Hebrews 5:1-3
Last week a small group of friends and I spent an afternoon talking about Hebrews 5:1-3. We laughed. At our slow pace we might not live long enough to finish studying the book.
We realized there were depths to the passage we did not touch and saw anew that 1) Jesus is our high priest. 2) The sacrifice He offered to God was Himself; He was a perfect sacrifice; His death bridged the distance between us and His Holy Father. 3) He compassionately understands our ignorance, and weaknesses, our falling short of His holiness. 4) Since Jesus is the Living Word of God and since He lives in His people, we too are called to be priests unto God and many of the words that apply to Him also apply to us. 5) Our own function as priests unto God is similar in some ways to Jesus’ function. We are called to be a bridge between men and God. 6) We fulfill our priestly function every time we serve one another in love. 7) We can only serve as priests through the death and life of Jesus and by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
That last was a big one. We talked a lot about what it means to lay down our lives and serve other people in love. It was part of the function of Old Testament priests to prepare animals for sacrifice, to wash the utensils, cook the sacrifices and offerings on the fire, and give edible portions to those who brought them to the temple.
When we, as homemakers, lovingly serve our families, which often means picking up our daily crosses and laying down our own lives, we are ministering to them in a priestly function. When we lay down our lives to listen to others and seek God for His wisdom and love for them, we serve as a bridge between them and God. That’s a priestly function. When we pray and worship, we function as priests. The list goes on— motivated by the love of God filling our hearts, when we choose to love others as God has loved us, we function as priests.
This means not judging, but bearing with one another’s weaknesses and ignorance in patient endurance. It means forgiving others for their sins just as Jesus died forgiving not only those who crucified Him on Golgotha but forgiving all who don’t know what they are doing. As priests unto God, we are called to extend merciful loving kindness to all. We forgive the wounds, indifferences and betrayals that bring us pain just as Jesus forgives us. As priests, we intercede for others by dying to our own reactions and seeking God for His Spirit to love our enemies, to pray for those who use us, abuse us and might try to manipulate us.
All of our discussion naturally and easily came out of taking a careful look at the words of Hebrew’s 5: 1-3, then reading and talking about a few definitions and comments and thoughts on the verses and listening as the Holy Spirit spoke into our own hearts and minds. Here’s the path we followed.
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.He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins.
Hebrews 5: 1-3
After reading the verses, my friends asked me to quickly review my first lesson on the history and function of the priesthood. You can do that by quickly skimming https://givenwordnow.com/hebrews-414/
Next we took turns reading the scriptures, definitions and comments below. Follow along and see where God might take you.
A full study of these verses would explain how they apply to Jesus, to the Jewish nation, and to Christian citizens of the Kingdom of God in varying ways. We didn’t analyze them; we read them and let the Holy Spirit speak to us individually.
You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Exodus 19:6
You will be called the priests of the LORD; You will be spoken of as ministers of our God. Isaiah 61:6
Paul wrote that grace was given to me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:16
. . . Chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I Peter 2:4,5
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. I Peter 2:9
And He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Revelation 1:6
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth, Revelation 5:10
These verses strengthened our sense that believers are called to be priests unto God. We are called to love Him and to serve Him above all. Next we read and talked about these definitions in the context of the text.
For every high priest, being taken from among men
Taken from the Greek lambano means laid hold of. A high priest is a man God has laid hold of; He is God’s man, not His own. Similarly, God lays hold of and takes for Himself every one whom He draws to faith in His Son. Everyone who receives God’s Holy Spirit by asking Jesus into his or her heart becomes a child of God. Thus, as believers, we no longer belong to ourselves; we belong to God. He gave His life for us and to us and now we
are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. I Peter 2:9
For every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men
Appointed or ordained is from the Greek kathistemi translated appointed or ordained and literally means to place or set down; it is from kata, down or over against and histemi to cause to stand or to set. God has not only appointed believers to be priests unto God, but that as we follow Him, He sets His people into the places He wants and connects us with the people He chooses for His Spirit to work through us
in things pertaining to God
Things pertaining to God suggests that our ministry as priests is to bring people nearer to God not to draw them to ourselves or into our orbits. When we minister to others as priests unto God, we ask, “Lord, what do You want? What is best for them? What lines up with Your Word?
Jesus is and was and always will be the once and for all sacrifice for sins— yet as we adjust our schedules and desires to make time to pray and worship God, as we serve others in the tasks of daily life, as we quietly go about our days speaking truth as the opportunity arises, living in forgiveness to others and returning love for hate and trusting and hoping in God through griefs, persecutions and misunderstandings we too, like Jesus offer our lives to God as gifts and sacrifices for the sins and trespasses against us.
that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
Offer according to the Oxford Dictionary means to “present or proffer (something) for (someone) to accept or reject as so desired.” The noun is “an expression of readiness to do or give something if desired.” For example, Mary offered to host the Bible study this week and we accepted.
AS God’s chosen priests, we ideally offer ourselves— all we are, all we have, and all we do— to serve Him and others willingly.
Gifts are simply something that is given. According to the Oxford dictionary, to give is to “freely transfer the possession of (something) to (someone); hand over to. *
In the Bible and especially in John’s gospel, God’s love is a gift. Although we humans know love as an emotion, God’s love is qualitatively different than all our human emotions. God’s love can touch and stir our emotions profoundly. God’s love can rise up in us with unexpected power and compassion to do a good deed, to pray, to right a wrong or meet a need. Nevertheless, while God’s love can encompass and include our human loves, those who have tasted His love say no earthly love can compare. It is always pure and purifying, all-consuming. It differs from every human love based on friendship, familiarity, attraction, or determined principle.
Jesus alone is the epitome of God’s love. God so loved the world that He gave His Son so that whoever believes in Jesus would not be condemned but be saved from death. John 3:16-17. God’s love is Jesus, all He is, was, and ever will be is God’s gift to mankind and to the world. All Jesus did was a gift. All Jesus continues to do is a gift. When Jesus gave His life, it was a gift. He gave His life to God and to us as a sacrifice for us.
Sacrifices
According to the Free Dictionary, a sacrifice is “the act of offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or a person. The act of giving up something highly valued for the sake of something else considered to have a greater value or claim. “
Offering a sacrifice to God is quite like giving Him a gift. When we give Him our time, our choices, our pocketbooks, our minds and hand and mouths, we offer Him a sacrifice. A sacrifice, by definition, links man, or attempts to create a link between a man and God. It is either a reaching out toward Him or expressing a connection of relationship with Him.
Our Bible Study group didn’t talk too much about Jesus’s sacrifice as atonement for sins because we had talked about it before and understood it, but for web readers, I’ll review a little.
A sacrifice is seen as an atoning sacrifice when it is offered to meet the need for a consequence or punishment for sin. The idea of atonement goes all the way back to the beginning accounts of God’s written history with men and women. In Genesis, when Adam disobeyed God and broke fellowship with Him, one consequence was death. Death is defined first as God’s putting a time limit on how long the human soul and spirit can exist or live inside their earthly material body and second as the human species loss of continual unbroken communion with God.
Paul summed it up when he wrote that
The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23
Since the consequence of every broken union and communion with God is death, the death or the sacrifice of an animal in the Old Testament was a substitutionary death for man. The animal’s shed blood vicariously took the place of a person’s deserved death, atoned for the sins or shortcomings of man, and made continued relationship between God and man possible.
In The Book of Hebrews a sacrifice is often described as expiation. The Oxford Dictionary, says expiation is “the act of making amends for guilt or wrong doing.” Jesus makes legal amends for sinners because he meets the law’s requirements by taking the consequences of our sins upon Himself. So Jesus sacrificial death not only atones by taking our death, it also expiates our sins by cancelling the just legal penalty for them. All that seems really important to believers though is summed up in the old hymn:
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
Jesus Paid it All, Elvina M. Hall, 1865 **
But on the every day, flesh and blood relational level that most of us understand and live on, what matters most is that all who have asked Jesus to forgive their sins and been born again by the Holy Spirit of God know that our sins are forgiven and taken away. We know that Jesus personally understands our weaknesses and failings. He identifies with us, takes our blame on Himself and forgive us. In a mysterious way, His forgiveness frees us from the consequences of sin and restores our lost relationship with God. We truly can approach the throne of grace in boldness and confidence and live without guilt and fear because in the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness to trust God and love others.
For sins
Sin literally means not to hit, to miss.
As we talked on this, it became clear that often men and women who live without God and Jesus truly can do good works and can be noble and virtuous. But, they can fully miss God in the process. Source and motive matter in the Kingdom of God. Without the Holy Spirit, no matter how good and noble and kind and generous a man or woman might be, no matter how consistent their good works, they will still fall short of the divine nature of God’s holy love and the infusion of supernatural Kingdom reality and power.
Sin is not always active evil. Sin is missing God Himself and not having and living, loving relationship with Him.
Jesus did not preach about “sin” per se. He rarely used the word. But he overcame sin by a life of constant unbroken union with God. All His works were by the power of the Holy Spirit and done in obedience to His Heavenly Father’s will. Perhaps His most well known illustration of sin is the parable of the prodigal son. Sin is the prodigal leaving his Father’s house and wasting his father’s gifts. Repentance is return to His Father’s love. All that is without God; all that leaves the Father and breaks relationship with him is sin.
Our discussion ended with the seventh point in the summary at the beginning of this essay. In our human weaknesses and distance from God, we can only serve as priests unto God through the death and life of Jesus and by the indwelling power of His loving guiding strengthening Holy Spirit.
If you’ve followed our discussion, I hope the Holy Spirit met you as He met with us in a lively, energizing and faith building love.
Jesus Paid it All by Elvina M. Hall (public domain)
I hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me your all in all.”
Refrain:
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim;
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calvary’s Lamb.
And now complete in Him,
My robe, His righteousness,
Close sheltered ’neath His side,
I am divinely blest.
Lord, now indeed I find
Your power, and You alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.
When from my dying bed
My ransomed soul shall rise,
“Jesus died my soul to save,”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.
And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down,
All down at Jesus’
* Other meanings of give are: Cause or allow (someone or something) to have (something, especially something abstract); Provide or supply with as in My daughter gives me joy. Carry out or perform (a specified action): He gave a smile. State or put forward (information or argument): He did not give any support for his opinion.
