I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas. We surely did. We even had snow in Dallas to top it all off! I know that we generally put away the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh until next year, but I promised to share their implications in our every day lives.

Remember this, Jesus always shares His gifts with us. In the previous post, we talked about the significance of each gift to the life of Jesus. But what do they mean to us?

After Jesus was resurrected, He passed through the heavens and entered the true tabernacle. Once there, He presented His very own blood as the forever sacrifice for all mankind - past, present, and future. He then sat down and became a priest on His throne.

An earthly king has some authority. Jesus has been given all authority and yet He has delegated authority to us to complete the work that He started while on the earth. In addition, as our faithful High Priest, He has access to the God of the universe. Therefore, we have access to God through Him.

Let's look at these verses:

...and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him [be] glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Revelations 1:6

And have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth." Revelations 5:10

And my personal favorite:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1Peter 2:9-10

It is important that we know who we are. We are not kings or priests. In Christ, we are both kings and priests. As kings, no matter our vocation, we have authority in the earth. For centuries, men and women have grasped for power and authority. Well, in Christ, we have been given the authority to operate on His behalf. As the saying goes, power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you know what prevents our total corruption? Our God-given authority is tempered by our role as priests.

Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come fearlessly into God's presence, assured of his glad welcome. Ephesians 3:12

We have access to God! Through Christ we are able to identify with the sufferings of others and petition God for ourselves, our families, our businesses, our churches, etc. Only because we are compassionate priests, can we be effective kings in the earth. 

Now you know that when Christ was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh so too were you.  Go ahead. Open these precious gifts and use them wisely.