Today, in thinking about the Threefold Office of Christ, we are looking at Christ as Priest in our series Beholding Christ. Early in His ministry Christ made it clear that He was the fulfillment of the Temple (John 2:19). This means that everything that happened there in the Temple was fulfilled in Christ. The Temple (and the Tabernacle before) was where God’s people could come into His presence by His grace. The grace part is where the activity of the Priest came in; the Priest would administer sacrifices on behalf of the people so that they could come into God’s presence. The message of the sacrificial system was very clear, “I do not deserve to come into God’s presence because of my sin. What I deserve is death. The sacrifice of an animal was a substitute, it died instead of me.” This was God’s grace! Of course the activity of the Priest in the temple never ended because the people were continually sinning.
When Jesus says He is the fulfillment of the Temple He is saying that He is coming to do a more sufficient work. Everything that has happened before Him was merely a shadow, but His work is the substance the Temple pointed to. In 1 Timothy 2:5 Paul says, “there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” The Priests were to mediate between God and His people (Heb. 5:1). The Bible is clearly telling us that Christ is the one true Priest who mediates between God and His people, all former Priests point to Him. Paul also emphasizes the humanity of Christ showing that He is the perfect mediator between God and man because He is both God and man (see the first post in this series).
We saw that in His office of Prophet Christ is both the messenger and message, so in His office as Priest, He is both the Priest and the sacrifice. When John the Baptist saw Jesus at the beginning of His public ministry John proclaimed, “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Every sacrifice of God’s people prior to Christ only pointed forward to Christ the full, final, and sufficient sacrifice (Heb. 10:4, 10-12). On the cross, Christ was cursed (Gal. 3:13) for any who would come to Him in faith and repentance. Pastor Nick Batzig explains that Christ received the anti-Aaron blessing by taking our curse so we could receive the Aaron (Priestly) blessing. He says:
It was necessary that Jesus receive what has been called “the anti-Aaron blessing” when He hung on the cross that we might receive the blessing of God’s presence and goodness for all eternity. Instead of hearing “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you peace,” Jesus heard, “the Lord curse you and cast you off; the Lord hide His face from you and pour out His wrath on you; the Lord hide the light of His countenance from you and give you turmoil” as he hung on the cross. (The Sin-Bearing, Curse-Removing True Israel)
The resurrection proves that when Christ said on the cross, “it is finished” that He has in fact paid the full penalty of sin. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23) and there was no more death to be paid so the grave could no longer hold Him. The ascended Christ is still our Great High Priest who sits at the Father’s right hand speaking a better word for us and interceding on our behalf.
Written by Matt Baker