The Great High Priest

The Names of Jesus

The Great High Priest

After Jesus’s death and resurrection, He ascended into heaven where He took upon Himself, not only the title, but also the ministry of being our great High Priest, and that for all eternity. It was for this very purpose that Jesus came, to be our Mediator, our go-between with God and to offer His life as a ransom.

In his first letter to Timothy Paul says, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all.” (1 Timothy 2:5-6a NKJV)

The idea that it is for all eternity, and not like the priesthood set up through the tribe of Levi, is seen in that the High Priest, due to sin and death, needed to be replaced, but not so Jesus. His priesthood is unchangeable, because He is alive and always ready to intercede.

“But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:24-25 NKJV)

The writer of Hebrews brings out the unchangeableness of Jesus when he said, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8 NKJV). Therefore if Jesus is always the same, that is, unchangeable, He will always be our great High Priest, which was foretold by King David in Psalm 110:4.

“The Lord has sworn and will not relent, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’” (Psalm 110:4 NKJV)

Now, this Melchizedek guy we’ll look at later on in our time together. But for now, we can comforted knowing that Jesus will always be our great High Priest who offered Himself as that eternal sacrifice for our sins so that we can be assured of eternal life in Heaven in the presence of God.

In other words, as long as we live and have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, He will be our great High Priest, interceding for us until that day when we will be with Him forever.

The writer of Hebrews goes on to tell us that Jesus is sitting right now at the right hand of God’s heavenly throne as our great High Priest. This is something that should bring us great joy, because now we have access to heaven and can boldly enter before Him to find grace and mercy to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

Jesus A Perfect Mediator

One of the titles for Jesus is that He is a mediator between God and us. The Apostle Paul in his first letter to Timothy brought this out.

“For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5 NKJV)

A mediator is someone who inserts themselves between two parties in order to reconcile any and all differences in order to come up with a resolution to a problem.

Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve back in the Garden of Eden, humanity and God have been at odds, and that’s because God cannot abide sin in his presence.

“For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with You.” (Psalm 5:4 NKJV)

The Bible says that we’re all sinners, and no one is righteousness enough to stand before God (Romans 3:10, 23). And we are also told that it is this sinful condition that keeps us away from God where He no longer hears our cries (Isaiah 59:2; Psalm 66:18).

It was because of this that God set forth a precursor to what He ultimately wanted to do through Jesus, and that is He set up a priesthood through the Jewish line of Levi to stand before God making intercession on behalf of the people. The high priest was the people’s representative to God, and God’s representative to the people.

The High Priest was to offered sacrifices to God to atone for the people’s sins, but it was only temporary because the blood of these sacrificial animals could not permanently do away with a person’s sins, hence it had to be repeated.

“In those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins” (Hebrews 10:3-4 NKJV)

And so the priests and their sacrifices were a foreshadowing and a precursor to a priesthood and sacrifice that would be permanent.

“For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14 NKJV)

And so Jesus is our mediator and through His sacrifice He reconciled us to God bringing lasting and eternal peace.

In fact, what we might say is that Jesus is the perfect mediator, first because He knows all about us and what we go through.