throne of the Majesty,
and, as Priest, is also Minister of the sanctuary and of the true
tabernacle. The indefinite and somewhat unusual term "minister" or
"public servant"[143] is intentionally chosen, partly to emphasise the
contrast between Christ's kingly dignity and His priestly service,
partly because the author wishes to explain at greater length in what
Christ's actual work as High-priest in heaven consists. For Christ's
heavenly glory is a life of service, not of selfish gratification. Every
high-priest serves.[144] He is appointed for no other purpose than to
offer gifts and sacrifices. The Apostle's readers admitted that Christ
was High-priest. But they were forgetting that, as such, He too must
necessarily minister and have something which He can offer. Our theology
is still in like danger. We are sometimes prone to regard Christ's life
in heaven as only a state of exaltation and power, and, consequently, to
speak more of the saints' happiness than of their service. It is the
natural result of superficial theories of the Atonement that little
practical use is made by many Christians of the truth of Christ's
priestly intercession. The debt has been paid, the debtor discharged,
and the transaction ended. Christ's present activity towards God is
acknowledged and--neglected. Protestants are confirmed in this baneful
worldliness of conception by their just desire to keep at a safe
distance from the error in the opposite extreme: that Christ presents to
God the Church's sacrifices of the mass.

The truth lies midway between two errors. On the one hand, Christ's
intercession is not itself the making or constituting of a sacrifice; on
the other, it is not mere pleading and prayer. The sacrifice was made
and completed on the Cross, as the victims were slain in the outer
court. But it was through the blood of those victims the high-priest had
authority to enter the holiest place; and when he had entered, he must
sprinkle the warm blood, and so present the sacrifice to God. Similarly
Christ must enter a sanctuary in order to present the sacrifice slain on
Calvary. The words of the Apostle John, "We have an Advocate with the
Father," express only one side of the truth. But he adds the other side
of the conception in the same verse, "And He is the propitiation," which
is a very different thing from saying, "His death was the propitiation."
But what sanctuary shall He enter? He could not approach the holiest
place in the