A while back my wife and I were spending time with our grandkids and I noticed they were using a number of devices and contraptions I’d never seen before … devices that weren’t around when we were parents. When I asked them where they got these things, quite often they said it was a shower gift—someone had given it to them at an occasion planned to celebrate the arrival of their child. I was amazed at some of the products that are available today. Granted, there’s still the need for disposable diapers, baby blankets, changing pads, and onesies. I don’t think babies will ever outgrow the need for pacifiers, diaper bags, burp cloths, and bath toys. But some of the things available today are just astonishing—self-sterilizing baby bottles … battery operated nail trimmers that safely file tiny fingernails without harming the surrounding skin … all kinds of products that utilize technology and wifi so you can check on your baby with your phone … a bassinet that auto-responds to a baby’s cry encouraging extended sleep.
As I was thinking about that, my mind drifted to the Christmas narrative and the gifts that Scripture records the baby Jesus received from the magi upon his arrival—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. While the gift of gold seems somewhat appropriate—you could always use it to purchase some item or object that you needed—the gifts of frankincense and myrrh, as I’ve come to learn more about them, don’t seem to be the kinds of things new parents would really use. But as I mentioned in my previous post, these gifts were largely emblematic. They were prophetic symbols that spoke to who Jesus was and what He came to do—images that foreshadowed what He’d accomplish and be about. In this series of posts I’m digging into those gifts in hopes of more fully understanding Jesus’ role and function—investigating those presents so we can come away with a more complete grasp of His divine purpose and reason for coming to earth.
The gift of gold spoke to his kingship and authority. It pointed to the fact Jesus was of royal lineage and came to establish a kingdom that was unlike anything the world had ever seen—a kingdom not marked by conquest, power, and the subjugation of people but one marked by righteousness, peace, and grace. He was a king that was unique in his approach. Not only was his kingdom permanent and everlasting, but it didn’t feature by the traditional bells and whistles that accompany royalty. It was a spiritual kingdom rather than a political or territorial one. Unlike worldly kingdoms built on power, wealth, and control, it was founded on love, humility, and service—ruling in people’s hearts by choice rather than by force or earthly authority.
In this post I want to look at frankincense—a gift that at some level had to cause Mary and Joseph to scratch their heads and ask, “What’s up with this?” But as I said, it was a gift that was emblematic and prophetic. Frankincense was a resin harvested from the Boswellia tree that was native to that part of the world. People would make deep incisions into the bark during the winter months and a yellow sap would drip out which would then dry, harden, and crystallize to where it could be ground into powder. Frankincense was a commodity that was prized for a number of reasons, but one of the most common was the fact it had a very sweet, pleasant aroma when burned. As a result, it was kind of like a Swiss army knife in that it was used for a number of different reasons and purposes. It was used to heal sicknesses and treat wounds. It was used to alleviate gastric and digestive discomfort as well as address circulatory issues. It had a number of medicinal and curative uses. But where it gives meaning to Jesus’ birth was from its use in the Temple as part of the sacrificial system. Frankincense was a substance priests would use during the offering of sacrifices that would make the smoke form a thick cloud and rise. The Psalmist references this in Psalm 141:2 when he says, “May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.” When the wise men brought frankincense to the Christ-child, they weren’t simply offering Mary and Joseph a valuable resin that had a variety of uses. They were pointing to Jesus’ priestly role and hinting at the fact this newborn child was God in human form.
The priest’s primary role was to be a middleman—a go-between—between the people and God—to represent the people to God and God to the people. As such, one of the responsibilities that came with being a priest in the Old Testament was offering sacrifices on people’s behalf. The Jews had a very elaborate and involved sacrificial system, but everything pointed to a ceremony carried out on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar—the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. This ceremony, which happened during the late September-mid October time frame, came at the culmination of ten days of introspection where Jews were encouraged to fast, pray, and reflect on their actions over the past year. At the end of that period, the priest would, on that day, sacrifice an innocent animal as a temporary payment for the sins of the people—an act meant to help the people turn the page, push reset, and renew their spiritual lives. But this ceremony was “temporary” because it was an annual observance that was repeated year after year. Just as the Jewish sacrificial system was very elaborate and sophisticated, so the Day of Atonement was full of imagery and symbolism.
In order for us to more fully understand Jesus’ priestly role, there are two paradoxical truths we must balance and hold in tension—the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. Granted, we live in a day when the notion of sin is seen as outdated. Many people think of sin as nothing more than a term religious people like us use to coerce and trick children into being good. But I think the reason people have reached that conclusion about sin is because, as a society, we’ve lost sight of God’s holiness. For when we don’t understand His holiness—when we fail to grasp what it means for God to be holy—we won’t take sin seriously or realize the cost and tragedy of what it does to us.
The word “holy” comes from a Greek word that means “separate” or “other”. We believe God is transcendently separate—perfect in every way. He is flawless, pure, and free of fault. There is no wrong or stain in Him. In many ways God’s holiness is not a single attribute so much as it is the perfection and flawlessness of all His other attributes. His power is holy, His grace is holy, His mercy is holy—it’s His otherness that makes Him holy. But hold in tension with that the fact we are sinful. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 51:5, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” We are born with an inherited predisposition toward sin which, when acted upon, breaks our intimacy with a holy God. It disrupts our fellowship with Him. It blemishes and batters our life. It harms us in ways that are corrupting and counterproductive. That’s why God hates sin—because of what it does to us, and because it’s everything He’s not!
Getting back to the role of the priest—on the Day of Atonement the high priest would sacrifice an innocent animal on behalf of the people and then go into an inner chamber of the Temple called the Holy of Holies. In that chamber was fire holder called a censer that was filled with burning coals from the altar where the sacrifice was made. After it was full, the priest would then take a couple of handfuls of frankincense and dump it over the coals, creating an aromatic and fragrant, but also incredibly thick, cloud of smoke that would rise. Then the priest would take a second animal and confess the sins of the people while his hands were placed upon its head, symbolically transferring their sins on to that animal. And then they’d drive that animal out of the Temple and into the wilderness—away from the community—symbolizing that the accumulated sins of the people had been banished and removed. In fact, this ceremony is where the term “scapegoat” originated. It refers to that innocent animal that symbolically absorbed the accumulated sin of the people and was then expelled.
This whole process probably seems a bit extreme and odd to us (not to mention entirely unfair to the animals). I remember, on a trip to Kenya during my doctoral program, we spent two or three days out in the bush—that part of the country away from the capital of Nairobi that had no electricity or running water, and roads that were nothing more than hardened paths where vegetation didn’t grow because enough vehicles had driven on them and pounded the soil down. We were staying at a mission station and one night had goat for dinner—a goat whose throat had been slit and had died at the hands of one of the mission station staffers only a couple of hours earlier. As we watched that process play out, not only did a hush fell over our group as an animal was losing its life on our behalf. As I stood quietly and watched, I reflected on the Old Testament sacrificial system and thought, “While I get the point, this is cruel and barbaric.” Many of us look at the Old Testament sacrificial system and think, “Who in their right mind would come up with a system like this?”
What we need to understand is that one of God’s essential character qualities is that He’s just. And because He’s just—completely just—He must punish sin. For sin to go unpunished would compromise His justice. But not only is God just, but He’s also merciful. And here’s where the beauty of what Jesus did for us as our priest comes into play. His death not only satisfies God’s sense of justice, but it also extends mercy. He can be our intermediary—our middleman. Which brings us back to what happened that night in Bethlehem.
As Christians, we believe in the hypostatic union—the fact Jesus was fully God and fully man. We believe within his person were two very distinct natures—divine and human. You won’t find anyone any more divine than Jesus was—He was fully God. But at the same time, he was fully human. He felt the emotions we feel—sadness, grief, anger, frustration, and fear. He knew hunger and thirst, pain, fatigue. He knew temptation, stress, rejection, and family tension. He didn’t walk through life with rubber gloves and a bulletproof vest, but he fully entered into the human condition … which is why He can serve as our priest. If He hadn’t been divine, he couldn’t have met the criteria of perfection required by the sacrificial system. When a sacrifice was offered, it had to be an animal that was without blemish—flawless … unmarred … spotless. Because you and I are tainted by sin we don’t measure up—only Jesus does. But because Jesus was human, He can be our substitute. Because he was one of us He could step in for us. Because He was human He can serve as our priest and offer a once-and-for-all-time sacrifice that doesn’t need to be repeated annually. When it comes to our salvation, we need a middleman—someone who can stand in the gap between us and God. And that’s what Jesus did!
The writer to the Hebrews expresses it this way:
Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant. … (And) because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. … Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. (Hebrews 7:22b, 24-25, 27).
Just as the priests in the Old Testament burned incense before the Lord on behalf of the people and a fragrant cloud rose toward heaven, so the sacrifice of Jesus’ life became a fragrant offering to God. His prayers, obedience, and ultimately His death rose to the Father as a pleasing aroma. This is what the apostle Paul is pointing to in Eph. 5:2 when he challenges us to, “walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Jesus came so the holiness that is innately housed in him might be replicated in us. God’s will for you, me, and every person on this planet is that we might be holy—that the essential attributes resident in Him might be reproduced and recreated in us. And how does that happen? How are we made holy? By the priestly work of Jesus. The writer to the Hebrews put it this way: And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. (Hebrews 13:12).
In 1936 King Edward VIII of England wanted to speak to the American people via radio, which was an ambitious and formidable event to coordinate because, ninety years ago, they didn’t have the satellites and communication technology we have today. It took a massive amount of planning and preparation. Everything was set and put in place until, moments before the broadcast was scheduled to begin, one of the radio station employees ran across the floor and tripped on the primary wire that was to be used to capture and transmit the sound and broke it. Nobody knew what to do, and panic set in. But a quick-thinking crew member grabbed the ends of the wires and manually held them together during his speech. In a sense, He did for that broadcast what Jesus did for us spiritually. He became the means by which King Edward could be connected with people halfway around the world. Just as that crew member became the conduit for a transatlantic connection between King Edward and the American people, Jesus became our middleman and did what needed to be done so we could be reconnected to our Creator and God’s grace could come to our lives.
For us, the symbolism of frankincense calls us to cultivate a life of surrender and service to God. When we choose to honor the Lord with our time, words, and actions because we’ve allowed Jesus to serve as our priest and entered into a relationship with Him, we are offering up to Him an “incense” He finds pleasing and delightful. Every moment of trust in hardship … every act of love and generosity … every expression of praise and worship … every exercise of prayer and intercession … every move of repentance and humility … every gesture of compassion and service … and every demonstration of faithfulness in the face of suffering becomes a fragrant offering to the Lord. As we reflect on the gift of frankincense, we are invited to see our lives as fragrant offerings and realize the same Jesus who received that gift as a child now longs to receive the incense of our worship as Lord. May the actions of our daily lives rise before Him like sweet-smelling incense, and may our hearts burn with the same adoration and devotion the magi expressed when they bowed before Him and recognized him as king.