Hebrews 8:1. We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.
Martin has asserted that “the particular doctrine concerning Christ’s priesthood which the Apostle asserts in [the text] is: the locality of that priesthood is heaven”. And this doctrine “throws a very powerful light on various attributes . . . of Christ’s priesthood. We select the following: (1) its reality. (2) its effectiveness. (3) its perfection. (4) its permanence. (5) its exceeding glory.” Martin dealt with the first two points in the part printed last month; the others appear here. The sermon is taken with editing from The Family Treasury for 1870.
3. Perfection of Christ’s Priesthood
It is a continuation of this line of thought to remark that Christ’s priesthood in heaven illustrates also the perfection of that priesthood. The first covenant was not “faultless”, which was illustrated by the fact that it had but “a worldly sanctuary” (Heb 9:1). Its priesthood was imperfect; it could not possibly be otherwise, seeing its only scene was this world. Perfection, it is strongly asserted, was not by the Levitical priesthood (Heb 7:11). “The law made nothing perfect” (Heb 7:19).
Meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances – being all merely the beggarly elements of the world – could only keep men in certain bondage, never lifting them above that realm. These were but a “shadow of good things to come” – not even rising to the character of “the very image of them” (Heb 10:1). They were “weak” and “unprofitable”. They did not “profit”, for they did not “perfect” them that were exercised in them. They “could not make the comers thereunto perfect” (Heb 10:1). They “could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience (Heb 9:9). For the conscience asserts man’s relation to higher interests than those of earth, and binds him to a government of larger sweep and longer duration than any special government that God established among the seed of Abraham after the flesh. It testifies his relation to the universal moral government of the God of heaven, and no earthly priesthood can so minister or mediate as to satisfy it perfectly.
But the eternal Son of God is a Priest from heaven – from the bosom of the Father – and the heir of all things. Perfection is largely and variously affirmed of His priesthood. He was “made perfect through suffering” (Heb 2:10); and “being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation” (Heb 5:9). “The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which [hope] we draw near unto God” (Heb 7:19), now that our Priest has entered as the forerunner within the veil (Heb 6:19,20), even “to the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens”. He reached this perfection in the triumph of His holy sacrifice; and it is proved by His inauguration on His Father’s throne. “Behold, I do cures today, and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.” And everyone shall be perfected as well as his Master. For by His one offering He hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified, seeing that this man, when He had offered one sacrifice for sin, sat down on the right hand of God for ever.
The priesthood of Levi was effective in its own sphere; its sacrifices “sanctified to the purifying of the flesh”. But it did not rise beyond the sphere of earth – it acted by “the law of a carnal commandment”. It could not penetrate with its virtue and efficiency and powers, to “an endless life”. It could not bring its services and functions to bear on man’s deepest relation to God, and man’s position as a subject of His eternal moral government. There was a great sphere of influence, interest and relation from which it was necessarily excluded. On man’s prospect and position in that sphere, it had no bearing whatsoever.
That priesthood might dimly shadow forth great truths belonging to the sphere of God’s moral government, but it could not rise to its elevation; it could exert no influence on its interests. It could keep the Israelitish kingdom from falling to pieces; it could accomplish the service and fulfill the conditions on which the continued residence of the divine Shechinah among Israel depended; and it might restore to the lapsed and unclean worshipper the privilege of returning into Israel’s camp and, with acceptance, re-engaging in Israel’s ceremonial worship. But it could not satisfy the demands of the moral law; it could not obliterate the guilt of sin as the transgression of that law; it could not glorify God as a moral ruler, nor pacify the conscience of man as a moral agent, concerning the forgiveness of sins; it could not re-admit apostate man to the family of heaven. It could admit him no further than into a sanctuary made with hands, which was but the figure of the true (Heb 9:24).
But Christ’s is a perfect priesthood. It does not appertain to any limited sphere, or any temporary interests, or any arbitrary and local kingdom. It appertains to the universal government of God. It deals with sin. It magnifies the moral and eternal law. It pacifies and purifies the conscience of man, not as an Israelite, but as man – as a moral agent, or subject of the one all-embracing government ranging over heaven and earth. It grasps every moral being by “the law”, not of “a carnal commandment”, but in “the power of an endless life”. It has left no demand of universal and eternal justice unsatisfied; it has not passed over unnoticed, or injured, any requirement of God’s eternal kingdom that rules over all. It has left no attribute of God’s nature unglorified, no elements of man’s nature unrectified, no element of man’s ruin unretrieved. It has knit with eternal firmness the bond whose breaking resulted in man being set adrift from heaven, as an alien and an outcast from God. It has poured the splendours of “glory in the highest” around God’s character and it has established, by the power of things immutable, the purity of man’s character, the peace of his conscience and his heart, and the blessedness and joy of his destiny.
Its virtues reach unto the highest heavens; they even prevail to save, from going down unto the pit, those who are worthy of the lowest hell. It sweeps sin away “as far as the east is from the west;” and “as the heavens are higher than the earth”, so far does it remove our iniquities from us. Its sweet savour fills the souls of believing men on earth with tranquillity and the soul of God in heaven with rest. To Jehovah it is “a saviour of rest”, and to those who believe it gives admission into the rest of God. It is perfect. It is absolutely final and conclusive. It makes certain a fearful looking for of vengeance and fiery indignation for those who reject its love and ministrations, shutting with the key of David the hell of the unbelieving, and no man can open it; and it seals and perfects into a hope most sure and steadfast those that humbly trust to its mediation, opening heaven for them by a new and living way, and giving them boldness to enter in.
All this is true. And all this is made most obviously true by the fact that its ministrations are conducted, as in their rightful native sanctuary, at the right hand of the throne in heaven. The central throne of God is the scene of this priesthood. It would be a terrible place of testing and of peril to a priesthood that was not perfect; for there, on that stainless seat of holiness and tenderest moral sensibility, any imperfection, unprofitableness, deficiency, or fault, arising anywhere in all the universe, would vibrate with the power of many thunders, and manifest itself with worse than the lightnings and the darkness of Sinai.
But no; round about the throne is the rainbow of the covenant. There is no jarring sound of disharmony to tell of something still unsettled or left unhealed. The storm of divine wrath is past, and no clouds return after the rain. “For this is as the waters of Noah unto Me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” For this Man, continuing ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood; “He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession” – such an High Priest indeed becomes us “who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens”. For the law made nothing perfect, making men high priests that had infirmity; but the word of the oath “maketh the Son, who is perfected for evermore” (Heb 7:28).
4. Permanence of Christ’s Priesthood
Our thought runs on, without a break, to consider that the heavenly locality of Christ’s priesthood illustrates its permanence. This indeed necessarily results from its perfection. When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part is done away; but the perfect, which replaces the partial, is not done away – it abides. The priesthood of Levi was imperfect; for the priests were men that had infirmity, and “they were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But this man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable” – an untransferable – “priesthood” and “ever liveth to make intercession”. In the virtue of His one perfect and perfecting sacrifice, He sat down for ever at the right hand of God.
The priesthood of Levi, even if Aaron could have lived through its entire dispensation, was, for other reasons, so imperfect, that it must pass away. Its ministrations had no moral virtue or value to establish an everlasting covenant. It could not operate upon the conscience and the heart of Israel, to keep Israel true to their King. For, in itself, it never reached the realm of conscience; it could not make them that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience. It could not renew or regulate or control their wills. It could only sanctify “to the purifying of the flesh”. Hence, it was not faultless, and its covenant could not be eternal. They broke it, and the Lord “regarded them not”.
He introduced a new covenant; but from the moment that He uttered the words, “a new covenant”, He made the first old. “Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away,” and the covenant and the priesthood vanished simultaneously; for they are so bound together that the fall of the one entailed the fall of the other. If there was a change of priesthood, there must be, “of necessity, a change also of the law” (Heb 7:12), or constitution, or covenant, under which its provisions were arranged and its ministrations were conducted. But it vanished in a manner not to be regretted. Its believing worshippers had all along fled to it, professedly as an interim arrangement. They went to the mountains of its sacrifices and its spices of incense only till the day should dawn and the shadows flee away. For the law had but “a shadow of the good things to come”. And when the day dawned, the shadows fled unmourned, for the substance was of Christ.
The covenant which His blood sealed, and in which His priesthood ministers, is a “faultless” one, “established upon better promises”, cancelling the guilt and the remembrance of sin, providing for the regeneration, the obedience and the final perseverance of its clients. It is an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure. The redemption He obtained, before He entered into the heavenly sanctuary, was an “eternal” redemption, fulfilling on the cross all the conditions of the law, and rendering any further claims on its part impossible; trampling death into the dust of death, and making death’s re-appearance for ever impossible.
From the highest heights unto the lowest depths it swept, with victorious power, through all realms where evil could dwell or opposition rise. The triumphing reach of it is “high as heaven; what canst thou do,” sin and unbelief? Its penetrating force is “deeper than hell”; how can ye “prevail against it”, O “gates of hell?” “The measure thereof is longer than the earth.” “Look unto Me, all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved.” It is “broader than the sea”; let it be your confidence, all ye “that are afar off upon the sea”. It cannot be excelled, it cannot be supplanted, it cannot be replaced.
In token of this, it is at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. It is final, conclusive, eternal. Priesthood now can receive no higher promotion; it can rise to no loftier rank; no step in the peerage of the kingdom now awaits it; no brighter coronet can sit upon the head of the priest upon his throne; and no more august title in celestial heraldry remains to dignify the name that is above every name. Continuing ever, His is an unchangeable and everlasting priesthood; and the song of angels and of men which celebrates the worship of the Lamb of God rejoices in the enraptured recognition of its eternity. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.” And the high refrain sounds forth again: “Every creature which is in heaven and on the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever”. For ever! It is perfect, permanent, eternal.
5. Exceeding Glory of Christ’s Priesthood
That heaven is the home, and heaven’s high throne the adequate and native seat of this priesthood, illustrates not only its reality and effectiveness, its perfection and its permanence, but also its exceeding glory. There is glory in all real priesthood. I am not very sure but an investigation of Scripture might prove that the profound idea which revelation conveys by the mysterious word glory is chiefly, if not uniformly, suggested in connection with priesthood – and as flowing from it and secured by it.
It is certain that, when the Priest came to earth, the heavens rang with the angelic anthem, “Glory to God in the highest”. And it is doubtless safe to say that, where sin has been, glory cannot come save by priesthood; for the antagonist of glory is shame, even as death is the opposite of life. And priesthood’s function is to turn sin, the occasion of shame, into the counter-occasion of exceeding glory. How great then is that glory! How great the glory of priesthood finally and perfectly triumphant, so as even to be seated on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens! Even Aaron’s priesthood was glorious. Its garments were formed, by divine command, “for glory and for beauty”. But if that which was done away with was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious!
But the glory of this priesthood is beyond searching out. We must have felt already that we have been bordering on the limit where our powers of speech and meditation are baffled and arrested. Let it suffice to say that the principle concerning the glory of the priesthood, as seated on the throne of God, is this: God has entrusted it into the hands of His own Son, with all power and dominion, in heaven and in earth, to further and complete its ministrations of love and of saving power among the sons of men.
To our great High Priest in the heavens every knee must bow and every tongue confess. Every region of the universe is subject to Him in His priesthood. Honour and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His holy place within the veil, where Jesus has entered, as the forerunner appearing in the presence of God for us. “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool,” and until those whom I have given Thee be with Thee, that they may behold Thy glory, which I have given Thee, for I loved Thee before the foundation of the world. “The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4).
Two closing appeals.
(1.) To the unbelieving.
You cannot but feel, I trust, that these meditations bear down, with accumulated and – I hope, through the blessing of God – with resistless force, on the folly and infatuation and offensiveness of your neglect and unbelief. What think ye of Christ in His priesthood? Or rather, What think ye of the unbelief that despises Him in the functions of an office, in executing which the Most High God has thought Him worthy to sit “at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens”? If a dull despondency, beneath the guilt and power of sin, has paralysed you into the unbelieving neglect of your salvation, I call upon you to contemplate the real efficiency, the permanent and perfect power, and the illimitable glory of Jesus, in the very office on which salvation from sin so entirely hinges.
Consciousness of defilement and unworthiness and shame may cause you to shrink away from the High Priest, the more you realise He is glorious in His office – as if, with Peter, you would say, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. If so, I beseech you to consider that His office can have no power, no fruit, no glory, no vindication and no meaning, save as it deals with sin – save to put away sin’s shame and defilement, to rob it of its victory over you, and to quench all its fruits and power for ever. Therefore with faith and confidence, put your case into the High Priest’s hands, however evil it may be. His own right to the throne of the Majesty in the heavens is perilled if, from any deficiency in either power or compassion, He fails to deal with it successfully.
(2.) To you who believe on His name.
How steadfast your faith should be! “Seeing then that we have a great High Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.” How believing and expectant your supplications should be! “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne.” How spiritual your worship should be and how heavenly, freed from all carnal ceremonies and all beggarly elements of this world, seeing that your sanctuary is not, as of old, a “worldly” one, but heavenly, within the veil, and in the very presence of God! And how safe is your position, and how sure your prospects!
Contemplate habitually the great responsible agent and minister of your salvation, as a priest at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. Behold Him bringing all the influence and power with which He is there endowed to bear on your full deliverance from sin and your full attainment of holiness and blessing. There is no backsliding into which you have fallen from which His intercession cannot recall and relieve and restore you. There is no sin for which He cannot procure forgiveness, no corruption for which He cannot obtain supplies of grace to subdue. There is no blessing which He cannot confer, and no enemy which He cannot destroy; nor is there any possible combination of the affairs of your salvation which He does not foresee and provide for – indeed arrange and manage, by His own love and power. He sits in the central throne of majesty and might, and in all the universe there is no power of evil which He, from that central seat of influence and glory, cannot charm or crush into helplessness, and no power of good which He cannot lovingly awaken for your sake, and the promotion of your welfare and salvation.
Are you not complete in Him who is the Head of all principality and power, having redemption in His blood? By Him all things were made, whether they be visible or invisible, thrones or dominions, or principalities and powers. Now, as the High Priest of Zion, He has in all things the pre-eminence, sitting “at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens”.
Secure neglect of prayer is a great deal worse than a faulty managing of it. Let such folks say then, I will pray, and try to pray; and though I should mar twenty prayers, I will pray still; for it is better to try it as we can than to neglect it quite. What know you but grace may come in and help you when sinking under the weight of prayer?
Robert Traill