The Priest — J. C. Ryle
“We have a great High Priest!” Hebrews 4:14
He who wishes to have any comfort in religion must have a priest. A religion without a priest is a poor, unhappy, useless thing. Now what is our religion? Have we a Priest?
We are all such sinful, corrupt creatures, that we are unfit, by ourselves, to have anything to do with God. God is so holy a Being that He cannot bear that which is evil, and so high a Being that His majesty makes us afraid. We are so fallen, and defective, and guilty, that we naturally shrink from God, and dare not speak to Him or look Him in the face. We need an almighty Friend between us. We need a Mediator and Advocate, able, willing, loving, commissioned, tried, proved, and ready to help us. Have we found this out? Have we got a Friend? Have we a Priest?
The Christian religion provides the very thing that man’s soul and conscience require. It is the glory of God’s Word that it reveals to man the very Friend and Mediator that he needs—the God-man Christ Jesus. It tells us of the very Priest that meets our wants—even Jesus the Son of God. It sets Him fully before us, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as the very Person that our longing hearts could desire. To open up this great subject is the simple purpose of this paper.
I think it will clear our way, and throw broad light on the matter in hand, if I state three plain questions, and try to supply answers to them:
I. Where is Jesus Christ now?
II. What is Jesus Christ doing now?
III. What is Jesus Christ going to do before the end of the world?
When we have considered these three questions, we shall perhaps be better able to answer the inquiry, Have we a Priest?
I. Where is Jesus Christ now?
Let us take care that we understand the drift of this inquiry. He about whom we are now asking is no common person. He is God as well as man, and man as well as God. The words of the Creed ought to be carefully remembered. Jesus Christ is—“God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world: perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.” This, at any rate, is sound speech that cannot be condemned. This is one of the foundation doctrines of Christianity.
Where is Jesus Christ, as God? That is not the question I want to consider. As God He is everywhere. He fills heaven and earth. There is no secret corner, there is no height above or depth beneath where He is not. Wherever two or three are met together on earth in His name, there is He in the midst of them. “Show me where your God is,” said an infidel to a Christian. “Show me where your God is, and I will give you a penny.” “Show me where He is not,” was the crushing reply. I am not asking where Christ is as God.
But where is Christ, as Man? That is the point. Where is the body that was born of the Virgin Mary? Where is the head that was crowned with thorns? Where are the hands that were nailed to the cross, and the feet that walked by the sea of Galilee? Where are the eyes that wept tears at the grave of Lazarus? Where is the side that was pierced with a spear? Where is the “visage that was marred more than any man, and the form more than the sons of men?” (Isa. 52.14.) Where, in a word, is the Man Christ Jesus? That is the question.
I answer in the words of Scripture, that “Christ is passed into the heavens,“—that He “has entered into the holy place,“—that “He has entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us,“—and that “the heavens must receive Him until the time of restitution of all things.” (Heb. iv. 14; ix. 12-24; Acts iii. 21.)
Let us mark this well. Christ, as Man, is in heaven, and not in the grave. The Jews pretended to deny that He rose from the dead. The infidels of modern times profess to believe that the ashes of Jesus of Nazareth are still lying, like the remains of any other man, in some Syrian town. What is this but kicking against the pricks? If ever there was a fact proved by unanswerable evidence in this world, it is the fact that Jesus rose from the dead!—That He died on a Friday, is certain. That He was buried in a sepulchre hewn out of rock that night, is certain. That the stone over the place was sealed, and a guard of soldiers set around it, is certain. That the grave was opened and the body gone on Sunday morning, is certain. That the soldiers could give no account of it, is certain. That the disciples themselves could hardly believe that their Master had risen, is certain. That after seeing Him several times for forty days, they at last were convinced, is certain. That, once convinced, they never ceased to teach and hold, even to death, that their Master had risen, is certain. That the unbelieving Jews could neither shake the disciples out of their belief, nor show Christ’s dead body, nor give any satisfactory account of what had become of it, is equally certain. All this is certain, certain, certain! The resurrection of Christ is a great, unanswerable, undeniable fact. There are none so blind as those that will not see.