Post 33 of Study: Hebrews 5

 Hebrews 4:14-16 is sort of a climax; I have always found that passage very meaningful. Not because of I am enamored by the idea of a High Priest, but because of the magnificent and magnanimous grace it offers. The Jewish audience would have seen the High Priest role as central to their faith, but they also would have known that the men who had filled that role in their lifetimes were less than stellar spiritual personalities.  The human High Priests were an enemy of the real High Priest and of His followers. Human version of kings and such are tarnished, at best, replications of the true King.

The admonishment is to “hold fast our confession,” based on the character of our real High Priest who didn’t offer animals as sacrifices but Himself, which is the continuing thought into Chapter 5. High Priests can, or should, be compassionate with sinners because they need the sacrifices themselves, and it’s an honor bestowed because of family, not because of any merit of the priests. So far, so good. But then we get to verse 5.

I understand why readers stumble in Hebrews; it takes some thought and reflection and study and patience. But the rewards are many. One of the rewards is a deeper understanding of Jesus’ humanity on earth.

Verse 5 and following in many ways parallels Philippians 2:5-11: “Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest…” it was something He took as a command from the Father as an obedient Son despite the suffering it would mean. Verses 7-8 is one of the few times, perhaps only, when the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane is mentioned in the epistles (another argument for John having written it).

“Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” 

More on this tomorrow. Today, we recognize a mystery: “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory.” I Timothy 3:16. Part of the mystery is how He was manifested in the flesh and lived that way, that He did not come to earth as an ethereal, perfect, disembodied, abstract philosopher who lived without touching humanity or learning or experiencing. He was the Son of God, therefore like God, yet He learned what human life, in the least class and way, is like.