When we think of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, what comes to our mind immediately is his passion and death without reference to which no other aspect of his priesthood could be understood. The importance of the identification between priest and victim in the case of Jesus , as pointed out above, is evident from the depiction of Jesus as the Lamb of God slain from the beginning of the world. This means that Jesus is a priest by being the victim that is offered to God, which implies his passion and death. During his public ministry, Jesus took pains to explain to the disciples the necessity of his passion and death that could not be grasped , let alone accepted, by them. In this connection Peter was severely reprimanded by Jesus as his thinking was too human in trying to dissuade Jesus from undergoing suffering and death (Mark, 8: 31:33). It was necessary for Jesus to undergo passion and death not only because the prophets had foretold that it was the destiny of the servant of God fixed by God himself , but also and more radically because the real and eternal priest was destined to be the victim as well. A step further, we may say that Jesus is a priest in virtue of being a victim to which status all priesthood is internally ordered by reference to the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Such a priest did not require any offering other than himself for the sacrifice most pleasing to God prefigured in the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham (Genesis, 22:1-18). In the same spirit, Paul exhorts us to offer our own selves as a living sacrifice to God, being a worship offered by mind and heart, and acceptable to Him (Romans, 12: 1:2). This means that a genuine victim, for whatever reason, is also a priest whose ministry could be exercised by a simple act of self-offering to God for whatever intentions we choose and this would be acceptable to God as a real sacrifice.
The inexplicable mystery of predestination and free will has its origin in the priesthood of Jesus Christ that is inseparably connected to his victim-hood as the Lamb of God. It is Paul who brings out clearly the problem of predestination in his Letter to the Romans 8:29-30 and the whole of Chapter 9. The question of free will and our responsibility to work out our salvation are a constant theme of the Bible that a seeming conflict between predestination and free will is seen here. The solution to this apparent dilemma is to be sought in the eternal priesthood of Jesus Christ. Though predestined as victim before the foundations of the world, how did Jesus exercise his free will in offering himself as a sacrifice to the Father? We must follow him in his footsteps so that though predestined to glory or destruction, everyone should exercise his or her priesthood in union with that of Jesus Christ in order to achieve the purpose intended by God before the foundations of the world. As the Good Shepherd, Jesus laid down his life on his own accord for the whole world without being forced by anyone (John, 10:18). Our little sacrifices for others should help us to freely access the predetermined glory to which we have been called.
The value of Jesus' passion and death should be seen not so much in his physical suffering or even in the agony of death as in the complete submission of his will to that of the Father. His passion and death were but a consequence of his strict adherence to the Will of God in everything he said or did in his public ministry to the utter consternation of his enemies. Jesus could not care less for the opinions of those who were blinded by their authority , whether real or imagined, as long as he was on the right track of his mission entrusted by the Father. Besides, Jesus knew that those who were busy with acquiring honor for themselves could not love God nor could they have faith if they were busy with receiving honor from one another instead for caring for the honor that comes from Him Who alone is God (John, 5: 41-44). The fundamental reason for this kind of pathetic attitude arises from a study of the Scriptures that misses the real import of the message contained in them , although the belief that they contain eternal life is true (John, 5: 39-40). The Jewish authorities saw Jesus as a rebel and a threat to their way of practicing religion, entrusted to them by God Himself, and yet Jesus could not but continue his mission of leading people to worship God in spirit and in truth as God Himself was Spirit (John, 4: 23-24). The conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities had to lead to his passion and death and yet he could not compromise on fulfilling the Will of God that actually consumed him. The same thing may be said about his trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate when Jesus could have escaped his terrible end with a little bit of compromise on his attitude to truth and justice. The compromise would have involved the denial of whatever he stood for so far and thereby place his own will to live over against the Father's Will for him to die. This was the great struggle Jesus had undergone in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross just before he died that was but a resumption of the temptations offered by the devil in the desert at the beginning of his public ministry.
The inexplicable mystery of predestination and free will has its origin in the priesthood of Jesus Christ that is inseparably connected to his victim-hood as the Lamb of God. It is Paul who brings out clearly the problem of predestination in his Letter to the Romans 8:29-30 and the whole of Chapter 9. The question of free will and our responsibility to work out our salvation are a constant theme of the Bible that a seeming conflict between predestination and free will is seen here. The solution to this apparent dilemma is to be sought in the eternal priesthood of Jesus Christ. Though predestined as victim before the foundations of the world, how did Jesus exercise his free will in offering himself as a sacrifice to the Father? We must follow him in his footsteps so that though predestined to glory or destruction, everyone should exercise his or her priesthood in union with that of Jesus Christ in order to achieve the purpose intended by God before the foundations of the world. As the Good Shepherd, Jesus laid down his life on his own accord for the whole world without being forced by anyone (John, 10:18). Our little sacrifices for others should help us to freely access the predetermined glory to which we have been called.
The value of Jesus' passion and death should be seen not so much in his physical suffering or even in the agony of death as in the complete submission of his will to that of the Father. His passion and death were but a consequence of his strict adherence to the Will of God in everything he said or did in his public ministry to the utter consternation of his enemies. Jesus could not care less for the opinions of those who were blinded by their authority , whether real or imagined, as long as he was on the right track of his mission entrusted by the Father. Besides, Jesus knew that those who were busy with acquiring honor for themselves could not love God nor could they have faith if they were busy with receiving honor from one another instead for caring for the honor that comes from Him Who alone is God (John, 5: 41-44). The fundamental reason for this kind of pathetic attitude arises from a study of the Scriptures that misses the real import of the message contained in them , although the belief that they contain eternal life is true (John, 5: 39-40). The Jewish authorities saw Jesus as a rebel and a threat to their way of practicing religion, entrusted to them by God Himself, and yet Jesus could not but continue his mission of leading people to worship God in spirit and in truth as God Himself was Spirit (John, 4: 23-24). The conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities had to lead to his passion and death and yet he could not compromise on fulfilling the Will of God that actually consumed him. The same thing may be said about his trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate when Jesus could have escaped his terrible end with a little bit of compromise on his attitude to truth and justice. The compromise would have involved the denial of whatever he stood for so far and thereby place his own will to live over against the Father's Will for him to die. This was the great struggle Jesus had undergone in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross just before he died that was but a resumption of the temptations offered by the devil in the desert at the beginning of his public ministry.
No comments:
Post a Comment