When you read the first few chapters of Genesis it looks like a battle zone – a war between humans and God!
1) Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden and God placed a flaming sword to flash back and forth, to stop them from getting to the tree of life. (Gen 3:24)
2) Later, God flooded the world due to the wickedness in it, and He destroyed them all, except Noah and his family. (Gen 6 to 8)
3) And later again, God rained fire down upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding area, because of the things they were doing. (Gen 19)
Hmmm, a war zone, is God really at war with mankind?
Looking at those stories – and I believe that they are true – we must come to the conclusion that the human race was in a horrendous situation – a very bleak and fearful place.
In Jude’s letter (v7), he wrote about Sodom and Gomorrah being an example, of all those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire. Not only was there the chance, that judgement would fall again upon everyone, or individuals, for disobeying God’s commands, there was the certainty of eternal punishment.
Oh boy that is heavy! And what makes it worse is Jude is in the New Testament!
What’s going on?
You may say that God must forgive people and that He would be wrong to condemn the whole human race.
But let’s consider the position of the angels, those angels who fell from God had no grounds for forgiveness. (Jude v6).
So it looks like we are totally relying upon God’s mercy.
If He chose not to save people, it would be perfectly just for Him to carry out the sentence upon everyone.
What was needed was a Mediator between the Holy God and fallen, polluted mankind.
No human being could mediate, because none could ever be found who was innocent.
So the Almighty God provided His Son. Paul wrote:
For there is One God, and One Mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all people.”
1 Timothy 2:5
That’s the job of a priest, to be a mediator, to stand in that gap.
The Lord Jesus Christ fulfils the office of a priest by:-
- Offering Himself as a sacrifice, to satisfy Divine justice, and so reconcile us to God.
- By Him continually praying and interceding for us. “… Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”
Romans 8:34
In following blogs we will be looking at Jesus’ role as a Priest in more detail and also looking at His other offices of Prophet and King.
Jesus image: thanks to GSP 100,000 clipart CD.
