Jesus, Our High Priest Forever

Because of what Jesus has done, all of us as believers in Him share in His priestly ministry to one another. We can pray for each other, serve each other, offer our lives in sacrificial loving ways to help each other in difficult times, and stand for each other in times of injustice. What a joyful truth to meditate upon and consider as you continue your study of Hebrews.

The praise of our lips can also be a priestly gift we offer to the Lord (Hebrews 13:15-16). Have you praised Him today?

A priest stands between our sinful self and a righteous, gracious God. Under the Old Testament Law, a priest would have been a designated individual from the tribe of Levi, set apart by God to mediate between the sins of God’s people and God’s righteous requirements.

Today in Jesus, you have a High Priest who is fully qualified to represent you in every possible need before God. And because Jesus walked on earth as a human, experienced the press and pressure of humanity and the most intense of all human temptations without sinning, He represents you before God with genuine empathy, understanding, compassion, and grace. There is not a hint of judgment in His mind or heart toward you as He brings your need to God.

While Jesus was on earth, He showed compassion for people in their needs, especially those who felt the shame of rejection and the sting of prejudice toward their origin or social status. These injustices broke Jesus’ heart to the point that He called on His Father with tears. In this way, Jesus served in His priestly role while on earth by advocating for the deepest human needs imaginable, the deepest of which was the condemning impact of sin.

Jesus understands your deepest concerns, too, because He is human. He weeps when people are hurting, He grieves when you experience great loss, and He enters our human sorrows that flow from the injustice and evil that run rampant in our world.

Thankfully, Jesus in His earthly ministry was not shielded from the intensity of human heartache and pain, but rather those things became part of what made Him so qualified to be our High Priest forever—in fact, His enduring of such intense human struggle, ultimately even death, guaranteed our salvation (Hebrews 5:8).

God longs for you to know Him and His Son, deeply and with a level of commitment that continues to grow. He invites you to learn the foundation truths, then to move past those fundamentals and go deeper. That’s God’s desire for you once you come to know Him through Jesus.

God wants you to mature in faith and in the knowledge of His Word to such an extent that you become unusually skillful in navigating life’s inevitable challenges. Are you up for that? If so, you will become fully equipped to do His will and live your own life of obedience and trust in Jesus with confidence, come what may.

Next: Learn the danger of walking away from the faith.

1. Often when we think of prayer, we tend to think about praying for what we need or the troubles we are going through. But the greatest opportunity of prayer is to use our access to God on behalf of others. Who in your life should you be approaching God about?

2. After we’ve been a part of God’s family for a while, it can be easy to forget how much we needed mercy. What are some things you can do to keep your own need for God’s mercy at the forefront of your mind?

3. Jesus is both our High Priest and the sacrifice for our sins. How is He able to be both, and what importance does that have for us?

4. In the Old Testament, sacrifices had to be offered constantly. But Jesus’ sacrifice was once for all. What does that tell us about ourselves, and what does it tell us about Jesus?

5. Sometimes emotions can feel unimportant, but Jesus expressed emotions while on earth. If Jesus experienced and expressed His emotions, what does that mean for us and our emotions?

6. How can you guard against the indifference to the truth which was plaguing the Hebrew Christians who first read the book of Hebrews?

7. If you could ask the first-century Christians who read this letter about their faith, do you think they would realize they were immature, or do you think they were surprised to read that in Hebrews?