Jesus gave the Lord’s Supper to disciples who would soon see Him arrested and crucified. He told them to remember Him through the bread and cup, and Paul later instructed the church to proclaim His death until He comes. I want to receive Communion with that purpose in mind. Taking the elements should direct us to Christ and make us consider whether the way we treat His people agrees with what we claim to believe.
Bread, Wine, and the New Covenant
Communion, also called the Lord’s Supper, is an ordinance, a practice Jesus commanded His church to observe. We share bread and a cup to remember His body given for us and His blood shed for us. The meal also expresses our fellowship as people who belong to the same Savior.
I don’t believe receiving the elements can save us or supply forgiveness. But dismissing the Lord’s Supper as an insignificant ritual disregards a command Jesus gave His church. We need to understand what He intended us to remember and how He wants His people to receive it.
Bread and wine appear together much earlier in Scripture, when Abram returned from rescuing Lot and defeating the kings who had carried him away. The king of Sodom came out to meet him, along with Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High.
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”
Genesis 14:18-20
Melchizedek blessed Abram and credited God with the victory. Abram then refused Sodom’s offer because he would not let its king claim to have made him rich. The bread and wine accompanied a priestly blessing, but Genesis does not describe the institution of Communion. The encounter introduces Melchizedek serving as both king and priest before the Law was given, combining offices that would later be separated in Israel. Hebrews returns to his priesthood when explaining Christ’s.
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God… first being translated “king of righteousness,” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,” without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.
Hebrews 7:1-3
I believe Melchizedek is the preincarnate Son of God. His encounter with Abram was a Christophany, meaning Christ appeared before He became man. The description of a priest without beginning or end, who remains continually, leads me to that conclusion. Some read it as a description of how a human priest is presented in Genesis, without a recorded genealogy. The study on Melchizedek explains why I believe Hebrews points beyond an ordinary human priest.
The more immediate background to the Lord’s Supper is Passover, which God instituted when He delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. The Israelites killed unblemished lambs and marked their doorposts and lintels, the beams above their doorways, with blood. When judgment struck Egypt’s firstborn, the LORD passed over the homes marked by blood. Israel’s protection depended on receiving God’s provision in trust and obedience, rather than on being better people than the Egyptians.
God commanded Israel to remember that deliverance through an annual meal. When Jesus shared Passover with His disciples, He explained the bread and cup in relation to the death He was about to suffer.
And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.”
Luke 22:19-20
The earlier Passover lamb pointed forward to Him. The bread now directed the disciples to His body given for them, and the cup to His blood shed for them.
Jesus also identified the cup with the new covenant in His blood. A covenant is a binding commitment. Jeremiah had announced God’s promise to forgive sin and write His law on His people’s hearts. Jesus identified His blood as the basis of that covenant, and the church remembers the death by which He established it. We aren’t establishing a new covenant each time we receive Communion.
Calling these elements symbols doesn’t make the suffering they represent symbolic. Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God, who became fully man and lived without sin. Wicked men tortured and crucified Him, but He willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His sinlessness and His sacrificial death are the basis of our forgiveness. His innocent blood was physically shed, and He died.
The Father and Son were united in providing our redemption. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Christ completed His saving sacrifice through His shed blood and death before He was buried and rose bodily from the grave. He died for the whole world, and salvation is received through repentance and faith. The bread and cup add nothing to what He accomplished. The study on life being in the blood explains the significance of His shed blood further.
Remember the Lord’s Death Until He Comes
The Greek word translated remembrance is anamnesis. Jesus calls us to remember Him deliberately, giving attention to what He did rather than allowing the familiar act of eating and drinking to pass without thought. Paul handed on the instruction he had received about the Supper, then explained what the church announces by observing it.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
1 Corinthians 11:26
By receiving the meal together, we confess that Christ died for sinners and established the new covenant through His blood. We also confess our expectation that He will return. The Supper keeps His death before the church while we wait for the risen Savior. Because we share it as His people, examining ourselves includes considering how we treat one another.
That confession belongs to believers. Eating bread or drinking from a cup cannot create saving faith, forgive sin, or bring about regeneration. By regeneration, I mean genuine new birth, through which God makes the believer a new creation. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals that person for the day of redemption, and genuine salvation is eternally secure. A Christian label or a long record of taking Communion cannot demonstrate that new life on its own. Nor can I appeal to eternal security to excuse lawlessness.
We need to explain the meal from Scripture because the elements don’t explain themselves. People can leave an elaborate service admiring the ceremony without understanding why Christ died. A simple gathering can honor Him when His words are explained and the church receives the bread and cup in faith. If we have neglected that explanation, making the service more impressive won’t correct the problem.
His command, “in remembrance of Me,” should also correct anyone who wants to make himself the center of the service. A pastor, priest, or worship leader is there to direct attention to Christ. Personal performance, inherited traditions, and the emotional atmosphere cannot be allowed to obscure the One we are remembering.
When Paul says “as often as” we eat and drink, he assumes the church will continue observing the Supper. His wording doesn’t require every church to adopt the same weekly or monthly schedule. We should receive Communion regularly as part of obedient worship, taking care to explain what we are doing. Increasing its frequency won’t correct irreverence if we continue taking it without understanding.
One Sacrifice and the Meaning of John 6
What we believe about Christ’s sacrifice determines what we should expect from the Supper. Hebrews describes old covenant priests standing at their work day after day because their offerings could not finally remove sin. Christ offered Himself once.
By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Hebrews 10:10
But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.
Hebrews 10:12
Christ sat down because His offering was complete. A church ceremony cannot continue His sacrificial work or provide another propitiatory offering, meaning an offering to atone for sin. His blood has already been shed, and the Father accepted His sacrifice. The church remembers and proclaims what He accomplished; Communion doesn’t make the cross effective again whenever we gather.
I reject transubstantiation, the teaching that the substance of the bread and wine becomes Christ’s body and blood while their outward appearances remain. The Catholic Catechism also describes the Mass as making Christ’s one sacrifice present and offering it sacramentally. It does not teach that He undergoes another bloody death at every Mass. I still disagree with giving Communion that sacrificial role. I understand Christ’s command as remembrance and proclamation of His completed offering, not a sacramental offering of His body and blood.
John 6 is often used to support receiving His body and blood through the elements. Jesus gave that public teaching after feeding the five thousand, before the institution of the Supper in the upper room. He was confronting people who wanted bread but would not truly believe in Him. His own explanation helps us understand the language He used.
And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
John 6:35
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.
John 6:47
In verse 47, Jesus promises everlasting life to the person who believes in Him. Together with His explanation about coming and believing in verse 35, that promise guides how I read His words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. He calls sinners to receive Him by faith as their only source of life. He isn’t commanding cannibalism or instituting Communion in this discourse. Later He says:
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
John 6:63
Jesus isn’t denying the value of the body He would give for the world. He is explaining that life comes through the Spirit and that His words communicate spiritual truth. John had already recorded His conversation with Nicodemus about new birth and His offer of living water to the Samaritan woman. Later Jesus would describe Himself as the door for the sheep, their Shepherd, and the true Vine. His language about eating and drinking likewise directs us to faith in Him. That reading agrees with the finished sacrifice in Hebrews and the remembrance commanded in Luke and 1 Corinthians.
Other Christians believe Christ’s body and blood are present with the elements without accepting transubstantiation. The Lutheran confession teaches that His true body and blood are received with the bread and wine while the bread remains bread. The word consubstantiation is sometimes used in discussions of this view, but the confession calls it a sacramental union. I disagree with that bodily reception as well. The bread remains bread and the cup remains the fruit of the vine; we receive the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice by faith.
Calling the elements symbols doesn’t give us permission to discard the meal or replace it with an illustration of our own choosing. Jesus chose the bread and cup and commanded this remembrance, so we honor Him by continuing it as He instructed. Those symbols direct us to Christ and the sacrifice He completed.
One Body and a Serious Warning
Paul also connects the bread and cup with our fellowship in Christ. The Greek word koinonia means sharing, fellowship, or participation and explains why we call the meal Communion.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.
1 Corinthians 10:16-17
I understand this as believers sharing by faith in the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice and expressing that fellowship through the meal. Paul does not say that the elements change into His physical body and blood. He does say that we belong to one body. If Christ purchased these people with His blood, I cannot honor Him by treating some of them as beneath me.
The church in Corinth observed the Supper as part of a larger meal. Some went ahead with their own food while others remained hungry, and some even became drunk. People with plenty were willing to let poorer members go without at the gathering that proclaimed their fellowship in the same Savior. Paul rebuked them for humiliating those who had nothing.
Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
1 Corinthians 11:27-28
Paul warns against an unworthy manner of partaking. He isn’t requiring a sinless record before anyone may come. He tells them to examine themselves and then eat and drink as they should. The selfishness and irreverence in Corinth contradicted what the meal proclaimed, and calling it the Lord’s Supper didn’t excuse what they were doing.
The Lord’s discipline was severe. Some were weak or sick, and some died. Paul distinguished that chastening of believers from the condemnation of the world.
But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.
1 Corinthians 11:32
God keeps the people His Spirit has sealed, but eternal security doesn’t give us permission to treat holy things carelessly. Corinth demonstrates how serious the repercussions can be. We need to confess known sin and seek peace where possible, including putting right how we treat other believers.
It would be reckless, though, to tell a sick believer he is being punished for mishandling Communion simply because he is sick. Paul identified a particular judgment in Corinth. He did not give us an explanation for every illness or death. This passage calls each of us to examine our own conduct, rather than presume to know the reason for someone else’s suffering.
How Believers Should Come
We come as people who have trusted the crucified and risen Christ. Someone who has not believed needs repentance and faith, and taking Communion cannot substitute for that conversion. The study on baptism considers another ordinance through which we publicly express faith without creating salvation.
As we receive the bread and cup, we remember that the Son of God suffered in His body, shed His blood, and died for our sins before rising bodily. Familiarity should not make us indifferent to what He endured. We are thanking Him for salvation we could not provide for ourselves.
When examination exposes sin, we can confess it honestly to the God who already knows. We aren’t bargaining for a place at His table or promising enough improvement to earn forgiveness. Our confidence rests in Christ’s blood and God’s promise to cleanse us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9
A believer with a tender conscience may hear Paul’s warning and conclude that he ought to stay away whenever he feels unworthy. But Paul tells us to examine ourselves so that we can partake properly. If I have sinned against someone, sitting out Communion won’t settle the offense. I need to confess and repent, seeking reconciliation where it is needed, then come trusting the Savior whose blood cleanses me. I cannot make myself worthy by waiting until I feel better about my record.
That examination also has to reach beyond a private moment of reflection. If I receive the cup while continuing to humiliate another believer or cultivate bitterness against him, I am ignoring the fellowship the meal declares. Sharing the table calls us to love the people Christ has made members of His body.
We also receive it with hope. Paul tells the church to proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes, so we remember a Savior who lives and will return. His sacrifice remains sufficient while we wait. Continuing to share the bread and cup expresses our confidence in that completed work and His promise to come again.
My Final Thoughts
I want to receive Communion with gratitude for what Christ accomplished and a willingness to face honestly what His Word exposes in me. The bread and cup point to His body and blood; they neither save us nor become His physical body and blood. We remember His one completed sacrifice as people who belong to Him together. If I claim that fellowship at His table, I need to show it in how I treat His people while we wait for His return.
After Abram rescued Lot, Melchizedek met him with bread and wine and blessed him in God’s name. Genesis gives this king and priest only a brief introduction, yet Psalm 110 and Hebrews return to the encounter to explain Christ’s priesthood. I believe Melchizedek was the pre-incarnate Son of God, appearing before He became man. The reasons for that conclusion lie in the details Hebrews explains, and they lead us to a promise we can depend on: the Priest who saves us will never need a successor.
Melchizedek Meets Abram After the Battle
Lot had been taken captive during a war between several kings. Abram pursued his captors and recovered the people and their possessions. When he returned, the king of Sodom went out to meet him, and Genesis introduces another king, Melchizedek of Salem, who was also priest of God Most High.
Melchizedek brought bread and wine and blessed Abram. The blessing gave God the credit for Abram’s victory.
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” And he gave him a tithe of all.
Genesis 14:18-20
The title El Elyon means “God Most High.” Earthly kings had fought for control, but Melchizedek proclaimed the Possessor of heaven and earth. God’s authority was not confined to any of their kingdoms. Abram had fought and won, but the blessing credited God with delivering his enemies into his hand.
Abram received Melchizedek’s blessing and gave him a tenth. That honor from the man who had received God’s promises becomes central to the argument in Hebrews. Genesis introduces the priest’s offices here without naming his parents or explaining how he came to serve.
The king of Sodom then offered to let Abram keep the goods if he returned the people. Abram refused to enrich himself from the spoils because he did not want the king to claim he had made him rich. His refusal agreed with the blessing he had just received: God Most High had given the victory, and Abram would not let Sodom’s ruler claim the credit for his prosperity.
The bread and wine Melchizedek had brought supplied refreshment after battle. They also bring to mind the bread and cup Jesus later gave as signs of His body and blood. I can recognize that connection without reading the institution of the Lord’s Supper back into Genesis. These provisions alone do not establish Melchizedek’s identity. The argument depends on what Scripture tells us about his priesthood.
The Righteous King of Peace
Melchizedek held the offices of king and priest long before God gave Israel the Law at Sinai. Under that later arrangement, David’s royal line came from Judah, while priests had to descend from Aaron, of the tribe of Levi. Royal authority gave a man no right to perform the service God had assigned to the priests.
King Uzziah violated that boundary in 2 Chronicles 26 when he entered the temple to burn incense, and God judged him. Being king had not qualified him for priestly work. Melchizedek’s combined offices involved no such intrusion: he served before the Levitical arrangement existed and belonged to a different priestly order.
Hebrews translates his name as “king of righteousness,” then identifies the king of Salem as “king of peace.” I see those titles brought together in Christ’s saving work. The peace He made through His blood rests on His righteous dealing with sin. He reconciles us to God without ignoring our guilt or pretending that the wrong we have done is harmless.
Psalm 76 connects Salem with Zion as the place of God’s dwelling, pointing us to Jerusalem. Melchizedek therefore served in the city that would later be known for David’s throne and the temple, and would become central to the Messiah’s saving work. Genesis does not explain that future significance when it introduces him, but the later passages give us reason to return to this brief encounter.
Psalm 110 develops the connection between the Messiah’s royal authority and Melchizedek’s priesthood. David first speaks of the One the LORD exalts to His right hand.
The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”
Psalm 110:1
Jesus used this verse in Matthew 22 to question religious leaders who identified the Messiah as David’s Son. Why did David, speaking by the Spirit, call his own descendant Lord? They could not answer Him. The Messiah is both David’s Son and David’s Lord, exalted to God’s right hand until His enemies are placed beneath His feet. The study on Psalm 110’s opening words considers that exchange more fully.
In Psalm 110:4, David adds God’s oath concerning the Messiah’s priesthood.
The LORD has sworn And will not relent, “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.”
Psalm 110:4
The LORD’s oath establishes a priesthood that will not end. David wrote long after God appointed Aaron’s family, yet announced a Priest from another order who would serve forever. The earlier priesthood could not be God’s final provision when He was promising this one. In the Messiah, the offices of King and Priest would be united.
How Hebrews Reads the Details
Hebrews brings Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 together to explain Jesus’ priesthood. I believe Paul wrote it, although the letter does not name its writer and readers differ over that question. I find the internal and early-church evidence persuasive. His argument asks us to consider both what Genesis records about Melchizedek and what it leaves unrecorded.
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated “king of righteousness,” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,” without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.
Hebrews 7:1-3
Genesis names neither Melchizedek’s father nor his mother and records neither his birth nor his death. It supplies no family line to establish his right to serve, and names no predecessor or successor. That presentation is unusual in a book containing so many genealogies. Hebrews expressly draws our attention to it, so we cannot treat the missing details as irrelevant to the explanation.
For a priest under the Law, ancestry was essential. He had to belong to the family God appointed, regardless of how much he wanted the office. Melchizedek was already serving before Levi was born, and Genesis gives no such lineage to account for his priesthood.
Paul also says that Melchizedek has neither beginning of days nor end of life and remains a priest continually. An ordinary man still has a beginning and an end, even if an account records neither date. I therefore understand Hebrews to be saying more than that Genesis omitted some biographical information. The description of his continuing priesthood, read alongside the promise in Psalm 110, leads me to recognize the eternal Son.
Hebrews 7:16 describes Christ’s priesthood as resting on “the power of an endless life.” When an Aaronic priest died, another man had to take his place. Jesus also died, but He rose bodily and now lives forever. No future death will end His ministry or require someone else to succeed Him.
Why I Believe Melchizedek Is Christ
Some readers understand Melchizedek as a historical king whose recorded life serves as a type, or foreshadowing, of Christ. I believe he was a Christophany, an appearance of the Son before His incarnation. My conclusion comes from reading Genesis, Psalm 110, and Hebrews together. An unexplained visitor or an absent family record would not, by itself, establish that identity.
The strongest objection concerns the wording “made like the Son of God.” Those who understand Melchizedek as a human type reason that someone made like the Son must be a different person. I understand why they draw that distinction. My reading concerns the way the Holy Spirit presents Melchizedek in Genesis: the written account corresponds to the Son as later Scripture reveals Him. I do not take that comparison to require that the person described was merely an ordinary king.
The titles of righteousness and peace, the combined royal and priestly offices, and the continuing priesthood need to be considered together. A human type can foreshadow Christ, but no priest in Aaron’s line could fulfill the description of an eternal Priest. When I read those details alongside God’s oath in Psalm 110, I am persuaded that Abram met the Son Himself.
The Son’s other Old Testament appearances help explain how He could meet Abram before the incarnation. The distinctive Angel of the LORD speaks as God, and other accounts describe the LORD visibly drawing near to people. John 1:18 explains that the only begotten Son makes the unseen Father known. The studies on Christophanies in the Old Testament and the Angel of the Lord examine those encounters.
Meeting Abram did not mark the beginning of the Son’s existence. He is eternal and fully God, the Creator who existed before all things and holds them together, as Colossians 1:16-17 explains. Appearing within human history did not make Him one of the creatures He had made.
Identifying Him as the Son also preserves His personal distinction from the Father. The Father sends the Son who reveals Him, and the Holy Spirit inspired the accounts explaining His work. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct divine Persons who are one God. The Son was not the Father appearing under another name, nor was He a separate god.
An appearance before the incarnation also differs from the incarnation itself, when the Word became flesh. The Son permanently took human nature in the virgin Mary’s womb. He lived without sin, shed His physical blood, and died for our sins before rising bodily. He remains fully God and fully man forever. His earlier appearance to Abram neither replaced nor repeated His becoming man and being born in Bethlehem.
Genesis records a real encounter without supplying a full biography of Melchizedek. I identify him as Christ because of the details Hebrews explains and the promise in Psalm 110. That gives me no reason to identify every unexplained king-priest as the Son. The passages that support the conclusion also set limits on what I can say about the encounter.
A Greater Priesthood That Saves Completely
Hebrews has already explained the Son’s greatness above angels and Moses. Paul now returns to Abram’s tithe and Melchizedek’s blessing to show why Melchizedek’s priesthood is greater than Levi’s. Abraham was the patriarch through whom God had promised blessing to the families of the earth, yet he received a priestly blessing from Melchizedek.
Now beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better.
Hebrews 7:7
Abraham’s greatness gives Paul’s argument its force. Even the man who received God’s promises acknowledged Melchizedek’s greater priestly standing. Paul is asking us to recognize the honor Abraham himself gave, rather than diminishing the patriarch’s place in God’s purposes.
Paul extends that reasoning to Levi, who had not yet been born but belonged to Abraham’s family line. He reasons that Levi paid tithes through Abraham, so the priesthood that later descended from Levi stood beneath Melchizedek’s order. The comparison concerns their priestly standing, rather than merely how much Abraham gave.
That argument addressed readers tempted to return to the old covenant priesthood. Familiar rituals and a long sacred history could make the earlier system seem more dependable. Yet turning from Christ to that system would mean looking again to mortal priests and repeated offerings after He had already made the sacrifice those offerings anticipated.
God gave the Levitical priesthood to teach His holiness and the sinner’s need for sacrifice and a mediator, someone appointed to act on his behalf before God. That priesthood was neither an evil institution nor a mistake. Its repeated offerings pointed toward the One who would remove sin, but could not accomplish that work themselves. To rely on them for salvation after Christ came would overlook the fulfillment God had provided. The study on the role of the high priest explains that earlier ministry. Jesus came from Judah, so His priesthood did not rest on descent from Aaron.
And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest who has come, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life. For He testifies: “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.”
Hebrews 7:15-17
God’s oath established Christ’s office, and His endless life means He will never need a replacement. The men who served under the Law died, ending their ministry and requiring successors. Our salvation is entrusted to a Priest whose ministry will continue forever.
But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Hebrews 7:24-25
To “save to the uttermost” is to save completely. Christ does not bring someone partway to God and then leave his continued salvation dependent on keeping himself secure. Everyone who truly comes to God through Him has a living Priest whose intercession does not fail. That intercession is His continuing ministry on our behalf before the Father, grounded in the sacrifice He has already offered.
Jesus needed no offering for sins of His own. He lived without sin and willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for ours. Wicked men tortured His innocent body, shed His physical blood, and killed Him. His blood and death completed His saving sacrifice before He was buried. He then rose bodily, displaying His victory over death. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remained united in our redemption.
For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.
Hebrews 7:26-27
Hebrews 9 and 10 explain why His sacrifice never needs to be repeated. Year after year, the old covenant high priest entered the Most Holy Place with animal blood, but Christ entered by His own blood and obtained eternal redemption. Those earlier offerings pointed toward the removal of guilt that His sacrifice accomplished. We do not need another sacrifice or another priest to make His work complete.
Earlier in the letter, Hebrews 4:15-16 explains why we can approach God with confidence. The incarnate Son understands human weakness because He was tempted as we are, yet without sin. We may come boldly to the throne of grace for mercy and help. I do not have to produce a faultless record for the week before I can pray. My access depends on the Priest who has already made the way.
Drawing Near to the Priest-King
If you belong to Christ, come to God honestly when you have sinned. You do not have to persuade a reluctant Savior to receive you. Repent and depend on the blood He has already shed, rather than delaying confession while you try to make yourself presentable. He is also changing His people, so eternal security gives us no excuse to settle into something He calls sin. The assurance that He saves us completely should give us confidence to obey Him.
If you have never trusted Christ, consider who can deal with your guilt before God. Religious observances cannot erase it, and trying to make yourself good enough cannot undo the sin you have already committed. Christ died for the whole world and genuinely offers salvation, although people can resist Him. Everyone who repents and believes is forgiven and born again, indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Eternal life is secure because He saves us. Come to the Priest-King who died for sinners and rose bodily, trusting Him to accomplish what you cannot do for yourself.
My Final Thoughts
The Son who met Abram as Melchizedek is the Priest who now gives us access to God. Having offered Himself once for all, He lives forever to intercede for those who come to God through Him. When guilt makes me hesitant to pray, I need to remember that I am approaching God through this Priest. His sacrifice is finished, and His ministry will never end or be handed to someone else. I can come honestly, needing mercy, because He has already made the way.
