Main news for 11 January 2025

What was the Levitical priesthood? And what was the role of the High Priest? From the very beginning God wanted to see His people as a community of the faithful. But how could such a community be created if the very nature of fallen humanity resists it? Obviously, in only one way: by changing that nature. Of course, to transform it completely before Christ came into the world was impossible; there was no point even thinking of that. But every action of God upon nature, including human nature, changes that nature to some degree. Of course, such a change by itself still guarantees neither righteousness nor what the biblical books call "holiness," that sanctification which once again makes real for a person communion with God, the possibility of which he had almost lost after the fall. But it does provide the possibility of new life. And since we are speaking of a people-community that must be sanctified continually, there always had to exist within this people a certain sanctified part that would remain in God's presence not episodically, being sanctified, for example, once a week and then living ordinary life during the other six days, but constantly, as the priests who served at the altar were sanctified, since during their service they had no right to leave the Tabernacle or, later, the Temple. But after the coming of the Messiah, the whole people had to be sanctified, not through intermediaries but directly and immediately by the Risen One. Thus the risen Messiah becomes for the faithful the High Priest, sanctifying them and opening for them the way into the Kingdom, where the transformation of human nature and its sanctification will be completed, opening to the human person such fullness of spiritual life as is impossible in principle in our world, which has not yet been transformed.

Heb 2:17

NOTES

Continuing the conversation about angels and about the Messiah, the author of the epistle especially emphasizes the fact that the Savior quite...

Continuing the conversation about angels and about the Messiah, the author of the epistle especially emphasizes the fact that the Savior suffered on the cross in a completely real way, just as anyone else would have suffered on it (v. 10). This is precisely where the humanity of the Messiah is shown: an angel in principle cannot suffer the way a human being suffers; he cannot be crucified, for he is free from bodiliness and from all the problems connected with it. But the Messiah is not an angel, not a being from another world. He calls the people He saves brothers, thereby emphasizing His real, essential unity with those being saved (vv. 12-13). Only in this way was it possible to save the whole human being, not only his soul, but also his body, which God also intends to become part of the Kingdom (vv. 14-15). If the Kingdom had entered the world through an angel, a human being would never have been able to enter it whole. Then one really could have spoken of the salvation of the soul alone, which has more share in the spiritual world than the body does, of salvation in the sense in which people began to understand it in the Middle Ages, with postmortem bliss or postmortem torments in mind.

But God wanted to sanctify and transform the whole human being; that is why He sends the Messiah into the world not as an angel, but as a man. The author of the epistle does not compare Christ with a high priest by accident (v. 17): both one and the other are human beings, and through both one and the other God sanctifies His people, in the first case the New Testament Church, in the second the Old Testament Church. But for both the Old Testament high priest and the New Testament High Priest it was absolutely necessary to belong to the world of human beings wholly and to the end; otherwise there could be no question of sanctifying the people. An angel can show the way, but he cannot sit at one table with a human being, sharing a sacrificial meal with him. Yet the road into the Kingdom lies precisely through the sacrificial meal that sanctifies those who are walking. And one can walk it to the end only with Christ, not with angels.

Continuing the discussion of salvation, the Messiah, and angels, the author of the letter draws attention to an essentially important point in this regard. He speaks of the Messiah as a Human Being who can help people precisely because...

The world of angels is remarkable in its own way, and angels surpass people in their present condition because they did not fall, speaking, of course, about the angels who kept faithfulness to God and not about fallen spirits. Yet for all that, angels and people belong, in a certain sense, to different layers of reality. Angels and people were created differently from the beginning; their interaction was conceived by God from the very beginning as the interaction of beings that are spiritual, but each existing in its own way and in forms belonging only to it.

An angel can bring God's message to a person, for the Greek word "angel," like the corresponding Hebrew word, properly means "messenger." But he cannot help a person in the condition in which the person found himself after the fall. He cannot, in particular, because a person is a being at once spiritual and natural, in whom both components are united in a completely special way, unrepeatable either in the spiritual or in the natural world.

Of course, one cannot exclude in principle the appearance in the world of God's fullness contained within the bounds of angelic nature, insofar as one can speak of nature with regard to angels. All things are possible for God. But for a person such fullness would still remain inaccessible. It might perhaps be perceived by him somehow, but in any case it would remain separated from him in such a way that the person could never become at home in the Kingdom, could never become its true inhabitant. Only another Human Being could do this for a person: a Human Being who contained in Himself God's fullness and at the same time was absolutely "one of his own" by nature for every person.

So much "one of his own" that even the possibility of death was quite real for Him, whereas for an angel death in the human sense of the word is impossible in principle. And the Messiah became exactly such a "one of his own" for everyone, differing from fallen people only in the uncorruptedness of His human nature. But this "only" is precisely what made it possible for Him to contain God's fullness and unite it with His humanity. And therefore it made salvation possible as well, opening the road to the Kingdom for those who seek it.

Could the Lord help a person facing temptation before the Incarnation? Of course He could, for He was almighty even then...

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