The FINAL High Priest

What makes Jesus the perfect High Priest forever? Paul gives us 5 powerful words to answer this!

The concept of a high priest is so foreign to us, egalitarian Americans and moderns.

We are centuries removed from a time when hierarchy and royalty were the norm.

But it’s helpful to remember that, for the vast majority of Christians who have ever lived, the notion of a hierarchy and even monarchy was the norm. More Christians have lived under monarchal societies that were either neutral or even hostile to them through the centuries.

Frankly, from my perspective, the jury is still out on whether our modern way is any better. Especially the current focus on mere utility and secular ideas of “fairness” and “equality.” These modern ideologies have been as hostile to Christianity as any pagan Roman emperor.

There is something regal in the notion of hierarchy. And, to be sure, there are dangers and advantages in that way of ordering society. But isn’t that true of any system of ordering society?

Look at our lesson today in Hebrews 7:26-28; 8:1-2:

Brethren, it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, unstained, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did this once for all when he offered up himself. Indeed, the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect for ever. Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the sanctuary and the true tent which is set up not by man but by the Lord.

St. Paul is trying to get these Hebrew Christians to grasp the “WHY” behind the system of worship and leadership that God Himself established for the Jewish people in the First Testament.

And part of what God set in place was the notion of a “high priest.”

This priest was the head of the priests, and he had specific duties and obligations in Temple worship. His duties were both irreplaceable and terrifying! He would enter the Holy of Holies only once a year at the Feast of the Atonement (Yom Kippur) with the blood of a sacrifice for his sins and the sins of all the nation. And he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant to show that the people repented of their sins and wanted to restore their relationship with God!

Then St. Paul says that our Lord Jesus has now become our “high priest,” and He is the only one we will ever need, because, as we pray in the Liturgy, He is the One Who offers and is offered. He is the Giver and the Gift! We will never need another because He has conquered mortality and lives forever!

And St. Paul uses five words or phrases to describe WHY Jesus Christ is the final and only faithful “High Priest.”

Jesus is High Priest because He is: