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Needgod.net released a video listing 10 reasons not to convert to Catholicism. Joe focuses in on #6, The Catholic Priesthood, and shows that it is indeed the biblical priesthood instituted by Christ.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and many Protestants believe that the Catholic priesthood is unbiblical, that it’s not something that is authentic to Christianity. And this was recently raised by Ryan of needgod.net as one of his 10 reasons not to convert to the Catholic Church. Now, I might at another point in time address the other nine reasons, but I wanted to focus particularly on this one. It’s his reason number six. So I’m going to give you Ryan’s argument in its entirety and then break down the particular points that I think he’s making show where we agree, where we disagree, and why he’s clearly wrong from a biblical perspective. So let’s start with Ryan’s argument so you can hear it in his words rather than in mine.
CLIP:
The Old Testament had priests who acted on behalf of the people before God, offering sacrifices to make atonement. But with the atoning work of Jesus, he became our great high priest. And then when the curtain of the temper was torn in two from top to bottom, God was showing that through Christ, we now have direct access to him. Because of Jesus, no human priest is needed to mediate between us and God. Yet the Catholic church reintroduces a mediating priesthood. When somebody commits what Rome calls a mortal sin, forgiveness is not by faith in Christ, a sinner must go to a priest, confess their sins to him, and perform an act of penance to get absolution. You see what Christ finished on the cross. The Roman system resets up. The veil was torn in two by Christ, but the Catholic priesthood quietly stitches it back together.
Joe:
Okay. So you’ve heard his argument. Let’s unpack it piece by piece. Beginning with some of the areas that we agree. For instance, both sides agree Jesus is our one mediator. The difference is what that means.
CLIP:
Because of Jesus, no human priest is needed to mediate between us and God.
Joe:
As I said, Ryan is right about that. In one Timothy chapter two, we’re told there’s one God and there’s one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Now, the logical question we should be asking is, what does that mean? What is a mediator biblically speaking? Because we don’t want to just impose our own ideas. We want to find out what the Bible has to say. And in the Bible, we see the priest Eli telling his sons in one Samuel chapter two, “If a man sends against a man, God will mediate for him. But if a man sends against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” So this might lead us to one of two conclusions. We might say, “Okay, therefore mediation is the same as intercession.” Or we might say, “Well, he switches. He switches from talking about mediation to talking about intercession, so maybe they’re distinct.” A mediator is one who brings about some kind of harmony, but as you might imagine, that can mean a bunch of different things.
So what does it mean in the particular context of one Timothy chapter two? Is it saying we can’t have intercessors? Of course not. First Himothy two begins with St. Paul telling us to make intercession for everybody. Now, if that’s not possible because the only intercessor is Jesus, then clearly he wouldn’t be telling us to do that. So what does he mean when he says that the one mediator is Jesus Christ then? Well, he tells us that Jesus is one mediator because he gives himself as a ransom for all. In other words, Jesus dies on the cross for us. That’s the unique mediation. So think about it like this. There are ways of bringing people into harmony with God. You can tell them something that changes their mind and gets them to change their life and so on, or you can die on the cross for them for the salvation of the world.
You and I don’t have the power to do that second one. The question becomes, are there any other forms of mediation besides being the ransom for all that are still available to us? In other words, are there other ways we can bring people in harmony with God, not to replace the cross, but to bring people to the cross? And the New Testament is very clear on the answer and the answer is yes. So in James five, we’re told that if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. There’s one way in which only Jesus is the savior of the world. There’s another way in which we can say truly that this person saved another person by bringing them back from the error of their ways.
Both ways are biblically accurate. It just depends in what sense are you talking about someone getting saved. If you preach the gospel and they convert, you’ve saved them biblically, but Jesus has also saved them biblically. We just mean different things when we use those two expressions. Two Corinthians chapter five is very clear about this when it talks about what St. Paul calls the ministry of reconciliation. And this is obviously very relevant for the example that Ryan raises, the forgiveness of sins. St. Paul says, all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself. So notice that the first reconciliation is from Christ. There’s one sentence in which only Christ can reconcile us to God, but then he says, “And gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” So there’s another sense in which human beings, those commissioned by God can go out with this ministry of reconciliation.
It’s not either or. Yes, Christ is the one who uniquely reconciles us to God. Yes, he also sends people out with the ministry of reconciliation. These things are both true. In Paul’s words, that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. He then puts it not in terms of the ministry of reconciliation, but in terms of being ambassadors for Christ. It means the same thing. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ. Be reconciled to God. So who does the reconciling? In one sense, Jesus. And in other sense, his ministers to whom he’s entrusted the ministry of reconciliation. And a third sense, the sinner who chooses to be reconciled to God. All of those are true. They just mean different aspects of this reconciliation process.
So now with that in mind, consider Ryan’s critique of Catholic priests exercise in the ministry of reconciliation.
CLIP:
Yet the Catholic church reintroduces a mediating priesthood. When somebody commits what Rome calls a mortal sin, forgiveness is not by faith in Christ, a sinner must go to a priest, confess their sins to him and perform an act of penance to get absolution.
Joe:
There’s several problems with Ryan’s claims. The first is that he’s misrepresenting what the Catholic church actually teaches. So for instance, he says, “Forgiveness is not by faith in Christ and the Catholic system.” That’s blatantly false. You might disagree with the Catholic view, but at least honestly say what the Catholic view is. And the catechism of the Catholic church is quite clear that for you to receive the sacrament of penance, the penitent, the person going to confession, is required first to have repentance. This is paragraph 1491 of the Catechism, actually says it multiple times. And then 1492 says that repentance also called contrition must be inspired by motives that arise from faith. So it’s just not honest. It’s not accurate to say forgiveness is not by faith in Christ in the Catholic system. In the Catholic system, literally everyone who has ever validly received absolution and confession, literally everyone who has validly received the sacrament of penance, reconciliation, confession, has done so by faith in Christ.
Without exception, it is a must. So don’t claim something that is explicitly what we reject as our teaching. It would be like if I said, “Oh, the problem with Ryan is he doesn’t believe in the three persons of the Trinity.” Yes, he does. It’d be dishonest to accuse him on those grounds. So accusing Catholics on the grounds that we don’t believe forgiveness is by faith in Christ and confession is just not true. So what about the actual Catholic? Once you get the falsehoods Ryan sharing out of the way, he is right to say that when we commit mortal sins, we are told to go to confession and to confess our sins to other people. Well, is that biblical? Absolutely it is. It’s not actually true, by the way, that you have to perform the act of penance to get absolution. If you see 1491, you’ll notice you just have the intention to make the act of penance, but that’s not here nor there.That’s an easier mistake.
Whereas the not by faith in Christ is just a flagrant falsehood. But let’s talk about the actual biblical foundation. In one John five, we see there’s a distinction between mortal and non-mortal sin. This is later called venial sin. In James chapter five, we’re told to confess our sins to one another and to pray for one another that we might be healed. And then we’re told the prayer of a righteous man has great power in his effects. So notice, we are confessing our sins that we might be healed because we believe in the power of prayer. Now, so far, it doesn’t say anything about it having to be a priest. And in that sense, it doesn’t. You can go and take your sins before someone else and you can ask him to pray for you to bring about spiritual healing. All of that is completely compatible with the Catholic system.
All of that is completely compatible with Christ’s finished work of redemption on the cross. There’s nothing wrong with believing both that Christ did everything he needed to do on the cross for my sin, although he still rose from the dead. So it’s not actually completed in that sense, neither here nor there. And also believing that when I sin, I must confess my sin to somebody else, because that’s also biblical. James 5:16 is right there in the Bible. You might interpret away that verse, but it’s right there. And then we’re told in one John one: nine, “If we confess our sins, he, God, is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Now that’s significant because it shows that current Christians might still have sins that need confessing and might still have areas where we need to be cleansed from all unrighteousness.
Now I’ve talked about this before, but for instance, two Corinthians seven, where St. Paul talks about us needing to be completely purified, Christians are told of an ongoing need of forgiveness for sins. The cross does not eliminate my ongoing need to be forgiven for my sins. The cross makes possible my ongoing need to be forgiven for my sins and the fact that they can actually be forgiven. Christians pray this every day in the Lord’s prayer. We pray that we will be forgiven of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And Jesus in Matthew six goes on to say, “If we don’t do that, we won’t be forgiven.” So Ryan’s schema where sin is only something in the past because of the work of Christ on the cross is directly contrary to scripture. So our sins need to be confessed so they can be forgiven.
That’s biblical and part of that includes confessing them to one another. That’s also biblical.
Why a priest though? Because to the clergy, not to everybody, but to the 12, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit upon them in John 20 and tells them, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they’re forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. So put these pieces together and I think a very clear picture emerges that the priests are living out this ministry of reconciliation, which is very clearly biblical and that this includes the ability to forgive sins. You might disagree with that, but it shouldn’t be on the grounds that it’s not in the Bible because it clearly is. Let’s go to another point where we actually have a good deal of agreement. Jesus is our great high priest. So here’s how Ryan puts it.
CLIP:
The Old Testament had priests who acted on behalf of the people before God, offering sacrifices to make atonement, but with the atoning work of Jesus, he became our great high priest.
Joe:
So it’s true. Jesus does become our great high priest and Hebrews five talks about, although Christ was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, which this is significant, Ryan, because he’s denied the need for obedience for salvation. He’s a source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God, a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. We’re going to find out later why that matters. And it’s after the order of Melchizedek and what that has to do with the Eucharist. But for now, I want you to notice that the fact that Jesus is a high priest doesn’t mean there aren’t other priests. In fact, the term high priest suggests that there are other priests. So for instance, in Nehemiah three mentions the high priest who rises up with his brethren and the priests or two Kings 23 mentions the high priest and what it calls the priest of the second order.
It’s like if you say the lead singer, the implication there isn’t that there are no other singers. The implication there is that there are and that one is the leader. So when calling Christ our high priest, it’s pointing to the fact that there are in fact other priests. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which Christ isn’t just our high priest. We would actually go further and say, in a certain sense is as if Christ is the only priest because the only true priesthood is the Christian priesthood, the priesthood of Jesus Christ. That’s not a rebuttal of the Catholic view. That is explicitly the Catholic view. The Catechism paragraph 15:45 says, “The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for all, yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the church.” That’s going to get back to the Melchizedek nature of the priesthood of Christ.
We’re going to return to that theme. The same is true of the one priesthood of Christ. It is made present through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness of Christ priesthood. And then St. Thomas Aquinas is quoted, “Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers.” Again, notice how biblical this idea is. Christ is the one who makes reconciliation, yet he sends out ambassadors ministers of reconciliation. Not to be another bridge to God, but to be people to lead others to the bridge that is Christ. That’s the idea that all these other priests are just the ministers sharing in the priesthood of the one true priest, the high priest, Jesus Christ. It’s not an either or. It’s not Christ can do his thing over here, but I’m going to do some totally other thing over here. Just as when we talk about someone being good, in the fullest sense, only God is good.
But you can nevertheless say someone is a good person and scripture even uses that kind of language, as long as you understand it to be a sharing and the one goodness of God. Similarly, any true priesthood, whether we’re talking about the priest of the Catholic church or whether we’re talking about the way all the baptized share in the priesthood of Christ, this is only true as a sharing in the one true priesthood, which is out of Jesus. So let’s turn to that because I think this is a third area where we actually have a substantial amount of agreement. We, the baptized, all faithful Christians are a royal priesthood. This is biblical, but it’s biblical in a way that many Protestants have misunderstood, I think, the meaning of it. In one Peter chapter two, Peter says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Aha, you might say, “Well, look, I guess the issue isn’t that there’s just one priest.
I guess the issue is we are all priests, and so we don’t need a priesthood. We don’t need some subset of Christians calling themselves Catholic clergy and declaring themselves to be bishops and priests.” Well, here’s the first problem with that. From a biblical literacy perspective, this is not some break between the old covenant and the new covenant. Peter is quoting almost verbatim from Exodus 19 and which God says to Israel, “Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” So those are the words that were spoken to Israel about being a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. And then St. Peter says, almost the exact same thing in one Peter two, verse nine, to the new Israel, the church.
So the question should be, do these words deny the existence of a distinct priesthood within the people of God? Or to put it another way, did Israel have a priesthood? They did. The fact that all the people are priestly in one sense doesn’t mean there might be some second sense in which only the Iranic priesthood shares in the priesthood of Israel. It doesn’t mean there’s not a special sense in which only the Melchizedek priests share in the priesthood of Christ. In fact, there’s a notorious example in Numbers chapter 16. In number 16, one of the Levites, a man named Cora, uses this argument that, “Hey, we’re all a holy people. ” In other words, he’s looking to this promise made in Exodus 19 as an explanation that they don’t need a special priesthood. This is almost exactly the charge that Martin Luther and many Protestants made against the Catholic priesthood.
The Holy people is holy. Cora says, “You have gone too far for all the congregation are holy, every one of them and the Lord is among them. Why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” That sounds like a very familiar charge. How does it work out in number 16? Well, when Cora and the others go to offer sacrifice, they’re committing an act of schism. They’re breaking from the congregation, from the people of God. And so the earth beneath them breaks. There’s a schism in the earth. The ground under them splits as under, the earth swallows them up and they die. Moses had pointed to this as evidence that if they go down alive into shael like this, that you shall know that these men have despised the Lord. So that’s what happens. Their death is being buried alive in the earth because they’re schismatics and because in doing this, even though Cora and his followers would say this is a sign of their holiness as part of this congregation, they were in fact despising the Lord by rejecting the order that he had established.
Now, I think that’s something that we should take very seriously today. I think the fact that Exodus 19 was misinterpreted in this deadly schismatic way and that one Peter sounds very similar to Exodus 19 and is in being interpreted in this similarly schismatic way, he’s dangerous and something we should watch out for. But I’m aware. Someone might say, “Well, no, this is different in the New Covenant. That’s no longer true. So even though Exodus 19 and one Peter two looks similar, we no longer have to be worried about Korah’s rebellion. We may be doing something that looks a lot like what Korah is doing, but don’t worry. It’s not wrong when we do it. ” Now, Ryan hasn’t said that. I’m not trying to put those words in his mouth. I’m trying to anticipate how someone might hear about Korah and not immediately repent and return to the Catholic church.
They would say, “It’s not sinful this time.” To that, I would point to the epistle of Jude. In Jude one, it’s only one chapter, verse three, Jude explains that he’s writing to appeal to contend for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. And he’s explaining why. He says, “For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our Lord into licensiousness and deny our only master in Lord Jesus Christ.” So notice two things. Number one, there is this new threat of people perverting the grace of God into life sensiousness saying, “You can do whatever you want, you don’t have to obey.” And number two, that one of the responses is to contend to the old time faith, the faith delivered once for all. That you should watch out for someone who reinterprets grace into licensiousness.
You should watch out for someone with a new interpretation of what scripture allegedly says that you should instead contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. That if someone’s coming along with a new teaching, that’s a red flag. Even if they say they got it from their plain reading of scripture, if that’s not the plain reading delivered once for all to the saints, don’t listen to it. That’s the first thing I’d say there. That’s verses three to four. But let’s talk about these revilers of Christ, those who pervert the grace of God into licensiousness. We’re told that they defile the flesh, reject authority and revile the glorious ones. So there’s a hatred for the saints and a rejection of authority. This is going to be an important dimension because a few verses later in verse 11, he says, “Woe to them and he accuses them of perishing in Cora’s rebellion.” In other words, there will be groups that come along and their teaching on grace is going to be very similar to what Korah did and this will be rebellion, breaking away from the church and woe to them because they’re abandoning the true faith That’s the warning.
They are rejecting Christianity. This is what Jude is teaching. This isn’t what I’m telling you. Jude is telling you this. And then the question is, “Well, who do we find doing this? ” And I would point to an actual interaction I had with Ryan and which I asked him if he could point to anyone in the centuries, I think I said the thousand years after the time of the apostles, who he would recognize as saved, and he had to admit he could not name a single person he would recognize as a brother Christian who he saw as saved. Okay. Was there someone in the first thousand years after the apostles who was saved you could point to and you say, “I think that person is going to heaven?”
CLIP:
Well, I know that there was because God will-
Joe:
Right. I know that they … Obviously there must be- But it does seem like kind of a strike against your position if you can’t find anyone, right?
CLIP:
Well, there are … I would say because it wasn’t this major position in during different time periods, I would say that those who held a different position would have been suppressed.
Joe:
So Ryan says there must be somebody out there, but he admits for a thousand years he can’t find anybody. And just suggest maybe this was all a big coverup. They were suppressed and persecuted. But of course, even those who were opponents of the church, we often find the writings written to respond to them. So this is what I mean where it appears he is engaging in Cora’s rebellion, using these passages to say, “We don’t need the priests in the exact same way Cora did, using this same kind of authority and reasoning that Cora uses, we’re all holy.” And we can all go directly to God. This is Cora’s argument, and he doesn’t seem aware that biblically this is a damned position, that this is not praised in numbers. This is not praised in Jude one. These are things that we should watch out for. This understanding is false.
Ryan is right. We are all priests in Christ. We can go directly to God. We agree on that, but he’s wrong to take that true principle that we saw in Exodus 19, that we saw in one Peter two, and take that to mean that therefore there’s no clergy. That was a mistake in the old covenant. It’s a mistake in the new covenant, and it’s a dangerous one in both cases.
Let’s talk about the temple veil, because this is another thing that Ryan raises, and it’s true. Christ does in fact … Well, the temple veil is torn when Christ dies on the cross. Ryan doesn’t seem to understand what that means. I want to remind you of what he argues and then look at what the Bible actually says.
CLIP:
And then when the curtain of the temper was torn in two from top to bottom, God was showing that through Christ, we now have direct access to him.
Joe:
Now, he is going to use that to say …
CLIP:
The veil was torn in two by Christ, but the Catholic priesthood quietly stitches it back together.
Joe:
Now, the idea that people didn’t have direct access to God in the Old Testament is contradicted by both the old and the New Testament. I mean, for instance, in Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable beginning with a Pharisee and a tax collector, both going into the temple to pray. People prayed directly to God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Nevertheless, it is true that something new happens in the kind of access we have to God, and it has to do with the body of Christ. This is going to involve what the true temple is in Christianity. And I’m going to get to all of that in a moment because while you could offer prayer directly to God, there was a kind of sacrificial worship that required the priesthood and required the temple. We’re going to get to all of that, but let’s acknowledge an area of agreement.
The tearing of the temple veil does signify a change, but it’s not. We can now pray directly to God. We already could. Biblically, Hebrews 10 talks about it like this. He says, “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain or veil, that is through his flesh.” Let’s pause there. So the tearing of the temple veil, what does that signify according to Hebrews 10? It signifies the piercing of the sight of Christ or the piercing of the flesh of Christ at least that we would see in this, the piercing of the side of Christ specifically, the blood and water flowing out. This is going to represent baptism in the Eucharist. This is the means in which we can commune directly with Christ. But notice here, the tearing of the curtain or the tearing of the temple veil is the tearing of the flesh of Christ.
Now, we’re going to talk more about all of that when we talk about the temple in Christianity, but the temple is a place of divine presence and divine sacrifice. The temple in Jerusalem was merely a prefigurement of the true temple, which is the body of Jesus. And the body of Jesus is the place of ultimate divine presence because he is God, and also the ultimate divine sacrifice because this is the one sacrifice that brings about atonement. So for that reason, when the true temple is mounted upon the cross, the body of Christ and is torn, the temple veil is torn. That’s the connection Hebrews 10 actually makes. So when you hear someone explaining the tearing of the temple veil and they ignore the way scripture actually explains the turn of the temple veil, watch out for that. But nevertheless, it is true. There is access given because of that.
Now, if you miss that whole temple theology about why that’s happening, then you’ve missed something really big. But it is nevertheless true that we now have both a new temple and a new high priest, the great priest over the house of God. Notice the house of God is what? It’s the temple. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. Our heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water that is baptized. So the baptized are now incorporated into Christ and we now have this access to the body of Christ. Now, Catholics would say, “Amen to all of that. ” But it’s because of this frequent evangelical misunderstanding where they think the tearing of the temple veil means people can pray directly to God. Again, they already could. That’s not what changes here. What changes is we have a new access to the body of Christ.
We can go directly into the Holy of Holies in communion, but we’ll talk about that again more in a moment because Hebrews goes on to say, “We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.” This is Hebrews 13 now, meaning that in this system, Hebrews is not saying this gets rid of any kind of temple. It’s not saying this gets rid of any kind of altar because it explicitly speaks of Christians still having an altar. Jesus, as we’re going to see, also talks about this, but to make sense of all of this, we need to now talk squarely about priestly sacrifice. So here I want to highlight one more area of partial agreement. And then area is this, what is it that a priest actually does? What makes someone a priest or what makes an action priestly?
CLIP:
The Old Testament had priests who acted on behalf of the people before God, offering sacrifices to make atonement, but with the atoning work of Jesus, he became our great high priest.
Joe:
So that’s right. A priest is one who offers sacrifice, and that’s going to be a very important … Just definitionally, what a priest is is one who offers sacrifice. Everything else a priest does might be helpful in many ways, but the heart of what a priest is definitionally, whether we’re talking about a pagan priest, a Jewish priest, a Christian priest, it is one who offers sacrifice. And Jesus is a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. What What makes Melchizedek interesting? Well, many things. One of them is that he is the first to offer bread and wine as sacrifice in the Bible. He is the king of Salem. He has no origins. King of Salem meaning king of peace. He doesn’t have a genealogy. So he appears to be this timeless king of peace who then comes and Abraham ties to him recognizing him as a superior and he offers bread and wine.
Does that look like Jesus at the last supper? It does. And it seems to be prefiguring the fact that Jesus is going to take bread and wine and turn them into his body and blood, which brings us squarely to the last two themes we have to hit, the true temple and the truth sacrifice. So the true temple. I’ve alluded to this several times, but while Pharisees and tax collectors and everyone in between knew, you could go and pray directly to God anywhere you were. Jesus in Matthew six talks about Pharisees praying on street corners and in synagogues. You could pray wherever. What you couldn’t do is make the true act of worship. In John four, the Samaritan woman on Mount Gerazim, which was the Holy Mountain for the Samaritans, confronts Jesus with the question. She says, “Our father’s worshiped on this mountain. And you say that in Jerusalem is the place for men not to worship.” What does she mean there?
Well, she means very clearly the temple. And Jesus responds in this fascinating way. He tells her that the time is coming where neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. And then he goes on to say that true worshipers will instead offer worship and spirit and truth to the Father, for such the Father seeks to worship him. So we should ask a few questions. Number one, okay, what is worship? This thing that’s somehow distinct from prayer? And number two, what is happening in Jerusalem and Spirit and in truth? Or to put it in another way. If in the old days you had to go to the temple, what does it mean to worship in spirit and truth? Does it mean we don’t need temples anymore or does it mean that there’s a new kind of temple?
The answer to that, those two questions. Number one is that worship involves a kind of sacrificial offering. As Everett Ferguson has pointed out, sacrifice is the heart of worship in the ancient world. But one of the things that kept the idea of worship distinct from the idea of prayer is that you’re not just asking for prayer, you’re making a sacrifice to God. You’re not just asking him for something, you’re giving him something. You’re making an offering or a sacrifice. As for wear, there is still a temple in Christianity. It’s no longer in Jerusalem. It’s no longer in a particular building. That’s not to deny the importance of buildings. It’s to say something has changed. But I want you to be very, very careful here because many times people hear spirit and truth and they hear that as disembodied and that is a gross misunderstanding of the Bible.
We’ll see why. In John two, Jesus says, “Destroy his template in three days, I’ll raise it up.” And he’s speaking of the temple of his body. So the true temple in Christianity still exists. It’s just the body of Jesus. Remember, the temple is a place of divine presence and divine sacrifice. Jesus is that in his fullness. But you and I have been incorporated into the body of Christ by our baptism. If you’re a Christian, you’re part of the body of Christ, which means you’re part of the temple of Christ, and your body has now become a temple. In Romans 12, we’re told what spiritual worship means, and it’s bodily worship. It’s not disembodied worship. It’s the opposite. Paul says, “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” So notice, just as in the old days, you would never try to offer worship apart from the temple.
Now, you don’t offer worship apart from the body. Apart from your own body, apart from the body of Christ the church, apart from Jesus’ body. Why? Well, as St. Paul says in one Corinthians six, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, that you have become a place of divine indwelling, which is why bodily worship is pleasing to God.” So watch out for anyone who has a disembodied view of worship because it’s an unChristian view of worship. The church itself matters partly for this reason. The church is a temple. It’s a household of God. It’s the church of the living God. First Timothy 3:15. So I mention all of this to say we still have a place of worship, the body, the body of Christ, the church, our individual bodies, and worship is still sacrifice.
Romans 12, we’re offering sacrifices. This is our spiritual worship. So what does our sacrifice look like when it’s not just our individual bodies, but when we come together as the household of God? So that’s going to lead us to the final theme here, the true sacrifice, which is going to explain why the priesthood exists.
There’s a few places very clearly in the Old Testament where God foretells that he’s going to create not just a new covenant, but a new priesthood capable of offering a new kind of sacrifice. One of them is at the end of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 66, “God promises that he’s coming, he’s going to come into the world to gather all nations and tongue, and they shall come and see my glory, and I will set a sign among them.” This is, I think we can clearly say as Christians, the prophecy of Christ coming and gathering the nations together. And so then it goes on to talk about people coming from all these various places, and then we’re told among these faithful Gentiles, verse 21, “Some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites,” says the Lord. Now, this is, I think, really important because at the heart of the attacks on the priesthood made by people like Ryan and people like the late John MacArthur and many others, there’s this idea that you can say everybody’s a priest.
We’re a nation of priests. Or you can say that we only have one priest, Jesus, or you can say nobody’s a priest, but you’re not allowed to say some people are priests and not others. Some Christians are priests, other Christians aren’t priests. That’s the one position that you can’t make. John MacArthur has a kind of notorious clip in which he makes all of these apparently contradictory claims. We don’t need any
CLIP:
Priests. Revelation one, you are a kingdom of priests. We only need one high priest, and it’s not the Pope. We have one mediator, the man Christ Jesus. The veil is torn. We go right into the holy of holies. You are a priest and I am a priest
Joe:
Unto God. So I want you to just hear all of these arguments he’s raised against a Catholic priesthood. Number one, we don’t need any priests. So there are zero priests. Number two, you’re a kingdom of priests. Oh, we’re all priests. Number three, we need one high priest and it’s not the Pope, it’s Jesus. So nobody’s a priest, everybody’s a priest, only one person’s a priest. Those are all claims that he makes. And he doesn’t even bother trying to harmonize how they could all be true. It’s just this idea, you are a priest and I’m a priest under God, therefore we don’t need any other priest.This is just kora reheated. And so notice, if Isaiah 66 had said, “And none of them I will take for priests and Levites that would work within this system.” If Isaiah 66 has said, “And one of them I will take for priests and Levites.” Okay, then maybe it’s a prophecy of Christ.
Or if it had said, “All of them I will take as priests in Levites,” you could harmonize that with the Protestant system. But in fact, Isaiah 66:21 says, “Some of them, the one position that people like John MacArthur and Ryan mean to deny that some Christians are priests in ways other Christians are not, but that’s the actual biblical position.” Now you might say, “Well, that’s just one passage. I want to turn to another one, Malachi chapter one. Here, God is rebuking the priests in the old covenant and he accuses them of despising his name.” Again, despising the proper priesthood is a way of dishonoring and despising God, even if you claim you’re serving him for it and he accuses even his priests of this in the old covenant, they say, “How have we despised thy name?” And he answers, “By offering polluted food upon my altar.” They say, “How have we polluted it?
” And he answers by thinking that the Lord’s table may be despised. What I want you to know right now is that the offering of polluted food on the altar is the same as despising the Lord’s table. So the Lord’s table is the altar in the temple. This is going to be very important because there’s a lot about the Lord’s table in the New Testament and many Christians reading it haven’t read enough of the Old Testament to realize that means the altar, but the altar in the Lord’s table are the same place. We’re going to get back to that.
And then God goes on in verse eight to talk about the offering of blind animals and sacrifice. So notice the offering of food is explicitly sacrificial. What is happening to the Lord’s table? The offering of sacrifice. So we want you to keep these themes in mind, the altar, the Lord’s table, these are the place of sacrifice, but these are being done in an unworthy way. And so in Malachi 1:11, God says, “From the rise of the Son to its setting, my name is great among the nations.” Again, the Gentiles and in every place incense is offered to my name in a pure offering that is a sacrifice for my name is great among the nation that says the Lord of hosts. So there is some sense on which Gentiles are going to come in and offer true and pleasing sacrifice to God at the table of the Lord.
What is that in the new covenant? Well, it’s very explicitly the Eucharist. And this is a fulfillment of Genesis 14, which talks about the bread and wine being the hallmarks of Melchizedek. When Christ is going to fulfill this, he’s going to transform it in ways that I think we can see pretty clearly. There’s one more point that is important to make here because many people hearing this will say, “Isn’t Christ sacrificed once for all on the cross?” And so even though I’ve covered this before in other videos, I have to at least say a word about this for anyone who may be struggling or confused at this point.
The way you participated in a sacrifice in the ancient world was primarily through eating the sacrifice. If you’re a Jewish kid in its Passover, you don’t own the lamb, you don’t personally slit the lamb’s throat, you don’t prepare the food in any way. So how are you sharing in the sacrifice? You’re sharing in the sacrifice by eating it. And in Exodus 12, as the Passover is described, all of the different steps from the killing of the lamb to the spirit of the blood, eating of the lamb, all of those are described. And you’re told when your children say to you, “What do you mean by this service, like the whole right, you shall say it is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover.” So notice, many of us today imagine a sacrifice just as a moment of killing the animal, but sacrifice biblically and in antiquity is much bigger than that.
It’s the offering of the animals, the killing of the animal. It’s things like the smearing of the blood on the doorpost. It’s also the eating of the animal. This is very important because that’s how you partook of a sacrifice biblically. So I’m going to keep all those themes together. The way you share in a sacrifice is by eating it and somehow there’s going to be sacrifices in the new covenant which are going to be offered at an altar, the Lord’s table and are going to be pleasing to God. And where does that land us? It lands us in one Corinthians chapter 10, where St. Paul says, “The cup of blessing which we bless is not a participation in the blood of Christ, the bread or loaf, which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” So he’s saying, “We somehow share in the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, in the Lord’s supper.” Now, how could that be?
He’s going to give a couple examples to show how this could be. He gives one example from Israel. “Consider the practice of Israel are not those who eat the sacrifices, partners, and the altar. Maybe you were inclined not to believe me about eating the sacrifice being the way you partook. St. Paul just tells you that outright versus Corinthians 10:18, but then he gives a more radical example of pagans and he talks about how what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and onto God. Don’t become partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Hold on a second. Where have we heard that language about the table of the Lord? Well, Malachi one. Paul is explicitly talking about the Eucharist and comparing it to Jewish sacrifice and pagan sacrifice and invoking this language from Malachi one of the altar being the table of the Lord.
And the table of the Lord is where you offer food, which is an eaten in a way that you partake of the altar. And who does the offering? A priest. So the one who offers the Eucharist is a priest offering a true sacrifice. Now, lest you think that I’m like the first to connect these dots. This is how Christians understood Christian worship for 2000 years. The dedicate, which is probably from the first century, talks about this. Every Lord’s day, that is every Sunday. Gather yourselves together and break bread and give Thanksgiving the word there is Eucharist after having confessed your transgressions. Notice the need to confess that your sacrifice may be pure.
And then we’re told if you’ve got somebody who’ve got a beef with, you need to be reconciled that your sacrifice may not be profaned. For this is at which was spoken by the Lord and then Malachi one is quoted directly in every place and time offer to me a pure sacrifice for I’m a great king, says the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations. So this idea that there is a sacrifice of the mass and a priestly class to offer that sacrifice, this isn’t some late invention. We see Christians talking about this literally before we get to the year 100. And this also makes sense of other parts of the New Testament. For instance, in Matthew chapter five, we’re told if you’re offering your gift at the altar and then remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there and go make before the altar and go.
First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. So notice there’s an altar and there are offerings being made. If your church has altar calls and not an altar, you’re not following the biblical model. The biblical model includes an altar at the table of the Lord at which the sacrifice of the Eucharist is offered and the one offering sacrifice is a priest. Some of the Gentiles have been named as priests and Levites as the Lord. So that’s the basic model. And I could go on from there. It’s not just the dedicate. We find this all over early Christian writings where they don’t just talk about the sacrifice of the Eucharist. They talk about it explicitly in the context of passages like Malachi one and Irreneus in 180 even connects it as well with the offer of spiritual worship in John chapter four.
Over and over and over again, we find these kind of passages. So all that’s to say is the priesthood and the offering of a sacrificial Eucharist is clearly biblical. You can’t say because there’s a high priest there are no other priests. You can’t say because we’re all a priestly people, there are no other priests because those two passages would seemingly disprove the Old Testament priesthood. If those were your arguments, well, there can’t be priests if there’s a high priest. You’d have to say there were no priests besides the high priest and the old covenant, and that’s false. If you said, “If you’re a priestly people, you can’t have a cast of priests.” Well, that’s false. So all that’s to say, Ryan’s arguments against a priesthood are simply not true. Frequently, they’re based on just fundamentally not understanding or representing correctly what Catholics actually believe, for instance, his claim that we think you can be forgiven of sins without faith in Christ, but they’re frequently just based on not understanding what scripture has to say as he promotes what looks a lot like the new version of Cora’s rebellion.
Now, this theme of prayer and worship is really important. Many of you may be listening to this saying, “I didn’t even realize that I’ve been missing the heart of sacrificial worship and what I’ve been trying to offer to God.” And so for that, I would recommend this much longer video I did, unpacking many of those important themes and hopefully changing the way you approach God. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.