5:1 For every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
The first thing we see is that every high priest – both those of the Old Covenant and Christ, the one and only High Priest of the New Covenant – is “taken from among men”. We saw earlier in this study that part of the function of a priest is to represent man before God. Any person can only represent those with whom he has common ground: he must be part of a group before he can be its representative.
For the Old Covenant, this meant that the priests had to be Israelites: a foreigner could not represent the nation of Israel before the Lord. Christ, however, came to represent not just Israel, but the whole of mankind. Therefore He had to be fully human. For the Old Covenant priesthood this was not an issue – after all, there was nowhere other than the pool of mankind from which priests could be drawn. For the New Covenant it becomes an issue, since there were those who said that Christ never truly became human, but merely took on the appearance of humanity. The writer makes it clear that this was not the case. To simply look like a man would never have qualified Him to represent man: for that, He had to be man in the fullest possible sense, whilst never ceasing to be fully God.
… is appointed for men …
The high priest – or, for that matter, any priest – is not ordained by men, but for men. Under the original rules for the priesthood, the high priest could come only from the line of Aaron, and his ordination was for life. Thus, the appointment could only be made by God, for only He could order the man’s family line and order of birth.
By the time of Christ both these things had been lost. The high priesthood had become a kind of political appointment, and served on a rotational basis. There could even be several high priests at one time. This was not according to God’s purposes. The writer points us back to the original truth: ordination does not come from man, but from God. Likewise today, it would be good for some churches and denominations to remember that ordination to ministry is not conferred by the church or denomination: all they can do is give public recognition to the ordination that has already been given by God.
Whilst the priest was not ordained by men, he was ordained for men. God did not need a priesthood. His original purpose was that the whole nation of Israel would be as priests, representing Him to the rest of the world and the word before Him. (Exodus 19:6). Indeed, at the time of creation, the whole of mankind had been designated as God’s representatives. (Genesis 1:26-28) The priesthood was introduced as a concession to man’s need to have someone stand between him and God. The thing that created that need was man’s sin. It was sin that caused the Israelites to say to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will hear; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die” (Exodus 20:19) – their sin made the holiness of God fearful to them, rather than desirable, and they chose second-hand religion rather than have their sins exposed. At a more basic level, it was the sin of mankind that made it necessary for Christ to come as the ultimate High Priest to represent all of us before the Father.
… that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
There are many aspects to the character of God, but they may be broadly classed into two groups: His goodness and His justice. His justice sees Him as the righteous and holy One, the lawgiver and judge, the King and Lord of all. His justice demands that sin be punished, that a penalty be paid. Under the Old Covenant the priests offered continual sacrifices in recognition of God’s justice. They were only temporary measures, providing a short-term covering for sin, and pointing forward to Christ, Whose sacrifice alone could truly deal with sin once and for all.
His goodness presents Him as creator, sustainer, lover, giver, healer, comforter – all the things which we see as blessings in our lives. For all these, we are to give Him thanks and praise. In the Old Covenant, this was done by bringing thank offerings or freewill offerings. These were not intended to deal with sin, but simply to express the giver’s gratitude and commitment to God. We generally miss out on this aspect of Christ’s ministry. He did not have to go to the Cross. There was nothing in His own life that required sacrifice on His own behalf. His death was a sacrifice given on our behalf, to pay the penalty of our sins. But for Himself, His death was a free will offering. He could have said “no” in the garden of Gethsemane. For that matter, He could have said “no” to the incarnation. At this level, His life and death were a love gift to the Father, enabling the salvation of mankind and the restoration of the Kingdom on earth. Yet in another sense this was also given “for” us: a man, representing mankind, offering to the Father the ultimate gift of love.