14
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,[f]
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do
not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we
have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are —yet he did not sin.
16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may
receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Dig Deeper
I recently read a book, “Ultramarathon Man” by Dean
Karnazes (thanks are in order to my good friend Duncan Comrie for talking me
into reading the book). Dean is an
incredible individual who picked up distance running in his early thirties one
night as he was contemplating where he was going with his life. Many people think that running a marathon is
pretty incredible but Dean has gone way beyond the 26.2 mile distance. Among other highlights, he has won the
Badwater race (a 135 mile race across a desert with temperatures soaring well
past 100 degrees F), completed a 199-mile relay race in California by himself
eleven times, set a world record by running 168 miles on a treadmill in 24
hours, run a 350 mile race in 80 hours and 44 minutes without stopping, and
running over 3,000 miles across the United States in just 75 days, averaging
nearly 50 miles a day. With all of those
amazing accomplishments it might be easy to think that running long distances
comes so easy to this man that it’s not even a challenge. He must be superhuman at this point,
right? But that’s not accurate. Running takes every bit as much drive,
determination, and discipline for Dean Karnazes as it does for anyone
else. In fact, it takes much more
because he has gone to limits that most people will never even imagine. The average runner, or non-runner for that
matter, has no idea the will-power and discipline that it takes to push past
the desire to stop running after having run for 50 or 75 hours without
stopping. So no, running is not easier
for a man like Dean, it is actually much more difficult and his accomplishments
should be appreciated all the more.
I say all of that because when I was a kid I used to
read passages like this one and not be very impressed. “So what,” I thought, “if Jesus was tempted
in every way.” I just didn’t think that
was a very big deal because, after all, he is God and so being tempted just
like we are tempted is not that great of an accomplishment. In my youth and spiritual immaturity, there
were two important things that I did not fully understand. The first is that Jesus is divine, yes, but
the Scriptures are extremely clear that he was fully human. He didn’t cheat and just have a body that
looked human, as the Gnostics (a group from the late 1st through the third
century that claimed that Jesus was divine and only appeared human) would later
claim. Jesus had the full character of
God but he was one-hundred percent human and could be tempted just like any
other human. He could grow tired and
weak and struggle with needs just like any other person.
The second thing that I never considered fully as a
young man who thought I knew everything was that Jesus’ temptations weren’t
less or easier than the average human being.
They were actually much tougher.
How, you might ask? Just as Dean
Karnazes has faced challenges and temptations to quit that no average person or
average runner ever has, so Jesus faced a level of temptation that no other
human could imagine. He bore the full
brunt of Satan’s attacks and temptations and did not give in. We just have no idea, in many respects, of
the levels that Satan can go to in tempting humans to sin because we have all
caved into sin over and over again. That
doesn’t mean that we can’t stand up to temptation or never do, but Jesus didn’t
cave in even once. We fall in the face
of temptation far before the tempter has reached his full attack level. Jesus went far beyond that. He went to areas of resisting temptation that
we could only imagine. No, it wasn’t easier
for Jesus but much more demanding than what you and I will ever deal with.
In the Old Covenant, of course, the high priest held the
preeminent position among God’s people.
He oversaw the worship of the nation and was the primary representative
between the people and God. He alone was
the one that was sanctioned to enter the Most Holy Place, the Holy of Holies,
on the Day of Atonement. Thus, it was a
big statement to equate Jesus with the role of the high priest. In fact Hebrews will go far beyond that as he
focuses on the high priesthood of Jesus from here all the way through chapter
10 and makes the point that Jesus is not just a high priest but he is the high
priest. He is the penultimate priest of
God and the final mediator between God and his people.
This great high priest does not just serve in the
earthly Temple, which was considered to be a mere facsimile of the true
heavenly Temple, but he has ascended through the heavens and now dwells
directly in God’s throne room . Jesus,
in other words is the true high priest, dwelling in the true Temple, and
sitting directly in the presence of the Father.
The point that Hebrews starts to make here and will continue to make is
that Jesus is the long-awaited fulfillment of the promise that God would send a
high priest who would make a final and complete sacrifice in place of the
symbolic and temporary sacrifices that the regular priests performed
daily.
The fact of Jesus’ ascension into heaven was a much more
important element of the gospel to the early Christians than it tends to be to
us today. For them, Jesus’ ascension was
vital because it was evidence that he was seated on the throne and ruling in
his kingdom right now. One thing that is
often overlooked is that Jesus is our high priest but he is still fully human
right now or he could not serve as our high priest. He continues to rule over his kingdom and the
world as a human being that knows exactly what it feels like to be a human as
you and I are.
Jesus is the ultimate living, breathing example of the
saying “been there, done that.” The Old
Covenant high priest served as the mediator between God and his people but he
was a sinner just like everyone else and had to make atonement for his own sin. But our high priest had a distinct advantage. He was human just like us but he was without
sin, being also fully divine, and could make the final and complete atonement
for sin through his own sacrifice. This
high priest is, to put it simply, incredible.
He did what we could never do for ourselves and yet he can sympathize
with us because he knows what we go through.
He has faced temptation, he has looked the desire to sin square in the
face. That means that Jesus both knows
exactly what we go through but also didn’t give in when facing much stronger
temptation.
So what does that mean in practical terms? The author of Hebrews gives us two answers to
that. The first practical result of
recognizing the status of Jesus as the preeminent high priest, found in verse
14, is to hold firmly to the faith that we confess. The confession of Jesus as Lord was
monumental in the first century because it carried with it the dangerous
implication that Jesus was Lord and no one else was. Making a public confession like that just
prior to baptism (Romans 10:9-13 alludes to this practice as Paul speaks of
confessing Jesus as Lord and then calling on his name, which was early
Christian language for being baptized into the life of Christ), could and often
did cost the confessor a great deal. It
might put them on the outs with their family and their entire culture and often
made them a religious target and an economic and social outcast. Knowing that Jesus is the perfect high priest
should cause one to be emboldened in their faith and to cling to him as Lord of
one’s life all the more. For the
original audience, this was far more than just theory. They were suffering daily and the call
throughout this letter to hold firmly to the faith of their confession, the
life of Christ, was a challenging call.
Such a demanding call needed to have a reason behind it that was equal
to the sacrifice, and the nature of Jesus as the great and sympathetic high
priest was indeed a reason worth remaining faithful.
The second practical result of recognizing Jesus as our
high priest comes in verse 16. The
writer of Hebrews encourages us, based on the actions of our high priest, to “approach God’s throne of
grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us
in our time of need.” The author
stresses the concept of grace and mercy when it comes to God but the truly
amazing message was the idea that those in Christ could, because of his work as
high priest, could approach God’s throne with confidence. As mentioned above, only the high priest
could approach the Most Holy Place and interact with the presence of God and
that was only once a year. But now
believers can spiritually go directly into God’s presence with no earthly
mediator necessary. In Christ, God’s
promise that he would have a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6) had been fulfilled
and all can now approach God boldly at anytime.
The priesthood under the Old Covenant was highly thought
of, at least in theory, but the reality could be much less than the ideal. The high priests of the first century could
be just as political, just as driven, just as sinful, and just as corrupt as
any other leader or politician. As
important as the office was it could be hard to rely on the high priest as being
the true and righteous mediator between God and his people. But the Messiah was a high priest that was
not fraught with all of those difficulties.
He was the perfect and eternal high priest who could be fully relied on
forever. In fact, the author of Hebrews
was asking his audience to stake their lives, both presently and eternally, on
it. And as we read his words nearly
2,000 years later, they demand no less faith from us.
Devotional Thought
Those
in the Old Covenant who trusted in the high priest to mediate for them could be
seen regularly going to the Temple and engaging in actions that demonstrated
that reliance. Do the people in your
life truly see your reliance on your high priest, Jesus Christ? Do they know that you rely on him as the
perfect mediator between you and God?
When we truly rely on someone as our high priest, it seems to me that
everyone around will know it.
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