The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
The Rest of the Christmas Story
When we think of priests, we generally have in mind either a cassocked representative of the Catholic Church or a Sunday school picture of priests overseeing daily sacrifices in the Old Testament Tabernacle. But we, as Christians, are also called priests (and kings) according to Revelation. 1:5b-6: “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” And we learn how to function in that role from our own High Priest in God’s presence, Jesus Christ.
He is the one priest who does not have to continually sacrifice as the Old Testament priests did because He became the once-and-for-all-time sacrifice for the sins of the world. “And every priest stands daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:11-13).
Hebrew 2:16-18 specifies that His becoming a man, beginning as a helpless baby in a manger, was for the particular purpose of being the priest we need before God the Father: “For verily he took not on Him the nature of angels but he took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered being tempted, He is able to [help] them that are tempted.”
Hebrews 4:14-16 encourages us that Christ is the One who acts from His first-hand knowledge of the human condition: “Seeing then that we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
We can rejoice that an outcome of having such a High Priest, who knows from experience what it is like to be human, provides support for holiness from The Holy One, the only sinless person to have ever walked the earth since Adam’s fall. Prayer is the beginning of that support as we see in the Lord’s Prayer of Matthew 6:13a: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The other part of that support is the fulfillment of the promise that “There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). Not only are we protected from trials too heavy for us, but there is always a way to escape the temptation to sin.
As we walk this earth, we are the priestly representatives of God, the purveyors of the good news of salvation by faith in the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Like Jesus, we are called to pray for those around us, helping where we can and seeking to strengthen the weak to recognize and follow the escape from falling to temptation all year long, not just at Christmas.
