BY David Falk | 04 February 2012
We need to change our thinking about what a priest is. The apostle Peter called all followers of Jesus Christ, a royal priesthood. 1 Pe 2:9. When we serve as priests before God, we are performing the specific ‘works’ which He has ordained for each of us to do. Eph 2:10. The word of our priesthood comes to every man and woman in the form of a command. Jesus said, ‘As the Father commanded Me so I do.’ Joh 10:18. Joh 14:31.
When obedience to His command becomes the mode of our life, we find that we will serve in a way that is contrary to our will. It won’t be the thing that we would necessarily choose to do. But although we are unwilling, we will still obey. The apostle Paul was commanded by God to be a preacher and teacher of the gospel. He told the Corinthians that he had been entrusted to a stewardship against his will. He said, ‘Necessity has been laid upon me’. 1Co 9:16-17.
Of course, we all want to be willing but we may get to a stage where we cannot be willing. Jesus said of Paul, ‘He is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.’ Act 9:15-16. It was non-negotiable. The job and the suffering went hand in hand. Jesus was saying in effect, ‘You will do that, or you cannot be saved!’ Paul wrote of ‘the fellowship of His sufferings’ in his letter to the Phillipians.
‘Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.’ Phil 3:8-11