Priesthood and Life

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The Nature of Priesthood

Reading: Heb. 2:17-3:1; 4:14-5:6; 7:26-8:2.

"But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light" (1 Pet. 2:9).

"And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen" (Rev. 1:5-6).

You will recognise that these passages all bear upon one matter, and that is the matter of priesthood. I have it very much on my heart that we should be occupied for this little while with this great matter of priesthood and Life, for those two things go together - priesthood and Life; the one is unto the other.

We are very well aware that the one all-inclusive issue of the ages and of the eternities is that of Life. We can gather everything into that matter, all the purposes of God from eternity to eternity, all the ways of God through the ages, all the interventions of God in history, all the revelation of God in Christ, and all the dealings of God with His own people. All these things (and that is a very vast range and a mighty depth of fulness) are gathered into the one matter of Life, known to us in New Testament language as "eternal life". It has become the one, great, critical issue and question - the most critical matter with which anyone can have to do - this matter of Life: eternal life, divine life.

In the Scriptures throughout, from the beginning to the end, two things are found in pairs - sin and death; righteousness and life. Immediately sin appeared, death ensued, and then, without any announcement or explanation, without any teaching or doctrine on the matter: sacrifice, the shedding of blood, and an altar came in as related to sin and death. Sin had entered, death had followed. "Death by sin; and death passed upon all men" (Rom. 5:12), is the statement. Then, I repeat, no teaching, no explanation, no expounding of a truth, but an act: the immediate introduction of sacrifice in the shedding of blood. And almost as immediately, an altar is before us in connection with sin and death, and these things - sacrifice, shedding of blood, the altar - stand for righteousness and Life over against sin and death.

And then another factor appears. This sacrifice, this shedding of blood, this altar, brings in priesthood quite spontaneously. For whoever makes the sacrifice, sheds the blood, builds the altar, and serves at it is a priest whoever he is, and God was the first priest. In the case of Adam and his wife, there was quite clearly the slaying of some beast to provide them with a covering. And, if the symbolism means anything (and surely it does), then God was the first priest to do the slaying to make provision for the covering. From that time onward, it is taken for granted, and this whole matter grows and grows and grows until we have a very elaborate and fully developed priestly ministry.

What a Priest is

A priest is not appointed to an office; priesthood is not something official. It is not a cult, a class, an order amongst men. A priest is simply one who stands on the ground of righteousness; righteousness by means of an incorruptible life offered to God. And, standing upon that ground of righteousness and an incorruptible life offered to God, the operation and working of death is arrested, nullified and set aside. Death as an active thing is overpowered because the ground of death has been taken from beneath it, which is sin. Incorruptible Life, incorruptibility, has set aside corruption. Righteousness has taken the place of unrighteousness. The fruit of sin, therefore, cannot be borne; and the fruit of righteousness can be borne, and it is Life. And anyone who ministers on the ground of righteousness, anyone who stands on the ground of incorruptible Life and spiritually functions on that ground, is a priest - a priest unto God and a priest for God - so that priesthood and Life always go together.

What in the Old Testament, because it is but a matter of types, of symbols, is a system, an external system, an order, shall we say a cult, an official matter amongst men, always dealing with outward things, in the New Testament is passed over in a spiritual way and stripped of all that which is merely external and formal and official, and is transmitted to the Church through Christ as a spiritual vocation. So that the Church takes the place of Israel. You remember the Lord Jesus said, "The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43). And then Peter, writing to the spiritual Israel said, "you, who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God" - you, a chosen nation, a royal priesthood, the nation which has taken the place of the historic Israel, the earthly Israel, which forfeited its great mission and vocation to be God's minister of Life in the earth. The Church has now been put in the place of Israel to be the nation and the royal priesthood to fulfil this spiritual vocation.

So John, right at the opening of his great apocalypse, bursts out with this doxology - he cannot wait till he sees the saints in glory, he must come out with it at once - "Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood; and He made us... priests unto His God".

Now, with all the wonderful unveiling of truth in this particular connection, both in the Old Testament and in the New, which is something to occupy and ravish our hearts for a lifetime more, the sum of it all is this. As members of Christ's Body, we stand in relation to Him as the great High Priest in heaven as His priests or sons here, to make fruitful and effectual that high priestly work which He is carrying on in the heavenly sense.

Let me put that a little more simply, perhaps in more words. In the Old Testament, you have Aaron and his sons. Aaron fulfils the ministry of the High Priest through his sons. In the New Testament, particularly this great Levitical book of the New Testament, the letter to the Hebrews (for Hebrews is the Leviticus of the New Testament) you have Christ as the High Priest, and then, although there are other titles given to believers, amongst them there is this one - His sons. He calls them 'holy brethren'. He says, "I will declare Thy name unto My brethren", but then He also says, "I and the children whom God hath given Me". But then, though brethren, and as Father and children, there is this added - "bringing many sons to glory". Christ is here in a spiritual sense not only as our elder Brother, but as our spiritual Father, that is, the One through whom we have received Life, to whom we owe our standing in the family.

The Nature of Spiritual Priesthood

Now, it is through us as members of Christ that this great High Priestly work of His, which is going on in heaven, has to be made effectual here. And again, when we ask what is the meaning, the significance, the value, the import of Christ's continual High Priestly work, the answer is: to set Life over against death, to nullify the reign and operation of spiritual death.

In a word, the Church, from God's standpoint, is here on this earth with one all-inclusive purpose, and that is to minister Life on the ground of righteousness, to destroy the operation of death by setting righteousness over against sin and therefore Life over against death. The Church's great conflict, the Church's supreme conflict, the great warfare of every member of Christ, is with spiritual death. And the more spiritual you become, the more in touch with Christ you live, the more you function in a spiritual priestly ministry, the more terrible and awful does spiritual death become in your realization. You will not become sentimental about death if you are a priest. You ask any priest or Levite of the Old Testament what he thought about death, and you will not have him waxing poetical and talking about death as the great friend, the lovely messenger, as the poets do. Oh no, death is the enemy of God and of all God's interests.

The supreme triumph of God in Christ by the Cross was in the overcoming of death, and the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. And when we speak of the last enemy, it is not only the last on the list, it is the consummate enemy, the enemy in which all things, all other enemies, are gathered up. It is with that that you and I have to do and are called to do, and this is the very essence and nature of spiritual priesthood. I simply state the fact and emphasize it for the moment.

You can take up the Word of God and move through that Word and bear this whole thing out. You see the breaking in of death again and again and again because of sin, and then you will see the breaking in of God with blood, with sacrifice, and arresting that work of death and destroying it and bringing Life into its place.

You see how John is led to put this matter. "Unto Him who loveth us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and made us priests...". Washed us and made us priests. Priesthood is the ministry of Life, the ministry of Life from the Lord to others. The priest stands in relation to Life. That is the positive side of priesthood. He is dealing with death all the time, but he stands on the side of Life against death and all the time he is having to counter death everywhere wherever he finds it. We cannot minister Life until we can say, "and washed us from our sins", and even the Lord Jesus, as we have read in the letter to the Hebrews, had to come onto that ground. Yes, tempted in all points like we are, sin apart, nevertheless He was made sin for us. He who knew no sin, was made sin, and in the offering of Himself as a sacrifice, He who was made sin was delivered from that sin and entered upon His great priestly work of ministering Life to believers.

Now, beloved, I want to say this to you. If you rejoice in the first part of the truth, the statement, "unto Him that loveth us and washed us from our sins in His own blood", and I trust everyone is rejoicing in that, that we find our hearts rise in worship and praise to God at the very sound of those words because they mean something to us in an inward way. Oh, they mean everything to us - unto Him that loveth us and washed us from our sins. Can you say that from your heart? Well, if you can, and if you rejoice in that first half of the statement, are you quite sure that you are functioning in the second? For the first is supposed to lead to the second. There is something wrong if we just stand in that part, that half, and do not go on to the other - "and hath made us priests unto His God".

If the word 'priests' gives you some difficulty and you cannot bring your mentality from some picture of what you have been accustomed to thinking to be a priest (oh, the tragedy that 'priest' has been dragged down on to the level which it occupies now!) if you have difficulty in that matter and the word 'priest' carries you into this horrible system of things known amongst men, let me then paraphrase it. "Unto Him that loveth us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us ministers of Life unto His God", God's ministers of Life. That is what it means.

Spiritual Authority

And there is a great spiritual authority about this, spiritual authority. It is not ecclesiastical authority, it is spiritual. Do you remember what the apostle said, that if one shall sin a sin which is not unto death he shall ask Life for him? (1 John 5:16). Here is one standing on the ground of righteousness by faith through the blood of the Lord Jesus, and here is another who is suffering as the result of sin, and this one standing there for him stands in the position of a priest spiritually, and has the authority, the right, to go to the fountain-head of Life and ask Life for this one. "Oh Lord, I ask Thee to give Life for this one!" That is priestly ministry, and who will say that that is not a needed ministry?

There is no ministry needed on this earth today more than the ministry of spiritual Life. Any kind of ministry which does not have that as its result is a failing ministry. If we minister any truth and it does not issue in Life, then we are beating the air. Everything, we said at the beginning, in God's thought, in God's intention, in God's purpose, in God's ways, in God's dealings with us, has this matter of Life, divine Life, eternal Life, bound up with it, and that is the test. Does it mean Life? Then it bears the stamp, the hallmark, of God. If it does not mean that, it is lacking in the one essential. So we are all, from God's standpoint, intended to be priests. And to understand the meaning of that, we are intended to be ministers of Life, divine Life, God's own Life to others who are needing that Life.

Oh, beloved, there is so much bound up with this matter which, I think, if you stay to consider for a little while, will impress you tremendously. You see the great reign of death from the beginning on through the ages, and today the reign of death, spiritual death. Yes, but oh, the working out of that, the terrible activity of that in the physical realm! Multitudes and multitudes now almost daily being hurled into eternity, death sweeping over the earth. Why? Because of unrighteousness, because of sin, and what is the sum of all sin? The setting aside of God's Christ, the minister of Life, who is Himself the Life. And there is no meeting of the situation at all until we come again and minister Christ, minister Christ in terms of Life. Men are not wanting us to preach about Jesus Christ in doctrine. What they are needing is the impact of the living Christ in terms of Life.

You can understand why it was that satan and all the powers of evil set themselves against Israel - because the presence of that nation on this earth in right relationship with God declared effectually, positively, actually, that sin and death do not reign universally in God's world, but that there was present not something that talked doctrine, explained truth, but something which itself was a mighty, living offset to sin and death to counter it. And while Israel was there on the earth in that right relationship with God, there was the evidence, the proof, that sin and death were conquered. Well, Israel was destroyed in its testimony and set aside. The Church has been brought in to take Israel's place on a larger scale, it is true a much larger scale in the heavens and in the earth, for this one object of being here present in God's universe for a testimony, and that is called "the testimony of Jesus". John says, "I was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the... testimony of Jesus", and throughout the book of Revelation that clause and phrase occurs and recurs - the testimony of Jesus.

The Testimony of Jesus

What is the testimony of Jesus? The testimony of Jesus is the testimony of Life triumphant over death. So He opens His Revelation with that: "I am He that liveth; I became dead; and behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and I have the keys (the authority) of death and of Hades".

It is the presentation of the Lord Jesus there, and that is the testimony of Jesus. "I became dead and I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and I have the authority over death and Hades!" That testimony was deposited in the church at its beginning, and how mightily did it uphold that testimony and bear that testimony among the nations! But the church today, speaking of it as a whole, is not functioning in its priestly vocation. It cannot be said to have, in any effectual sense, the testimony of Jesus. The Apostolic age was not closed before that testimony was closed, and so the book of the Revelation opens with the covering of the ground of the Church, and the one thing that is brought by the living Lord, the risen, eternally living Lord, against the Church, was concerning this testimony of Jesus: "You have this and that, you have a lot of things, many things, that are quite good, but, but - you have really lost the testimony! It is not works, it is not patience as such, or endurance, it is not things, but this one central, supreme matter of an impact of Life over death - that is the testimony".

Now, that has to be taken up. Inasmuch as the whole church generally has lost it, that has to be taken up by those who will - "to him that overcomes...". God's hope at an end-time is centred in such, call them what you will. Leave out all designations and titles, but the fact remains that in the midst of His great company He must have those who conform to His first thought to fulfil the ministry of priests, that is, to be ministers of Life. They, as the book of the Revelation makes perfectly clear, will meet the first mighty impact and onslaught of death, but they overcome because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony; all true to the original basis of priesthood. They are meeting the dragon in full force, the power of death, and whether you all understand what I am saying or not, some of you do, you know, some of you the one great business with which those of us who are really standing for God's fullest thought have to contend is the naked assaults of the power of death spiritually continually, and it will be so to the end. But if it is so, that in itself is significant, tremendously significant.

The day when you and I get out of that battle will be the day when we have lost our vocation, lost our priesthood, and lost our testimony in reality. These things must go together, for the testimony is not a testimony of truth, or doctrine, or interpretation of Scripture. The testimony is the registration of Life, the power of His life present which says, "Here, at least, death is not lord! Here, at least, wherever death may be reigning, here death does not reign! Death meets a challenge here and death has to fight for its ground here". That is the testimony. It is something very practical and something very actual, and while we are in that battle we know that our ministry is alright.

What ministry do you want? Do you want to be running about giving addresses everywhere, preaching, doing Christian work? Well, that may be all right, but the real ministry, beloved, is the ministry of priests. And the ministry of priests is the ministration of Life, the setting of this Life in the risen exalted Lord over against the power of spiritual death so that death registers the presence of Life and has to do something about it.

Now, is the presence of spiritual death where you are concerned in your sphere of life, feeling it unnecessary to do anything about you, to take account of you or to say in effect, "Look here, we have got a dangerous person here, if we are not careful, we shall be losing our ground here, we must give them a hot time, try to drive them out, make things impossible for them!" If that is your experience, that is good, that is right, you are priests. But if you as a child of God can just be anywhere and nothing and no one takes any account of you and you do not meet anything, it is time to look into your priesthood to see what is the matter.

You see, after all we are members of Christ's Body. Now, when He was here, His presence did mean something. Evil spirits could not hold their peace, could not keep silent, could not be inactive. They had to do something about it. They gave themselves away. Evilly actuated men and women were dragged into light by His presence without His saying anything. He brought everything into the light and things became active only by His coming into a place. Christ is here; He is as much here on this earth today as ever He was in those days. He is here now in His Body, His spiritual Body, the Church. We are members of His Body, says the apostle, and He has come again in the power of His Spirit to be resident in His Body, in His members. And the presence of Christ in His body must mean today just as much as it meant when He was here alone. And that means that things will begin to take notice, to sit up, to become active, to fight, to oppose, because there is really something dangerous to their kingdom.

Well, I have no doubt that the majority of you know something of this, but what I am wanting to say to you is that it must be like that if there is to be a testimony. Do not go out and try to make yourself a nuisance to everybody and everything and think that unless you are upsetting everybody there is something wrong with you. You can go with the apostle - "If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men" (Rom. 12:18). He knew what he was talking about when he said, "as much as in you lieth". He knew there comes a point where, when you have gone as far as you can, the devil will see to it that you shall not have an easy time with people. No, you need not try and make yourself a nuisance, either to the devil or anyone else, but if you really are in living union with your Lord and standing truly in your spiritual vocation as a priest - you need not take the title - but standing in the value of His risen Life, you will meet it, and the meeting of it will be your certificate. You will be then, by that very antagonism of the powers of evil, certified a true priest unto your God.

But remember, it is Life, always in terms of Life, Life for those who need it, Life against death reigning around, Life as witnessing against the work of him that has the power of death, the devil. You can test everything, everything, by that one thing - Life. Test everything, test your own experiences, test your own registrations, test your own sensations. Are you haunted by fear? Do fears have a large place in your life, in your experience? What is the effect of fear? Death! Where does it come from? God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of love, of a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7). "Fear hath torment, perfect love casteth out fear" (1 John 4:18). Fear is a work of death. Then you should call your fears into question and challenge them. That is what I mean.

Test everything by this matter of Life. All that goes on in you of controversy. What is the outworking of it? Death! Well, why not end the whole thing? There is a ground upon which all controversies are settled. It is the ground of His righteousness by faith.

Well, I am going to stop there. May the Lord teach us what it means to be priests, ministers of Life unto our God.