02.18 Christ Was Both Priest And Sacrifice

18. CHRIST WAS BOTH PRIEST AND SACRIFICE The expression “Christ’s passive and active obedience” has been a source of much controversy. There are extreme views of the passive and active obedience of Christ. With proper explanations, nothing is wrong with the phrase. Some have said if there is anything in Christ’s intervention for man’s salvation that may be called “passive,” it must be His death. This is the very opposite to the clearness of Scripture that Christ did not die until He gave Himself in death:

He poured out himself to death (Isaiah 53:12 NASB).

I lay down My life for the sheep.... I lay down My life that I may take it again....

I lay it down on My own initiative (John 10:15; John 10:17-18 NASB). And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit (John 19:30 NASB). Christ...loved the church and gave Himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25 NASB). When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3 NASB).

He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself
(Hebrews 9:26 NASB). The body Jesus Christ assumed in the incarnation was completely under His control not only in His death but after His death. For that reason Christ said,
“No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18 NASB). Jesus Christ was both Priest and Sacrifice.

Christ was seen in a variety of types in the Old Testament. For example, the sacrificial lamb, as it was offered by the priest, was a type of the sin-bearer. But, as it has been said, types are the best interpreters of New Testament truths only if one bears in mind that the antitype is always of a higher order and superior nature to what prefigured it, as the substance must excel the shadow. Hence, the Christian has no problem recognizing the superior nature of the God-Man Priest, who offered Himself, over the Aaronic priests, who offered up unblemished lambs. The antithesis is between the priests “standing” daily offering their imperfect sacrifices and Christ “sitting” after having offered one perfect sacrifice (Hebrews 10:1-18). The prayers of Christ during the days of His flesh must be viewed in connection with His priestly office (Hebrews 5:1-10). Many take for granted that Hebrews 5:7 teaches that Christ prayed to be saved from death: Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared (Hebrews 5:7).

Hebrews 5:7-9 must never be read or studied apart from other verses included in Hebrews 5:1-10. Hebrews 5:7-9 are closed between two affirmations of Christ’s priesthood after the order of Melchisedec. Therefore, His prayers must be recognized as the discharge of His priestly function. The passage does not affirm that Christ prayed to be saved from death but that He offered up prayers
“unto him that was able to save him from death.” He prayed for that which God was able to give-salvation from death. What Christ actually prayed for is not stated in Hebrews; but the writer, in stating the substance of the prayer, says the prayer was “heard because of His piety” (NASB). The Greek word translated “feared” in the King James Bible is eulabeias, which means reverence to God.
The God-Man did not pray to be saved from “dying,” but He prayed to God who was able to raise Him out from the state of death.

Matthew records two prayers by Christ in the garden of Gethsemane:
(1) “...O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt (Matthew 26:39).
(2) ”...O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done" (Matthew 26:42). The first prayer was spoken out of His sinless human consciousness. The language was that of His sinless fear of separation from the Father; but at the same time, it was the submission of His human will to the Divine will. Christ learned obedience by the things which He suffered (Hebrews 5:8). To say He learned to be obedient is to admit He was a sinner. Obedience is learned in the school of experience. Hence, Christ learned experientially the meaning of obedience. “Being made perfect” of Hebrews 5:9 was not moral perfection because that was always His. However, this perfection was the appointed end of His human experience in the work to which He was ordained. Christ’s second prayer shows that beyond the submission of the human will to the Divine will lies the silencing of the human will.

We learn from Luke 22:42 that Christ’s prayer was one of submission to the Father’s will. Shortly after the Lord Jesus prayed, He said, “...the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it” (John 18:11). Isaiah foretold of Him,
“I was not rebellious, neither turned away back” (Isaiah 50:5). Christ’s human will was revealed in the garden of Gethsemane, as His human soul was revealed many times during the days of His flesh. The High Priest, who was also the Sacrifice, was resigned to the will of God, which was known to Him before the foundation of the world. He had already begun to taste of the bitter cup in the garden and had accepted this bestowment from the Father’s hand. The sins He would bear were those of the elect by commission, but they would become His by imputation.

Jesus Christ’s intense suffering began as He entered the garden of Gethsemane, and it did not cease until He dismissed His spirit and left the body for the tomb. Christ invited the disciples to watch with Him, but He did not ask them to pray with Him. He never besought the prayers of men for Himself. Why? There is a different approach for them to God. The sinner must come as a penitent, but Christ was impeccable. There was an essential difference in nature between Christ and men. Christ could go directly to the Father, but men can approach
the Father only through Christ and by the Spirit of regeneration. The evidence of Christ’s Deity was greatly manifested when He went into the agony of Gethsemane alone, without fellowship with men in prayer. He had on one occasion asked certain disciples if they were able to be baptized with the baptism with which He was baptized (Matthew 20:22-23; Mark 10:38-39; Luke 12:50). The folly of the disciples’ affirmative answer, “We are able,” can only be comprehended in the light of Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane. He had a baptism to be baptized with, and His soul was “straitened [sunechomai, to be hard pressed from every side] till it be accomplished” (Luke 12:50). Christ’s prayer in the garden was to the Father for the benefit of the elect.

Some say Christ’s prayers in the garden of Gethsemane reveal the tension between His human and Divine natures. Was there a strained relationship between them? Admittedly, Christ speaking out of His human consciousness desired life, but one must not overlook the truth that His human will was controlled by His Divine will. This shows that although His human will was different from His Divine will, it was not contrary to it. There was no tension between them. Jesus Christ was like man and at the same time very much unlike man. Submission of the human will silenced it. Conclusively, there was no conflict between the human and Divine wills of the unique Person, the God-Man.

Since Christ was both the Sacrifice and the Sacrificer in the office of Priest, as the Sacrificer, He wanted no interruption of His office in death. Hence, “having been made perfect [teleiotheis, first aorist passive participle of teleioo, to reach the end of; to advance to final completeness; to reach the end of one’s course]” (Hebrews 5:9 NASB) as Priest, He reached the completion of His experiential training and actively became the Author of eternal salvation. Jesus Christ’s doing the will of His Father by being subjected to death was not passive endurance. In the volume of the book it was written of Christ, “...Lo, I come...to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7). Christ not only offered Himself to God as a sacrifice for the elect but, in the offering, He offered the elect with Himself. Hence, it can be said the elect died with Christ when He died. The aorist tenses used in Romans 6:1-11 denote a single and completed past act of Christ’s substitutionary work and the identification of the elect with Him in that work.

Some teach that Christ could not be a Priest on earth. They say He was saluted as the Son of God at His incarnation (Psalms 2:1-12), and He was saluted as a Priest forever at His ascension (Psalms 110:1-7). Their proof text is Hebrews 8:4 - “For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law.” One must note, however, that Scripture does not say that when Christ was on earth He was not a Priest (Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 5:7-10), but had He remained on earth He could not have discharged His priestly functions. He was not a priest after the order of Aaron. The first tabernacle was not false, but it was incomplete. It was a shadow of the reality. The perfection of the sacrifice is derived from the Person of Christ, the Divine Son of God. He was “obedient unto death” (Php 2:8). The word for “unto” is mechri (mechris before a vowel), an adverb meaning unto, even to, until, or till. It has the force of a preposition with the genitive case of thanatou (death). Does this mean that Christ was obedient up to the point of His death but not in His death? Such belief would be synonymous with Christ’s exhortation to the church in Smyrna to be “faithful unto death” - achri thanatou (Revelation 2:10). Jesus Christ, unlike men, was actively obedient up to the point of death, and as the Conqueror of death, He “cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost [edzepneusen, first aorist active indicative of ekpneo, to breath out, to expire, or to die]" (Mark 15:37). If Christ’s active obedience had stopped short of going through death, He would have failed to bring His righteousness through death for the benefit of the elect. Christ who offered Himself not only satisfied Divine justice by bearing the sins of the elect but He also brought His righteousness through death for the benefit of those for whom He died.