The Lord Jesus Christ is a Man, as real as any human is on earth; He is the Son of God, totally divine; but He is also the Son of man, totally human.
He has many names; one of them is “Melchizedek.” Do you know Melchizedek?
The name sounds strange to us; but we need to get acquainted with him.
We cannot say that he was Christ Himself, but for sure, he was a type of Christ who is our heavenly High Priest.
The truth about him is not lost in the complexities of theological acumen; Melchizedek was the great High Priest for the world, more than for Israel only. That’s where you and I come into the picture: we are what the Bible calls spiritual Gentiles, and we need a priest who is greater than the priests of mere Israel were.
Melchizedek was the Gentile sinner’s link with God, the assurance to lost people everywhere that God cares about them, those of us who stand on the outside in the dark watching the party go on in the lighted house, where there is feasting and merriment and we wish we could be inside. Melchizedek is our high priest—ordained outside the Israelite nation.
His name means “king of Jerusalem” as it was before David ever entered the city; Melchizedek was “king of Salem, that is, king of peace” (Heb. 7:2).
Representing Christ, he is our High Priest who never has to “slumber or sleep”(Psalm 121:3, 4).
If you wake up in the wee hours of the night, you can pray to Him; He is there.
If you are laden with the heavy burden of guilt for sin, He is on duty as your High Priest with His forgiveness for your sin. He has taken your sin upon Himself; He was “made to be sin for us, who knew no sin”—and it was our sin that killed Him (see 2 Cor. 5:21).
He has done everything to save us; is there nothing we are to do? There is something for us to do: not a list of good works that we do to earn salvation, no; we are to believe what He has done to save us, and the supporting text is John 3:16; but what does it mean to “believe”?
It means to let our heart appreciate what He has done, appreciate the cost of our salvation, appreciate the length and breadth and depth and height of that love (agape) that led Him to His cross to die for us (Eph. 3:17-19). It’s our poor shriveled up worldly hearts being stretched outsize to contemplate, think about—well, the right word is, appreciate the love (agape) that led Him to die our second death, to go to hell, to surrender Himself for eternity for us.
Yes, there is something appropriate for us to do: “behold,” look, look, and look, at “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world”).
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