So first of all, God started with “Melchizedek, priest of God Most High” (Genesis 14:18). Then a gap of 500 years or so to the time when God designated Aaron and his descendants from the tribe of Levi as priests (Exodus 28:1) and the rest of the Levite tribe as their assistants (Numbers 3:6-7). The Melchizedek priesthood then took over from the Levitical priesthood when Jesus “became a high priest in the order of Melchizedek” in Hebrews 6:20, and since “Jesus lives forever, his priesthood is permanent” (7:24).  

But what did God have all these priests for? There’s a clue in Hebrews 7:18-19 in the author’s explanation of why the Levitical priesthood ended when Jesus arrived; it’s because in the Melchizedek priesthood of Jesus “a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.”

So the Melchizedek priesthood offers something “better” than the Levitical priesthood, but the underlying purpose of both the Levitical and Melchizedek priesthoods is exactly the same, to “draw us near to God.” This is what God has priests for.  

Which takes us back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were near to God, but God banished them from the Garden for disobeying him (Genesis 3:11 and 23). Which could’ve been the end of it, no more being near to God at all. But when “Abel offered choice cuts of meat to God from the firstborn animals of his flock (4:4), God very much accepted Abel for what he’d done.” Through animal sacrifice, then, God had provided a way of maintaining a connection with him.

Following the Flood, Noah also sacrificed animals, to which God again responded favourably, that “Never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done – despite the ingrained human leaning to evil” (8:20). Sacrifices again had kept God and humanity connected, and would do so in future too, when God formally set up the Levitical sacrificial system in Old Testament Israel as “an aroma pleasing to him” (Numbers 28:2), so that, even though the Israelites continually fell far short of trusting and obeying him, they could still interact with him and draw near to him. 

And the priests were the ones God put in place to make all this possible. But here we are now with no such system in place, so “How do we draw near to God today?”….(next blog) 

Up to Genesis 14:18, there’s no mention of priests in Scripture. But then, out of the blue, appears Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High.” But why, when God hadn’t sent a priest to Abram up to this point? 

Abram knew Melchizedek, though, and deeply respected him too, because he “gave Melchizedek a tenth of everything” he’d brought back from his battle to rescue his nephew Lot (20).

But why such a large gift to Melchizedek? Because, as Melchizedek himself explained in verse 20, it was “God Most High who’d delivered Abram’s enemies into his hand.” Melchizedek, therefore, was on the scene as God’s representative, speaking on behalf of God in passing on God’s blessing to Abram himself (19), and then, in blessing God, relaying thanks to God for giving Abram such a resounding victory (20).

But why was it necessary to do all this through a priest? There’s a clue in why God gave us a Melchizedek priest too. The Message translation of Hebrews 6:18-20 phrases it this way: “We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.”

These verses tell us why we need a Melchizedek priest. He’s there in the very presence of God on our behalf, as the one designated by God to keep our lifeline to him secure so we never give up, or give in, when things happening to us in this world are overwhelming. He lives to anchor our hope in God and his promises (19).

Which is what Melchizedek did for Abram. God had made amazing promises to Abram in Genesis 12:2-3 that Abram had placed his hope in too. Then troubles hit in chapters 12 to 14 — famine, nearly losing his wife to a Pharaoh, quarrels in the family, and then a violent invasion. But that’s when the human priest of God’s choosing turns up – first of all, to meet the exhausted Abram’s physical need, and then to anchor his mind on God (14:19-20). The timing was exquisite, because it gave Abram the courage to fend off a major temptation coming up in verses 21 to 24. But this is “What God has priests for”….(next blog)

In Romans 8:34, “Jesus died, was raised to life, and is now at the right hand of God interceding for us.” He “always lives to intercede for us” too (Hebrews 7:25), so it’s an intercessory role both now and forever. 

But what is Jesus’ intercessory role and why is it necessary? There’s a clue in Hebrews 5:10, that Jesus was “designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek” – and that’s “forever” too (7:17). 

The purpose of that high priestly office is hinted at in the first appearance of “Melchizedek king of Salem and priest of God Most High” in Genesis 14:18. Melchizedek arrives on the scene just after Abram’s sensational victory over four kings to rescue his nephew Lot (11-17). And that’s when Melchizedek intercedes in the life of the exhausted Abram, by personally serving him with bread and wine, and saying to him, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High who handed your enemies over to you” (19-20).

Three things of note here: that God already had a priest on hand for Abram long before he began the priesthood in Israel. Secondly, Melchizedek came to serve Abram in his hour of need; and thirdly, he “blessed Abram” (19), pronouncing a blessing from God on Abram himself, and then a blessing on God for pulling off Abram’s victory.

Which ties in with Jesus and his intercessory role as a Melchizedek priest. That first of all, God has a priest on hand for us in our day too (Hebrews 4:14). Secondly, Jesus came in our hour of need as well, that “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6), and he continues to serve us in our hour of need (Hebrews 4:14-16). And thirdly, Jesus was also sent by God to bless – with blessings from God (Luke 4:18-19), and blessings to God as well, as in Matthew 11:25-26, when Jesus prays, “O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, I thank you (bless you) for hiding these things from the clever and intelligent and for showing them to mere children. Yes, I thank you, Father, that this was your will” – for pulling off such an impossible plan on our behalf. 

So Melchizedek and Jesus intercede in the same ways, as humble servants on hand to help in stressful situations, but also with full authority to pass on blessings from God to us, and blessings to God for what he’s done and doing on our behalf. But why do all this through a priest? To the second point in paragraph two, then: “Why is intercession by a priest necessary?”….(next blog) 

God “knows the mind of the Spirit” in us because, Romans 8:27, “the Spirit is interceding for us in accordance with God’s will” – God’s will being “the righteous requirements of the law being fully met in us” (4).  

So, if we find ourselves wanting to obey God’s law as fully as possible – or as Paul put it in Romans 7:22, “delighting in God’s law in my inner being” – then we, like God, also know that’s the Spirit in us. Just wanting to obey God is proof that the Spirit is interceding for us, because naturally our minds are “hostile to God” and “cannot submit to God’s law” (8:7). The fact, then, that we have any interest in God at all is a miracle. But that’s exactly what God gave us the Spirit for – to “work miracles” in us (Galatians 3:5) 

But it’s not only our interest in God coming out of nowhere that’s a miracle, it’s finding ourselves not giving up on God too, taking into account what John wrote in 1 John 5:19, that we’re living in a world that’s “under the control of the evil one.” And the devil is very good at what he does, because he’s made “the whole world a prisoner of sin” (Galatians 3:22). He knows our weaknesses and exploits them – just as he did in the Garden of Eden. We’re also up against Ephesians 6:16, the “fiery darts of the wicked one” inflaming all sorts of rotten thoughts and attitudes in us, including rotten thoughts about God.

So it’s no surprise if we’re tempted to give up on God. To find ourselves instead, therefore, being lifted out of the depths of despair at our pathetic inadequacy and knowing we’re still loved by God and every failing of ours is forgiven, is a miracle too, because our natural impulse when we give in to temptation is to hate ourselves for being so weak. 

But despair and hating ourselves aren’t “in accordance with God’s will.” His will for us is “the law of the Spirit of life,” Romans 8:2. It’s God’s will that in the Spirit we have another heartbeat pumping away Inside us, that never stops circulating God’s mercy, love, joy, trust and peace through our inner being – so that we find ourselves experiencing the greatest miracle of all, living our eternal life now (just as Jesus promised in John 3:36, 4:14, 5:24, 6:47, 6:54, 10:28, and 1 John 5:13).

But amazingly, it’s not just the Spirit interceding for us, we have “The intercessory role of Jesus” too….(next blog)

Romans 8:28 follows immediately after “the Spirit himself interceding for us with groans that words cannot express” in verse 26, and “the Spirit interceding for us in accordance with God’s will” in verse 27, because verse 28 shows us what the result of these two intercessions is. 

The result is something that could only come from Spirit help too, because it certainly isn’t anything we could come up with naturally or by human will and wisdom. Imagine knowing with absolute certainty “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” But that’s exactly what Paul is saying the Spirit’s intercession on our behalf is for: it’s to bring us to the point of total trust in God, no matter what happens to us, good, bad or ugly. 

Thanks to the Spirit, then, what would normally be a source of anxiety, confusion, anger, estrangement and even bitterness at the senselessness of what’s happening to us and to others – it no longer is for us. Not that we have no emotions at all, or no fury at injustice; it’s that we have no fear, no consuming desire for revenge or vindication, just simple trust in the God we love that he works everything to our benefit. 

To the Spirit there’s nothing better he could want for us than that, to the point of groaning in ways we can’t even imagine that we’ll grasp it too. That’s because when Jesus asked his Father to give us the Spirit, what we “received was the Spirit of sonship” (15), whose great desire and skill is “testifying with our spirit that we are God’s children” (16). He desperately wants to get it through to the deepest part of our being that in God we really do have an “Abba, Father” (15) who never fails us. 

Tough to believe when suffering for no fault of our own, or being unfairly accused of a wrong we’ve never done, or having something horrible happen to us or to others that makes no sense. But in the fog of our despair the Spirit’s groaning on our behalf for us to realize that “in all these things we are more that conquerors” (37), because we are the children of a loving God. The Spirit is on constant watch in us to help us grasp that “Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (39).

But it’s not only trust in our loving God that the Spirit is interceding on our behalf for; he’s also interceding for us “In accordance with God’s will”….(next blog)

In John 14:17, Jesus said we would “know the Spirit, for he lives with you and will be in you.” Paul then shows us how we can know the Spirit is living in us, because, Romans 8:26, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” 

And one weakness in particular: “not knowing how and what to pray” (26). Which isn’t a criticism; instead, it ties in with “the creation being subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it” (20). God limited us on purpose. He made us “weak in our natural selves” (6:19), which can be seriously frustrating, as Paul himself found out. Try as hard as he could to “do what is good, he couldn’t carry it out” (7:18). It was so frustrating. But it made him realize his weakness and his need for help, and that’s when he discovered that help beyond himself was available (24-25).

And the same in our frustration with prayer. On the one hand, we’re so fortunate in having the Spirit living in us, because our minds are “set on what the Spirit desires” (8:5). Search our hearts – as God does – and what he finds in us is “the mind of the Spirit” (8:27).

On the other hand, we’re still frustratingly stuck in weak bodies. And until our bodies are “redeemed” (23) and freed from their “bondage to decay” (21), we’ll be doing a lot of “groaning inwardly” (23) at our weakness, and not knowing how and what to pray when things happen to us and to others that we simply cannot see the sense in. It’s so frustrating. But from Paul’s example maybe that’s good, because is there help beyond us available too?

Yes there is, according to Paul: it’s in the Spirit’s prayers for us. And very personal prayers too, since the Spirit is in us, and therefore knows every frustration we’ve got. So when we run out of words to express our frustrations the Spirit “intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (26). He loves and cares for us that much. And that’s what the Father sees the Spirit doing in and for us. Which is exactly what he gave the Spirit to us for, to dive into the depths of our frustrations and feeling them with us, and then “interceding for us in accordance with God’s will” (27), so that we rise up from the depths fully confident again in the Father’s will and purpose. 

No wonder the Father answers the Spirit’s prayers for us. And we get to know the Spirit’s doing this for us too. How? By “Romans 8:28”….(next blog)

According to Paul in Romans 8:27, “he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit.” So when John speaks of us “knowing that Jesus lives in us by the Spirit he gave us” in 1 John 3:24, the reason we know it is the mind of the Spirit at work in us. 

And we need the Spirit’s mind at work in us, because “no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,” 1 Corinthians 2:9. Our own human mind, left to itself, hasn’t got the capacity to grasp what “God destined for our glory before time began” (7) – “but,” verse 10, “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” 

Which is why Paul didn’t depend on his own “wise and persuasive words” (4) to “clue you in to God’s secret plan” (1). Rather, Paul wanted everything he taught to be “a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (4-5). And again in verse 13, “When we speak, it’s not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” – because, verse 11, “no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”

In other words, to know the thoughts of God – or to understand God’s mind – it takes a spiritual mind like his. And the Spirit is that mind. Not only does the Spirit have the ability to “search into everything about God,” verse 10, he can “delve into God’s deepest secrets” too. 

That’s the amazing mind of the Spirit. There’s nothing about God and his plan for us humans that he doesn’t know, including God’s deepest secret of all, which is “what God has freely given us” (12) through “Jesus Christ and his death on the cross” (2). God’s entire plan revolves around that, but it’s only through the Spirit mind at work in our minds that we understand it (12). And that’s our proof we have the Spirit. As John writes in 1 John 4:2, “You’ll know it’s God’s Spirit, because you’ll have no trouble accepting that Jesus came to us as a human being” – and know why too – to be “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and for everyone else’s sins too” (2:2). 

So when God searches our hearts he knows it’s the mind of the Spirit at work in us too. Not only because we understand the part Jesus played in his plan, but also because of “The Spirit’s prayers for us”….(next blog)

According to 1 John 3:24, the Spirit has been given to us so that “we know Jesus lives in us.” But what does “Jesus living in us” mean, and why is it important?

The Greek word for “lives” in that verse is meno (may-no), meaning to “abide, dwell, reside in,” so Jesus living in us means he now resides and is always present in us, just as God was always present for the Israelites in the temple of old. And we’ve been given the Spirit to grasp that. 

But why is it important for us to grasp? Because according to Hebrews 2, it’s why Jesus lives and resides in us. In verse 10, he lives to fulfill his Father’s plan to “bring many sons to glory,” which the Father made possible by “making Jesus, the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” With that completed, Jesus is now “making us holy” like himself so that we can become members “of the same family” as he is, and he can then “call us brothers” (11). 

But why did Jesus go through all that, just so we could be his brothers? Because, verse 12, he could then “declare his Father’s name to (us) his brothers.” And again in verse 12, that “in the presence of his brothers he could sing his Father’s praises.” In other words, Jesus wants to reside with, in, and among his brothers to reveal his Father to us – and he said so himself in John 17:6 and 26, that his great wish is to “make his Father known to us.” 

How? Verse 26, by living in us the relationship he had as a human with his Father. His purpose being that we’d come to “know and rely on the love God has for us,” 1 John 4:16 – just as Jesus in his human life relied on his Father’s love for him (John 5:20). “I will put my trust in him,” Hebrews 2:13, is what characterized every moment of Jesus’ life, so that by living that same trust in his brothers, he could then say to his Father, “Here am I, and the children you have given me (who know and rely on your love, Father, just like I did).”

Jesus came as a human to live that life of trust in his Father’s love himself, in preparation for living it in us. Sharing his trust, then, is our proof that he lives in us. And we’ve been given the Holy Spirit so we truly know it. 

Coming to understand that and believe it, therefore, depends very much on “The mind of the Spirit” at work in us….(next blog)

According to 1 John 3:23-24, the Holy Spirit was given to us to provide obvious evidence in our lives that Jesus lives in us and we live in him. Part of that obvious evidence is Jesus “purifying us from all unrighteousness” (1:9) “by the Spirit putting to death the misdeeds of our body” (Romans 8:13). And so effectively is that being done by the Spirit that we’ll “know” it’s happening (1 John 4:13). 

In other words, we’ll sense there’s a switch going on, which in John’s words is a switch from darkness to light (1 John 1:5-7), and – in Jesus’ instructions to Paul – a switch from “the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). Not only, then, is the Spirit “putting to death” whatever had us held in Satan’s grip, he’s also replacing it with what God’s all about. Comparing us to a house, the Spirit’s not only scrubbing and scraping and cleaning out all the engrained muck we accumulated from not knowing God, he’s also filling up every cleaned out room with brand new furnishings. And because of the Spirit we can sense both these things happening, both the scrubbing out and the refurbishing. 

It’s this massive and obvious switch that helps us really know Jesus is living in us. Paul gives us several practical illustrations too, writing about “our old self that was being wrecked by deceitful desires,” Ephesians 4:22, and in its place “being made new in the attitude of our minds, and putting on a new self that’s like God in his nature and character” (23-24). 

And the same again in Colossians 3:9-10, “for you’ve finished with that old self and its rotten habits and put on a new self, which God, its Creator, is constantly renewing in his own image, in order to bring you to a full knowledge of himself.”  

And the switch is so obvious – from being angry, resentful, nasty and dishonest (8-9), to being kind, humble, sensitive, patient and quick to forgive (12-13). And the same in Ephesians 4 – from bearing grudges to being forgiving, and from hateful feelings to being tender-hearted (31-32). Such total and obvious opposites. The Spirit’s taking us on a wild journey – a bold escape from the clutches of the devil into a totally new home filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). 

And the Spirit makes sure we know it too, because what the Spirit wants for us is “Knowing that Jesus lives in us”….(next blog)

In 1 John 3:24, “we know that Jesus lives in us by the Spirit he gave us.” It’s the Spirit’s job, then, to help us know for real that Jesus is living in us – so how does the Spirit go about doing that?

According to Paul in Romans 8:13, it’s “by the Spirit that we put to death the misdeeds of the body” – because, Titus 2:13-14, this is what “Jesus gave his life for, to free us from our messed up lives, to clean us up and become his kind of people, totally committed to doing good.” 

The Spirit, therefore, is like a house keeper, cleaning house, getting rid of the dirt, and doing whatever needs to be done to mature us into Christ’s likeness (Ephesians 4:13). Which fits Jesus’ own analogy in John 14:23, when he told his disciples, if “you obey my teaching” then “My Father will love you, and we’ll come to you and make our home with you.” The author of Hebrews says “we are his house” too (Hebrews 3:6), so the Spirit being the house keeper gives us a practical picture of what he’s been given to do, that in the doing makes Jesus living in us real. 

Imagine ourselves, therefore, being a house where the Father and Jesus wish to reside. To begin with it’s a mess, left that way by the previous owner who filled the house with “gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts” (Ephesians 2:2-3). In every room there’s garbage that needs to be taken out and worthless trash destroyed. All those unhealthy appetites and desires on every shelf to be thrown in the bin. And in all the hidden corners, under the stairs, inside the closets, and all the places where cobwebs have grown on bad habits left unswept, the Spirit misses nothing. He works his way into every nook and cranny, wherever we’ve been “foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures, sucked in by malice and envy, hating and being hated,” Titus 3:3.

God, therefore, has given us a Spirit who is so practical in making Jesus real to us, because we know it when another room gets cleared out. He makes us aware of another layer of grime in us that needs a good scrubbing, or as Titus put it, there’s some obvious “washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” going on (3:5), so that we know for real we’re “being transformed into Jesus’ likeness with ever-increasing glory,” 2 Corinthians 3:18. 

Thanks to the Spirit, then, we’ll know “There’s a switch going on”….(next blog)