In this message we will continue to consider the experience and enjoyment of Christ as the One better than Aaron.
Hebrews 7:25 tells us that Christ “is able to save to the uttermost those who come forward to God through Him, since He lives always to intercede for them.” Here the expression to the uttermost means “completely, entirely, perfectly, to the end, and for eternity.” This indicates that Christ as our High Priest is able to save to the fullest extent, that is, to save in every kind of situation and condition.
He is able to save to the uttermost those who come forward to God through Him, since He lives always to intercede for us. Christ as our High Priest undertakes our case by interceding for us. He appears before God on our behalf and prays for us that we may be saved and brought fully into God’s eternal purpose. We should believe that Christ is always interceding for us. By interceding for us, He takes care of us. He can take care of us much better than we could ever take care of ourselves. Most of the time we are foolish in the way that we care for ourselves. Instead of trying to take care of ourselves by our own efforts, we should simply give ourselves to Him and rest, knowing that He is always caring for us.
Verse 25 tells us that Christ is able to save to the uttermost. Because He lives forever without any change, Christ is able to save us to the uttermost in extent, in time, and in space. Hence, His salvation reaches to the uttermost.
Christ can save us to the uttermost because He is living not only in the heavens but also within us. While He is living in the heavens, He is transmitting Himself into us. He is living in the heavens to intercede for us and take care of our case, but the reality of this is transmitted into our spirit by His Spirit. We must learn to see this heavenly vision and enjoy our High Priest. Then we will receive mercy and find grace at the throne of grace for timely help. We will be delivered and saved to the uttermost. This is the work of our divine High Priest.
Because He has this kind of priesthood, He is able to save us to the uttermost. If we are not saved to the uttermost, it does not mean that He is not able to save. Rather, it means that we were not willing to be saved. We have no excuse. If we are willing to be saved, surely He will save us to the uttermost.
According to the Scriptures, there are three aspects of the priesthood: the aspect of the Aaronic priesthood, the aspect of the kingly priesthood, and the aspect of the divine priesthood. The Aaronic aspect of the priesthood is for offering sacrifices to God for our sins. Hence, the Aaronic priesthood is mainly concerned with the sin offering. The kingly aspect of the priesthood is for ministering the processed God to us as our life supply. The aspect of the divine priesthood is for saving us to the uttermost. Therefore, we have three words to describe the three aspects of the priesthood: offering for the Aaronic aspect, ministering for the kingly aspect, and saving for the divine aspect. Offering solves the problem of sin, ministering imparts the processed God to us as our daily supply, and saving rescues us to the uttermost. The saving of the divine priesthood rescues us especially from death and all the environment of death.
At this point, we need to consider why there is the need for the third aspect of the priesthood, the divine priesthood. Although sin is over, it caused a tremendous result—death. According to Romans 5, the issue of sin is death (v. 12). We should not understand death according to the narrow view of our human concept. According to the broadest understanding of death in the Bible, death includes vanity, corruption, sighing, groaning, and decay. Everything is decaying. We may have a strong body, but before too long it begins to decay. The matters of vanity, corruption, bondage, groaning, and decay are fully developed and covered in Romans 8. In Romans 5 we have sin and death; in Romans 8 we have vanity, corruption, bondage, groaning, and decay. The whole universe has been polluted by death, which is the result of the sin that came in through Adam, the head of the old creation. The pollution that comes from death is corruption, vanity, decay, and groaning. Romans 8:22 says that the whole creation is groaning. Every person is groaning deep within. Since people want to escape from this groaning, they partake of worldly entertainments. Even after indulging in these entertainments, they find that the inward groaning is still there. This groaning is one of the issues of death.
Because of the issues of death, we need the divine priesthood, which is the presence of life and the absence of death. He will save us from all our corruption, vanity, groaning, and decay. When others come to our home, there should be praising, reality, building up, and growth, not groaning, vanity, corruption, and decay. To be saved from these issues of death is what it means to be saved to the uttermost. This is more than the saving of the Savior—it is the saving of the divine priesthood.
The Greek word translated “uttermost” in Hebrews 7:25 has the same root as the Greek word for perfection. Hence, to be saved to the uttermost means to be saved into perfection. Christ saves us into His perfection. To be saved to the uttermost is to be brought into Christ’s perfection. The Son of God was incarnated, lived on earth, passed through death, was resurrected, and has been fully perfected forever. This means that in His perfection there is no groaning, vanity, corruption, bondage, or decay. In Christ, the perfected Son of God, the One who has been resurrected and uplifted, there is no groaning. Within Him there is no vanity, bondage, corruption, or decay. He is absolutely free from these things. Vanity, groaning, decay, bondage, and corruption are all by-products of death. Christ, the perfected One, is able to save us from all of these by-products of death and to bring us into His perfection. This is the saving to the uttermost, the saving to perfection. This is the saving of the divine priesthood of Christ.
While Christ was on earth, He solved the problems of sin and death. As we are enjoying His kingly priesthood, we participate in the divine priesthood that diminishes and even swallows up all of the by-products of death. While we enjoy God being ministered into us as the processed One, we partake of the divine priesthood that diminishes, eliminates, and swallows up all of the by-products of death, such as vanity, corruption, bondage, groaning, and decay. Day by day there is within us a diminishing, a swallowing up, of our groaning and vanity. The more we participate in the divine priesthood of Christ, the less groaning we have. The more we enjoy the divine priesthood of Christ, the less we will sigh and the more we will shout. According to Romans 8, the last step of God’s work on us is to glorify us. To be glorified is to be thoroughly saturated with the divine priesthood. When we have been thoroughly saturated with the divine priesthood, that will be our glorification. To be glorified is also to be delivered from vanity, corruption, bondage, groaning, and decay. This is exactly the meaning of glorification in Romans 8—the full sonship, the redemption of our body (v. 23). The redemption of our body is its being transfigured out of vanity, corruption, and decay into a stage in which it is completely filled with the divine priesthood. That will be our glorification. The Aaronic priesthood is in Romans 3 and 4, the kingly priesthood is in Romans 6 and in the first part of Romans 8, and the divine priesthood is in the middle and the last part of Romans 8. Hebrews 7 does not correspond with Romans 3 or 4; it firstly corresponds with Romans 6 and the first part of Romans 8, and eventually it corresponds completely with the middle and the last parts of Romans 8 dealing with glorification and our deliverance from vanity, corruption, bondage, and decay into the freedom of glory.
We are now on our way toward this perfection. We are in the process of being perfected. As our Forerunner, Christ has already entered into that complete perfection, and we also will be brought there. We will be saved to the uttermost. To be saved to the uttermost is to be brought into Christ’s complete perfection where there is no vanity, corruption, bondage, groaning, decay, or sighing. To save us in this way is the ministry of the divine priesthood.
Christ’s kingly priesthood is for ministry, and His divine priesthood is for saving. He is able to save to the uttermost because He not only is living but also is the indestructible life. Nothing can destroy Him. Although we may have the heart to save others, we can easily be destroyed and terminated. But Christ can save us to the uttermost because His priesthood is composed of an indestructible life. Regardless of our situation or the condition in which we may find ourselves, we have the divine priesthood to take care of us. This divine priesthood is the saving power of the indestructible life. The work of the divine High Priest is mainly to save us to the uttermost. The divine priesthood is constituted with the indestructible life; thus, it is able to save us to the uttermost from all the by-products of death into Christ’s perfection.
He saves to the uttermost those who come forward to God through Him (Heb. 7:25a). Christ died for all mankind, but not everyone will be saved. This is because not everyone comes forward to God through Him. Although we may have been saved in the sense of being regenerated, we still need more saving (Rom. 5:10). If we do not come forward, we cannot receive His saving. It may be raining, but a vessel cannot receive this rain unless its opening is toward the heavens. Likewise, many genuine Christians today do not receive Christ’s saving, because they do not come forward to God. Christ’s saving in His priesthood will not reach the ones who will not come forward.
Sometimes we may be saved from our temper only to a certain extent and not to the uttermost. A sister may be about to lose her temper; hence, she turns to Christ and is stopped from losing her temper. She may be saved from her temper but not to the uttermost. If she were saved from her temper to the uttermost, she would be rejoicing in the Lord. For the Lord’s sake, we may forgive others’ mistakes. But to be saved from remembering others’ mistakes is to be saved to the uttermost. We may forgive others and yet still remember their mistakes. When God forgives us, He forgets (Heb. 8:12); hence, to forgive is to forget. If our forgiving does not equal forgetting, we are not saved to the uttermost. If we have truly forgiven someone, we should also forget the offense. We need to be saved to the uttermost in our forgiving of others and from all our daily troubles. When we come forward to God through Christ, our High Priest, He saves us in the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10) and by the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2).