Kings And Priests, And Not Gods

Scripture honors you further than most Christians dare believe — sons and daughters of the King, priests in the same order as Christ. And the oldest lie in the world is a counterfeit of exactly that. This is where the two roads part, and they run very close together.

A study on Righteousness By Faith · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 15 min read

The Oldest Lie Is Not What You Think

Ask most people what the serpent told Eve and they will say he called God a liar. He did. But that was the setup. The offer itself — the thing that actually moved her hand — was flattery.

“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:5

Ye shall be as gods. Not you are worthless. Not God does not love you. The lie that emptied Eden was an upgrade offer — and it was sold to a woman who was already, at that moment, the crowned regent of a world.

It was not a new invention even then. He had run it on himself first:

“For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God … I will be like the most High.”

Isaiah 14:13, 14

An angel already close to the throne wanted to be a degree closer than the arrangement allowed. That is the original sin of the universe, and every version since has been a re-run: take something God has genuinely given, and want it held on your own terms.

God Really Does Honor You This Highly

Now the mistake most reactions to that make. Having seen how flattery works, a cautious believer decides the safe course is to think as little of himself as possible — and that is not humility, it is a second error with better manners.

Because Scripture’s estimate of a redeemed sinner is higher than almost anyone preaches:

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

1 Peter 2:9

“And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”

Revelation 1:6

Kings. Priests. A royal house. Not metaphors softened into encouragement — the same words used of actual thrones and actual altars. Refusing that is not modesty. It is calling God’s valuation of His own purchase excessive.

So the answer to the serpent was never think less of yourself. Both roads run through a high estimate. The difference is somewhere else entirely.

In The Same Order As Christ

And the honor goes higher still, which is the burden of the Melchizedek Message. The priesthood believers are brought into is not the Levitical one. It is the older order, sworn by oath:

“The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”

Psalm 110:4

That is said of Christ. And believers are named kings and priests in Him — which means the order is shared. Same order as our Lord. It is difficult to state that without it sounding like too much.

It is not too much. It is exactly what is written. Which is precisely why this is the ground the enemy has always worked hardest, and why the next question is the one that decides everything.

What A Priest In That Order Actually Does

Ask what the office consists of, and the whole thing turns over.

“For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.”

Hebrews 5:1

A priest’s whole function is to bring to God something that is not himself. He does not qualify by being clean; he handles a sacrifice on behalf of people who are not. Take away the offering and there is no priesthood left — only a man in robes.

And in this order the offering is not ours either:

“Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.”

Hebrews 7:27

So here is the whole balance in one line, and it is not a qualification of the honor — it is the honor:

A priest in the order of Melchizedek ministers on the merits of a sacrifice that is not his own. A king in that order received his crown as a gift.

Dependence is not the small print under the title. Dependence is the title. Take it away and you do not have a more exalted priest — you have no priest at all, and 1 Peter says as much in the same breath in which it says holy priesthood: the sacrifices are “acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”

The Counterfeit Wears The Truth’s Clothes

Now watch how the substitution is actually made, because it is never crude.

When the pantheistic teaching that would split the church came to a head in Kellogg’s The Living Temple, Ellen White traced it without hesitation to its origin:

“Living Temple contains the Alpha of these theories. The Omega would follow in a little while. I tremble for our people. These beautiful representations are similar to the temptation that the enemy brought to Adam and Eve in Eden.”

Ellen G. White · Sermons and Talks, vol. 1, p. 341

Eden. Not a novel heresy — the original one, in beautiful representations. And note what wounded her most about how the book was received:

“…the worst of it—that which struck right to my heart—was the assertion made regarding the book: ‘It contains the very sentiments that Sister White has been teaching.’”

Ellen G. White · Sermons and Talks, vol. 1, p. 341

There is the mechanism, exactly. The counterfeit does not arrive announcing itself as the opposite of the truth. It arrives claiming to be what you already believed — only more so.

Set the pair side by side and the distance between them is one word:

Nothing further from the truth could have caught the people it caught. Only something that close would do.

How It Took The Two Messengers

Which brings this series back to where it started, and to the uncomfortable fact recorded in the previous study.

The men who eventually went over the edge of this were not the ones who lacked light. They were the two who had preached Christ our righteousness more powerfully than anyone in their generation — and who had been vindicated for it, publicly, against the assembled leadership of their church.

Being right had taught them a lesson that is very hard to unlearn: the assembly can be wrong and I can be right. True, in 1888. And held without a counterweight, it eventually put both of them outside every check that might have saved them.

That is why Paul’s caution is addressed to believers and not to unbelievers:

“…not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”

Romans 12:3

More highly than he ought. There is a height a redeemed man ought to think of himself, and it is very high. There is also a line, and it is not drawn where most people look for it. It is not crossed by thinking too well of what God has given. It is crossed by beginning to think of it as yours.

Four Questions To Put To Yourself

None of this is safe as theory. It is only useful as examination, and Paul supplies the sharpest instrument:

“For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”

1 Corinthians 4:7

• Can I still be corrected — by someone with less light than I think I have?
• When I am proved right, does it make me gentler with those who were wrong, or does it build a case?
• Is the righteousness I am counting on a Person who lives in me, or a record I am maintaining?
• What have I that I did not receive? — and does my manner show that I received it?

The second question is the one that would have saved two men, and it is the one nobody asks in the hour they most need it.

White Raiment, Offered By Someone Else

The letter written to the last church says both halves of this at once, and it is no accident that it was the text at the center of 1888:

“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed.”

Revelation 3:17, 18

Notice that He does not answer I am rich by telling them they are nothing. He tells them they are naked — and then offers to clothe them like royalty. The rebuke and the crown arrive in the same sentence, from the same hand.

That is the balanced pathway, and there is no third road. You are a king and a priest in the order of Melchizedek, purchased at a price nobody can compute, seated in a family you did not marry into by merit. And every thread of the robe was woven by Someone else, is worn on His account, and is kept only while you are willing to be told you are naked without it.

Hold both, and the serpent’s offer loses all its power — because he has nothing left to offer you that you have not already been given, and nothing to promise except the one thing that would cost you all of it.