The offices of Christ

Christ Our Priest

Jesus Christ is our Priest because he offers the one perfect sacrifice for sin and lives forever to pray for us. A priest represents people before God, bringing an offering to make peace and interceding on their behalf. Jesus is our great High Priest who offered not the blood of animals but himself, and who now ever liveth to make intercession for us. He is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

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.Hebrews 4:14 (KJV)

What it means to call Christ our Priest

If a prophet is God's mouth to the people, a priest is the people's representative before God. The priest stood on the other side of the gap, taking human need up to heaven, offering sacrifice for sin and pleading for mercy. Prophet and priest move in opposite directions: the prophet brings God down to us, the priest carries us up to God. Both were needed because sin had opened a distance no one could cross alone.

To confess Christ as Priest is to say that Jesus has done for us the one thing we could never do for ourselves. He has dealt with our sin and reconciled us to God. He is called in Hebrews our great high priest, and the whole book is written to show that his priesthood is greater than any that came before. Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, Scripture says, joining his prophetic and priestly work in a single breath.

The priestly office has two great parts, and Jesus fulfills both. First, the priest offers sacrifice, and Jesus offered himself once for all upon the cross. Second, the priest intercedes, standing in the holy place to pray for the people, and Jesus now lives to intercede for us at the right hand of God. The sacrifice is finished; the intercession goes on. Both together are the ground of our peace.

The Old Testament background of the priesthood

Under the law of Moses, God set apart Aaron and his sons to be priests, and appointed the tribe of Levi to serve the tabernacle and later the temple. Day after day the priests offered the blood of bulls and goats for the sins of the people, and once a year the high priest entered the Most Holy Place on the Day of Atonement, carrying blood to cover the sins of the whole nation. It was a solemn, constant, unfinished work.

Yet the whole system pointed beyond itself. The priests were mortal men, and so were replaced by death one after another. The sacrifices had to be repeated endlessly, for the blood of bulls and goats could not truly take away sins; it could only cover them and picture a cleansing yet to come. The high priest himself was a sinner who had to offer for his own sins before he could offer for the people. Every part of the arrangement whispered that a better priest and a better sacrifice were needed.

Long before Aaron, Scripture had given a hint of another kind of priesthood. In Genesis a mysterious figure named Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the most high God, blessed Abraham and received his tithe. He appears without recorded beginning or end, both king and priest at once. Centuries later, Psalm 110 declared of the coming Messiah, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Israel was being taught to look for a priest greater than Aaron, one whose priesthood would never pass away.

How Jesus fulfills the priestly office perfectly

Jesus is the great High Priest the whole law was pointing toward. Hebrews declares, 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. Unlike Aaron, he was appointed by God's oath after the order of Melchizedek, a priesthood that does not pass from hand to hand but belongs to him forever, because he lives forever.

His sacrifice is greater than any that came before, for he offered not the blood of animals but himself, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. He was at once the priest who offers and the offering that is given. And because he was without sin, his one sacrifice did what centuries of sacrifices could not: it truly took away sin, once for all, and never needs to be repeated. When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, the sitting itself a sign that the work was finished.

But his priesthood did not end at the cross. Hebrews says he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. Risen and ascended, Jesus stands in the presence of God on our behalf, our peace made and our names spoken before the Father. And he is a priest who understands us, for he was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin, and so he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

Every shadow of the old priesthood finds its substance in him. The tabernacle, the altar, the blood, the veil, the Day of Atonement, all were pictures drawn in advance of what Jesus would do. He is the true temple where God and man meet, the altar and the offering upon it, the lamb whose blood truly cleanses. Where the old high priest entered an earthly holy place made with hands, Jesus entered heaven itself, into the very presence of God, and not with the blood of others but with his own. And where the old priests stood daily at their unfinished work, Jesus sat down, for his work was done. One priest, one sacrifice, one entrance into the presence of God, and it is enough forever.

What Christ our Priest means for us

Because Jesus is our Priest, our sins are truly and fully forgiven. We do not stand before God on the strength of our own goodness, nor must we bring an offering to earn his favor, for the one offering that matters has already been made. The debt is paid. This is the deepest relief the human heart can know, that the guilt which no amount of effort could remove has been carried away by another.

Because he ever lives to intercede, our salvation is secure. Our standing with God does not rise and fall with our feelings or our failures, for it rests on a priest who never dies and never stops praying for us. He is able to save to the uttermost, all the way, to the end, everyone who comes to God through him. No case is too hard, no sinner too far gone, for the one who lives forever to plead their cause.

And so we are invited near. The old priesthood kept the people at a distance, behind a veil, but our great High Priest throws the way open. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, Hebrews urges, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. We come not with fear but with confidence, not because we are worthy but because our Priest is, bringing every sin, every sorrow, and every need to a God who welcomes us for his sake.

This is the answer to a guilty conscience. When we feel the weight of what we have done and fear to face God, we do not clean ourselves up first and then approach; we come as we are, leaning wholly on our Priest. He has already carried our sin away, and he stands even now before the Father, not accusing us but pleading for us. So the nearer we draw, the more we find not a frown but a welcome, and the throne we dreaded turns out to be a throne of grace. Because our great High Priest lives, we may live in peace, sure that nothing can separate us from the God who gave his own Son to bring us home.

A note for all traditions: the threefold office of Christ, Prophet, Priest, and King, is a historic and non-denominational way of understanding Jesus, shared across the Christian church. Every verse above is quoted from the King James Version and can be read in its own context. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and the invitation of this page is simply to know him.

Related: Christ Our Prophet · Christ Our King · Christ Our Mediator · The offices of Christ