What Does It Mean Jesus Is Our High Priest?

Question 03047

To say that Jesus is our High Priest is to say that He is the one who represents us before God and brings God to us, the mediator who deals with our sin and keeps us in fellowship with the Father. The title High Priest runs all through the letter to the Hebrews, and it answers a need every honest person feels, the need for someone to stand between a holy God and a sinful people. Understanding what it means that Jesus is our High Priest opens up the very heart of the gospel and of the Christian life.

The priesthood of Jesus is not a minor doctrine tucked away in one New Testament book. It gathers up the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament and shows how it was always pointing forward to Him, and it tells the believer how he is kept secure from the day he believes to the day he sees the Lord.

What a high priest was meant to do

Under the Old Testament, the High Priest was the man appointed to act on behalf of the people in things pertaining to God. He offered the sacrifices, he carried the names of the tribes on his breastplate into the holy place, and once a year, on the Day of Atonement, he entered the most holy place with blood to make atonement for the sins of the nation. The whole arrangement said something searching, that sinful people cannot simply stroll into the presence of a holy God. There must be a representative, and there must be blood.

Yet the old priesthood could never finish its work. The priests died and had to be replaced, and the sacrifices had to be repeated endlessly because the blood of bulls and goats could not actually take away sin. The system was a shadow, designed to teach Israel its need and to prepare the way for a better High Priest who could do what the others never could. Hebrews builds its whole argument on this contrast between the shadow and the reality.

Jesus, a High Priest in the order of Melchizedek

Hebrews makes the remarkable claim that Jesus is a High Priest not in the line of Aaron but in the order of Melchizedek, the mysterious priest-king who blessed Abraham long before the Levitical system existed. This matters because Jesus did not come from the priestly tribe of Levi but from Judah, so His priesthood could not rest on ancestry. It rests instead on something greater, on the power of an indestructible life. Because He lives for ever, His priesthood does not pass to a successor.

This is also why Jesus can be both King and High Priest at once, as Melchizedek was both king of Salem and priest of God Most High. In Jesus the offices come together. He is the royal Priest who reigns and intercedes, the one who offered the sacrifice and now sits enthroned. The pre-existent Son, who appeared in the Old Testament as the Angel of the LORD in the Christophanies, has taken our humanity in order to serve as our High Priest, a theme touched in the question of who the Angel of the LORD is.

A High Priest who offered Himself

The greatest difference between Jesus and every earlier priest is what He offered. The old priests brought the blood of animals. Our High Priest offered Himself. On the cross He was both the priest who made the sacrifice and the sacrifice that was made, bearing in His own body the full judicial weight of our sin. This is the heart of the matter, that the wrath of God against sin fell actively and personally on the Son in the place of sinners, which the question of substitutionary atonement sets out more fully.

When Paul writes that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, he means that our sin and its penalty were laid on Jesus as our substitute. It does not mean, as some have wrongly taught, that Jesus became personally sinful, or was born again in hell, or had to defeat Satan before rising. That teaching is a serious error to be rejected. Our High Priest was sinless throughout, the spotless Lamb whose perfection alone made His sacrifice acceptable.

And because the sacrifice was perfect, it never needs repeating. Where the old priests stood daily offering the same sacrifices that could never take away sins, our High Priest offered one sacrifice for sins for all time and then sat down at the right hand of God. The sitting down is the proof that the work is finished. There is no more offering to make.

A High Priest who lives to intercede

The priesthood of Jesus did not end at the cross. Having offered Himself, He rose bodily, ascended, and now reigns at the Father’s right hand in glorified humanity, and from there He carries on the work of a High Priest by interceding for His own. Hebrews says He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. Paul echoes it, asking who can condemn us when Jesus is at God’s right hand interceding for us.

This continuing intercession is one of the strongest grounds of the believer’s assurance. Our standing does not depend on the unsteady quality of our own prayers or holiness but on the unbroken priestly work of Jesus, who never stops pleading His finished sacrifice on our behalf. The link between His priestly intercession and the security of the believer is explored in the question of eternal security, and the Spirit’s parallel intercession within us in the question of what the Spirit does in intercession.

A High Priest who sympathises with us

There is a tenderness in this doctrine that we must not miss. Because our High Priest became truly human and was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin, He is not a distant official but a sympathetic representative who understands our weakness from the inside. Hebrews invites us, on this very ground, to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

This is the pastoral payoff of the whole teaching. The same Jesus who carried our sin now carries our cares, and the same hands that were pierced for us are lifted in prayer for us. When we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus the righteous. When we are weak, we have a High Priest who has felt our frailty and meets us with grace rather than contempt.

A better covenant secured by our High Priest

Hebrews ties the priesthood of Jesus to a better covenant, of which He is the guarantor. The old priests served a covenant that could expose sin but could not finally deal with it, while our High Priest mediates the New Covenant in His own blood, a covenant in which God promises to remember our sins no more. Because the guarantor of that covenant lives for ever, the covenant itself can never fail.

This is why the New Covenant rests on surer ground than the old. It does not depend on the faithfulness of a long line of dying priests but on the single, deathless High Priest who has already secured everything it promises. The believer is not waiting to see whether the covenant will hold, because the One who guarantees it has passed through death and lives at God’s right hand.

The torn veil and our access through the High Priest

When Jesus died, the great veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the meaning was unmistakable. The barrier that had kept worshippers out of the most holy place was removed, because our High Priest had opened a new and living way into the presence of God. What only one man could do once a year under the old system is now the settled privilege of every believer.

Hebrews draws the conclusion directly. Since we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, and since His blood has opened the way, we may now draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. The access is not occasional or fragile. It is the permanent standing of those who come to God through the priestly work of His Son.

Worship offered through our High Priest

The priesthood of Jesus also shapes how we worship. Under the old order the people could not approach God directly, but through our High Priest we now offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. Our praise, our thanksgiving, our very lives presented to Him, all rise to the Father through the mediation of the Son who makes them acceptable.

This means no believer needs another human priest to reach God on his behalf. There is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus, and He is the only High Priest the Church will ever need. Every Christian comes to God directly through Him, which is the heart of what it means to belong to a priesthood of all believers.

When we sin: our Advocate and High Priest

The priestly work of Jesus speaks tenderly to the believer who has fallen. John writes that if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins. Our High Priest does not abandon us when we fail but pleads His finished sacrifice on our behalf, so that our standing with God is not destroyed by our stumbling.

This is far from giving us licence to sin, for the same priestly love that forgives also draws us back to holiness. Yet it means the Christian never faces God’s rejection over his failures, because the matter has already been settled by the blood of our High Priest. We confess our sin, we are cleansed, and we go on, kept by the One who ever lives to intercede.

Our High Priest carries our names before God

There is a moving picture in the old priesthood that finds its fulfilment in Jesus. The High Priest of Israel wore a breastplate set with twelve stones engraved with the names of the tribes, and he carried those names over his heart whenever he entered the holy place. He bore the people on his heart before God. In a far greater way our High Priest carries us on His heart, representing each of His own before the Father continually.

This means you are never out of mind in heaven. While you sleep, while you work, while you forget to pray, your High Priest is bearing your name before God, presenting you to the Father in His own perfect righteousness. The security of the believer rests not on the warmth of our own devotion but on the unbroken attention of the One who represents us above.

A High Priest forever and the anchor of hope

Hebrews reaches for the image of an anchor to describe what the priesthood of Jesus gives us. We have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf. Because our High Priest is already within the veil, our hope is fastened to the most secure place in the universe, the very presence of God.

An anchor does not keep a ship from every storm, but it keeps it from being swept away. So the priesthood of our High Priest does not promise us a trouble-free life, but it guarantees that nothing can finally tear us from God. The hope is sure because the One who holds it is unchanging and His sacrifice is complete.

This is why the believer can face death itself without despair. The same High Priest who carried our sin and now carries our prayers will receive us at the last into the presence He has opened for us. The priestly work that began at the cross is brought to its end when He presents us faultless before the glory of God with great joy.

The dignity of belonging to such a High Priest

It is worth pausing over the sheer dignity of what this means for ordinary believers. We are not left to approach God through a distant official or a fallible go-between. We are represented in the very presence of the Father by the exalted Son Himself, our High Priest, who shares our nature and pleads our cause. There is no higher representation conceivable, and it belongs to every Christian alike.

This lifts the head of the discouraged believer. Whatever your standing in the eyes of the world, you have a High Priest seated at the right hand of God who counts you His own and speaks for you there. The humblest saint and the most prominent share the same Mediator, and that shared privilege levels every worldly distinction and steadies every anxious heart.

To belong to such a High Priest is also to be drawn upward in worship. The proper response to a Mediator this great is not anxious striving but glad and confident adoration, the kind that fills the closing chapters of Scripture as the redeemed gather around the throne. The priesthood of Jesus was never meant to leave us merely informed. It was meant to leave us grateful, secure, and bold in our approach to the God who has welcomed us through His Son.

So, now what?

Let the priesthood of Jesus settle your conscience. If you are in Him, your sin has already been carried by your High Priest, the sacrifice has already been accepted, and He is at this moment interceding for you at the Father’s side. Your acceptance does not rise and fall with your performance, because it rests on His finished and ongoing work.

Then make full use of Him. Because we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, we are told to hold fast our confession and to come boldly for help. Do not stay away from God when you have failed. Come to the throne of grace through the One appointed to bring you there, and you will find mercy waiting rather than rejection.

“Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:25

For Further Study

Those wishing to dig deeper into what it means that Jesus is our High Priest will be helped by the treatments of Hebrews in the writings of J. Dwight Pentecost and Lewis Sperry Chafer, and by the discussions of the work of Christ in Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology and Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology. Each traces how the priesthood of Jesus fulfils the Old Testament pattern and grounds the believer’s security in His unrepeatable sacrifice and unceasing intercession.