THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST
THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST
... I did not remember that I had not answered your question about the priesthood.... A very wonderful subject. Christ having set us as Himself before the eye of the Father, His present service is to maintain us in our walk here. For our weakness He is the Priest, and for our sins, the Advocate. I am a weak creature, even when I am not perverse. The Lord learned the weakness of the creature, but He ever did His Father’s pleasure. He now imparts grace to me in all need; mercy, because of my weakness, and grace to help me; mercy is consideration; grace is actual favour conferred. The word detects the motive that would influence me. I learn myself concurrently with learning the grace of my Priest, who understands all my weakness, though He never gave way to it, and therefore He imparts His grace, or manna.
The blessed Lord enters into all I suffer from in spirit because of the weakness of the creature. Supposing I could not stay awake at a meeting, or that I was so timid I could not speak as I wished; well, He would [p. 301] be merciful to me, and help me by His grace, if I looked to Him; and at the same time He would, by His word, expose the way my flesh would feel, act, and shelter itself under the trial. This is on my side when infirmity is in the ascendant; but the Priest before God has quite another service. It is the perfect and divine, so entirely unknown to me, and so beyond all human apprehension, which He conducts me into, and supports me in. I learn Him, blessed be His name, in the weakness of myself, and in the greatness and perfection of the blessed God; one is too little for me, and the other is infinitely too great for me. But our Saviour is for us in both; and I believe we are more attached to Him as the Priest than only as a Saviour. We learn the largeness and suitability of His interest in us, adapted to every turn of our lives here. One could write volumes on this interesting subject. He comes down to our fireside, and He conducts and sustains us consciously in the glorious scene where God is. As consecrated ones, we enter the holiest.