Hebrews 5:4

Hebrews 5:4. A priest, moreover, who is God's agent as well as man's, has his appointment not from himself nor from man, but from God.

And none taketh this honour (the office, as the word frequently means) to himself (upon himself, as we now say), i.e legally, acceptably to the chief party in this arrangement; but when called of God, even as Aaron was. The Divine ordinance which made Aaron and his sons high priests continued long in the theocracy, and was vindicated against the usurpation of other Levites and of kings (Numbers 16:17; 2 Chronicles 26:16-21). But long before the date of this Epistle the ordinance had been broken, and the Roman power contemptuously set it aside. Some have thought that the writer rebukes these irregularities in this verse, but probably he is speaking of what was in fact the law and the proprieties of the case without any side-reference to later abuses. Who are to present offerings to God, and whom God will accept, are questions that belong clearly to God Himself. We must carefully distinguish, however, between the prophetical office and the priestly. All Christians that have the Gospel may prophesy; every man who has found the cross is competent and is authorised, nay, is even required to tell others the road. Warnings against preaching the Gospel, derived from the history of Korah and Abiram, are specially inappropriate under a dispensation when all are commanded to tell what God has done for them, when not only the Spirit and the Bride, but every one that heareth is to say, Come. The real lesson lies in another direction. We have under the Gospel one Priest only in the deeper sense of that word, a Mediator and a sacrifice, who has made complete atonement for sin. The usurpation of His office is on the part of those who assume to themselves the name of priests, and pretend to offer sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead. Here is the sin of Korah; the more guilty as Christ is greater than Aaron, and as His perfect sacrifice is superior to the shadowy sacrifices of the ancient Law.