W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

Chapter 7

Priest, Sacrifice and Temple

The Multiple Magnificence of the

Messenger of the Covenant,

THE MESSIAH

In the last Chapter, at the MESSENGER OF THE COVENANT (Malachi 3), mention was made of the Messiah's role, AS the Covenant, from Isaiah 42:6. In fact the New Covenant so proclaimed in Jeremiah 31:31ff., is one which Isaiah 49-55 shows as being a prodigy of divine passion in allowing the very Lord of  Glory (as in Isaiah 48:16) to become man to die for sin that salvation might live for many.

Let us extend that a little.

Since  Christ is the High Priest fulfilment (as in Hebrews 3-8), and He offered Himself as a sacrifice (willingly as in  Psalm 40 cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25), it is apparent that the New Covenant is one of the finale of all priests offering a sacrifice which is that of Himself. To be sure, we who are Christians are called a holy and royal priesthood, but this is not because we are offering anyone or anything but ourselves, which is our reasonable service (Romans 12:1-2, I Peter 2), and have immediate access to God through Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:18).

No more sacrifice, no more priests are there to be (Hebrews 4-10), since He is the very acme of priests, having come personally to render them passé, because their ministrations were so corrupted. He did it Himself, with Himself (as foretold in Ezekiel 34, Hosea 13:14), where,  speaking as God, He designates His own Being as the One to perform this ultimate shepherding, even removing the ultimate problem: death, and its cause, which is relentless sin. For whom is it removed then ? why as in all medicine, for those who receive Him, without whom there is nothing there, neither payment nor payor, only emptiness.

Now by ONE offering ONCE offered (Hebrews 9-10), He has gained eternal redemption, and perfected forever those who so receive Him.

What a relief to be free from the priest who is not God! Thus has God ministered to the tender in heart by becoming the personal High Priest, making intercession (Hebrews 7:25), to whom we are encouraged to seek access with boldness through faith (Hebrews 4).

Christ then is both priest and offering; but He is far more than that. As the Son of God, the only begotten Son, the eternal Word of God, yet born as a babe, even He whose goings have been from everlasting (Micah 5:1-3), He has a deeper mission, if this be possible.

It is not that the cross is thereby reduced, but augmented; for the point is that not only did He offer an efficacious, one time only and eternally effective sacrifice IN Himself, so that as He declared, the New Covenant is the one IN  HIS BLOOD (Matthew 26). In addition, He who so offered being the Lord of glory Himself,  there is no referral from receptionist to director. He who died IS the director, for it is on  account of this that He both died and rose and lived again, we learn in Romans 15:9, "that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living."

You might wonder how He could be Lord of the dead, but "it pleased the Father by Him to reconcile all things to Himself" (Colossians 1:19) through the blood of the everlasting covenant, yes both those in heaven and on earth. The dead are no more on earth, but are held in reserve (II Peter 2, John 14, Revelation 6), being His own, ready for the resurrection of the justified, rendered just persons by grace, through faith. As with Stephen, their dead bodies were re-aligned with the earth, but their spirits, like his, are received into heaven, until they are overcoated with the resurrection format, as He was who died and rose again (II Corinthians 5:1ff.). It is not, Paul is inspired to divulge, as if the spirits were to be naked, but rather fully clothed with the temple for resurrection, "the habitation from heaven," retained against  the needs of events of that day.

Thus as God He not only became priest for many, offering for the same, but eternal saviour and salvation, the New Covenant for those who receive Him to whom He gave the power to become children of God (John 1:12-14), conferring not only new life on earth (John 3), but new clothing for that resurrection by which mortality is transformed into immortality, and time's domain is superseded by the new dynamics of a heaven and earth no more clouded with curse, but animated by life everlasting.

These are the results of His tour of sacrifice on which He was sent (Colossians 1:19ff.). Indeed, its very nature is such that as sacrificial officer, sacrifice and giver of new life, He embraces in His divine sovereignty the very model and matrix for worship.

Thus, as God, He becomes with His Father, the Temple of worship itself (Revelation 21:22), something for which the antichrist and his sponsor would doubtless give all but everything! But it is not for them, since it is not and never was or could be, theirs.

His own body on earth was a temple for the Second Person of the Trinity, and as it was in this that the offering was made, He became both priest, offering and temple on the Cross. It is better to be the Temple than a template. He IS the example, but not in becoming the ransom for sinners, since they CANNOT follow THAT example, needing and not being the sacrifice in themselves! Nor is He a method, though He has method in His compassion.

As personal, God became the ultimate temple in which the sacrifice was made for himself, through Himself, in an intensity of the love and  beauty of holiness that reminds one in imagery, of an intense electrical field, ready for outlet for many. No more do we need temples and priests and sacrificial oddments or altars. The altar on which one places the sacrifice now is His will, the sacrifice oneself, not to atone, since there is no other name under heaven by which men must be saved (Acts 4:11-12), but as one's reasonable service (Romans 12:1-12).

An example from a notable prisoner of war book may give help here for the imagination. A participant in that camp had noted a peculiarly and almost insanely despotic and ruthless guard among the Japanese, whose ferocious attacks on prisoners could descend to the level, it seems, of being outraged by their tallness (for he was so short as just to escape being a dwarf). He could  attack the the head with his cane, and brutally command service from those nearing death. It appeared that he was imbued with a kind of feudal spirit, and  relishing what he had to do, at the start of his military service had deemed it his duty to be so fully occupied with the war that it was a funeral, his own, which ensued for his spirit. He reckoned himself, we are told, as dead from that moment,  so fully occupied in the service of his country that only its fulfilment now counted.

There was certainly nothing noble in his perhaps devil-augmented attacks on those under his charge; but there is, for all that, one point of contact here.

His deeming himself dead,  so that physical death would be only an application, though misdirected,  did signify a sense of duty. The Christian is likewise said to "have crucified the flesh, with its lusts and desires" (Galatians 5:24), and Paul deems himself to be "crucified with Christ, so that it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" - Galatians 2:20. Certainly the differences are huge, but the point of contact remains in abstraction. Let us, however, examine some of the differences.

Thus this is not a matter of mere resolve, but transformation of spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:3-7). Secondly, this changed configuration of spirit, so that in all things Christ has the pre-eminence (Colossians 1:18), is a fealty between friends, since this is part of the covenant in Christ: "you are My friends if you do whatever I command you," John 15. Thirdly, it is part of a living correlation, as for example to some  extent occurs between man and horse when there is a real intimacy. You lean, the horse understands the direction change, you turn your head and fix your eye on something and the horse seems to follow when the motion is accompanied by bodily inclination. Both seem to enjoy it, the unison a thing of beauty, the accomplishment in subtle riding a delight of motion, a kind of mutual kinaesthesia.

Thus Peter DID put up his sword, though its use may well have seemed natural, almost necessary, advantageous, spiritually intelligent and personally loyal, when Christ was arrested. However the word of Christ supervened. Nor was this arbitrary: on the contrary, it was a result of insistent, persistent and consistent spiritual principles applied by Christ to the case;  as did the purpose of the Lord in coming at that time, not to judge the world, but to save it, as many as would come.

Thus, in that the body of Christ is under the Head, Christ Himself, so the Temple of Christ is that in which the Christian works, as if a living stone. Yet it is a LIVING stone, for once again, the relationship is a vital one, and not either mechanical, rote or induced, like electricity through the right use of magnets. Thus while the Japanese case was listless and dead in its summons, that of the Christian does not at all undervalue life, but fulfils it; for it is not for squandering on mere reactions, nor wandering on unknown paths, like a stray dog, but for abundance of interchange with the Almighty, to admire His wit, delight in His love, be moved by His compassion and be strengthened by Him with might in the inner man (Ephesians 3:16), so that in loving Him and keeping His commandments is found the best way to love others (I John 5:1-3).

You count yourself crucified with Christ, but alive from the dead with Him also, so that because He lives, we who are His, live also (John 14:19). Here is the animation, the exuberance, the vitality, the strength, the guidance, direction and dynamic, here the withering of wrong and the raising of a standard, of character formed or even forged by Him in the fires (cf. I Peter 4:1ff.).

In heaven, then, this discipline has become freed from contention, and it flows, like the river of life (cf. Revelation 22).

Moreover there is to be a new heavens and a new earth. Consider this in conjunction with Ezekiel 47, where the river, representing the Spirit of God, issues from the temple with its altar, just as Christ send the Spirit following His death and resurrection, having first promised it (Luke 24, Acts 2). In Ezekiel the river carries the meaning of the altar outside to many such as fish in the water, beside which spiritual fishermen fish. Thus the Temple and its sacrifice, are finalised in Christ (so that the presence of the Moslem mosque on the temple hill has little meaning, a barb to unbelief which in many there, does not realise that the Temple has no more point, Christ BEING the New Temple, Himself offering, offeror and Temple).

It is He who swallows up the offices of the former Temple in Himself, and in Him, a multiplicity abounds. From the Spirit whom He sends from the Father, there are resolved what gifts are sovereignly to be sent to whom (I Corinthians 12:3ff.).

Here then is the Messenger of the Covenant, the personal Covenant Himself, in whom there is a spiritual co-ordination of beauty of holiness, a functionality of righteousness. A new heavens and a new earth come: and imagine, for now as in Ezekiel 47's millenium, there are no more fishermen on the shores, for there are no more sinners to fish. When it is all over: Gone is the former tableau, absent are the little dramas, the life-longings, the repentances and the realisation, leading to salvation of sinners; for none enter here.

How important is it now, therefore, to sit on those banks, fishing, in the presence of a reviving and vitalising work of the Spirit of God, adorning the Gospel with His presence! In time, time will be gone ... Action in time is timely for all time! (II Corinthians 6:1ff.)