These chapters unfold, with great minuteness of detail, the divine requirements in reference to those who were privileged to draw near as priests to "offer the bread of their God." In this, as in the preceding section, we have conduct as the _result_, not the procuring _cause_ of the relationship. This should be carefully borne in mind. The sons of Aaron were, in virtue of their birth, priests unto God. They all stood in this relationship, one as well as another. It was not a matter of attainment, a question of progress, something which one had and another had not. All the sons of Aaron were priests; they were born into a priestly place. Their capacity to understand and enjoy their position and its attendant privileges was obviously a different thing altogether. One might be a babe, and another might have reached the point of mature and vigorous manhood. The former would, of necessity, be unable to eat of the priestly food, being a babe, for whom "milk," and not "strong meat," was adapted; but he was as truly a member of the priestly house as the man who could tread, with firm step, the courts of the Lord's house, and feed upon "the wave breast" and "heave shoulder" of the sacrifice.
This distinction is easily understood in the case of the sons of Aaron, and hence it will serve to illustrate, in a very simple manner, the truth as to the members of the true priestly house, over which our great High-Priest presides, and to which all true believers belong. (Heb. iii. 6.) Every child of God is a priest. He is enrolled as a member of Christ's priestly house. He may be very ignorant, but his position as a priest is not founded upon knowledge, but upon life; his experience may be very shallow, but his place as a priest does not depend upon experience, but upon life; his capacity may be very limited, but his relationship as a priest does not rest upon an enlarged capacity, but upon life. He was born into the position and relationship of a priest: he did not work himself thereinto. It was not by any efforts of his own that he became a priest: he became a priest by birth. The spiritual priesthood, together with all the spiritual functions attaching thereunto, is the necessary appendage to spiritual birth. The capacity to enjoy the privileges and to discharge the functions of a position must not be confounded with the position itself: they must ever be kept distinct. Relationship is one thing; capacity is quite another.
Furthermore, in looking at the family of Aaron, we see that nothing could break the relationship between him and his sons. There were many things which would interfere with the full enjoyment of the privileges attaching to the relationship. A son of Aaron might "defile himself by the dead;" he might defile himself by forming an unholy alliance; he might have some bodily "blemish;" he might be "blind or lame;" he might be "a dwarf." Any of these things would have interfered very materially with his enjoyment of the privileges and his discharge of the functions pertaining to his relationship, as we read, "No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire: he hath a blemish: he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God. He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and the holy; only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries; for I the Lord do sanctify them." (Chap. xxi. 21-23.) But none of these things could possibly touch the fact of a relationship founded upon the established principles of human nature. Though a son of Aaron were a dwarf, that dwarf was a son of Aaron. True, he was, as a dwarf, shorn of many precious privileges and lofty dignities pertaining to the priesthood, but he was a son of Aaron all the while. He could neither enjoy the same measure or character of communion, nor yet discharge the same elevated functions of priestly service, as one who had reached to manhood's appointed stature; but he was a member of the priestly house, and as such, permitted to "eat the bread of his God." The relationship was genuine, though the development was so defective.