Jesus is fully God, and Jesus is fully man. In our previous post, we looked at three reasons why it’s important for Jesus to be human, but there’s one more reason we need to see.
A fourth reason that Jesus had to be human is so he can be our great high priest. Not just any priest like we mentioned in the third reason, but the high priest. And not just any high priest, but the Great High Priest.
I get excited about this because Hebrews is one of my top three favorite books of the Bible. The author does a great job of explaining that the Jewish high priest was a picture of the true high priest, Jesus.
In the Old Testament, the High Priest did something regular priests couldn’t do. He was the only person in the world who could enter the Most Holy Place, the inner place of the Jewish temple. The Most Holy Place represented the very presence of God, and it was separated from the Holy Place by a curtain. The Most Holy Place was so holy that only the high priest could enter it.
Of all the people in the world, only the high priest could enter into the presence of God. And, get this, he could only enter the Most Holy Place one day each year. That day was the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). On that day, the high priest would offer a sacrifice for himself (after all, he had sinned like everyone else) and another for the people. He would then take the blood from those sacrifices, enter the Most Holy Place, and sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat that sat on top of the ark of the covenant. By entering the Most Holy Place on behalf of the people, the high priest would secure forgiveness for the people for another year.
All of this, and indeed, the entire sacrificial system, pointed to one person — Jesus.
Jesus, the “great” high priest, has gone into the true Most Holy Place on our behalf:
We have this 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, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 6:19-20).
We can talk about this Melchizedek one day in a future post, but for now, the author of Hebrews is telling us that as high priest, Jesus went into the true Most Holy Place in heaven. Unlike the Jewish high priests, he didn’t need to offer a sacrifice for his sins, because he never sinned. He also didn’t sacrifice an animal. Jesus sacrificed himself. He is both the sacrifice and the one who offers the sacrifice.
Here’s the point I’m making — before Jesus, the only way into the presence of God, and the only way to experience forgiveness, was through a sacrifice made by a priest. With Jesus, everything changed.
As our Great High Priest, Jesus made the once-for-all sacrifice so that our sins are forgiven. Jesus also continually leads us directly into God’s presence. We don’t have to come before God through a priest. We don’t need a temple, and we don’t need to make sacrifices on an altar, to provide us access to God.
As William Barclay wrote, “Before Jesus came, God was the distant stranger whom only a very few might approach and that at peril of their lives. But because of what Jesus was and did, God has become the friend of every man. Once men thought of him as barring the door; now they think of the door to his presence as thrown wide open to all.”
But for any of this to be possible, Jesus had to be human. As a man, Jesus is our perfect representative before God, a human acting on behalf of his fellow humans, offering the ultimate sacrifice to bring us forgiveness and the joy of experiencing God’s presence.
Which leads to this:
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:17-18)
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
Jesus represents us to God as one of us. If he was not human, he could not truly intercede on behalf of those he represents. Only God could perform a sacrifice that would meet the demands of God’s holiness, but only a God who is also fully man can perfectly intercede for the rest of mankind.
Likewise, if Jesus wasn’t a man, he would not know from experience what we go through in our temptations and struggles and anxiety and fear and sadness. Obviously, as God, he knows all of this because he’s all-knowing, but because he became a man he experienced it. He knows everything you feel, and everything you experience, and he’s there for you all the time.