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To define what we mean by the word priesthood, let us read several verses of Scripture. “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. 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. 19:4-6, italics ours).
“You yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ...But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people acquired for a possession, so that you may tell out the virtues of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:5, 9).
“To Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be the glory and the might forever and ever. Amen...And they sing a new song, saying: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain and have purchased for God by Your blood men out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made them a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign on the earth...Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no authority, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years...And there will no longer be a curse. And the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His slaves will serve Him; and they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads” (Rev. 1:5-6; 5:9-10; 20:6; 22:3-4).
The word priesthood has two meanings, which are expressed by two different Greek words. The first meaning is the office or ministry of the priest (Heb. 7). The second and more important meaning is a priestly body, or a corporate body of priests (1 Pet. 2:5, 9). In the King James Version these two Greek words are translated the same, yet in Greek they are two different words with two different meanings.
In God’s dispensation and economy, the leading ministry is the priesthood. In this universe God has an administration, a divine economy. His economy is the way He arranges or dispenses. Therefore, it is a kind of dispensation. According to the Bible, there are three main ministries in God’s divine dispensation: the priesthood, the kingship, and the prophethood. The priesthood is the leading ministry of the three and brings the kingship and prophethood into function. In other words, both the kingship and the prophethood depend upon the leading ministry of the priesthood.
The dictionary tells us that a priest is a person who serves God professionally. Most Christians would tell us that a priest is one who serves God. This is right, but what does it mean to serve God? Today’s Christians would answer that to serve God is to work for God. This answer is wrong! To say that a priest is a person who serves God is right, but to say that to serve God is merely to do something for God, is wrong.
To realize what a priest is, we must first see God’s eternal plan. God is a God of purpose. He has a purpose which He wants to accomplish. According to the revelation of the Scriptures, God has a plan to work Himself into a group of people in order that He might be their life and they might become His expression. Based upon this plan, God created man.
Man was destined to receive God, to be filled, saturated and permeated with God, and to have God flow out of him that he might be the living expression of God. This is a brief definition of a priest. He must contact God, be filled with God, and be possessed by God completely that he may be built up with others in the flow of the life of God. Then the priesthood will be God’s living, corporate expression.
Christianity’s concept is that if we love the Lord, we must work for Him. This is a natural, religious concept, not the revelation of the Bible. God never intended to call us merely to work for Him. God’s intention is that we must first open ourselves to Him that He may come into us to fill and flood us until He has taken possession of every part of our being. Our whole being must be saturated and permeated with Him. Then we will be one with Him. We will not only be clothed outwardly with Him as power, but permeated inwardly with Him as everything. Then spontaneously, God will flow out of us, and we will be built up with others in this flow of life.
I must repeat that a priest is not one who merely works for God. God has no intention of calling us to do something for Him. His intention is that we answer His call by opening ourselves to Him and saying, “Lord, here I am, not ready to work for You, but ready to be filled and possessed by You and to be one with You.” Not until we are one with the Lord can we ever work for Him and be a real priest. The main function of a priest is not to work but to spend time in the presence of the Lord until he is one with Him in the spirit. The priesthood that God plans to have is a corporate man who is saturated and permeated with Himself.
The first priest was the first person, Adam. Some may argue with me that according to the record of the Old Testament, a priest is one who offers sacrifices for sins, but Adam, when he was in the garden of Eden, did not have sin. Therefore, it was unnecessary for him to offer a sacrifice for sin. How then can we say that Adam was the first priest? A priest is not one who merely offers sacrifices. This was done in the outer court and is only a part of the service of a priest. The priest must also enter the Holy Place to spread the bread of the Presence on the table, light the lamp, and burn the incense on the golden altar. To enter the Holy Place is a much finer work than to offer sacrifices. Spreading the bread on the table, lighting the lamp, and burning the incense are related to the finer experiences of Christ. But there is still something deeper. After this, the priest must enter into the Holy of Holies. What work did the priests do in the Holy of Holies? There was no work. All human activity was stopped. The Lord does not need us to work for Him. What He needs is that we stop our work and be filled with Him.
Although Adam had no need to offer any kind of sacrifice, we must realize that before the fall he was in the presence of God all the time. After creation God did not ask Adam to do anything. He simply put him in front of the tree of life. Adam was to spend his time in the presence of God and enjoy God Himself as the tree of life. Adam was not to do anything for God but to take Him again and again as the life supply so that he would be filled with God. Then Adam would be saturated and permeated by and with God. We know that Adam eventually failed God.
Abel, the second priest, still did nothing for God. He simply approached and worshipped God according to the plan of God’s redemption. Abel did nothing but seek God’s face by offering the sacrifice according to God’s redemptive plan.
The Bible then tells us that Enoch walked with God. There is a sharp contrast between Cain and Enoch. Cain was cast away from the presence of God, but Enoch walked in the presence of God. Thus, Enoch was a priest. Did Enoch do anything for God? No. The Bible simply says that he walked with God. To walk with God means to be one with God, to be filled with Him, and to express Him as a priest. A real priest is one who is always in God’s presence.
After Enoch, there was Noah. Noah did a work for God by building the ark, but we must realize how Noah built the ark. By first walking with God, he came to know the will of God. It was through his walk with God that he received the revelation from God to build the ark. His work came from a priestly revelation. This is the priestly service.
Abraham was also one who lived in the presence of the Lord. He was called by God, yet he did not know where to go. This is because he was called to live in the presence of God. The presence of God was his destination. He did not know where to go, but he did know where to be! He also offered the offerings to the Lord just as Abel and Noah did. They were not called priests that early in the Bible, but they really were priests. Abraham offered sacrifices to God and lived a life in His presence. If we read the history of Abraham carefully, we will see that he was a real priest. His whole life was in the Holy of Holies in the shekinah glory of God.
Isaac was one who was brought into the Holy of Holies in the person of his father. He was born in the Holy of Holies. So he simply remained there all the time enjoying the presence of the shekinah glory of God. Therefore, Isaac was not only a priest but even the high priest. He lived continuously in the Holy of Holies.
Jacob differed much from Isaac. He was neither in the Holy of Holies nor in the Holy Place. Many times he was out of the outer court, far from the entrance of the tabernacle. But the mercy and sovereign grace of God brought him back again and again to the outer court, the Holy Place, and eventually the Holy of Holies. Then he became Israel, the prince of God. Jacob the supplanter was transformed into a priest of God who lived in the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. Therefore, being a priest, he offered the sacrifices himself.
Then we come to Moses. When he was in the wilderness, he was in the outer court. After he was called by God to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, he was at least in the Holy Place. He helped them pass through the Red Sea and eventually was brought to Mount Sinai where he stayed for forty days. No doubt that was the real Holy of Holies to him. He was with God. When he came down from the mountain, the people saw the shekinah glory of God on his face.
At the time of the passover, all the children of Israel offered the lamb without the help of priests. This was because they all were priests. Every house was a part of the priesthood. All the people offered the same sacrifice to God at the same time. Not one family had a special priest to offer the passover lamb for them, because all of them were priests. When they were brought out of Egypt to Mount Sinai, the Lord told them that He would make them a kingdom of priests. They all were to be His priests. All were to be in His presence, to be saturated with Him, and to become His corporate expression. This is the real priesthood. I must say again that the priesthood is not to do something for God. It is a group of people filled, saturated, and permeated with God, in order that God might flow out of them as His corporate expression. However, the people of Israel also failed God.
Then God turned to the tribe of Levi. They became the priests. Actually, the Levites did not do much for the Lord. They spent their time in His presence to be dealt with by Him and to be one with Him. We will see more of this in the following chapters. As the priesthood they continually enjoyed the Lord and bore Him as their testimony.
We cannot leave the Old Testament without considering the psalmists. When we read their writings, we must admit that they were real priests. Their writings indicate that they spent most of their time in God’s presence to be filled and permeated with Him.
As we come to the New Testament, we realize that the apostles were priests. They were continually opening themselves to the Lord to be saturated with Him. Thus, they were a real corporate expression of the Lord. In fact, according to the New Testament, a believer must be this kind of person. Peter and John especially emphasized this. Peter was the first apostle, and John ministered as the last one. Both of them told us that we are priests and that we are a priesthood.
Our concept of serving God has to be transformed and adjusted. To be a priest is not mainly to do something for the Lord but to be taken over by the Lord. We must spend much time in the presence of the Lord and let Him come in to fill and saturate us.
In the beginning of my Christian life, I liked to talk with people about the Lord’s work. Now I simply do not have the appetite to talk about work. It is not a matter of working for the Lord but a matter of being possessed by the Lord in the presence of His shekinah glory. Then He will flow out, and that flow will be the real work! The outflow of God is the real service. Only this flow can fulfill the purpose of the Lord. It is not a matter of a message, a form, or any kind of teaching. It is a matter of being fully and thoroughly permeated by and with Him. Then He will flow out of us. In this flow we will not only be one with Him but also one with all who open themselves to Him. In this flow is the work, the service, the flow of life, the Body life, and the building up of the Body. We must realize that the building up of the Body is not a work or a kind of organization. It is a corporate life in the flow of God Himself.
We must be saturated and permeated by His shekinah glory. Then we will be one with Him and one with one another in Him. All Christian work and service must issue out of this priesthood. Please be impressed that God has no intention for us to work for Him. No, absolutely not! If we realize His heart’s desire, we will be fully opened to Him that He may flood us with Himself. This is the priesthood, and this is the kind of person God desires to have today.
