The great High Priest of our profession is set down on the right of the Majesty in the heavens. There He remains throughout the fixed, but unknown, period of His Church's sojourn upon earth. But where the Priest ministers, the people worship. The earthly people saw the tabernacle in which was manifested the presence of Jehovah. Their eyes beheld the sacrificial ordinances; they were personally present in the courts of Jehovah until the high priest, who represented them and offered their oblations in the holy place, came forth again to bless them in Jehovah's name.
The Christian too is a worshiper of God; but faith brings him in spirit to the shrine of living and Eternal Truth. Instead of descending by a visible token to abide with men, God now raises His children to the place of His abode. He has, indeed, descended first to bring them hither, and by the Spirit He inhabits, even here below, the Church of His redemption (Eph. 2:20-22); but it is by that Spirit also, that the true children now have access through their Mediator to the Father. The true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The hour which the Son of God announced to be at hand when Jerusalem should be no longer the resort of God's worshipers (John 4:21-23) has now arrived.
The Apostle of our profession has pitched in heaven another and an abiding tabernacle – a tabernacle, rather than a temple, because it is during the wilderness experience of the Church that our Lord acts for "them according to the Aaronic type of intercessional ministry. In that tabernacle He fulfils for us, Godward. the faithful and perfect ministry of holy things, and thither, consequently by the Spirit which is given them, are God's true worshipers invited to repair, Practical effects flow from, this transfer of worship from earth to heaven. Let the Christian note carefully and keep in lasting remembrance, the principle involved in this doctrine of our Lord's priesthood. It involves an. essential contrast between the former, or Jewish, worship and the. Christian-the latter being a discernment, by faith, "of things invisible, and is now the a lone condition of true, worship.
Believers in .Christ Jesus can have no earthly sanctuary, because He whose presence makes the sanctuary is bodily now in heaven. That believers are in another sense a temple or sanctuary of God, is a truth not to be confounded with the apostle's doctrine in this epistle. To:attribute therefore a special sanctity to any earthly place, is to dishonor that true tabernacle wherein alone now shines the glory of God.
Moreover, to attach to Christian ministry a sacerdotal or mediatorial character and value, is to disallow the exclusive glory of the appointed Son of God. To present ourselves 'now as worshipers of God by the performance of a ritual of human institution, and in reliance upon the efficacy of external acts, is to grieve the Holy Spirit who is given to God's children as witness of that better hope by which they now, by faith, draw nigh to Him. .
All the requirements of God's true holiness are met approvingly by His anointed Son. All the necessities of those who are, by faith, the people of God, are effectually undertaken by that same High Priest, as the unfailing minister of grace and mercy. Any assumption now, therefore, by men, of priestly place or title :upon earth (other than that in which all Christians are priests), is at bold-variance with the truth of God. To assimilate' the order of Christian worship to the ancient Jewish model, betrays an entire ignorance or forgetfulness of the-leading doctrines of this epistle. A Christian priesthood as a distinct class amongst God's people upon earth, is a vain and presumptuous attempt to reestablish .what God has-set .aside.. It is a bold device of man–a-counterfeit of truth.
In its essence it is a nonentity, for the revelation of the Son of God in heavenly and eternal priesthood has dissolved the shadow which God once did sanction. It is a most haughty sin, for it exalts itself against the peculiar glory of the Son of God. It is a delusion suggested by the father of lies, who seeks thereby to despoil the souls of men of saving knowledge, while their conscience is beguiled by mere names and ceremonies into unsuspecting sleep.
-From Pridham's "Notes in Hebrews."