We’re used to thinking of the priesthood of our Savior, Christ Jesus, especially in connection with His atoning sacrificial death upon the Cross. For He is not only the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, but He is the merciful and great High Priest who offers Himself once for all, and who enters the Most Holy Place with His own Blood as the Propitiation for our sins. This is the apex of His High Priesthood, to be sure, but so also the foundation upon which that Priesthood persists and endures eternally for us and for all His saints in His bodily Resurrection from the dead and His Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father in flesh and blood like ours.
The Priesthood of our dear Lord Jesus Christ begins with His Incarnation, when the Son of God became true Man – flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood – in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He thus became like us, that we should become like Him. And having become true Man, He then also humbled Himself and took on the form of a servant, bearing in His own body all the curse and consequences of our sin. By His Baptism in the Jordan River, He took His stand with all the people – with all the sinners coming to St. John – in order to become our Champion, our Kinsman Redeemer, taking responsibility for the sins of the world, even unto death on the Cross. In doing so, He was anointed by the Spirit of the Father as the Christ, the Savior of all the sons and daughters of man. He was made to be like us in every respect, “so that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). Everything He did and suffered was “for us men and for our salvation.”
As we all heard this past Sunday, from His Baptism in the Jordan River He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, to fast and pray and wait upon His Father, and to be tempted by the devil on our behalf, as our dread Champion and great Defender. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). He perseveres and prevails against every temptation, not by the raw exercise of His own almighty power as the Son of God, but as the true Man, living as we are created and called to live, by perfect faith, with flawless fear, love, and trust in His own God and Father. “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8), not for His own benefit, but in order to blaze the trail and open the path of life for all of us.
All that He bore and suffered culminated in His Holy Cross and Passion, where He became the once-for-all Sacrifice of Atonement for the sins of the whole world. Thus did He redeem us from sin, death, the devil, and hell, and reconcile us to His God and Father by the shedding of His holy and precious Blood. But even as that was the completion and perfection of His redeeming work, it remains the basis of His ongoing Priesthood. For He has entered into the Holy of Holies made without hands, eternal in the heavens, bearing all the members of His Bride, the Church, into the presence of God, just as Aaron and his sons had for generations entered into the inner sanctum of the earthly tabernacle (and temple) on behalf of Israel. But the High Priesthood of Christ Jesus is not a temporary office, it rather endures forever, that we should live forever in and with Him.
As our merciful and great High Priest, our Savior and Redeemer, the one Mediator between God and Man, He ever lives to make intercession for us before the Throne of God (Hebrews 7:25). He who was crucified for our transgressions and raised for our justification is even now interceding for us at the Right Hand of God (Romans 8:34). He brings us, our prayers, praises, and sacrifices of thanksgiving, to the Father in the Holy Spirit, and we are acceptable and pleasing in the sight of God for His sake. At the same time, He is not absent from His Church on earth, but by and with His Ministry of the Gospel our great High Priest is actively present and at work among us, freely and fully forgiving our sins and pouring out the Spirit generously upon us. As He has been tempted in every way that we are, and as He has borne all our sins and griefs and sorrows in His own mortal Body unto the Cross, so does He have compassion upon us. He remembers us in His tender mercy and steadfast loving-kindness, and He helps us in our weakness, unto life eternal!