It will hardly be questioned that, if we had had no other information than is found in Genesis, we would have unhesitatingly concluded that Melchizedek was simply an extremely pious, God-fearing man who lived in the midst of an ungodly race, and held forth the banner of truth in the worship of the one living and true God. But our method of viewing that narrative has been materially affected by what we find recorded in other parts of Scripture. Our eyes have been thereby opened to perceive that there is an air of mystery about it which a cursory reading of it does not at first disclose. Melchizedek appears on the scene suddenly, and then disappears as suddenly. We are told that he was a priest of the Most High God, or rather the priest of the Most High God. He blesses Abraham, and that patriarch pays tithes to him. He could be no ordinary man who thus assumed superiority over the friend of God, and from whom the great head of the Hebrew race accepted a blessing. This mystery continued for many generations unrelieved by any ray of light from heaven.
1. Then came the oracle in Psa_110:1-7. But the author of that Psalm does not entirely remove the mystery left around the subject by the narrative in Genesis. He, however, gives us a little more light in a particular direction. He brings more vividly before our minds Melchizedek's priestly office. He does not tell us definitely who Melchizedek was, but he presses upon our notice the fact that his priesthood is eternal. “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”
(1) The Psalm is one which indisputably speaks of the Messiah. None other in the whole Book of Psalms does so more unmistakably, judged either by what it says, or by the interpretation given of it in the New Testament. Of the Messiah the Psalmist declares that He is to be a Priest, but no ordinary one; not even a High Priest, as known to Jewish ritual and worship; but a Priest who should be “after the order of,” and on the same footing as, Melchizedek of old. Nothing more is added. The word stood in the Psalm for ages in its single and mysterious suggestiveness.
(2) If the oracle had merely said that Christ was a priest for ever, this would not have so fully met the necessities of the case. It would not have shown the inferiority of Abraham to Melchizedek, and the inferiority of the Aaronic priesthood to that of Melchizedek, and, consequently, to that of Christ. The object was to prepare for the setting aside of the Aaronic priesthood as well as to establish the eternal priesthood of Christ. The peculiar mental attitude of the Jews seems to have rendered it necessary to put the oracle in this way. The most daring criticism will not deny that the Jewish religion, so impatient of any intrusion upon its ritual,-so increasingly impatient, they tell us, as time went on,-so resolute to keep its holy things in the hands of Israel, and within Israel in the hands of one tribe, and within Levi in the hands of a single family, nevertheless cherished in its bosom the death sentence of that system, in the announcement that the Divinely appointed priest, instituted by an oath of Jehovah, should belong to an alien priesthood, which could not officiate at their altars, perhaps Moabite, perhaps Canaanite, in any case unknown and unsanctioned by their law. Such a priest involved of necessity a change of the law against which his existence clashed. But we do not appreciate all the wonder of this evolution until we perceive that the promise of it was part of the creed of Judaism itself, and is implied in such a verse as this: Thou art a priest after the order of Melchizedek, not of Aaron. It is at least clear that the Psalmist meant to describe the Messiah as one who should possess a priesthood, and one older and more venerable than that of the Levitical Law.
No aspect of our Lord's heavenly life is more to be insisted upon than His priestly office and work. Popular theology on all sides shows a tendency to stop short at the Cross, that is, at the historical moment when the Divine Sacrifice was offered. The blessings of our redemption are traced to the Passion with such exclusive insistence as to suggest that they would have been ours if Christ had neither risen from the dead nor ascended into heaven. The whole attitude of the Christian life is affected by this departure from the primitive teaching; a dead Christ instead of a living Lord becomes the object of devotion; the anchor of the soul is fixed in the past and not in the present and future. The error, as in many other instances, turns upon the disproportionate weight which is attached to certain familiar words of Holy Scripture, while others, which are necessary to preserve the balance of truth, are strangely overlooked. Thus the words, “It is finished,” are supposed to exclude atoning work of any kind subsequent to the death of the Cross; whereas they only announce the completion of the particular work of obedience unto death which was the purpose of our Lord's earthly life. Neither the analogy of the Old Testament Day of Atonement, nor the direct teaching of the New Testament, sanctions the doctrine that the priestly work of Christ was finished when He died. If He was delivered for our trespasses, He was raised for our justification; if we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more … shall we be saved by His life. With St. Paul not the Cross and Passion, but the Ascension and the High-priestly Intercession are the climax of our Lord's saving work.1 [Note: H. B. Swete, The Ascended Christ, 49.]
Once when his servant read in the Psalms the verse, “I have sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a Priest for ever,” Doctor Martin said, “That is the most beautiful and glorious verse in the whole Psalter; for herein God holds forth this Christ alone as our Bishop and High Priest, who Himself, and no other, without ceasing, makes intercession for His own with the Father. Not Caiaphas, nor Annas, nor Peter, nor Paul, nor the Pope; He, He alone shall be the Priest. This I affirm with an oath. ‘Thou art a Priest for ever.' In that saying every syllable is greater than the whole Tower of Babel. To this Priest let us cling and cleave. For He is faithful; He has given Himself for us to God, and holds us dearer than His own life. When we stand firm to Christ, there is no other god in heaven or on earth but One who makes just and blessed. On the other hand, if we lose Him from our heart and eyes, there is no other help, comfort, or rest.”2 [Note: Luther, Table-Talk (ed. Forstemann), i. 32.]
When conquering Abram Salem sought
To God's High Priest his tithes he brought,
His thankfulness to mark:
Melchizedek an offering made,
Of Bread and Wine, on altar laid,
And blessed the Patriarch.
A victory nobler far we gain,
A nobler sacrifice is slain,
A better blessing shed:
Our great High Priest in Heaven stands,
Who gives Himself with His own hands,
In mystic Wine and Bread.3 [Note: E. L. Blenkinsopp.]
2. The Epistle to the Hebrews is a golden key which unlocks many of the difficulties which meet us in the books of Moses. In the seventh chapter we find this remarkable language (Heb_7:1-3), “This Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first, by interpretation, King of righteousness, and then also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God), abideth a priest continually.”
One of the main objects of the Epistle to the Hebrews is to establish, in a way to satisfy he Jewish converts of the time, the eternal priesthood of Christ. In no other part of the Word of God does this important subject receive formal discussion. And in no other part of the New Testament is the word “priest” applied to our Lord. His atonement and work are referred to elsewhere, but it is only here that He receives His official title of Priest. The writer aims not merely at establishing the superiority of the priesthood of Melchizedek over that of Aaron, but at bringing out its different and independent character, that character which belonged first and essentially to the High Priest of the Christian dispensation although it had been shadowed forth, as in a preparatory copy, in His Melchizedekean forerunner. In order, therefore, to understand the Priesthood of our Lord, we have to pass beyond the Old Testament arrangements for the Levitical priesthood, and to think of a still more ancient and famous “order.” The writer eagerly lays hold of the Melchizedek priesthood, as a means of showing that Christ might be a priest, though not possessing the legal qualifications for the Levitical priesthood, represented in the oracle of Psa_110:1-7 as of a different order, to which Jesus, as the Messiah, may lay claim. The new type is older than the Levitical, supposed alone to possess legitimacy; it is indeed the oldest type known to sacred history. But what if this order were only a rude, imperfect, irregular sort of priesthood, good enough for those old-world times, and graciously accepted by God in absence of a better, but destined to pass away when a regularly established priesthood came in, not worthy to continue side by side therewith, and not fit to be referred to as establishing a new sort of priesthood, claiming to supersede the Levitical? The possibility was present to the writer's mind, and he amply provides for it in his argument by unfolding the full significance of the oracle in Psa_110:1-7, pointing out that the priesthood of Melchizedek is there referred to, not as a rude, irregular, inferior sort of priesthood, the continuance of which, in times of established order, were absurd or impious, but as the highest sort of priesthood, the very ideal of priesthood, a priesthood fit for kings, as opposed to sacerdotal drudges. The Melchizedek priesthood, a distinct type, the most ancient, and, though ancient, yet not rude, but rather the better, and the best possible-such are the moments in the apologetic argument, which has for its aim to prove that the priesthood of Christ is at once real, and of ideal worth. The priesthood of Christ in its reality and ideal worth is not understood unless it is seen to be of the Melchizedek type.
(1) After the order of Melchizedek Jesus Christ has become the ideal High Priest by the worth of His Personality, not by claim of descent (Heb_7:1-3). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews beholds in the name “Melchizedek” a Divine revelation regarding the man, a revelation pregnant with the most important inferences as to both the person of whom he speaks and the ends to be attained by him. He was not merely a priest, but a priest-king. By his very name this Melchizedek, who had shadowed forth the Messiah to come, was “King of righteousness,” and also “King of Salem, which is, King of peace.” The two designations expressed alike what he was and that part which in the providence of God he had been raised up to play. Righteousness and peace met in him.
There can be little doubt, however, that the point mainly in the Apostle's mind is presented in the often-recurring phrase, “a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek.” The one statement is equivalent to the other: to be a priest for ever is to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek. This is really the point of importance, because this “for ever” of the priesthood is the seal and guarantee of the finality of the priestly acts as sanctifying for ever the people (Heb_10:10), and of the eternity of the covenant, and this last is the fundamental idea of the Epistle. This “for ever” belongs to the Melchizedek high priest in virtue of his indissoluble life, and this gain he has as the Son of God. So that the order of his priesthood resolves itself into the nature of his person.
The Levitical priest had carefully to trace his connexion with Aaron, hence the elaborate genealogies of which some parts of the Bible are full. The priests, at the time of the return from Babylon, who could not prove their pedigree were suspended until a priest arose with Urim and Thummim. But earlier than Aaron, and moving in the mists of dim antiquity, is seen the arresting figure of Melchizedek, who, for aught that the Scriptures record to the contrary, holds his priesthood in perpetuity. He was independent of priestly pedigree. Of course, it is not necessary to infer that he really had no human parentage, and that he knew neither birth nor death. This is neither stated nor assumed. The argument is simply built on the omission of any reference to these events in ordinary human life, and aims at proving that, therefore, this old-world priesthood was quite independent of those conditions which were of prime importance in the Levitical dispensation. It was of an entirely different order from that which officiated in the Jewish Temple, and was, therefore, so capable of representing Christ's. What was allegorically true of Melchizedek was literally true of Jesus, who has had neither beginning of days nor end of life. His Priesthood, therefore, is utterly unique. He stands amongst men unrivalled. There have been none like Him before nor since-His functions derived from none, shared by none, transmitted to none.
The foundation of our Lord's Priesthood is the constitution of His person, and not regularity of descent from others. No doubt it is “after the order of Melchizedek,” but the peculiar language of the sacred writer is sufficient to prove that its fundamental ideas pass from our Lord to Melchizedek, and not from Melchizedek to our Lord. Melchizedek illustrates rather than lays down the principles of the line to which he belongs. These in their originality are to be found in the exalted and glorified Lord; and the first of them is that the heavenly High-Priest is what He is personally, not by succession. He is the Son, and this connexion between His Sonship and His heavenly Priesthood is brought out with remarkable force in the Epistle to the Hebrews. No truth appears more clearly upon the face of the whole Epistle than that neither the pre-existent nor the incarnate Sonship of our Lord (although both are proceeded on and implied), but His Sonship in His now glorified condition constitutes Him to be our High Priest. The two conceptions of Son and Priest cannot, in His case, be separated from each other. Because He was to be the High Priest of humanity He assumed our human nature, and was afterwards elevated in that nature to the throne of the heavenly Majesty. Because He had assumed our human nature, and had been so elevated, He was fitted for His priestly function.1 [Note: W. Milligan, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord, 97.]
Behold, Melchizedek!
And he who for himself and for his seed
Paid tithes to him, and he who thus bespake
His pious Father: “But where is the Lamb
For sacrifice?”-his dignity partake,
Humbly with Isaac and with Abraham,
The eternal priest bowed down in silent prayer.
Messiah thus-
“Ere Abraham was, I am!
And thou, thou priest of Salem, who while-ere
Greeted the faithful from his victory
With sacramental blessing;-thou wert he
Of th'everlasting Order and Decree,
Whence bread from Heaven, angelic food for man,
And life divine outpoured in blood. With thee
That sacramental ordinance began,
Accomplished now. Be thou a priest for ever;
I swear, nor shall repent. I will-I can-
After thine Order rule, and it shall never
In righteousness and peace, surcease to hold
Sway and dominion when and wheresoever.”2 [Note: J. A. Heraud.]
(2) After the order of Melchizedek Jesus Christ has become the ideal High Priest by the greatness of His character, not by virtue of office (Heb_10:4-10). Melchizedek's priestly authority in accepting the title from Abraham and bestowing upon him his blessing, evinced his personal greatness. Abraham's submission to Melchizedek in accepting his benediction, and his action in offering him, spontaneously, a tithe of the spoils, constitute his recognition of the priest-king's great personal religious worth. He who blesses is higher than he whom he blesses. Melchizedek was perhaps not a better or greater man than Abraham, but as a priest he took upon him to stand between God and Abraham, and on God's behalf blessed Abraham, the head and fount of Israel. And thus Melchizedek's priesthood is superior to that of the Levites-first, by as much as personal worth is higher than privilege conferred by mere legal formula; and second, by as much as Abraham stands above his ordinary descendants.
If, then, priesthood after the order of Melchizedek is as incomparably greater than priesthood after the order of Aaron as greatness of character is superior to power of office, how infinitely better is Christ's priesthood (being of the former kind) than that of the Levitical priests. For His priesthood is spiritual, not legal; personal, not official; real, not professional; eternal, not transitory; not nominal, but ideal.
It is clear that our Lord was not a priest in the same sense as the priests under the law; nor were His functions the same as theirs. He did not belong to the house of Aaron, to which the ancient priesthood exclusively appertained; He was never invested with sacerdotal insignia and honours; He never officiated at the altar in the Temple; He never offered up any animal as a sacrifice; He never, so far as we know, discharged any proper priestly function during the whole of His public ministry on earth. In this literal outward sense, then, He was not a priest.1 [Note: W. Lindsay Alexander, System of Biblical Theology, i. 440.]
Our Lord's Priesthood elevates into the spiritual sphere the ideas that were only outwardly and carnally expressed in Israel. Was the priest of the Jewish economy the property of God in a deeper sense than the ordinary Israelite? It was thus in the highest possible degree with Him of whom it was declared by the voice from Heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” and who said of Himself, “I and my Father are one.” Was it necessary that the Jewish priest should be free from every personal defect and uncleanness? Christ was “holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners,” One who was able to offer Himself “without blemish unto God.” Did the priest of old require to be not only free from ceremonial defilement but to be positively cleansed? Christ could say of Himself, “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” “I do always the things that are pleasing to Him that sent me.” Or, finally, were Israel's priests not only divinely appointed but consecrated to their office? Even upon earth Christ was not only the “Sent” of God, but was consecrated by the fullest and most perfect unction of that Spirit who descended upon Him at His Baptism, abode with Him then, and abides with Him for ever.2 [Note: W. Milligan, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord, 104.]
(3) After the order of Melchizedek Jesus Christ has become the ideal High Priest by the energy of His life, not by validity of lawHeb_10:11-18). The contrast is here: the Levitical or Aaronic priest is made priest according to a law; the Melchizedek priest becomes priest according to a power. An influence or regulation outside of the one makes him a priest, and he is a priest of a kind corresponding to this external law; a power inherent in the other makes him priest, and his priesthood corresponds to this power. The authority of the Divine law, given through Moses, constituted the priesthood of Aaron and his successors. On the foundation of this priesthood was enacted the ceremonial system with its lavers and altars, its offerings and sacrifices, its holy and holiest places, its ark, mercy-seat, and shekinah, all telling of access to God's presence so rigorously restricted that into it none might enter, even through rites so elaborate, save the high priest, once a year, and then for not many moments.
Rightly understood, the imposing ceremonials of Aaron's investiture spoke his doom, if only because they were ceremonials. The robes that were put upon him, breastplate and ephod and mitre, would some day be stripped off him again (Num_20:28), and were in themselves carnal and perishable things: the beginning implied the end of them. Melchizedek was a priest in that earlier and better age, when the qualifications fitting any one for the office were individual and personal rather than ceremonial, when the father of the family, when the head of the tribe, when perhaps even any single individual might act as priest, and might become the religious guide and counsellor of all who desired his aid.
As the analogy of Melchizedek suggests, the Messiah differs in many respects from other high priests. He is, like Melchizedek, a unique Person, not a member of a sacerdotal caste, but the solitary representative of His order. Like Melchizedek, again, He has no successor, because He is endowed with an endless life, and His priesthood is perpetual. So it appears why the Psalm does not call him a priest “after the order of Aaron.” The Aaronic order was a succession of dying men who administered a transitory system, whereas the Risen and Ascended Christ is alive for evermore, and all His acts have the note of an indissoluble vitality. Thus one utterance of the 110th Psalm sweeps away the whole structure of the Levitical ministry, substituting for it the undying life and work of the Royal Priest of the Gospel. It involves, on the one hand, the abolition of a Law which could bring nothing to perfection, and, on the other hand, the introduction into human life of something infinitely better, the great Hope through which we draw nigh to God in Christ.… A gospel which ended with the story of the Cross would have had all the elevating power of infinite pathos and love. But the power of an endless life would have been wanting. It is the abiding life of our High Priest which makes His atoning Sacrifice operative, and is the unfailing spring of the life of justification and grace in all His true members upon earth.1 [Note: H. B. Swete, The Ascended Christ, 38.]
3. It was as the father of many nations that Abraham stood and worshipped and received the benediction from Melchizedek's saintly hands. To share the benefit of the priesthood of Aaron's line a man must needs become a Jew, submitting to the initial rite of Judaism. None but Jewish names shone in that breastplate. Only Jewish wants or sins were borne upon those consecrated lips. But Melchizedek was the priest of humanity, not of Judaism alone. He belonged to a date when he could discharge the duties of a priesthood wide as the world, and when no member of the human family was excluded from the benefits of his priestly rule.
Christ is the Priest of man. He draws all men unto Himself. He is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Psa_110:4. In Him a new religious foundation is laid, and this necessitates the removal of the former. When this exchange became completed the ceremonial system erected on the old basis of necessity fell to the ground. On the new foundation provided by the ideal priesthood of Christ another means of access to God is now prepared. God, then, may be approached by sinful men in their guilt and uncleanness not through mortal men, who discharged the duties of priesthood according to an external law expressed in a fleshly commandment, which regulated their fleshly descent, fleshly cleanness, and fleshly offerings, whose poor virtue could never reach the defiled conscience (Heb_9:14), but through the One perfected Person (Heb_5:9), who for evermore fulfils the functions of the ideal priesthood according to the inherent virtue of His personal life, which He has proved to be indissoluble, by winning for Himself a victorious way through temptations, sufferings, and death, and gaining entrance into the very presence of God in the heavenly and unseen temple.
As contrasted with the Levitical priestly service that of our Lord is universal. The blessings of the Levitical system were confined to Israel. No stranger, unless first naturalized, could share in them. Human feeling could flow only in the narrowest groove, and the effect produced upon the mass of the people, however inconsistent with the economy under which they lived, found expression in the words, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy.” With the Lord Jesus Christ as the Priest of the better covenant all differences between races and classes disappear. He is not like Aaron, the son of Israel: He is the Son of man. In Him there can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female. Not indeed that the distinctions lying in nature and providence are in Him obliterated, or that His Church will be like a large garden, full it may be of luxuriance, but of luxuriance produced only by many thousand specimens of the same flower. In one sense all the old varieties will continue to exist, and the Greek, the Jew, the bond, the free, the male and female will still be marked by those peculiarities of position or of character which may show to what great division of the human race they belong. But all are saved in the same way. The fancied righteousness of the Jew does not profit him. The long-continued alienation of the Gentile does not injure him. The learned and the ignorant, the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor, meet in a brotherhood of equal privilege and gratitude and love. The same foundation is laid for all.1 [Note: W. Milligan, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord, 108.]
A Priest for all, He is also a Priest for every period of life, In childhood, youth, manhood, age, Christ is all and in all.
When, o'er the primrose path, with childish feet
We wander forth new wonderments to spell,
And, tired at length, to loving arms retreat
To hear some loving voice old tales retell:
We know Thee, Lord, as our Emmanuel,
Who, lying in a manger cold and bare,
Brought Christmas music on the midnight air.
When fiercely throbs the pulse, and youthful fire
Burns through the heart and kindles all the brain;
When overflows the cup of our desire
With beauty and romance, and all in vain
We strive the fulness of our joy to drain:
Thou art our Poet and our Lord of Love,
Who clothed the flowers and lit the stars above.
When, at life's noon, the sultry clouds of care
Darken the footsteps of our pilgrim way,
And when, with failing heart, perforce we bear
The heat and burden of the summer's day:
Thou, Man of Sorrows, knowest our dismay,
And, treading 'neath the heavens' burning arch,
Thou art our Comrade in the toilsome march.
And when at length the sun sinks slowly west,
And lengthening shadows steal across the sky;
When dim grey eyes yearn patiently for rest,
And weary hearts for vanished faces sigh:
Then Thou, the Lord of Hope, art very nigh,
Thou, the great Conqueror in the ageless strife-
The Lord of Resurrection and of Life.1 [Note: Gilbert Thomas, The Wayside Altar, 7.]
