Qualifications for the Great High Priest
5: 1-4
Qualifications for the great high priest DIG: What qualifications does your messianic rabbi or pastor have? Is it merely education, or is there much more? What qualities do you look for? Are these qualities ever lacking? How do his shortcomings help him deal gently with his congregation when they go astray, since he too is subject to weakness? How does his role compare to Yeshua’s in terms of how each is chosen? How each relates to sinners?
REFLECT: Do you put your messianic rabbi or pastor on a pedestal? Do you expect perfection, or can you allow for human imperfections? What expectations do you have on the wife of your spiritual leader? Can she be a regular person in the congregation, or does she have to lead the women’s ministries and play the keyboard? What about their children? Can their halo slip now and then, or do they have to perfect?
The heart of the book of Hebrews, in Chapters 5 through 9, focuses on the high priesthood of Yeshua Messiah. His superior priesthood, more than anything else, makes the Christ’s high priesthood better than the Levitical high priesthood. Jesus has done what all the high priests together in the Dispensation of Torah did not do and could never have done (see the commentary on Exodus, to see link click Da – The Dispensation of Torah).
The priests in the TaNaKh were bridge builders to YHVH. They couldn’t come directly into the presence of Ha’Shem, and therefore, God appointed certain men to be ushers, as it were, to bring mankind into His presence. The way to ADONAI was opened only as the priests offered sacrifices – day in and day out, year after year – presenting the blood of animals to the LORD. The priests were the Holy One’s mediators.
But with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, need for the Temple and for the Levitical priesthood ended. A high priest like those who succeeded Aaron were no longer needed. Yeshua was both High Priest and sacrifice, and provided mankind an eternal opening into the presence of YHVH. After His crucifixion, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Lw – Accompanying Signs of Jesus’ Death), exposing the Most Holy Place to anyone who would come to God through His Son. In one perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God accomplished what millions upon millions of sacrifices offered by a multitude of priests never accomplished. He permanently opened the way to ADONAI, so that mankind, at any time by faith in Christ, could enter into God’s presence.127
The Hebrews, however, had not been familiar with the idea of the Messiah being a High Priest. Jesus had not come from the Order of Aaron; His priesthood was from the Order of Melchizedek. While on the earth Christ didn’t function as a priest in the Temple in Yerushalayim. He performed no priestly duties and thus contradicted the whole Jewish conception of the priesthood. The writer feels the need of explaining in more detail about this new Priest to whom some where in danger of rejecting.128
Not just anyone could serve the Israelite community as an ordinary priest, much less as high priest. One of the first questions a messianic Jew would ask when told the Yeshua held the position of High Priest was this: Is He qualified? The writer of Hebrews answers that question by reminding his readers that a high priest needed four qualifications.
The High Priest Must Be Human: For every great high priest (Hebrew: Cohen Rosh Gadol) taken from among men is appointed to act on the people’s behalf with regard to things concerning God (5:1a CJB). First, in order for a Cohen Rosh Gadol to act on behalf of men, he must be taken from among men. YHVH did not choose angels to be priests. Angels do not have the same nature as men. They cannot truly understand men and they do not have open communication with men. Only a man could be subject to the temptations of men, could experience suffering like men, and thereby be able to minister to men in an understanding and merciful way. This much, of course, was completely clear and acceptable to Jews. Their problem was with the incarnation – the fact that God became a man.
In the Dispensation of Torah, even after the covenants with Abraham and with Moshe, Ha’Shem was unapproachable. At the Fall, God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden and mankind no longer had access to the LORD’s presence (Genesis 3:24). In the wilderness, the people were told not to come too near Sinai, where ADONAI chose to reveal Himself to Moshe when giving the covenant of Torah. In the Tabernacle and in the Temple YHVH was behind a veil and could only be approached through the high priest.
By sending His Son, Jesus Christ, God no longer kept Himself aloof and separate from mankind. He entered into the human world and felt everything the mankind will ever feel in order that He might be a sympathetic, merciful and faithful High Priest. If God never became a man, He never could have been a high priest, a mediator, or an intercessor. He never could have offered the perfect and absolute sacrifice for the sins of His people, which divine justice required. Therefore, Messiah taking on human flesh and being born into this world as a man was not an option; it was an absolute necessity if we were to be saved.129
The High Priest Must Offer Gifts and Sacrifices for Sins: To offer gifts and sacrifices for sins (5:1b CJB). Secondly, the high priest must function in a priestly order that offers both gifts and sacrifices for sins. The word sacrifices refers to blood-offerings, while the word gifts refers to the grain-offering used with sacrifices. The grain offering was the only bloodless offering given by Moshe in the Torah (see the commentary on Exodus Ff – The Grain Offering). It was a voluntary act of worship and devotion, in recognition of God’s goodness and His provisions. The sin offerings, however, were for the temporary forgiveness, or covering, of sins. They could not take away a person’s sin nature, but were made for the covering of particular sins (see the commentary on Exodus Fb – The Five Offerings of the Tabernacle: Christ, Our Sacrificial Offering). Consequently, those sacrifices had to be continually repeated . . . day after day, and year after year. Every priest needed to function in some type of priestly order: Moses’ brother functioned in the Order of Aaron, and Yeshua functioned in the Order of Melchizedek. Therefore, Messiah was a superior High Priest (see Bl – Yeshua the Melchizedek Priest) to Aaron, and ministered within a superior covenant (see Bn – The Superiority of the New Covenant).
The High Priest Must Be Compassionate and Sympathetic: He can deal gently (Greek: metriopatheo, meaning to treat with compassion, with mildness or moderation, to be tender in the judgment of another’s errors) with the ignorant and with those who go astray, since he too is subject to weakness (5:2 CJB). Thirdly, because the high priest is taken from among men, he is able to have compassion on his fellow-sinners, since he himself is a sinner. This is the advantage of his humanity. Metriopatheo, then, speaks of a state of feeling toward the ignorant and the sinful that is neither too severe nor too tolerant. The high priest must be careful lest he become irritated at sin and ignorance. But he must also be careful not to become weakly indulgent.
Also, because of this weakness, he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for those of the people (5:3 CJB). The Greek word weakness, astheneia, means to be lying around, and implies moral weakness that makes man capable of sinning. In other words, having a totally deprived nature. Offering sacrifices was the main work of the priest. But since he himself had a totally deprived nature, he had to make sacrifices for himself as well as for the people. This was one disadvantage with the human priest on earth. On the one hand, he could be compassionate because he realized that he himself had the disease of sin, but on the other hand, he first had to sacrifice for his own sin. He had to obtain purity. So while the earthly Levitical priest had a sin nature and had to obtain purity, the Heavenly High Priest had no sin and, therefore, always had purity.
The High Priest Must Be Appointed by God: And no one takes this honor upon himself, rather, he is called by God (Exodus 28; Numbers 16:1-40; First Samuel 16:1-3), just as Aaron was (5:4 CJB). And last, a true priest could not just be any man. He had to be appointed by God because he had to represent man to God. When the priesthood was first established, Aaron was singled out by YHVH in Exodus 16:33 to be a priest. He was officially called into the priesthood in Exodus 28:1 when God said: Have Aaron your brother brought to you from among the Israelites, along with his sons Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, so they may serve Me as priests. He was later reconfirmed in that office (Numbers 17:8). Ha’Shem rejected anyone who tried to be a priest without God’s appointment. For example, Korah led a rebellion against Aaron. The LORD killed him by having the earth swallow him up (Numbers 16:31-35). King Sha’ul’s attempt to take the role of a priest and perform his own sacrifice, because he would not wait for Samuel to arrive, led to God’s rejection of Sha’ul as king and to the anointing of David (First Samuel 13:8-14). When King Uzziah tried to burn the incense, which he had no right to burn because he was not a priest, YHVH struck him with leprosy (2 Chronicles 26:16-23). Consequently, negatively, no man takes this honor upon himself, but positively, God must call a priest, and the example the writer gives is, just as Aaron was.130
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