This is the second article in a special three-part Advent series on how Jesus is our prophet, priest, and king.
We don’t get far into the Bible before we shake hands with the first priest in human history: Adam. Before you grab your Bible and scour Genesis 1-3 to locate the title “priest” applied to Adam, let me save you some time: it’s not there.
What is there? Something significant: two of the chief verbs that describe the work of the later priesthood in Israel. In Hebrew, these are avad (עבד) and shamar (שׁמר). God placed Adam into the garden to avad it and shamar it (Gen. 2:15). Avad is to work, serve, or worship. Shamar is to guard, keep, or protect.
Adam the priest was to work (avad) in Eden and to protect (shamar) this sacred space.
In that way, later Israelite priests followed in Adam’s footsteps. They worked in and protected the sacred garden of the tabernacle and temple. Those two Hebrew verbs, avad and shamar, frequently describe the duties of these priests and Levites (e.g., Num. 3:7–8, 10, 28, 32, 38; 18:3-7;1 Chron. 23:32).
In fact, the sanctuary was decorated with a rich variety of animal, angelic, and floral iconography to visually communicate that the tabernacle and temple were divine gardens where God met with his people. To visit the sanctuary of Israel was to revisit the replacement Garden of Eden, where God “walked” among his people once more.
The Priest-King in Salem
In addition to Adam, the first man expressly called a priest is also in Genesis. He is not only a priest but also king in the city of Salem, an earlier name for Jerusalem. His name? Melchizedek. In Genesis 14, this priest-king met Abram on his way home from a victorious battle, brought out bread and wine to the patriarch, pronounced a blessing upon him, and received a tithe from Abram (Gen. 14:18-20).
Now things are getting very interesting.
Adam was the first priest. He was also, as one who bore the image and likeness of God on earth, the king of creation. Adam was thus the first priest-king, ruling and serving in Eden. Melchizedek is explicitly called a priest-king, ruling and serving in Jerusalem—the city that was later to become the place of the temple of God, the replacement Eden.
Therefore, by the time we get to Genesis 14, we have some heavy hints of what God has up his sleeve for when the Messiah would come.
As is always the case in the Bible, however, there’s more!
The Psalm of Psalms
Moving past Genesis in your Bible, keep flipping the pages until you arrive at Psalm 110. This psalm is the most-quoted chapter of the Old Testament in the New Testament, a fact which alone tells you to sit up and pay attention.
In a mere seven verses, David describes the relation of the Father to the Son, the kingship of the Messiah, his victory over evil, the establishment of the kingdom of God, and – as if all that were not enough – the priesthood of Christ. He sings a whole Trinitarian and Christological theology in about 70 Hebrew words. In many ways, Psalm 110 is the psalm of Psalms.
Note especially verse 1, “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’” and verse 4, “The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’” The opening verse establishes the Lord Messiah as King, and verse 4 highlights his office as Priest.
Priest and King. Hmm, now that sounds familiar!
Combining Genesis 1-2, Genesis 14, and Psalm 110, we see that the priest-king Adam and the priest-king Melchizedek were signposts for the Priest-King Messiah. In their black-and-white lives, we behold what will come, in full color, in Jesus.
Adam, Melchizedek, Jesus
Through the lens of Genesis and Psalms, we can view what Jesus was up to in his ministry in a new and fresh way.
Jesus is God become Adam, that is, the Son of the Father making our nature his own. Thus Paul calls Jesus the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45). The image-Creator also becomes the image-Restorer by assuming the image into himself.
Jesus is not only everything Adam was (human), but he was also everything Adam was not (perfect) and everything Adam could never be (human and divine). Therefore, Christ enriched us more than Adam impoverished us.
Because Jesus is God in flesh and blood, he is like a walking, talking Eden; he is a Holy of Holies with feet; everywhere Jesus moves and stands is sacred ground. His “sanctuary” is now a lakeshore, now a boat, now the Mount of Olives, wherever he happens to be. Wherever this new and better Adam goes, he is the Priest-King.
If you are a guilty human, then Christ the priestly sacrifice is for you.
As a priest, he is working, serving, worshiping (avad). He is guarding, keeping, protecting (shamar). He removes the uncleanness of disease and death. Remember all those times he went off by himself to pray? He was interceding for his people and praying to his Father “with loud cries and tears” (Heb. 5:7). Ultimately, having shed his own blood for us in the sacrifice of crucifixion, he entered the heavenly Holy of Holies in fulfillment of the Day of Atonement.
As the regal, Adamic head of a restored humanity, Jesus is for all people, Jews and Gentiles alike. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). If you are a human sinner, then Christ the royal forgiver is for you. And as a priest, not of the order of Aaron the Israelite but of the order of Melchizedek the Gentile, Jesus is the universal priest, whose sacrifice excludes no one. If you are a guilty human, then Christ the priestly sacrifice is for you.
No Greater Comfort
Paul tells us that Jesus, our priest, who is at the right hand of the Father, “is interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34). What’s more, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (8:26). The Son himself intercedes for us with a sacrifice too merciful for words. The Father himself so loved us that he gave his Son to die and rise for us, and sent his Spirit to make his home within us.
We on earth are the subject of divine conversation in heaven, objects of divine mercy, recipients of divine life. There is no greater comfort than that.
