With Jesus as your High Priest, you are anchored behind the veil into the presence of God himself: anchored to his forgiveness, and anchored to his blessing, favor, and love. You are anchored there because Jesus is standing right there, representing you. He brings the blood of a sacrifice—his blood—evidence that your sins have been punished and dealt with. With Jesus as your High Priest you have absolute assurance that you are free from condemnation. And he brings to you, from God, abundant mercy, forgiveness, and life. 

Unlike our beloved Anglican cousins, Presbyterians don’t believe that it is right to ordain priests into the church. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t think that we need a priest. On the contrary, we most desperately need a priest! Not a mere human priest, however, but the one great High Priest, Jesus Christ.

For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. (Heb. 5:1-4)

First, what is a priest? A priest is a go-between, someone who represents God before humanity, and humanity before God. A go-between is needed because God is holy, and we are not.
The Holy God hates sin with a passion and breaks out against it with fierce anger (remember the Flood, the Ten Plagues, the Exile…). But we are sin-full. In the West Australian town of Greenough, constant strong winds have bent the trees to grow right-angled to the ground. Humans are bent by sin to do what God has forbidden, and to fail to do what God has commanded.
Sinners cannot stand in God’s holy presence without being destroyed.
This is why Isaiah said “Woe to me! I am ruined!” when he found himself in the presence of the “Holy! Holy! Holy! LORD Almighty!” (Isa. 6:1-5). This is why the Beloved Disciple, confronted by the Holy Son of God, fell at his feet “as though dead” (Rev. 1:17).
Sinful humanity must come to God to plead for his mercy and blessing. But how can we? It isn’t safe to be around him, since we would be destroyed in his presence like a tissue in a bonfire, like a comet straying near the sun, disintegrated to ashes by the nuclear heat.
God on his side longs to bring us grace, forgiveness, and blessing. But how can he? His holy presence would destroy us, we who are fouled black by sin to our very core.
Two nations are at war, trying with might and main to obliterate one another. If there is to be any dialogue, any hope of reconciliation, a go-between is needed: traditionally, someone from neutral Switzerland. We need a Switzerland: a go-between to approach God on our behalf, to plead for his mercy and blessing; and someone who can come from God to us, to bring mercy and blessing. That is what a priest is. He represents sinful humanity before Holy God, and Holy God before sinful humanity.
A priest must have two qualifications.
First, in order to represent humanity, a priest must be one of us. He must know what we know, he must have felt and experienced what we have felt, to plead for us from a place of personal knowledge and encounter. Yet, though human, he must be sinless, so that he can enter Holy God’s presence without annihilation.
Second, in order to represent God, the priest must himself be divine. A true mediator between God and man must himself be—a God-man.
A priest has duties to perform.
In order to reconcile Holy God and sinful humanity, the priest must satisfy God’s demand for the execution of just punishment upon human sin. God can no more overlook and disregard sin than a human justice can overlook premeditated murder. If God and humanity is to be reconciled, human sin must be dealt with.
How can God bless sinful humanity, when he must punish us? God in his wisdom and grace has provided a sacrifice: a means by which our sin can be punished in another, in a substitute.
Just punishment for our sin can be executed upon the substitute, so that we may instead be blessed. The priest can make this sacrifice, and then bring evidence to God that the sacrifice has been made, and that sin has been justly punished. The priest brings the blood of the slain victim: “Look, here is the evidence that this person’s sin has been punished, that justice has been administered.”
God sees the blood of the substitute, and his holy justice is satisfied. The person for whom the sacrifice was made is no longer the object of his wrath: for his wrath has already fallen upon the sacrificial victim.
Then God sends the priest back to the people he represents: to pronounce God’s forgiveness and favor, God’s promises and reassurance.
The high priest was Israel’s only priest.
This was the awesome office and duty of the Old Testament priest: he was a mutual representative of Holy God and sinful humanity; he brought bloody evidence to God that Israel’s sin had been justly punished; he took God’s blessing to Israel, whose sin had been lifted.
The singular magnificence of the dress of the high priest showed that he was actually Israel’s only priest—the other “ordinary priests” merely served as his assistants.
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Calvin understood the zeal of true religion can be patient, but the rage of unbelief acts hastily. Calvin’s demeanor and his patient plodding are instructive for our present moment in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). We should not expect the theological and practical deviations from our Standards to be dealt with speedily. But that should not upset the heart motivated by true religion, which alone can practice patient zeal.

This is the first of a two-part series.
In his comment on John 10:31, John Calvin makes a fascinating insight: true religion produces holy zeal and unbelief produces rage. Calvin observes a difference in how the holy zeal of true religion and the rage produced by unbelief are manifested: “unbelief is the mother of rage, and the devil hurries on the wicked.”
In that little comment we get a sense of Calvin’s pastoral heart. Despite ministering in a time of great spiritual and ecclesiastical dysfunction and in a city with grave moral depravities with staunch opposition, Calvin patiently and zealously preached and taught the truth.
Calvin understood the zeal of true religion can be patient, but the rage of unbelief acts hastily. Calvin’s demeanor and his patient plodding are instructive for our present moment in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
We should not expect the theological and practical deviations from our Standards to be dealt with speedily. But that should not upset the heart motivated by true religion, which alone can practice patient zeal.
Deviations in the PCA
There are grave theological and practical deviations from our Standards disturbing the purity and peace of this faith communion. For quite some time, the PCA has been troubled by those who not merely disagree with our Church constitution (the Book of Church Order and the Westminster Standards), but who also choose not to abide by the doctrine and requirements we have vowed together to uphold in the PCA Constitution.
PCA General Assemblies since 2018 seem to have been dominated largely by the flamboyant escapades of a certain minister in Saint Louis and the attempts to clarify our requirements for ordination. Facing increasing threat of judicial process, that minister and the congregation he serves have since left the PCA. While their repentance and restoration would have been preferred, their departure removes a blight upon the purity and peace of the PCA.
However, the inordinate focus on basic issues of sexual purity distracted the PCA from other issues that present challenges to our confessional integrity and biblical fidelity and therefore continue to hinder the peace of the Church.
A. Ordination & Church Office
We live in a moment of time in which the fundamental distinctions among mankind are not simply being ignored, but denied. The terms “man” and “woman” are confusing to many in post-modern America. While there doesn’t yet seem to be confusion in the PCA on the definition of “man” or “woman,” there does seem to be confusion on the definition of deacon in the PCA.
The PCA Constitution is clear on who may serve as a deacon: The “office of deacon” is an “ordinary and perpetual” office in the Church (BCO 9-1). Men shall be chosen to serve in that office (BCO 9-3). Deacons are among those who have been “inducted by the ordination of a court” (BCO 17-1).
Yet a number of congregations in the PCA seem unclear about this.

Some congregations list women as “Deacons” on their website, which is clearly at variance with our Book of Church Order (BCO), which limits the subjects of ordination to men only. Some congregations perhaps try to get around this by not ordaining any of those whom they call “deacons.”

But failing to ordain the ones they call “deacons” creates another issue. Since the BCO sets forth that people are admitted to church office by ordination, if a PCA congregation has no men ordained as deacons, then she has no deacons according to the BCO.
The PCA must sort this out. We can’t continue to have people impersonating church officers in the PCA. These impersonators lack the gift of ordination. Our BCO states regarding ordination:
Ordination is the authoritative admission of one duly called to an office in the Church of God, accompanied with prayer and the laying on of hands, to which it is proper to add the giving of the right hand of fellowship (BCO 17-2).
Why would congregations deprive themselves of the blessings of more ordained officers? Is it right for a church court to refuse to ordain one “duly called” to church office? Is it fair for a congregation’s leaders to confuse people by describing people as “deacons” who are in fact unordained persons and not, properly speaking, deacons according to the Constitution of the PCA?
B. Lady Preachers
There is a spectrum within the PCA regarding what role women may have in public worship. This stems from how one interprets 1 Corinthians 14 and whether silent means “silent” or “she can do anything an unordained man can do.”
God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Cor 14:33–35)
Despite some diversity of interpretation, until recently there was widespread agreement in the PCA that preaching as part of a public worship service was something only men were permitted to do.
For example, one PCA congregation described an address by a famous Episcopal clergywoman as a “bible study,” despite the fact that her presentation immediately preceded the Lord’s Supper and was the exposition of Scripture for that Lord’s Day worship service. This was not just any mainline minister, but one of the first women to be ordained by The Episcopal Church.
Other PCA churches simply invite women to give installments in their seasonal sermon series as part of their regular rotation.

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“What God has joined together” implies that marriage is not merely a human agreement but a relationship in which God changes the status of a man and a woman from being single (they are no longer two) to being married (one flesh). From the moment they are married, they are unified in a mysterious way that belongs to no other human relationship, having all the God-given rights and responsibilities of marriage that they did not have before. Being “one flesh” includes the sexual union of a husband and wife (see Gen. 2:24), but it is more than that because it means that they have left their parents’ household (“a man shall leave his father and his mother,” Gen. 2:24) and have established a new family, such that their primary human loyalty is now to each other, before anyone else.

All commentary sections adapted from the ESV Study Bible.
1. Ephesians 5:22–27
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Read More
The first example of general submission (Eph. 5:21) is illustrated as Paul exhorts wives to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22–24, 33). Husbands, on the other hand, are not told to submit to their wives but to love them (Eph. 5:25–33). Paul’s first example of general submission from Eph. 5:21 is the right ordering of the marriage relationship (see also Col. 3:18; 1 Pet. 3:1–7). The submission of wives is not like the obedience children owe parents, nor does this text command all women to submit to all men (to your own husbands, not to all husbands!). Both genders are equally created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–28) and heirs together of eternal life (Gal. 3:28–29). This submission is in deference to the ultimate leadership of the husband for the health and harmonious working of the marriage relationship.
The focus in these verses is on Christ, for husbands do not “sanctify” their wives or “wash” them of their sins, though they are to do all in their power to promote their wives’ holiness. “Sanctify” here means “to consecrate into the Lord’s service through cleansing, washing of water.” This might be a reference to baptism, since it is common in the Bible to speak of invisible, spiritual things (in this case, spiritual cleansing) by pointing to an outward physical sign of them (see Rom. 6:3–4). There may also be a link here to Ezek. 16:1–13, where the Lord washes infant Israel, raises her, and eventually elevates her to royalty and marries her, which would correspond to presenting the church to himself in splendor at his marriage supper (see also Ezek. 36:25; Rev. 19:7–9; 21:2, 9–11). without blemish. The church’s utter holiness and moral perfection will be consummated in resurrection glory, but is derived from the consecrating sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
2. Genesis 2:18
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Read More
“Not good” is a jarring contrast to Gen. 1:31; clearly, the situation here has not yet arrived to “very good.” “I will make him” can also be translated “I will make for him,” which explains Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 11:9. In order to find the man a helper fit for him, God brings to him all the livestock, birds, and beasts of the field. None of these, however, proves to be “fit for” the man. “Helper” (Hb. ‘ezer’) is one who supplies strength in the area that is lacking in “the helped.” The term does not imply that the helper is either stronger or weaker than the one helped. “Fit for him” or “matching him” (cf. ESV footnote) is not the same as “like him”: a wife is not her husband’s clone but complements him.

3. Matthew 19:4–6
“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Read More
“What God has joined together” implies that marriage is not merely a human agreement but a relationship in which God changes the status of a man and a woman from being single (they are no longer two) to being married (one flesh). From the moment they are married, they are unified in a mysterious way that belongs to no other human relationship, having all the God-given rights and responsibilities of marriage that they did not have before. Being “one flesh” includes the sexual union of a husband and wife (see Gen. 2:24), but it is more than that because it means that they have left their parents’ household (“a man shall leave his father and his mother,” Gen. 2:24) and have established a new family, such that their primary human loyalty is now to each other, before anyone else. Jesus avoids the Pharisaic argument about reasons for divorce and goes back to the beginning of creation to demonstrate God’s intention for the institution of marriage. It is to be a permanent bond between a man and a woman that joins them into one new union that is consecrated by physical intercourse (Gen. 2:24).
4. Colossians 3:18
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Read More
Instead of telling wives to “obey” (Gk. hypakouō), as was typical in Roman households, Paul appeals to them to “submit” (Gk. hypotassō), based on his conviction that men have a God-given leadership role in the family. The term suggests an ordering of society in which wives should align themselves with and respect the leadership of their husbands (see Eph. 5:22–33).
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