Highly Exalted

While this ministry is highly exalted it is my hope that I have helped to make the issues clearer for you dear reader that you may better comprehend as the ministry of Jesus Christ as our Great High Priest.

I could say much the same about this book. Its writing cost me far more time and toil than most of my readers could afford, so in this I hope I have done you good service. It also consists in the main of a commentary on a substantial part of the anonymous Letter to the Hebrews. It is not, however, a full commentary. You will find nothing here about the date of composition, place, author, or background material. If you wish to know those things, you will have to consult a regular commentary. I am interested here only in those parts of Hebrews that deal with the high priestly ministry of Christ.

The Saviour's heavenly priesthood is itself a product of the great event that climaxed his passion; that is, his ascension into heaven and his resumption of his seat at the right hand of the Father.

The end result, I trust, will be an answer to the question: where do you find true religion? There are four possible choices:

• you can search for it in rites and ceremonies, supposing that by the observance of the proper rituals you will gain acceptance with God
• you can trust in some good work or personal sacrifice to purchase divine pardon and entrance into heaven
• you can repose confidence in holding correct opinions, learning orthodox doctrine and refusing to deviate from it
• or you can (as the author of Hebrews would) utterly reject such delusions and place your dependence wholly upon Christ, trusting only in his sacrifice and intercession.

In a word, that means holding to Christ as the priest, the sole Mediator between heaven and earth. Trust in Christ leads to a work of grace that certainly occurs in us, but can never be of us. We are saved as a consequence of his work and of his gift alone, or we cannot be saved at all.

There are three stages in the assumption by Christ of the office of High Priest –

• first: he had to be Appointed from among Men, born among us and called out from us as the Incarnate Christ
• second: he had to Offer an Eternal Sacrifice, which he did at Calvary when he became the Crucified Christ
• third: he had to commence Continual Intercession for his people, which began after his resurrection and is the mark of the Ascended Christ.

All three of those stages are discussed in various parts of this book.

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