THE ENTERING IN OF THE HIGH PRIEST

^[p. 494] THE ENTERING IN OF THE HIGH PRIEST

We are told that the law had the shadow of good things to come, not the very image of the things, hence we must not expect that christianity can be learnt from the law, however much we may be assisted by the latter in the understanding of detail.

One simple point will serve to show how little able the law was to set forth the truth. In the very nature of things under the law a victim and the priest who offered it were distinct: now it is essential to christianity that they are combined in one Person; for it is plain that Christ could not be offered by any save Himself, and no victim short of Christ would meet the case, for in no other could divine love be fully shown.

I desire to carry this contrast on to what took place on the day of atonement, on which the high priest entered into the holiest “with blood of others”. He had to carry in every year the blood of the bullock for himself and his house, and of the goat for Israel, typical of the death, vicariously, of both, and incense beaten small, that thus he might be covered in the presence of the divine glory. Aaron and Israel were evidently in the flesh, and if Aaron had to approach God in His sanctuary, his approach must thus be ordered, otherwise it had been immediate death to himself. He represented his own house and Israel — but both as being under death.

Now nothing can be a greater contrast to this than the entering in of Christ. He entered in as the risen Man, when all the work of offering had been accomplished, having found an eternal redemption. He had no need, like Aaron, to be covered by blood and incense, nor was there need for the sprinkling of blood — for He carries in His own Person the witness of ^[p. 495] the one offering by which all has been purged. The blood of purging has been poured out. Christ Himself is the witness of death having been effected in the fact that He is risen from the dead, and has entered in, in the power of an endless life, high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.

So long as blood had to be carried in, the way into the holiest could not yet be made manifest, for there was, as yet, no resurrection from among the dead. Now all is changed — man after the flesh has been removed in the cross, and in the removal God has been glorified, there is the purgation of all, and now Christ has entered into heaven to appear before the face of God for us.

The truth is now come to pass “by man came also the resurrection of the dead”; and in the risen Man, the offering Priest, the way into the holiest is made manifest. The point now is not seeing ‘sprinkled with the blood the mercy-seat above’, but a risen man entered in when all the work of offering is over, sins put away, and the judgment and curse of God which lay upon man removed in the removal of the man after the flesh. I can hardly think of any truth as of more importance than the apprehension of the risen man abiding in the presence of God, and of the understanding of the significance of this, in that the way into the holiest is made manifest on the one hand, and on the other, that the work of offering is over.

To come now to the application of this to ourselves, It is clear that if we are to enter into the holiest we must be in accord with the Man that is there, and that in our minds. As we have seen, He has by one offering met all that lay upon us by the judgment of God, and our part lies now in the acceptance of death with Him so that we may by faith enter on the ground of “risen with him”, and ^[p. 496] be suited for the exercise of priestly function, and this in the sense that all offering work is over.

But one thing is essential to this, and that is attachment to the Person of the Priest. We are quickened together with Him so that we should live in His life. He is head of the priestly house, and whatever may have been the relations of Aaron’s sons with Aaron, none can separate us from the love of Christ; and in affection to Himself we are morally outside of the influences which appeal to nature, and are thus according to the glory of God, to serve Him in holiness.