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Scripture Reading: Exo. 19:6; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:5b-6, 9; 20:6; 22:3
In this universe God has an administration, in which is His divine economy. The Greek word for economy means “household law,” implying a plan, an administration, an arrangement, for distributing, or dispensing, the household supply to the members of a family. The base of this word is of the same origin as that for pasture in John 10:9, implying a distribution of the pasture to the flock. God’s economy is His household economy, His household administration (Eph. 1:10; 3:9; 1 Tim. 1:4), which is to dispense Himself in Christ into His chosen people that He may have a house to express Himself, which house is the church (3:15), the Body of Christ. In God’s economy, in this divine household administration, there are three main ministries: the priesthood, the kingship, and the prophethood. The priesthood is the first and leading ministry in God’s economy.
In the New Testament three Greek words are used in relation to the priesthood. The first word refers to the priestly office, as in Hebrews 7:12; the second refers to the priestly service, as in Hebrews 7:5; and the third refers to the assembly of priests, a priesthood, a body of priests who serve in a corporate way, as in 1 Peter 2:5 and 9. According to the natural human concept, a priest is a professional person, a person whose profession is to serve God. Most Christians consider a priest to be someone who serves God. Although this is correct, it is necessary to explain what it means to serve God. The common concept among Christians is that to serve God is to work for God. However, this is not an accurate concept. Although it is right to say that a priest is a person who serves God, it is wrong to consider that to serve God is merely to do something for God or to work for God.
In order to know what it means to be a priest, we must first discover God’s eternal intention, that is, God’s desire in eternity past and His intention for eternity future. God is a God of purpose. Just as we human beings are purposeful and always do things with a purpose, God, who is much greater than we are, is a God of purpose who has an intention to accomplish.
The Scriptures reveal that before the ages, in eternity past before the foundation of the world, God had a good pleasure, a heart’s desire (Eph. 1:9). According to His good pleasure, He made a purpose, an intention, to gain His heart’s desire, and He also made a plan to accomplish His purpose (3:11). In this plan He determined to work Himself into a group of people so that He might be their life and they might be His expression (1:5). Based on this divine determination, God created man. Man was destined to receive God, to be filled with God, to be saturated and permeated with God, and even to flow God out, so that he might be the living expression of God (Gen. 1:26; 2:8-10; John 7:37-39; Eph. 3:19; 1:22-23).
Although a priest is a person who serves God, this does not mean that he works for God and does something for God. According to the revelation of the Scriptures, to serve God is to receive God into us, to contact God, and to be filled with God, saturated with God, and permeated with God. Furthermore, to serve God is to flow God out and, in this flow of God, to be built up with others as a corporate expression of God. This is the proper meaning of serving God and of being a priest. A priest is simply a person who is filled with God, one with God, taken over by God, and even possessed by God in a full way and built up with others in the flow of the life of God to be a living, corporate expression of God on earth today. This built-up corporate entity is the priesthood.
In Christianity there is the concept that if we love God and fear Him, we must work for Him. According to this concept, we must consecrate ourselves to the Lord so that we may be His servants who do His will, serving Him by working for Him. But this is actually a natural, religious concept, not a revelation from the heavens. God has no intention whatsoever of calling us simply to work for Him or to do something for Him. Rather, God’s intention is for us to open ourselves to Him. We should not do anything for God but should open ourselves to Him so that He may come into us, fill us, and even flood us. In this way God will saturate us, permeate us, take us over, and take possession of every part of our being. When our whole being is taken over by Him, possessed by Him, and saturated and permeated with Him, we will be one with Him. Indeed, we will be full of Him, not only by being outwardly clothed with Him as power but also by being inwardly permeated with Him as everything to us. We will be God-men, persons full of God, and spontaneously God will flow Himself out of us. Moreover, in this flow of God, which is the flow of life, we will be built up with others.
People who are swept away in a flood can never be independent. They are carried along in the one flow of the flood waters. If we are all on dry land, it will be very easy for us to be independent and individualistic. But if a flood comes and sweeps us away in its current, we will all lose our independence and individualism. We will all be “one” in the flood, for we will be carried along in one direction. It will not matter whether or not we agree to go in the direction of the flood. We will have no choice but to go in the same direction. We may disagree with one another, but we will have no way to disagree with the flood. Likewise, when we are one with God and are in the flow of God, we will be one with one another and will be built up together in this one flow. The final picture in the Bible shows a river of water of life proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing through the whole city of New Jerusalem (Rev. 22:1-2). The whole city is in the one flow. This is a picture of the priesthood.
I must repeat that to be a priest is not merely to work for God. We must forget about this kind of concept. When I was young, I considered that a servant of the Lord was a priest who served the Lord full time, and I thought that a servant of the Lord should endeavor, struggle, and strive to do something for the Lord. One day the Lord opened my eyes to see that my concept was wrong. God has no intention to call us to do something for Him. His unique intention is for us to answer His call by opening ourselves to Him and telling Him, “Lord, here I am. I am ready not to do something for You or to work for You but to be filled and even be taken over by You so that I may be fully possessed by You and with You. I am ready to be one with You.” Until we are one with the Lord, we can do nothing for Him; we can neither work for Him nor be a genuine priest.
Furthermore, we must see that the main work and conduct of the priests is not to offer sacrifices but to spend time in the presence of the Lord to be filled, saturated, and permeated by and with the Lord until they are one with Him in the spirit. Before spending time with the Lord and being saturated with Him, they can never be adequate priests. A priest is not a person who does something for God but a person who is filled with God. This is a priest, and this is the man God planned to have. God planned to have a corporate man who would not be engaged in doing something for Him but who would be filled with Him. If we have this light, we will realize that every man should be a priest, one who receives God and opens himself to God to be filled with God and to be saturated, permeated, and possessed wholly, fully, and thoroughly by and with God.
We have pointed out that the priesthood is not any kind of service in which we do something or work for God. The priesthood is a group of persons who are filled with God, saturated and permeated by and with God, and one with God, and out of whom God Himself is flowing. These people become a corporate Body as a corporate expression of God.
In the Bible the first priest was not Aaron but Adam. When Adam was in the garden of Eden, he had no sin and thus did not need to offer sacrifices for sin. This indicates that to be a priest is not merely a matter of offering sacrifices to God. Even though Adam did not need to offer any sacrifices before the fall, he was continually in the presence of God. After creating man, God did not place any demand on man. Instead, He put him in front of the tree of life (Gen. 2:8-9). This portrays God’s desire that Adam would spend time in the presence of God, enjoying God Himself as the tree of life. Adam did not need to do anything for God; he only needed to take God in again and again as food, as his life and life supply, so that he would be filled with God and be full of the elements of God. Then he would be saturated and permeated by and with God. However, Adam failed in this matter.
After God had delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt and had brought them to Mount Sinai, He spoke to Moses and said, “Now therefore if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My personal treasure from among all peoples, for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel” (Exo. 19:5-6). This word spoken by God indicates that God ordained the entire nation of Israel to be a kingdom of priests. This means that God wanted all the children of Israel to be priests. However, because they worshipped the golden calf (32:1-6), they lost the priesthood, and only the tribe of Levi, because of its faithfulness to God, was chosen to replace the whole nation of Israel as priests to God (vv. 25-29; Deut. 33:8-10). The family of Aaron of the tribe of Levi became the priests who served God in the tabernacle and the temple, and the rest of the Levites served under them.
The priests who served in the tabernacle and the temple offered sacrifices in the outer court, but that was only a part of their service. The work of the priests in offering the sacrifices was somewhat coarse and rough. The animals had to be slain, and certain parts of their bodies, with the blood, had to be offered on the altar. After finishing their work at the altar, the priests entered the Holy Place to do a much finer work. In the Holy Place they spread the bread on the table, lit the lamps, and burned the incense on the golden altar. All of these items — the bread, the shining of the light, and the incense of sweet odor — are related to the finer experiences of Christ. Day by day we need to deal with all these finer experiences. We must not only shout, cry, and offer the sacrifices in a coarse, rough way; we must also deal with the finer experiences of Christ in the Holy Place. Nevertheless, there is something deeper still. After completing his service in the Holy Place, on certain occasions the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies. In the Holy of Holies there was very little for him to do. There he was quiet and calm, and all human activity ceased. This indicates that what the Lord needs is not our working for Him but our ceasing from work in order to be filled with Him.
In the same principle, when Moses spent forty days in the presence of Jehovah (Exo. 34), in reality he was in the Holy of Holies. He spent forty days without doing any kind of work, for the purpose of being filled with the Lord, saturated with the Lord, and being one with the Lord. Those forty days show us a real picture of a priest who was not in the outer court or in the Holy Place but in the Holy of Holies, that is, in the presence of God’s shekinah glory. He was completely stopped from every kind of work and was absolutely open to God. As a result, he was filled, saturated, and permeated by and with God so that eventually he became one with God. When he came down from the mountain, the people saw the shekinah glory of God on his face. Because he was truly one with God, he was a real priest.
We should not think, however, that there were no other priests in the Old Testament after the Levites. Although in a legal sense there were no other priests, in a spiritual sense many of the saints in the Old Testament were priests. For example, consider the psalmists who wrote the Psalms. When we read their writings, we realize that they were genuine priests because they spent much time in the presence of God. As a result, they were filled with God and occupied by and with God. Because they were one with God, they could express God in a living way and also in a corporate way.
In the New Testament the apostles also were genuine priests, persons who opened themselves to the Lord. They were filled with the Lord and saturated with the Lord, and so they were truly one with the Lord and were the expression of the Lord in a corporate way. According to the teaching of the New Testament, all the believers should be this kind of person. Both the apostle Peter and the apostle John told us that we are priests and are corporately the priesthood (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:5b-6, 9; 20:6; 22:3).
Our concept concerning the priesthood needs to be transformed, adjusted, and changed. To serve God is not mainly to do something for the Lord or work for Him, but to be taken over by the Lord. We must spend time, more time, and even all our time in the presence of the Lord to open ourselves that He may come in and flood us, that is, fill us, saturate us, and even permeate our entire being.
When I began to serve the Lord, I liked to talk with people about working for the Lord. Now I have no appetite for this because I have seen that it is not a matter of working for the Lord but a matter of being filled with Him, taken over by Him, possessed by Him, and saturated and permeated by and with Him. Serving the Lord is a matter of spending time in the presence of His shekinah glory. Then He will flow Himself out of us, and that flow will be our real work and service. This flow of God out of us is the very thing that we must take care of, for it is uniquely this that fulfills the Lord’s purpose. It is not a matter of working in this or that way; it is not a matter of method, form, or any kind of teaching or gift. Rather, it is a matter of being filled and possessed by the Lord and of being fully, thoroughly, and wholly permeated by and with Him. Then we will become one with Him, and there will be a certain flow out of us all the time. In this flow we are one not only with God but also with all the other members of the Body. In this flow we have our work and service to the Lord, the church life, the Body life, and the building up of the Body. The building up of the Body is not a work, nor is it any kind of organization. It is a corporate life in the flow of God Himself.
Therefore, we all must be filled with God, taken over by Him, possessed by Him, and saturated and permeated with His shekinah glory. Then we will be one with Him, and we will be one with one another in His flow. This is the testimony, the recovery, and the building up of the church. This is also the service, and this must be the preaching of the gospel. All Christian work and service, the building of the church, and the reaching out to others must come forth from this priesthood. God has absolutely no intention in this age for us to do something for Him. His heart’s desire is that we would be fully open to Him and allow Him to fill us. For this we must spend adequate time in His presence, allowing Him take us over, possess us, and even saturate us with Himself. This is the priesthood, and this is the kind of person God planned to have and desires to have today.
The following hymn helps us to realize that for the building of the church, there is a great need today for such a priesthood, for such a group of people who know God in this way.
What a blessing, what a priv’lege!
Called of God a royal priest,
That this glorious, holy office
I should bear, though last and least.
All the building of the Body
On the priesthood doth depend;
Ever praying in the spirit
I this office would attend.
If I keep this royal calling
Under Thine authority,
Priestly duty thus fulfilling,
Then the church will builded be.
Now the church is but the priesthood;
Thus the priesthood formed we need;
When the priests are knit together,
Then the church is built indeed.
Through the church’s degradation,
Saints this office desolate;
Through the weakness of their spirits
Preaching doth predominate.
Most are leaning on the message
And the preaching emphasize,
Yet neglect the priestly praying
And their spirits’ exercise.
Deal with me and make me balanced,
As in preaching, so in prayer;
Leading others oft in praying,
As Thy Word I too declare.
Only serving by our praying
Will our spirits mingled be;
Stressing prayer as much as preaching —
Thus the church is built for Thee.
(Hymns, #848)
