Sure Anchor

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 6: 19, 20

 

There was a time when people relied upon a human High Priest to go for us before God and to offer up our repentance and requests for forgiveness. Although these men were well chosen and were generally reliable, they were human, and they were far from perfect themselves. Additionally, they were just like the rest of us in that they too were in need of repentance for their sins and the forgiveness of that sinfulness that only God could give. But things have changed, and we no longer have a need for these human priests to go to God for us. Jesus turned that entire system upside down, or perhaps more accurately, He set it all right again.

 

God created this world and us people to be in a direct and very easily obtained regular, even daily relationship with Him. He desires to be able to walk with us and to talk with us about all of the aspects of life and of living in a manner that is as easy and direct as is a conversation with my closest friend. The distance and the formality of the Jewish temple order was the result of a form of separation of humanity from God that came about due to our sinful pulling away from Him. Yet God did not leave things like that. He sent Jesus into our world, and in His sinless perfection Christ broke through and tore down the curtain of separation that had been constructed. Christ brings us into direct contact with God and into complete communication and total communion with our Lord. This was not a temporary fix, either, for things will never go back to the way that they were in those days that came between our rebellion and Jesus’ coming.

 

In Christ, we can be confident of our place and our standing before God. He does go before us into the presence of the Most High, and Christ speaks in defense of our new status as redeemed citizens of the kingdom of God. Through the work of Christ, we are granted a certain place, that sure anchor for the soul, within God’s favor wherein we are included in His purpose and plan for the redemption of this world. We are saved into this secure status through the work of Christ alone, and we are granted confident access to the presence of God in all aspects of our lives by the mediation of Jesus for us. In addition, Jesus, our eternal High Priest, has sent His Spirit to dwell with and within us in order to provide that regular, routine, and on-going conversational communication with God that was the Father’s desire and intent from the beginning of time.

 

The Way

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 6: 19, 20

 

Why is there any distance between God and people? Did one of us get tired or bored with the relationship and decide to leave, or was there some sort of mutual blame for the breaking up of the relationship? If we choose to believe what the Bible says on this subject, it is clear that all of the blame for what is amiss in humanity’s connection to Creator comes about as a result of people’s willful desire to hold the upper hand and to plot our path through life exactly as we want to go and with our own sense of pleasure and security as our primary guide. We walked away and sought out the divorce, but God answered our foolish desire for absolute independence with His promise of unending love, total grace, and willingness to pay any price to grant us a way back into the relationship.

 

For a time God provided for the order in our world through the granting of His law and vested the maintenance of it with a chosen group of people who were to both follow that law and teach its principles to the rest of the world. God knew that this approach was nothing more than temporary and also that it was invested with the futility of human endeavor. We would not be able to resist the urge to take control of the law, and the chosen servants of the Lord could not restrain themselves from seeking after personal gain and power. So, from the beginning, God had a better way for the relationship between Himself and humanity to be restored.

 

Jesus is that answer, and His sacrifice is the way that the brokenness of this world is made whole and that we can enter into the holy presence of God without fear or regret. That veil of separation that was literally present in the temple in Jerusalem and that existed in the reality of all people’s lives was permanently torn and rendered useless by the sacrifice of self that Jesus entered into on the cross. We no longer require that people go before us to prepare the way to God’s presence. Christ has done that and now He serves as the only priest that is necessary for anyone to stand before God and to enter into the fullness of relationship with our Creator.