Bible Commentaries

The Priest and His Consecration

Romans 4:15 :—"Where no law 1 John 3:4 :—"Sin is the transgression of the law." But the Apostle Paul has just said, "Where no law Romans 3:20 :—"By the law is the knowledge of sin." The most distinctively illustrative statement upon the matter is made by the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:7—this expresses the whole thought:—"I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." So then the law created sin in its legal and spiritual sense. Until the law is revealed to a man he does not know precisely what he is doing in the judgment of God. He must learn what life is; he must have revelations addressed to him upon morality, even though he be prepared to resent the notion of revelation upon transcendental spiritual realities.

Mark how the history accumulates, how grandly it masses itself into unity and significance. The moment when sin was enlarged and defined and made matter of law, a new agency was needed. Up to this time there has been no priest, as that term is historically understood. There was a marvellous Figure, half-God, half- Exodus 30:19.

But we thought Aaron and his sons were ministers? So they were; but ministers are not exempt from the great law of regeneration and purification.—The man must never be lost in the officer.—Aaron was to be treated as a sinner, and not as a priest only. Aaron could assume no personal superiority over his fellow rebels. He had a function to discharge, an official policy to pursue; but these did not take away his sin: his feet had also gone in the evil way, and his feet must be washed in the appointed laver.—This is a law of universal application to ministers teachers, office-bearers, and leaders of men.—All mere snobbery, and self-assertion, and self-idolatry must be rebuked and condemned, and utterly driven out of the Church.—No man has any right in the Church except as he has washed in the true laver and become qualified by purity to stand in the inner place.—Wealth, considered merely as such, must be driven away; all social claim, prestige, influence, and the like, must be put down;—they have no right to be in the Church, unless they too have been washed in the appointed laver. Then they may come in, and wealth will be cleansed of its idolatry, and social influence will be humbled into heavenly modesty, and the great man shall be as the small man, and all shall be equal in the presence of God.