Bible Commentaries

THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK

The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’

Psalms 110:4

Set apart from before all worlds for His priestly work, Christ in due time occupied His office. Consider Him in His wonderful exercise of its functions, which are threefold: to sacrifice, to intercede, to bless.

I. What a sacrifice was that when the sacrificer and the victim met in one and the same Person!—His amazing endurance cast into the scales of Divine justice an equivalent, a more than equivalent, for the punishment of every sin of every sinner of every generation. That one vast sacrifice out-weighed it all.

II. But great as was the sacrifice, the Apostle St. Paul leads us to the thought that the intercession was greater still: ‘For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life,’ etc.; that is, by His intercession which He lives to make.

III. Christ in His priestly office is appointed to bless.—Our better Melchizedek is gone in, in His human form, ‘into the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man’; a little space He tarries for His Church’s sake within the veil; and presently we shall behold Him coming forth in His perfect beauty: and standing on the clouds of heaven, at the portals of glory, He will pronounce benediction on his Church.

—Rev. Jas. Vaughan.

Illustrations

(1) ‘The Psalmist, still addressing Messiah, declares the unchangeable purpose of Jehovah, confirmed by an oath, that the Priesthood of Christ should be eternal after the order of Melchizedek; that is, that He should be both Priest and King. Christ is a Priest and King, after the likeness of one who in remote antiquity was a King and Priest of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. And in the exercise of that office the Father has vouchsafed to promise that He will hear and accept Him in our behalf.’

(2) ‘The sixteenth psalm is addressed to Jesus as Risen, the twenty-fourth as King of Glory, the 110th as at God’s Right Hand.’