We have such a high priest. A priest that is eternally and omnipotently using His exaltation in order to serve us. Priests primarily served in two functions. They offered sacrifices to atone for sin, and they made intercession, praying to God on others’ behalf. Presently, Jesus is serving as our high priest by praying for us to the Father, which is the kind of praying that kept Peter from falling away like Judas.

For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.
Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.”
Hebrews 7:26-8:5 ESV

In our previous text, the author of Hebrews took us through a marvelous journey as he explained the mysterious prophesy that the Christ (David’s Lord) would be a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. As we noted, the purpose of Melchizedek’s brief appearance in Genesis 14 and in Psalm 110 must have been one of the greatest lingering questions for God’s people throughout the ages. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit revealed Melchizedek’s purpose as a type and prefiguring of Jesus.
In essence, we were shown that Jesus is a priest-king, just like Melchizedek. Although Melchizedek’s name means king of righteousness and he was the king of Salem, which means peace, Jesus is the true King of righteousness and King of peace. In the text of Genesis 14, Melchizedek appears suddenly and is given no exit or genealogy, making his priesthood seem unending; however, as the eternal Son of God, Jesus truly is unending.
Next, the author walked us through how Christ’s priesthood, which was resembled by Melchizedek’s priesthood, is superior to the Levitical priesthood. After laying his arguments before us, the author concluded by pointing toward why all of this was necessary: it is the proof that Christ can legally be our great high priest, mediating between us and God, and guaranteeing our salvation through His better covenant.
It was Indeed Fitting // Verses 26-28
With that nutshell of verses 1-25 set before us, we continue in this sermon-letter with verse 26: For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Of the first part of this verse, Richard Phillips notes:
A better translation would be, “Such a high priest was fitted to us.” The point is that Jesus as high priest is perfectly fitted for the predicament in which we find ourselves; he is appropriate in every way to be the Savior of sinful humankind.[1]
Like most things in Hebrews, the author already introduced us to this notion earlier, for he said in 2:10: “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Like puzzle pieces must be fittingly arranged in order to complete the puzzle, our salvation through Christ’s suffering is perfectly fitting to the eternal purpose of God. In the same way, Jesus Himself is also the exact Savior that we needed (and still need!). There is no other means of salvation from our sin because there is no other savior who is fit to save us. Christ alone is qualified to be the guarantor of the better covenant and to be the captain of our salvation, leading us as adopted sons and daughters of God onward to the eternal glory of God.
Again, 7:1-25 was ultimately concerned with Christ’s legal qualifications to serve as our great high priest. Here the author lists five rapid-fire qualities that qualify Jesus in His very person to be our high priest: holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Several commentators have made the case that the first three of these descriptions can be taken together to display Christ’s perfect moral character. Holy describes His sinless perfection before God, innocent describes His sinless perfection before other people, and unstained describes His sinless perfection within His own heart. Of course, like so many things, the distinctions are made for our own benefit of understanding. One cannot be holy before God without also being innocent before others, and one cannot be innocent before others without also being unstained in one’s own conscience. These descriptions truly apply to Christ alone, and we ought to be thankful that they do. As Owen reminds us:
Unholy sinners do stand in need of a holy priest and a holy sacrifice. What we have not in ourselves we must have in him, or we shall not be accepted with the holy God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.[2]
Although it is heresy today to speak of any insufficiency in us at all, we doth protest too much. Our society’s very fixation with affirming one another reveals that the internal paradise is a sham. We have not ascended beyond the basic moral compass that God has ingrained upon our hearts, and we have not transcended above truth itself. As I have said before, depression and anxiety statistics reveal that we are not as free and happy as we keep telling ourselves; instead, we are a society that is collectively caught in Giant Despair’s dungeon.

While we refuse to admit it, we are just as in need of a Savior as any other people throughout history. As the author of Hebrews has noted, we certainly have need of a Savior who is like us and is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. However, we also require a Savior who is separated from sinners. Consider Owen’s reflection on this point:

He was not set apart from them in his nature, for God sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful men” (Rom. 8:3). He was not set apart from men during his ministry on earth. He did not live apart from everyone in a desert. He spoke with tax collectors and prostitutes, and the hypocritical Pharisees rebuked him for this. His holy and undefiled… He was separate from sin, in its nature, causes, and effects. He had to be like this for our benefit. He became the middle person between God and sinners and had to be separate from those sinners in the thing he stood in their place for.
We cannot be saved by one who is altogether like us. In the Pilgrim’s Progress, Help was able to pull Christian out of the Slough of Despond because he was not in the bog himself. Likewise, our salvation is dependent upon Jesus being what we are not, that is, without sin.
The fifth and final description of Jesus’ qualification to be our high priest, exalted above the heaven, will be expounded upon by the author himself in verses 1-5 of chapter 8.
Because these qualities are true of Christ, verse 27 is also a reality: He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. This verse contains such wondrously good news that the author will essentially spend 9:1-10:18 unpacking this thought in detail. For the moment, let us simply consider what is being introduced to us for the first time in this sermon-letter. Jesus is qualified to be our high priest because He belongs to a superior priesthood than the Levites and because He is holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Amen!
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Helen Lemmel, a member of Ballard Baptist Church, died in Seattle on November 1, 1961, thirteen days before her 98th birthday; she had written nearly 500 hymns. Due to her extreme poverty, her remains were cremated and nobody seems to know where they were disposed of. No matter. Those are things of earth. Strangely dim. Imagine her joy, when she turned her glorified eyes on her Savior and Look[ed} full in his wonderful face”!

How are you doing? We’re often asking one another. And we dutifully respond, “Fine. I’m doing just fine.” When, in fact, we may be on the brink of despair. Do you ever feel that you’re believing and hoping in the darkness? Is your soul weary and troubled? You’re not alone. The life of Helen Howarth Lemmel (1863-1961) is a marvelous illustration of clinging and “doing well” though doing so in the total darkness.
Helen was born in Wardle, England, November 14, 1863. Her father was a Wesleyan minister who decided, when their daughter was about twelve-years-old, to immigrate to America. The family first settled in Mississippi and later moved to Wisconsin.
Early in her life, Helen had shown great love for music, and great skill. Her parents did their best to find good vocal teachers for their daughter, and her vocal expertise increased. In 1904, an opportunity arose in Seattle, Washington for Helen to write about music for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. After four years, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity arose: Helen was invited to further her musical studies in Germany.
While studying abroad, she fell in love with a wealthy European and they got married. How are you doing, Helen? Very well, indeed! So it seemed. Until tragedy struck. She was rapidly losing her eyesight. When she became totally blind—her husband abandoned her. Helen would struggle with loneliness and various heartaches throughout the rest of her long life.
Her soul, “weary and troubled,” blind Helen returned to America, “no light in the darkness” could she see. How are you doing, Helen? I’m lonely, afraid, blind, and abandonned–how do you think I’m doing? But her Savior had her graven on his heart, and she could still sing. Looking full in the wonderful face of her Savior, she travelled widely, singing in churches throughout the Midwest. During these years, Helen was hired to teach voice at Moody Bible Institute.
When she was fifty-five years old, Helen heard someone say something about her eyes–almost insulting–that had a huge impact on her mind and imagination: “So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will see that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”
“I stood still,” Helen later recalled, “and singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.
She continued her account, saying that there was “…not one conscious moment of putting word to word to make rhyme, or note to note to make melody. The verses were written the same week, after the usual manner of composition, but,” she added, “nonetheless dictated by the Holy Spirit.”
Now elderly, lonely, and infirm—and blind—Helen became acquainted with her neighbor, a young man named Doug Goins and his parents, Paul and Kathryn Goins. “She was advanced in years and almost destitute, but she was an amazing person,” recalled Doug. “She made a great impression on me as a junior high child because of her joy and enthusiasm. Though she was living on government assistance in a sparse bedroom, whenever we’d ask how she was doing, she would reply, ‘I’m doing well in the things that count.’” One day, the Goins invited her to dinner. “We had never entertained a blind person before,” said Kathryn, “…despite her infirmities, she was full of life.”
“She was always composing hymns,” said Kathryn. “She had no way of writing them down, so she would call my husband at all hours, and he’d rush down and record them before she forgot the words.”
Helen had a cheap plastic keyboard by her bed, at which she spent her days playing, singing—and, in her sorrows—sometimes crying. “One day, God is going to bless me with a great heavenly keyboard,” she’d say. “I can hardly wait!”
Helen Lemmel, a member of Ballard Baptist Church, died in Seattle on November 1, 1961, thirteen days before her 98th birthday; she had written nearly 500 hymns. Due to her extreme poverty, her remains were cremated and nobody seems to know where they were disposed of. No matter. Those are things of earth. Strangely dim. Imagine her joy, when she turned her glorified eyes on her Savior and Look[ed} full in his wonderful face”!
How are you really doing? In the things that really count?
1. O soul, are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness you see? There’s light for a look at the Savior, And life more abundant and free!
Refrain: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.
2. Thro’ death into life everlasting, He passed, and we follow Him there; O’er us sin no more hath dominion– For more than conqu’rors we are!
3. His Word shall not fail you–He promised; Believe Him, and all will be well: Then go to a world that is dying, His perfect salvation to tell! (Tune)
Douglas Bond, author of more than thirty books, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, leads Church history tours (join him on the Rome to Geneva Tour, 2023), and he is copy editor for authors and publishers. Contact him at [email protected]
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Humans have limits, and the Great Society did not acknowledge those limits. It did not look evil. But in fact, arrogance that denies limits is deeply evil.

Like you, I’m busy. I’m a pastor with a sermon to write and a flock to tend. Why did I read a 400-page book about the history of 1960s America? Shouldn’t I read, instead, about our own turbulent times?
My answer to that question might not lead you to read Amity Shlaes’s Great Society: A New History.[1] However, I hope it will inspire you to become more familiar with the vision of some of our fellow Americans during this period, a vision that they dubbed “The Great Society”—a program, like so many other grand schemes, that failed to live up to its name. Some truly great legislation came from this era, but enmeshed within them came much damaging legislation as well.[2] As Shlaes reminds us, “Nothing is new, just forgotten.”[3] Or as Solomon put it, “There’s nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9).
So, what was The Great Society? Why did it fail? And what must we learn from it? That is the question that this review essay attempts to answer as it follows and interacts with the story Shlaes tells of this epoch. It is a tornado siren for our own day. Those who care deeply about justice in our day will care deeply about the weather conditions that caused so much systemic wreckage for the precious people with whom justice is concerned.
Truly, Shlaes offers a cautionary tale for our compassionate nation.
This essay is a Christian exercise in stewarding history’s lessons in love for neighbor. This is a pastoral exercise in guarding the church from faulty visions of both humanity and heaven. It’s long, but only because this is a long-neglected subject. We have heard much over the last decade—from politicians and pastors alike—about the legacy of slavery in the form of a straight line from American’s founding to Jim Crow to the present as an explanation for real problems in America. Americans at our best are concerned to get our history right for the sake of doing right by our neighbors today. But what about that period we call “The Sixties” that was filled with programs and projects designed to eradicate poverty and racism? And why do we hear so little about these dramatic political efforts and their outcomes? Why is this so, especially given that their aims are the aims of modern justice movers and shakers today?
If you care about justice, about the poor, and about the lingering effects of slavery, then come with me on this journey into our country’s more recent history.
The Legacy of Slavery or the Legacy of Liberalism?
An exchange between columnists back in 2014 piqued my interest in this period. Nicholas Kristof, in his New York Times piece titled “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” writes the following: “The presumption on the part of so many well-meaning white Americans [is] that racism is a historical artifact. They don’t appreciate the overwhelming evidence that centuries of racial subjugation still shape inequity in the 21st century.”[4] Racists have existed and do exist. No problem with this claim. But Kristof says more: that present inequities are shaped by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, by past and enduring racism, both personal and systemic.
Thomas Sowell sees the same situation differently: “If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state.”[5] The title of his piece was his thesis, “A Legacy of Liberalism.” According to Sowell, “Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and ‘war on poverty’ programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began . . . from the laws and policies of the 1960s, nothing comparable happened economically. And there were serious retrogressions socially.”[6]
This resonated with me.
Cabrini-Green Homes, the public housing project just outside my window in downtown Chicago when I was a college student in the late nineties, was by then notorious for crime and violence. “The Projects”—Whose idea was that? And what precisely did they expect to achieve by building these inner city monoliths?
My father, then a district manager for a retail chain in St. Louis, was awakened many nights by the police due to break-ins at his stores in East St. Louis. What was the backstory for that “bad part of town”? Later, when I sold cell phones to fund my years as a seminary student, I encountered different cultures in different stores, each with their own admirable qualities and predictable sins. Upper-middle-class folks worked hard but frequently asked to split their accounts following a divorce. Rural folks frequently needed new phones for a child returning from Afghanistan or else for a man in the home who lost his phone in another drunken fishing incident. Then there were the black urban poor, many lovely individuals and loving mothers. In this community, however, few were married, “baby daddies” were a daily thing, and there was a refrain in the context of selling: “I’m waiting on my check,” that is, a government check. This was a cultural norm. More than the rest, this part of town felt stuck, trapped, downtrodden.
As statistics will show, not all blacks are stuck. Not hardly. The community I encountered does not characterize the whole of blacks in America, an important clarification. Today 82% of black Americans are above the poverty line despite only 30% being married.[7] 94% of black married couples are above the poverty line.[8] That we hear so much about black poverty is owing more to political rhetoric that exploits poor urban blacks, painting this subculture as the state of blacks as a whole. The dynamics I explore in this essay apply equally to whites and blacks, a point Shlaes makes.[9] The difference is that one group’s poor are exploited for political and social gain and the other are not.
For that downtrodden part of town in my sales experience, it did seem that something structural was going on—something systemic that shaped cultures and the precious individuals embedded within them. But I did not resonate with Kristof’s take in the New York Times.
What were these “war on poverty” programs Sowell wrote of, and how were they related to the passage of the civil rights laws of the 1960s? What were these “serious retrogressions,” and what might they have to do with “the liberal welfare state,” as Sowell claims? Sowell’s own body of work has been helpful on these questions, especially in the realm of researched statistics.[10]
But what is the story behind these stats, these policies? Who were the personalities involved in them? Why did the American public embrace them? What might all of this have to do with the “legacy of slavery” and the various disparities we see today?
Shlaes’s book Great Society tells that story.
This is the story not of cruel people, but in Shlaes’s words, “lovable people who, despite themselves, hurt those they loved.”[11]
At the start of the 1960s the country was affluent. That’s the first word that describes America at the start of the decade. The post-war American industries stood head and shoulders above those of other countries. The sharpest contrast was in the automotive industry. That a small Japanese company like Toyota could ever be competitive in the US was not on even the shrewdest industry leader’s mind. The American middle class thrived, work was in demand, and jobs paid well. If you weren’t skilled, a company would train you and then employ you. Young people growing up at this time had a different perspective than their parents who grew up during the Great Depression. Poverty was the exception rather than the rule. Add to this America’s recent industrial and managerial achievements in the Second World War and you have a generation marked by a second word: confidence. This was an optimistic generation. America could do anything and in particular, the United States government could do anything. Trust in government was high and so were hopes in the possibilities of government. We hear it in Kennedy’s words at Rice University on the Nation’s space effort in 1962: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”[12] This affluence and confidence made for a generation intrigued with socialism. Sound familiar?
The New Deal era programs of the 1930s failed to address the economic depression, leading to a truly Great Depression.[13] The Second World War pulled the country out of its economic plight. But those failures had faded just enough for a renewed optimism in big-government solutions.
The 60s were also dominated by ambition, a third word for the era that stirred popular intrigue with socialism to political action. This was a moral ambition, ambition for a cause, ambition with “a fierce urgency of now.”[14] The Great Depression era had its great crisis to overcome, and the World War II generation accomplished a truly great feat overseas. What great achievement might this generation undertake? If that wasn’t on the mind of average Americans, it was certainly on the mind of their political leaders. President Lyndon B. Johnson answered that question with what he called “The Great Society.”
What Was the Great Society?
We can answer that question from six angles: legal, historical, religious, political, sociological, and economic. This is not the outline for Shlaes’s book, which works across the sixties chronologically. Her story dramatizes the events of this period and humanizes its many characters. I commend it to you. This here is my attempt to synthesize what I learned from her narrative account.
1. Legally, the Great Society was Lyndon Johnson’s sweeping domestic legislative agenda to eliminate poverty and racial disparities.
Yes, that’s exactly what it was. This was in an era before the loss of trust in the government that makes that kind of legislative ambition sound hollow. In fact, it was in part the great failure of these promises that explains our present cynicism. But make no mistake: this is what they set out to do by legislation.
This package of legislative initiatives created new federal programs and whole agencies to help Americans in nearly every area of life: education, housing, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation, including bussing for school integration.
In her narrative history, Shlaes spends most of her volume tracing the personalities around the President during this time—aids, fed chairmen, famed economists, and union bosses. The mingling of genuine altruistic motives and blinding political ambition—often in the same characters—is a study of human nature and the nature of government. Among this cast of characters, President Johnson, as one of his aids put it, “made laws the way other men eat chocolate chip cookies.”[15] That was his expertise from the Senate. That’s what he became famous for in the White House. The sheer amount of legislation passed during this period was unparalleled.
2. Historically, the Great Society was an ambitious moniker reflecting that period’s mindset: confidence in what government could do and should do.
“Let’s not alleviate poverty; let’s cure it,”[16] President Johnson stridently and repeatedly insisted. He meant it. America after the Second World War was confident in its federal government. So too were government officials. Lyndon Johnson wanted to expand government in a way that eclipsed Roosevelt’s transformative presidency, but Johnson did not have Roosevelt’s crises: economic depression and war. Johnson, rather, had affluence. Things were not just going well for Americans, but exceptionally well. Johnson’s challenge, then, was to generate a sense of urgency for America to see it go well for everyone—literally.[17] His legacy as president—and the legacy of those whose careers were bound to his presidency—depended on such grand plans.
A “good society” would not do. He rejected that suggestion.[18] He insisted, rather, on a “Great Society,” and this became his rallying cry. America had already organized itself to finish a war overseas. Winning the war on poverty, it was said, would be a “mopping up action.”[19] This war, like any war, would be a job for the federal government. They were not sloganeering. They really were that optimistic in the power and precision of government planning.
3. Religiously, the Great Society was the expression of the nation’s collective human and religious—even Christian-informed—impulse to do something good for those who are hurting.
This legislative vision did not emerge in a vacuum. Johnson’s vision was a continuation of what President Kennedy pursued before him, in part, and what President Nixon continued after him. In his own time, it was marketable as the political expression of the human desire to help those in need, a good desire shaped by America’s Christian roots.
It was President Kennedy who by executive order established the Peace Corps, headed by Yale-grad and decorated officer Sargent Shriver. Shriver became President Johnson’s poverty czar, the principal architect of his “War on Poverty,” and head of the Office for Economic Opportunity. Along with many Americans, Shriver believed that what the church already did for the poor, the federal government could and should do through its programs.[20] To a national conscience informed by its Christian heritage, this just seemed right.
4. Politically, the Great Society was a political project with all the incentives and complexities intrinsic to politics.
Political motivations and incentives abounded. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society vision was curious on the heels of Kennedy’s death. Lyndon Johnson to that point was known for his opposition to civil rights legislation.[21] Johnson wanted to exceed the accomplishments of his predecessor, President Kennedy. This was something of a political imperative given that the House and the Senate went to Democrats following Kennedy’s assassination. He must do more. But he also wanted to best his intellectual and political father, President Roosevelt, and his New Deal. What Roosevelt did in creating infrastructure jobs to supposedly energize the economy, Johnson intended to do with the influx of cash to impoverished communities. Johnson expected these communities to begin to work, to contribute, and to join the rest of their American peers in their share of affluence. Without the crisis of a depression, Johnson leveraged the crisis of Kennedy’s death to move on this apparent political opportunity.[22] He forwarded this vision on a wave of empathy and optimism. As they said, Roosevelt had his “New Deal,” and Johnson had his “Fast Deal.” But had it, he did.[23]
A lawmaker by trade, Johnson was more attentive to legislative inputs and intentions than he was to results. Laws—and the promises they held out—were the goal. The more the better. Not so much the outcomes. As the war in Vietnam became complicated and politically costly, neither Johnson nor his successor, Richard Nixon, could afford politically to go back on these promises. The Great Society had to move forward no matter the results. The priority of winning elections consumed and compromised even the most principled economists and advisors at the time to such an embarrassing extent that many later acknowledged their complicity.[24]
5. Sociologically, the Great Society institutionalized America’s commitment to a desegregated society.
The Great Society was an expansive vision that merged ambitions and political visions beyond an interest in helping the poor. In one of his famous speeches, Johnson, who was fashioned as the “Great Emancipator” of the twentieth century, said, “We’ve got to find a way to let Negroes get what most white folks already have.” He continued, “Freedom is not enough. You do not take a person who has been hobbled by chains and put him at the starting line of a race and say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others.’” What the nation needed was, “equality as a fact and equality as a result.”[25]
Thomas Sowell, a young economist at the time, disagreed: “To expect civil rights to solve our economic and social problems was barking up the wrong tree.”[26] Blacks, for all the gains they had remarkably made, were nevertheless underdeveloped and, for that reason, genuinely and understandably discouraged.[27] Much to the embarrassment of whites and blacks, reading scores were significantly lower among blacks. From Sowell’s perspective, the black community should have turned away from counting on political leaders to change their circumstances and toward an investment in “our own self-development as a people.”[28] As Sowell has demonstrated in his own research, this is how any formerly-oppressed group rises out of the developmental consequences of their oppression.
In this attempt to compensate the black community, Johnson went further than the vision to which Martin Luther King Jr. rallied a generation in his early speeches. He went further than the call for equal treatment before the law, further than seeing that the children of the civil rights era were treated “according to the content of their character.”[29] Instead, Johnson wanted a policy of redistribution to make up for what was lost in the black community’s development under oppressive laws. Not only was school segregation outlawed—a good thing—but mandated school integration required that students be bussed from one part of town to another, a bad decision, as we’ll see.
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