Predigt (unbenannt)
Priester
The NT. To a very limited extent, the OT theology of priesthood continues into the time of the church. The earliest Jewish Christians did not automatically renounce their ties with the worship of the Jerusalem temple (Acts 3:1; 21:26); in that sense, they continued to worship through the mediacy of the temple priesthood, though the destruction of the temple in AD 70 brought to an end that possibility. In reality, however, their understanding of priesthood had undergone a radical change through the illumination of the gospel. Central to the proclamation of the gospel was that God had provided a mediator in the person of Jesus Christ. What had formerly been undertaken, in a limited fashion, by priests and Levites on a continuing basis, had now been fully achieved in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on a permanent basis.
Although this theme of the mediatory role of Jesus Christ penetrates the entire gospel, it is given its fullest expression in the Letter to the Hebrews. Therein, the writer elaborates upon the whole tradition of priests and Levites to demonstrate the fulfillment and consummation in the gospel. But the focal point of the epistle is the office of high priest; Jesus is the full and final High Priest of the new covenant who achieved that mediation with God (Heb 2:17) which used to be sought annually on the Day of Atonement. Jesus was not a high priest in the tradition of Aaron, or Zadok, which would have identified him with the old covenant. Jesus was designated by God “after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 6:20), for “he is without father or mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest for ever” (Heb 7:3). The eternality of the high priesthood of Jesus eclipsed the temporality of the priesthood in the OT.
But there is a final dimension to the concept of priesthood in the NT which is of vital significance. It is the concept of all Christians belonging to the priesthood. Peter indicates that Christians are “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Pt 2:9). But the conception of all Christians as priests does not mean that they no longer need priests as in OT times, though that is true; they have a High Priest in the person of Jesus Christ. More than that, it implies that all Christians must be priests to the world at large. Just as Israel, the community of the old covenant, was called upon to be a nation of priests on behalf of all nations, so Christians, citizens of the new covenant, are called upon to be priests representing all mankind before God—and God before all mankind.