mother-in-law is there, and there’s good food spread out, and I think These are the best days of my life … and then I think I may not have this tomorrow.
I believe Jesus right now. We all believe right now. But I don’t know what kind of diagnosis we could get next week. What if one of my little kids is playing in the front yard and they chase a ball into the street and get run over by a car?
How will I be then? What could I be like in an unknown future?
My mentor in college used to tell me that we’re always one day away from ruining our lives. And I know that sounds morbid, but it’s not untrue. God knows we feel our weakness. We are fragile. And when we feel that, it’s overwhelming, except … Jesus prays for us … that our faith may not fail.
And that’s why I’m gonna keep clinging to him. It’s not because I’m good or smart or super-spiritual, it’s because I have a great high priest who always lives to intercede for me.
Behind the Wall
For my imagination, when I think about this I go to a scene from John Bunyans’ Pilgrim Progress. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s so good.
In this one scene, Christian, the main character, is being led by another character named Interpreter, and they come to this fire burning against a wall. And Christian looks at this fire and he sees someone standing by the fire who keeps casting water upon it, trying their hardest to put the fire out, but the fire just keeps burning “higher and hotter.”
And Christian asks Interpreter what’s going on, and Interpreter explains:
the fire you see is the work of grace that God has wrought in the heart, and the person casting water on the fire is Satan, but you’ll see that as more water gets cast on the fire, the fire only burns higher and hotter.
And then Interpreter takes Christian around the other side of the wall, and there he saw a man with a [bucket] of fuel in his hand, and that man was continually casting the fuel into the fire, but doing it secretly.
Then said Christian, What means this?
The Interpreter answered him,
This is Christ, who continually, with the fuel of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart: by which, whatever the devil might do, the souls of His people persevere.
I don’t know how hard things might be for you right now. Maybe you are overwhelmed with how fragile life can be. Maybe you’re fearful about your own heart and your future. I just want to remind you about what’s happening on the other side of that wall.
Jesus, your great high priest, prays for you. He’s always pouring fuel on the fire of your faith. And it’s not just so that you can get your foot in the door. But it’s for your salvation to the uttermost, all the way, where the very presence of God is our home.
And we remember that when we come to this table.
The Table
This Table symbolizes the fellowship we have with Jesus, and it’s meant to be a foretaste — it’s a pointer to that greater eternal feast that awaits us, when we will forever be seated at God’s table with him.
