The Holiest of All By Andrew Murray

180 Cbe holiest of ail
No man taketh the honour unto himself, but when he is
called of God. It is God against whom we have sinned, in
separation from whom we are fallen into the power of death.
It is God we need
;
it is to Him and His love the way must be
opened. It is God alone, who can say what that way is, who is
able to have it
opened up. And this now is what gives the
gospel, and our faith in Christ, its security and sufficiency
that it
is all of God. Christ has been called of God to be High Priest.
The very God who created us, against whom we sinned, gives
His Son as our Redeemer.
So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a High
Priest, but He that spake unto Him, Thou art My Son, this day
I have begotten thee. As He saith also in another place, Thou
art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
Here it
is not merely the fact that Christ was called of God to be High
Priest, but the ground upon which He was chosen, that we must
specially notice. The two passages quoted teach us that it was
as Son of God that He was appointed High Priest. This opens
up to us the true nature and character of the priesthood. It
shows us that the priesthood
is rooted in the :
sonship the work
of the priesthood
is to reveal and communicate the blessed
life of sonship.
As Son, Christ alone was heir of all that God had. All
the life of the Father was in Him. God could have no union
or fellowship with any creature
but through His beloved Son,
or as far as the life and spirit and image of the Son was seen
in it. Therefore no one could be our High Priest but the Son
of God. If our salvation was not to be a merely legal one
external and, I may say, artificial but an entrance anew into
the very life of God, with the restoration of the divine nature we
had lose in paradise,
it was the Son of God alone who could