Today's Devotion
Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026 - Heb 5:1-14
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
The author of Hebrews is focusing on Jesus our High Priest. And he is doing so from the perspective of the “type” or the preview of Christ as given to us in the Old Testament. For the entire sacrificial system established among the children of Israel – the slaughtered substitutionary victims, the sacred space of the temple, the holy altar, and the priests chosen by God to offer these sacrifices – all point us to Jesus. And while we can focus on Jesus the temple, or Jesus the Lamb – today we meditate on Jesus our High Priest.
Priests in the Old Testament did not choose their callings. Rather they were called. There was a kind of determinism at work. Whereas a man might have had some choice to become a farmer, fisherman, cobbler, or merchant, the priests had to be of the tribe of Levi, descendants of Aaron. They had to be men. They served a specific term according to age. They were assigned rotations of service. And the high priesthood was inherited. The high priest at any given time was there not by his own personal choice, but by the hidden will of God.
By the time of the first century, the temple had long been destroyed and rebuilt. The northern tribes had been conquered. Israel had been reduced to occupied Judea. But the tribe of Levi and the Aaronic priesthood did continue. However, the high priesthood lost this hereditary character, becoming a matter of political appointment, often chosen to be toadies of the Romans.
Jesus is both the restoration and the end of the high priesthood. He is no one’s toady. He is the pinnacle of the priesthood: of the “order of Melchizedek,” rather than being a Levite. His Father was not merely a human high priest, but rather God Himself. Jesus did not take the office of High Priest by choice, conquest, or politics. Rather He was “appointed by Him who said to Him, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You.’” So “Christ did not exalt Himself to be made a high priest.” Rather, He lowered Himself for this calling, “being born in the likeness of man,” and “found in human form.” He “made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant.” He became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7-8).
Our Lord did not become High Priest by glorifying Himself, but rather by humbling Himself. For He is not a politician, not a master of ceremonies, not a religious box-checker. Rather He is the true High Priest and the true High Victim, the God who is a man, the offering and the one who offers. He has come to intercede to the Father for us, “with loud cries and tears.” For our Priest is “perfect” and He is “the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, being designated by God a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek.”
On this day in which we remember “the night when He was betrayed,” when our Priest presided over that first Eucharist, let us rejoice in God’s will, that we have a great High Priest whose flesh is offered to us, that we can eat and drink His body and blood unto our atonement because Jesus was chosen by God to “offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” – namely Himself. Let us worship our Priest even as we receive His sacrificial flesh and blood. Let us praise God for His priestly service on the cross and at the altar.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.