Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from the “Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide”, is titled “The Message of Hebrews”. “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9… as cited in Wednesday’s lesson). An amazing declaration of what we fallen repentant sinners are to be. We are “chosen”, a choosing we must accept. We are “royal”, kingly in nature being related-to our King. We are “holy”… “Holiness is agreement with God” (Testimonies vol. 5 pg. 743). And we are “special” or “belong-to” our “Father”. Wonderful qualifying words to describe the intimacy, the one-ness we are privileged to have with our Father, our God, our King. We are to “collaborate with God in His work of saving the world” Wednesday’s lesson). Of course, we must first understand what the “saving of the world (healing)” really means. If not, we may proclaim Satan’s distortion of this “saving”.
If the gospel is the supreme revelation of God Himself, then this is the area that Satan focuses upon in His deceptions. He works most adroitly and subtly in this regards as he did amongst the intelligent and discerning angels of heaven. Seeming to champion the things of God in a way that seems to uphold God, while really undermining God’s very character of sacrificial love. If, as a royal priesthood, we promote a gospel that has the Son performing a self-less act of faith (the cross) in order to change the Father (enable Him to forgive and accept us sinners), than we have “bought” Satan’s clever lie about the Father and are proclaiming Satan’s very accusations… proclaiming a spurious “gospel” that prepares the world to accept Satan as Christ when he comes impersonating Christ. But Christ came to refute those accusations of Satan. Refute the falsehood that God is so holy that He cannot even look upon sinners until His Son, “atones”, “appeases”, “makes amends” in order to “assuage” and “propitiate” the Father’s offended law. This false caricature of the Father seems to uphold the Father’s holiness and His law, but in reality portrays the Father as implacable and unloving. Not as loving as the Son, at all.
God instructs us about the priest’s role in Malachi 2: 1-7. I quote the GNB:
“The Lord Almighty says to the priests, ‘This command is for you: 2 you must honor me by what you do. If you will not listen to what I say, then I will bring a curse on you. I will put a curse on the things you receive for your support. In fact, I have already put a curse on them, because you do not take my command seriously. 3 I will punish your children and rub your faces in the dung of the animals you sacrifice—and you will be taken out to the dung heap. 4 Then you will know that I have given you this command, so that my covenant with the priests, the descendants of Levi, will not be broken’.
5 ‘In my covenant I promised them life and well-being, and this is what I gave them, so that they might respect me. In those days they did respect and fear me. 6 They taught what was right, not what was wrong. They lived in harmony with me; they not only did what was right themselves, but they also helped many others to stop doing evil. 7 It is the duty of priests to teach the true knowledge of God. People should go to them to learn my will, because they are the messengers of the Lord Almighty’.”
We are to “honor (God) by what we do… (and)…teach the true knowledge of God (for we) are messengers of the Lord Almighty” (verse 2 & 7, just quoted above). Not messengers of men. We are not to repeat the message men have devised to explain God. We, the royal priesthood of God, need to know the Lord Almighty as He has been revealed and as we have been “taught” by living “in harmony with” God (see verse 6 above). In my opinion, the popular Christian explanation of the Father, the Son and the plan of salvation is not straight from God and His Word, but is sinful self-centered man’s attempt to make sense of a holy God and His love that will not leave His children filthy. That “Love” is not merely a proclamation of pardon stamped across a sinful record but Love that reaches deep inside of each sinner and heals the damage sin has done. That “cross” reveals the Father, not a cross that appeases the Father. The popular “gospel” maligns the Father, even as it seeks to reunite us to Him. But a Father who cannot forgive us until He sees the penalty paid, who must kill His Son instead of killing me, is no Father to love passionately… no Father to “know” as a husband and wife “know” each other.
So here is the challenge to us “priests”. We are called to know our Father as He is, as revealed in His written Word and most especially in His Living Word. Christ needed not anyone to pay any penalty before He forgave (see Luke 23:34) and neither does the Father, who is just like the Son. So what is the priest’s role? It is to bring the things of God to mankind, to be God’ representative, as Malachi recorded. Our challenge is to know our Father and then reveal Him to His children, our brothers and sisters everywhere. Let us “know the Holy Scriptures” (2 Timothy 3:15) in order to know the Father. For in this alone is the way of Life, the way of Light, the way of Love… it’s to be the way of the Priest.
With brotherly love,
Jim