Building on the Foundation

  Most of us are probably aware that Jesus Christ is our High Priest, something which the Book of Hebrews calls Him at least 11 times. We’re also probably aware that we, God’s people, are spiritual priests in training under Jesus Christ. Our destiny, should we be blessed to be in the First Resurrection, is to “be priests of God and of Christ” (Rev. 20:6). We “are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5). But most of us have probably never considered how Jesus Christ became High Priest, or what it meant for Him to be appointed as such. Most churches today teach nothing about the Messiah’s appointment as our High Priest. The reason why will become apparent by the end of this article. Nevertheless, God’s Word does tell us that Jesus Christ had to be appointed as our High Priest, and it tells us when, how, and what that meant for us. This wasn’t something that just happened ; He didn’t ju...

In the midst of revising my post on authority in the church (after a lot of feedback and more study), I realized that the main change to that post would be a great standalone article as well. There seems to be a lot of ideas about how churches should function, who should run them, what can be done inside the official meetings of those churches, etc, but one huge question remains that defines all those other things.  What is the “Church?”  I think we often think of a church as something we go to, and actually, that’s not terribly far from the truth, but in a different way than it’s often thought of. A church isn’t the building, a church isn’t even an organization, and a church isn’t exactly the people either. All of the mistaken ideas of what a church is come from a poor translation of the words used for church in the New Testament. In fact, the idea of a church, to hear many speak of it, seems to have sprung into existence out of nothing immediately upon the events of Acts 2....