In the last post, I recommended looking at passages describing Jesus as our high priest and categorizing what you found by marking phrases in different colors. To summarize the findings of our study group, I’ll use another way to categorize what a passage is teaching, which is to list them out under different headings.
Jesus as High Priest
- Fully human in every way (Heb. 2:17)
- Merciful (Heb. 2:17)
- Faithful (Heb. 2:17)
- Suffered when He was tempted (Heb. 2:18)
- Ascended into heaven (Heb. 4:14)
- Empathizes with our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15)
- Has been tempted in every way we have (Heb. 4:15)
- Never sinned (Heb. 4:15)
Similarities: Jesus and Old Testament Priests
- Selected and appointed to represent people to God (Heb. 5:1)
- Offer gifts and sacrifices for sins (Heb. 5:1)
- Able to deal gently with the ignorant and straying (Heb. 5:2)
- Priesthood received by call of God (Heb. 5:4-6)
Differences: Jesus and Old Testament Priests
- OT priests had to offer sacrifices for their own sin, but Jesus did not because He was sinless (holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, made perfect forever) (Heb. 5:2-3, 7:26-28)
- Jesus was made priest through God’s unchangeable oath; OT priests were not (Heb. 7:20-22)
- There were many OT priests because they died; Jesus lives forever and therefore is a permanent priest (Heb. 7:23-24)
- OT priests offered sacrifices day after day; Jesus offered Himself as sacrifice once for all (Heb. 7:27)
Benefits We Receive from Jesus as High Priest
- Makes atonement for our sins (Heb. 2:17)
- Able to help those who are tempted (Heb. 2:18)
- Gives reason to hold firmly to our faith (Heb. 4:14)
- We can approach God’s throne with confidence (Heb. 4:16)
- We will receive mercy (Heb. 4:16)
- We will find grace to help us when in our need (Heb. 4:16)
- Able to save us completely when we come to God through Him (Heb. 7:25)
- Always lives to intercede for us (Heb. 7:25)
- Truly meets our needs (Heb. 7:26)
- Since Jesus offered Himself as our once-for-all sacrifice for sin, it implies that we never have to make another sacrifice for our sins, because His sacrifice forgives ALL our sins, past, present and future (Heb. 7:27)
All that from just three paragraphs! It’s amazing what rich detail there is in scripture if we will only look for it!
Sometimes, though, if we only look at the details we can lose sight of the main message a biblical author is trying to convey. Today our group will use another study method that helps show us the bigger picture. We will study each paragraph and then write a summary of the main teaching in the margin on the right. If you do that for a whole book, you can then read all your summaries in order to see the flow of the logic, which will help point you toward the main lesson of the book. (Notice that different translations divide paragraphs differently; there are no paragraphs in the original Hebrew and Greek! That means it’s okay if you disagree with your bible’s paragraph divisions!)
We’ll do this exercise with the following excerpts from Hebrews 8 and 9 about Jesus’ ministry as High Priest that relate to what we have studied about the Day of Atonement:
- Hebrews 8:1-5
- Hebrews 9:6-14
- Hebrews 9:24-28
I invite you to do this on your own, and compare your findings with ours when I summarize our group’s findings in my next post.
(This post is part of a series. See Entering the Most Holy Place: a Study on the Day of Atonement for an introduction and list of posts.)
