Christ as Mediator: Priest

Christ as Priest and Servant of God
Romans 8:34 indicates that Christ intercedes for us at the right hand of God. This statement may very well indicate that already by the time of Paul, some Christians had begun to think of Christ in priestly terms. Certainly the idea that Christ is a sacrifice appears in the earliest writings of the New Testament. Romans 3:25 may very well draw on an early Christian affirmation Paul himself inherited when it says that God put Jesus "forward as a sacrifice of atonement." Romans 8:3 may refer to Jesus' death as a sin offering, and 1 Corinthians 5:7 pictures Christ as a Passover lamb.

We can imagine that it did not take long before Jesus' death on the cross was interpreted in sacrificial and salvific categories. Indeed, it is possible that Jesus anticipated his own death and drew an analogy between it and the Passover lamb. The logion in Mark 10:45 surely indicates what at the very least must have been an early understanding of Jesus' death: "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." This saying may very well presuppose an identification of Jesus with the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, God's servant who "shall make many righteous" (Isa. 53:11).

If some dispute the allusion to Isaiah 53 in Mark, Luke 22:37 actually cites Isaiah 53:12 in relation to Jesus' approaching death. Acts 3:13 and 26 refer to Jesus as a pais, using the same word for servant as Isaiah 53. Further, Philip explicitly interprets Isaiah 53:7-8 for the Ethiopian eunuch in reference to Jesus' death. It is a more than reasonable conclusion that many early Christians also read Isaiah 53:6 in reference to Christ's death: "the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

Therefore, Christ's death served to mediate atonement and reconciliation with God in the manner of a sacrifice. Several Jewish texts are regularly brought into discussion of how the early Christians might have conceptualized the mediating value of Christ's death. Wisdom 2-3 wrestles with the son of God who has died an unjust death at the hands of the ungodly. The souls of such individuals are said to be in the hand of God (3:1), who has accepted them "like a sacrificial burnt offering" (3:6). In 2 Maccabees 7:38, one of seven brothers faces his impending death in hope "through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty that has justly fallen on our whole nation." Then most explicitly, 4 Maccabees 6:28-29, a text roughly contemporary with Paul, narrates a righteous martyr asking God to "let our punishment suffice for them [Israel]. Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs." While we can debate the precise nuances of these passages, they indicate a common understanding among certain Jews that a righteous individual's death might have mediating value of some sort in the relationship between God and mortals.

It is one thing to consider Christ's death as a sacrifice. The book of Hebrews goes one step further and pictures Christ as the consummate high priest offering the only truly effective sacrifice of all time. While Romans 8:34 may allude to Christ as a priest in some way, Hebrews is the only book in the New Testament explicitly to refer to him as such. The concept of Christ as both priest and sacrifice is heavily metaphorical. The literal picture of a high priest offering himself on an altar stretches the imagination and, in any case, does not fit with the imagery of Hebrews.

The other sacrificial imagery in the New Testament does not demand that Christ's death be the end of the sacrificial system (cf. Acts 21:26). Nor does it indicate that Christ's death might in some way atone for the righteous under the old covenant. In this respect, Hebrews presents startling claims with regard to the priestly mediation of Christ. It claims that none of the sacrifices under the old covenant were actually able to take away sins (10:11). Accordingly, none of the witnesses to faith in the old covenant could be made perfect until the sacrifice of Christ (11:13, 40). By contrast, "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified" (10:14). The priestly mediation of Christ is thus universal in scope and time, the only effective means of atonement and reconciliation between God and humanity.

Half of the actual occurrences of the Greek word mesites actually occur in Hebrews (8:6; 9:15; 12:24). The word in each case refers to Christ's role as the mediator of a new covenant. This new covenant, in contrast to the covenant mediated through Moses, bodes better promises (8:6). For Hebrews, this is the promise of true redemption (9:15), of the actual forgiveness of sins. The blood of the new covenant "speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (12:24; cf. 1 Cor. 11:25). Hebrews thus conceptualizes Christ as mediator almost completely in cultic terms.