Chapter 13: Priestliness
We have misunderstood priesthood. Far too many consider it an Old Testament phenomenon. Yet, it is in both 1 Peter as well as Revelation that we are called a royal priesthood.{cccl} Priestliness is also a New Testament phenomenon. Unlike the Old Testament, however, the New Testament priesthood is not sacerdotalism. What exactly it means to be a New Testament priest tells us what it means to be a son of God. The issue of sonship is not about adoption. We’ve all been adopted, and we’re all children of God. Yet, we must grow up unto sonship, and God is bringing many sons to glory.{cccli}
One of the preliminary issues of being a priest is a jealousy for God’s glory. We are not interested in being glorified ourselves. Anything that would desire to rob God of His due honor and praise is utterly opposed. We are ruthlessly combating anything that would pomp itself above the glory of God. Anything, especially within the context of religion, that would diminish God for the sake of the individual is plucked up and destroyed. Those in many congregations typically oppose the priest of God. They are intimidated because this man or woman of God will not relent. Priestliness is the first step in any calling. No man or woman can come into apostleship, be a prophet, evangelist, pastor, or teacher without first being a priest. This is preliminary to all of God’s callings, and it is the outworking of the Spirit in the lives of the saints.
When we read the epistles, and we come across the phrase, “the glory of God”, what happens? Does the drool flow? Does the heart skip a beat? The priest has seen a heavenly vision of the glory of God that causes their heart to groan for that glory to be established forever. That glory is incumbent upon the saints. You cannot be a saint without that reality in your life. It is a jealousy for the glory of God that will cause for anything that is light to be countered. In my Christian walk, almost from the very beginning, I have been troubled by the lightness of our Christianity. How is it that the eternal souls of men are hanging in the balance, and we are content to speak on trivial things like whether being single is okay with God?
Where is the weight? Where is the substance? Did you know that there is an eternal weight to glory?{ccclii} Eternity itself brings a weightiness and sobriety to the consciousness of the believer. A lack of the eternal perspective, knowing the terror of the Lord, has caused us to not persuade men. We debate with men. We reason together. We argue, and we counter their arguments. But we do not persuade them. It is this eternal weight of glory that causes the heart to tremble. Our hearts tremble, not because we think that God will condemn us, but because we know the judgments of God that are coming. We know that there is more coming than simply a judgment seat, and if we could teach people about the Bible, then maybe they will reconsider their position.
Men are not persuaded because we ourselves are not persuaded. A priest is one that communicates the knowledge of God to the people. They are ones who bring the reality of eternity into the here and now. We will venture to understand priestliness to a greater degree in this chapter, but maybe the truth is that we cannot appreciate our priestly call until we first appreciate what is implied in the glory of God. If we think of a beam of light from heaven, or the angels singing, we have misappropriated that term. How many of us think of songs and “clouds”?
God’s glory is His essence. It is the manifestation of who He is, in actuality and not who we believe Him to be. To behold the glory of God is to cause for corruption to cease. It is our sin that separates us from God,{cccliii} but that is not because God cannot dwell where sin is. Sin cannot dwell where God is. Thus, we choose our sin over the glory and majesty of God. That is the eternal agony of hell – one has been given over to corruption and must dwell in the presence of God for all of eternity without any remedy of being refined. When God is present, sin cannot be present. It is for this reason that God told Moses that no one could see His glory and live.
We do not behold His glory and simply remain the same. It is actually from being exposed to His glory when He is revealed in the clouds of heaven that will cause for the believers to be transfigured. When we behold Him, we will be made like Him.{cccliv} The greater the understanding of God’s glory, the greater the degree of holiness in the believer. The perfection of the Church, and coming unto Zion, is wrapped up in the beauty of holiness. Holiness is the issue of otherness. To be holy is to be set apart, to be sanctified. Sanctification is not merely becoming less sinful, but instead reflecting the divine image through our own faces. We become less like ourselves, and more like Him. Even though our personality, our nationality, our culture, our accent, and all the little details about who we are remain, God is radiantly present even within our very eyes.
It is the foundation of a jealousy for God’s glory that helps us to be brought into a fuller understanding. The Father desired to exalt the Son, and to give Him a name above every name. The Son, in return, desired to obey the Father and do nothing of His own account, but only what the Father has done and spoke.{ccclv} Anything that we live or speak out of our own imaginings is sin, because our thoughts are not His thoughts.{ccclvi} Let the wicked man forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. They are not wicked or unrighteous because they are inherently evil, but because they are not God’s way nor God’s thoughts.
Our jealousy for God’s magnification and glory through the ends of the earth alone is what will bring us into the realms of achieving that first resurrection. Any other purposes for our lives, even biblical purposes, fall incredibly short of God’s ultimate call and purpose for our lives. It says in Ephesians 3:21, “To God be glory in the Church…” His glory is manifest to this world through those that believe. That is why the priest must not walk up stairs, lest the skirt of their robe be lifted and the flesh of their legs be exposed.{ccclvii} No flesh may be exposed. The only thing that we live for and display to the world is a life that is hid with Christ in God. That is our main purpose and desire. We don’t want anything else. Nothing else satisfies. It is this reason that jealousy for God’s glory is the preliminary to priestliness.
Aaron
We are not called to the Aaronic priesthood. Yet, these things were written for our instruction.{ccclviii} We read in Hebrews 8:5 that these things are a shadow of the heavenly reality. Aaron’s priesthood and the things of the Tabernacle are things symbolic of the heavenly pattern.{ccclix} It is to that heavenly pattern that we are called. In order to look beyond Aaron, we need to understand the purpose and pattern of the Aaronic priesthood. There is a certain episode in the book of Leviticus that would help us to understand this type and pattern. It is Leviticus chapters 8 and 9. Leviticus 8 is the consecration of the priests, and in chapter 9 they offer the sacrifices. Let us consider these things.
“The Lord said to Moses…” Very rarely do I stop after such a small segment of Scripture. I think it necessary this time. Let those words sink into your consciousness. None of what is about to be performed to consecrate Aaron and his sons as priests has been thought up or imagined by Moses or anyone else. This is a command from God Himself. God ordered that they do things in this manner, and if they do not comply, the sacrifices and priesthood would not be acceptable. Everything hinges upon how well Moses can discern the voice of the Lord, and how willing Aaron and his sons are to obeying the command of the Lord.
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Bring Aaron and his sons, their garments, the anointing oil, the bull for the sin offering, the two rams and the basket containing bread made without yeast, and gather the entire assembly at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.’ Moses did as the Lord commanded him, and the assembly gathered at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.” We then read from verse 6, “Then Moses brought Aaron and his sons forward and washed them with water.” What is not said here, yet is implied by the bathing with water, is that Aaron and his sons were to strip before the assembly and be washed in front of them all.
Could you imagine the humiliation? That kind of nakedness before everyone is embarrassing. We can liken that sort of stripping to the Messiah that hung upon the cross. Not only was he stripped naked, but his hands were also nailed so that he could not cover his genitals. There is something about being exposed in this manner that is preliminary to priestly ministry.{ccclx} It is required for the exact reason that we would reject it. Nakedness is transparency. To be open and transparent means that the whole of the assembly can spot those areas in our lives that we fall short. Transparency is painful, and often it means that we might be rejected. But, if we are to offer sacrifices for the sins of others, they need to know that we aren’t high and sinless. Those that we are offering sacrifices on behalf of need to understand that we are just as human and flawed as they are.
It is nice to consider that the man up on the platform has some closer walk with Jesus than we do, and that’s why we listen to him. But that is a lie. Truth is established when we see that the leaders and elders are made out of the same stuff that we are – men of like passions. So why do we go to them? We go to them because God has called them out from the crowd to minister unto Him. It is not by our own choosing, but by God’s choosing that we go to these men. It tells us in James to go to the elders if we are sick, and our sins will be forgiven. Confess your faults one to another, and carry one another’s burdens.{ccclxi} It takes priests to be able to confess to. But a priest is not someone who sits in a confessional and listens to everyone’s sin. A priest is one just like we that we know will not judge us or condemn us. We know they will not judge and condemn, because they too are struggling with their own issues. That has to be established if we are going to be required to put our trust in them to offer up sacrifices on our behalf.
“He put the tunic on Aaron, tied the sash around him, clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod on him. He also tied the ephod to him by its skillfully woven waistband; so it was fastened on him. He placed the breast piece on him and put the Urim and Thummim in the breast piece. Then he placed the turban on Aaron’s head and set the gold plate, the sacred diadem, on the front of it, as the Lord commanded Moses.” We spoke in the last chapter about the woman in Proverbs 31. I explained how this is the Church – the Bride of Christ. We saw how she was robed in scarlet and made fine linen and sashes to sell. I compared this to being clothed in Christ. I think that here, as the High Priest, we’re getting a glimpse of what Christ is clothed in.{ccclxii}
It is not until after Aaron is anointed that his sons are clothed. While their father is being clothed here, and while he is being anointed, they continue to stand naked. Why? Well, we are those sons. As Christ is being clothed and anointed, we stand naked. Christ is our first fruit. Until He was robed in glory through His resurrection, no one else could taste of that glory. Now, we have an enigma presented in Romans 6-8. We find Paul explaining that we have been raised with Christ. So, we conclude that we have been clothed as priests with Christ. Yet, we reach Romans 8:19, and the story seems to change. Paul now speaks about how the creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed, and how we too groan inwardly for that resurrection.
Currently, Christ has been crowned High Priest and Apostle of our confession.{ccclxiii} He is the firstborn from the dead.{ccclxiv} We, too, have been raised up with Him. But there is something more than just being raised up with Him. As glorious and liberating as it is to walk in the resurrection reality, there is something yet still more glorious. We are being brought unto sonship. To be sons of God would require being exalted by God unto glory. That glory is not something that is attained because we simply believe. It is inherited. There is a certain quality of life that must be come into, of which we will need to discuss in the later part of this chapter, that the majority of us have not yet entered.{ccclxv}
“Then Moses took the anointing oil and anointed the tabernacle and everything in it, and so consecrated them. He sprinkled some of the oil on the altar seven times, anointing the altar and all its utensils and the basin with its stand, to consecrate them. He poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron’s head and anointed him to consecrate him. Then he brought Aaron’s sons forward, put tunics on them, tied sashes around them and put headbands on them, as the Lord commanded.” The anointing is more than oil. There is something precious about the anointing. With it comes authority. He who is anointed has authority over the assembly. He speaks on God’s behalf, and as long as that anointing remains, he is to be listened to and submitted under.
How many of us have rejected the Lord’s anointed because he doesn’t seem legitimate? King Saul was about as illegitimate as it comes, and yet David refused to “touch the Lord’s anointed.”{ccclxvi} In 1 Samuel 24, we read of an episode where David cuts the corner of the king’s robe in a cave. He then goes out to Saul and shows that God had delivered him into David’s hand. Yet, David doesn’t magnify himself as being more holy. Instead, David grieved that he touched the Lord’s anointed. How many of us not only touch the Lord’s anointed, but even harm them without repentance? The anointing cannot be fabricated. I’m not talking about working up the Spirit, or shouting because we’re excited. There is a legitimate and tangible presence of God that we can actually feel when certain men or women of God speak, worship, or pray. There is no question of whether or not they are truly anointed. It is obvious. Yet, even with the anointing it is possible to backslide and lose your authority in God. Saul did. That backslidden condition did not rid him of being the Lord’s anointed, though, and David respected that anointing. So should we.
“He presented the bull for the sin offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. Moses slaughtered the bull and took some of the blood, and with his finger he put it on all the horns of the altar to purify the altar. He poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. So he consecrated it to make atonement for it. Moses also took all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, and both kidneys and their fat, and burned it on the altar. But the bull with its hide and its flesh and its offal he burned up outside the camp, as the Lord commanded Moses.”
There are a couple of things that happened in this passage. To start from the beginning, imagine if you were one of the people watching this bull be slaughtered. You watch as the knife sinks into the animal, the animal winces and lets out a groan, stumbles a little bit with one last kick of life, and then falls to the ground dead. Blood is pouring out of the open wound. Then, Moses takes that knife and cuts open the belly of this bull. All of its innards are exposed. The blood, guts, and organs of the animal are displayed for the whole crowd to see. This is a gross sight. I don’t think that we have appreciated what it must have meant for that bull to be cut to pieces for the sacrifice to take place.
Aaron and his sons placed their hands upon that bull to impart their sin into it. They do this on behalf of all Israel. Thus, all Israel gets to see the result of their sin: death. The wages of sin are death, and those wages are not pretty. The inward parts that we would throw to the side are the very ones that are placed upon the altar. God is not after the flesh, the hide, the good cuts of meat, and all the other aspects of the cow that we would delight to have. The good cuts of steak, roast, and shoulder are all burned outside of the camp with the dung. God requires the inward parts – the most intimate and deepest parts of the animal. So, too, does He require our inward parts – the most intimate and deepest aspects of what we are.{ccclxvii}
“He then presented the ram for the burnt offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. Then Moses slaughtered the ram and sprinkled the blood against the altar on all sides. He cut the ram into pieces and burned the head, the pieces and the fat. He washed the inner parts and the legs with water and burned the whole ram on the altar as a burnt offering, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the Lord by fire, as the Lord commanded Moses.” Something I neglected to mention from the last sacrifice was the emphasis on fat. Fat represents rest. The animal cannot gain fat if it is not at rest. When the beast is frightened, feels threatened, is uncomfortable, or is overworked, it will not have fat to offer. Fat is the accumulation of rest, and God delights in it.
“He then presented the other ram, the ram for the ordination, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. Moses slaughtered the ram and took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. Moses also brought Aaron’s sons forward and put some of the blood on the loves of their right ears, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. Then he sprinkled blood against the altar on all sides. He took the fat, the fat tail, and all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, both kidneys and their fat, and the right thigh. Then from the basket of bread made without yeast, which was before the Lord, he took a cake of bread, and one made with oil, and a wafer; he put these on the fat portions and on the right thigh. He put all these in the hands of Aaron and his sons and waved them before the Lord as a wave offering.”
Once again, we’ll start from the beginning and work our way through this passage. Moses placed some of the blood on Aaron’s right ear lobe, right thumb, and the big toe on his right foot. He also did this with Aaron’s sons. I believe that this is a symbol of hearing, working, and walking with God. Our ears need to be sanctified in order to be attuned to God’s voice. Our hands need to be sanctified in order to do the work of God. Our feet need to be sanctified to go where Jesus sends us. Everything is both sanctified and handed over to the will of God – to be used however He sees fit. We all intuit the importance of it being on the right side that the blood was put. We have phrases like, “right hand man.” To be the right hand man is to be an indispensable helper or chief assistant. If we are to be priests, this is our call.
What about this bread made without yeast? Jesus warns His disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees.{ccclxviii} Paul tells the church in Galatia that a little leaven leavens the whole lump{ccclxix} – the context being sin. Leaven represents corruption. It does not take much to leaven the whole loaf of bread. A little sin that is allowed to remain will corrupt the whole of your being and character. God requires unleavened bread – the bread of Truth. That bread is to be anointed with oil. The anointing is animation. Without the anointing, our words and deeds are dead. Even with excitement and hype, our words will only create atmosphere without reality. The anointing alone will give the truth its cogency. And the truth is both the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or it is not the truth. We can render truth a lie when we don’t live in accordance with that truth. As long as it is only a fact or a statement, and not reality in our life, our truth is reduced to being truism.
These things were waved before the Lord as a wave offering. What does that mean? The wave offering was presented to the Lord by holding up the offering toward the heavens. You lift your hand up and down, and then side to side. You make the motion of a cross with your waving. So, when Aaron offered these things as a wave offering, he was actually making motions of the cross. This was symbolic foreshadowing of the one who was to be offered as the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate unleavened bread, anointed with the Holy Spirit, and offered to make atonement for the whole world. He would then be lifted up and exalted to being the High Priest of our confession. This man, Christ Jesus, is the heavenly pattern of all of these consecratory commands of the Lord.
“Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and some of the blood from the altar and sprinkled them on Aaron and his garments and on his sons and their garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his garments and his sons and their garments.” It is after all of the sacrifices have been made that there is now the final anointing and sprinkling of the blood for the consecration of the priests. Likewise, it is when we have breathed our last and given up the ghost saying, “Into your hands I commit my spirit,”{ccclxx} that we are then brought to the final and ultimate consecration. To be consecrated is more than being given to the worship of God. It requires holiness and sanctification. We aren’t simply dedicated and presented to God for service. We are made to be like Him through the renewing of our minds. That renewal of our minds is achieved by laying down our life, which is our reasonable service.{ccclxxi}
“Moses then said to Aaron and his sons, ‘Cook the meat at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and eat it there with the bread from the basket of ordination offerings, as I commanded, saying, “Aaron and his sons are to eat it.” Then burn up the rest of the meat and the bread. Do not leave the entrance to the Tent of Meeting for seven days, until the days of your ordination are completed, for your ordination will last seven days. What has been done today was commanded by the Lord to make atonement for you. You must stay at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting day and night for seven days and do what the Lord requires, so you will not die; for that is what I have been commanded.’ So Aaron and his sons did everything the Lord commanded Moses.”
The sacrifices were to be eaten by Aaron and his sons. They were now qualified to eat of the holy offerings made by fire before the Lord. Only one thing stood between them and fulfilling their priestly ministry: seven days of waiting. Waiting is more than twiddling your thumbs. It is more than sitting in silence. It is more than letting the time pass. Waiting is anguish. Everything in the flesh fights against this. We want to do. God has called us to this or that, and so we want to rush out knowing our calling and perform it. Yet, before there can be a fulfillment of that calling, we’re required to wait.
I’m not sure that we can truly appreciate all that is being stated here. God does not focus on doing, but instead on being. When we are priests, we can then be priests. Priesthood is not a calling that we perform. It is something that we are. Likewise, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, or teachers are not callings into ministry that we perform. They are distinct modes of living. The man who is called is the calling himself. You cannot separate the man from the calling or the calling from the man. The two are interwoven in a manner that they describe each other. How do you know whether you have reached a place of priestliness? The priest is only the priest when they are priestly in character. It becomes a part of who they are. You cannot stop being a priest. You simply are one.
The priest speaks, works, and moves according to the command of God. That is their life. If God does not dictate, the priest remains waiting. They offer spiritual sacrifices on behalf of others. The spiritual sacrifice is nothing that we use our imaginations to describe. It is real and tangible. It is our own self. We give ourselves on behalf of others. We spend ourselves and are expended for the sake of the brethren.{ccclxxii} We pour ourselves out like a drink offering.{ccclxxiii} Everything is done for the glory of God, which is acted out for the edification and benefit of the Body of Christ. How do you know that you are truly living for God’s glory? It will manifest in the way that you treat and react with the Body. If you are one that continues to seek for others to help you, and you rarely (or never) give in return, then you are either a babe in Christ or a goat. The true priest is both the altar and the sacrifice, offering up their own life for the sake of their brethren.
Only a priest can bless the people. They are given the authority to bless and to curse, because they alone have the heart of God. They will give their life as a ransom.{ccclxxiv} With that heart, when the priest blesses the people, the people are truly blessed. It is not a cheap word that has an elusory definition. The blessing results in actual blessing. The curse results in actual curse. This kind of blessing and cursing is described in the New Testament as “binding and loosing.” What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. There is an actual affect in flesh and blood reality. Blessing is more than a word that we say because it is “Christian lingo.” This word needs to be guarded. We need to make sure that it isn’t robbed of its power. I know that we enjoy big and powerful terms like “prayer warrior” and “power evangelism,” but the priest sees the magnanimity in even these common words like bless, love, bind, and loose.
Melchizedek
Interestingly, to understand the Melchizedek priesthood, we need to start in Genesis. Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek, but this is too far into the story. We need to back up to Genesis 12, with the initial calling of Abraham. In Psalm 110:4, and also repeated in Hebrews 5:6, we find that the messiah will be “a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” Our High Priest is not a Levite. He came out of Judah. Captivatingly, it is written of David’s descendants (sons) that they are kohanim, priests.{ccclxxv} Kohanim are traditionally only the sons of Aaron. And yet, both the Psalm as well as 2 Samuel 8:18 seem to indicate that there is a priesthood that Aaron was only patterned after, and both David and the messiah are priests of that order.
In Genesis 12, God speaks to Abraham and says, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” I like how the King James translates it, “Get thee out.” Sever yourself from all ties. These three ties are possibly the deepest identifications that humanity has. My father doesn’t simply mean the man who bore me; it means the whole family line that has brought us to this point. My father’s side is German, and from my mother’s side I’m Irish and British. I’m a war waiting to happen… Yet, I’m not identified with being German, Irish, or British, nor American. I’m not identified with the Comer name. My identity comes from Christ.
The same call that Abraham received is the call that we all receive. Come out from national patriotic pride. Come out from your racial pride. Come out from your family heritage. Instead, be identified in a new way: as a new nation with a name and a land that I will give you. These are deep waters. It is not pleasant to consider coming out from those identifications. They classify who we are, and many get much pride from their heritage. Many are proud to call themselves Anglo-Saxons, or Latino, or Italian, or Irish. Many are proud of their Nazarene, or Baptist, or Methodist roots. Many are proud of being African-American or oriental. Much of our culture teaches us to take pride in what we are, but who we are is not governed by our nationality.
There is a deeper recognition of identification. Yes, I am a white man of Anglo-Saxon origin. Yes, I live in the United States of America. Yes, I have a rich history from my family line – one that is so rich that my family has yet to tell me of it. But, God has called me to something higher than that. There is an identification that I have in Christ that exceeds all other identification. Because I am now brought into the commonwealth of Israel, I don’t take pride in my heritage as though it defines whom I am. I am instead an ambassador of heaven. There is a heavenly dwelling from where I have my identification. That is not cheap. It costs much to sever your ties and be identified by something that is bigger than your heritage. That kind of separation is painful.
The call came to Abraham, and it comes to us as well. Whether we experience more of a kinship with our own families and those of our nationality and/or race than with the brethren of our faith is the plumb line (especially when our brethren are from a rival or enemy nationality). It is one thing to say that we are all brothers, but is that statement true? Generalizations are always wrong (pun intended). We might both believe in Jesus as the Messiah, but does that in fact make us brethren? The word brother needs to be radically altered in our mindsets. To be a brother or a sister does not simply mean that we are of the same blood, nor that we have some sort of similarity between us that we recognize and respect. Brotherhood is only brotherhood when it goes beyond the bounds and limitations of blood and water. It is spiritual reality – kinship of heart that is counted as more prec