Hebrews 7

Hebrews 7:1-28

Section 3. (Hebrews 7:1-28.)The Superiority of the Melchisedec to the Levitical Priesthood. We have now before us the subject of the Melchisedec priesthood of Christ; and there are questions connected with it which require more consideration than they have yet obtained. What, exactly, does this priesthood mean? Is the whole matter for us that Christ is a Priest after that order? Is He not acting as yet in that character? And is such action purely millennial, and therefore having respect only to Israel and the earth? This is how many understand it, but does Scripture really require or warrant this?

And what is the practical value for us, or for the epistle to the Hebrews, of the scriptural view? It is clear that we must take up carefully the chapter before us before we can hope to answer such questions, but let us keep them in mind all through. Whatever we may understand as to Melchisedec, it is certain that the section here, in accordance with its numerical place, shows the Priest in the sanctuary, with His propitiation work, therefore, accomplished, and in possession of the place resulting from it, “a Great Priest over the house of God.” That is His present place. There are three subsections here, with still smaller divisions in the last. The first dwells upon Melchisedec himself as presented in the book of Genesis, made typically like the Son of God; having an indissoluble priesthood in the power of an endless life: thus not only higher in character than that of Levi, but its primacy owned, as it were, by Levi himself. The second subsection shows us the consequences of Christ’s being a Priest of this order, the setting aside of the law, the priests of which were Aaronic. The third subsection shows us, therefore, the Priest of Christianity perfected forever and made higher than the heavens, in possession of a place to which the Levitical priesthood could lay no possible claim.

1. The first subsection cites and comments upon the brief story of Melchisedec in that wonderful way which has been to many of us such a revelation of the perfection of the inspiration of Scripture, and such an unfolding of the typical history of the Old Testament. The apostle interprets for us here both the speech and the silence of the narrative; both the names and the order of the names. Every jot and tittle has to be taken into account; and it is surely very much from disregard of this that we fail to get clear and assured knowledge of what Scripture contains. We credit it with idle words; and to us they are idle. We dishonor the Spirit who has given the Word, and we lose the deep things of God which the Spirit searches.

Especially as to parabolic speech, we say that “no parable goes on all fours,” and any maimed and halted interpretation can justify itself spite of such a mark as one of wisdom’s children. Let Melchisedec teach us, first of all, this truth, that no jot or tittle of the Word shall pass away without fulfilment, and let us act as if we believed this. And now, as to the name Melchisedec, “king of righteousness.” First of all, he is that; then “king of Salem,” that is, “king of peace.” This is always a principle in the divine ways. In the millennium, righteousness must first have its sway, for peace to be brought in; and as the prophet says: “The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever” (Isaiah 32:17). This is, of course, as true for the present as for the future, and fulfilled in the gospel in a far more wondrous way. As the effect of righteousness in the cross, peace has come to us; and our Melchisedec has indeed made good His name. Next, he is “without father, without mother, without genealogy.” So he is presented in the history, alone, without record of any preceding or indeed following him in his office. Again, “without beginning of days or end of life,” thus “made like unto the Son of God;” not actually like Him, but made like, the type perfectly preserved from any contradiction or anything irrelevant, that we might have a picture of a non-successional, unending priesthood, such as that of the Lord Jesus is, who is also King and Priest in one Person; and so it was prophesied of Him: “Behold the Man whose name is the BRANCH; and He shall grow up out of His place; and He shall build the temple of the Lord, even He shall build the temple of the Lord, and He shall bear the glory; and shall sit and rule upon His throne; and He shall be a Priest upon His throne; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both” (Zechariah 6:12-13). This is doubtless millennial, and yet very like the line of things which the apostle has been pursuing here, even to the building of the house of God; but in Hebrews all is higher. Here the house is the universe. The throne upon which the Priest sits is the throne of God (Hebrews 8:1). He has not yet taken His own throne as Son of Man (Revelation 3:21); He is on His Father’s, and we are thus “translated into the kingdom of His dear Son” (Colossians 1:13).

Thus He is already King, as He is Priest, in both characters as Son of God. His is a priestly rule over the house of God. If we look back now to the book of Genesis, we shall find the life of Abraham: the fourth in the series of seven lives which give us the perfect picture of the divine life in man from the time of its beginning, in repentance and faith, in Adam, until in Joseph we see the image of Christ fully formed. Abraham, following Noah, was brought into a new scene which abides in the value of accepted sacrifice, and gives us the practical life of faith which is the result of being in Christ, a new creation. By his very call to Canaan, he is a pilgrim and a stranger on the earth. His life divides into two parts, in the first of which (Genesis 11:10-14) we have the call of God and His obedience to it; while, in the second (Genesis 15:1-21; Genesis 16:1-16; Genesis 17:1-27; Genesis 18:1-33; Genesis 19:1-38; Genesis 20:1-18; Genesis 21:1-34), we have the conflicts of faith. Thus the whole, as indeed Genesis as a whole, is an elaborate and perfect type in which most certainly the Christian life is set before us. I say Christian, not because Israel is forgotten. Israel is there, and God is dwelling with her, in a love that cannot forget her; but this only makes more distinct what is our own in the book, and that decisively. Thus Abraham’s own call to Canaan, the heavenly country, and his walking in it by faith as a pilgrim, is not and cannot be a type of Israel; but again, in his sons Isaac and Ishmael, Isaac is distinctly the type of “the children of the free woman.” Now it is in the end of the first part of Abraham’s history that the type of Melchisedec appears. It is to Abram, the Hebrew (that is, “pilgrim”), returning from his conflict with the kings of the East, a Babylonish confederacy, that at the king’s dale Melchisedec brings forth the bread and wine which speak to us with such perfect plainness of our royal Priest’s provision for us now; not a sacrifice, for that has been “once for all” offered, but the memorial of a sacrifice, -too plain a thing to need enlargement on, or to need to vindicate our title to it. True, God is not yet manifested as Most High, and men and Satan seem to be joint possessors of the earth rather than God; but in the picture here, also, there is yet a king of Sodom by whom Abraham refuses to be enriched. Faith in him alone it is that counts God to be “Possessor of heaven and earth;” and faith now it is that receives such distinct ministry from the true Melchisedec, and owns God to be still in possession where most He seems to be displaced. How the bread and wine help to assure us of that! In fact, every detail in all this story suits us admirably, and we may be confident that our Melchisedec exists for us today; not One who will be that in the millennium: -though then He will be recognized openly as such, -but Sodom will then get, not faith’s refusal merely, but the judgment of God. Meanwhile, we have this ministry of bread and wine, and One with us who blesses us from the Most High God, and who, on our part, blesses the Most High God: -“In the midst of the assembly will I sing praise unto Thee.” The apostle goes on to prove from the history, brief as it is, the superiority of Melchisedec to Levi. “He was in the loins of his father when Melchisedec met him;” and in Abraham, Levi, therefore, paid tithes to Melchisedec. Thus the whole Levitical priesthood owned its inferiority, and Melchisedec, as one greater than Abraham, blesses him who had the promises; but this leads us on to consequences of far greater importance. 2. In the second subsection, therefore, the apostle goes on to argue the setting aside of the law itself by the change of the priesthood. It was incontestable that according to the psalm a Priest was to arise according to this higher type, a Priest after the order of Melchisedec, and not of Aaron. We have but to consider a moment, to realize how complete a change as to the law this involved. It is not simply, as some would put it, the special law as to the priesthood; for, as we see in the Day of Atonement, all the relation of Israel to God according to that dispensation, hung upon the priesthood. The blood put upon the mercy-seat by the high priest, year by year, alone enabled God to dwell in their midst; and this could only be done by one of the family of Aaron. The law contemplated no other; yet Christ had sprung out of Judah, and the law said nothing of priesthood in connection with that tribe. But again, why was it necessary thus to define the succession? plainly because it had to do with mortal men who could not continue in the office by reason of death. Thus it was a law of fleshly commandment. He having come, who lives eternally, sets aside the law necessarily by the very “power of an indissoluble life.” All is manifestly upon a higher plane, outside the law. “There is a setting aside of the commandment going before;” and that because of “its weakness and unprofitableness.” It perfected nothing. There was under it only a priesthood of dying men with animal sacrifices, unable really to atone, and a closed sanctuary, into which timidly the high priest entered once a year and immediately withdrew. This was plain, but is to be developed presently in contrast with what is now made good to us in Christ. Now there is “the bringing in of a better hope, by which we” do, as they did not, “draw nigh to God.” This introduces us to what is to be the theme of after-consideration. 3. The apostle now sets in contrast with the priests of a fleshly and earthly system, the true and heavenly Priest to whom as types they pointed. God had announced with an oath His unrepenting purpose as to Him. As a Priest forever, in the surety of a better covenant than the legal, conditional one, and in contrast with dying men, He abides eternally to care for and bring through to heaven those who draw near to God by Him, who is always living to intercede for them. We see how different is this view from that in Romans, where position in Christ is contemplated; and also from that in the gospel of John, we living because He lives (John 14:19). Here it is the living activity of the Priest to which we are entrusted, not apart from God, but as having all power with God, -this salvation to the uttermost being, of course, not the bringing into the sanctuary here, but to that full final rest which has been dwelt upon already in the epistle. Finally, the character of our High Priest is briefly considered, -such an One becomes us, “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and become higher than the heavens, -who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for their own sins and then for those of the people, for this He did once when He offered up Himself for the law maketh men high priests who have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is perfected for evermore.” This shows how far the Lord as Antitype transcends the type. The Jewish high priest was but a sinner amongst sinners. Christ in absolute holiness is One “separate from sinners;” and yet the apostle can say, such an One becomes us; for the blood of Christ as before God has perfected “in perpetuity” those who are sanctified by it, and “the worshipers once purged have no more conscience of sins” (Hebrews 10:2; Hebrews 10:14). Thus, it is not as sinners that Christ as High Priest intercedes for us with God, but as the many sons whom He is bringing to glory. The High Priest is for infirmity, not sin, “but if any one sin we have an Advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1). Christ is both Priest and Advocate, but the question of sin is settled for us as towards God, while between the children and the Father it may need frequent settlement.