5 Every high priest is selected from among the people
and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God, to offer
gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2 He is able to deal gently with those who are
ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. 3 This
is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of
the people. 4 And no one takes this honor on himself, but he receives it when
called by God, just as Aaron was.
5 In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the
glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him,
“You are my Son;
today I have
become your Father.”[a]
6 And he says in another place,
“You are a priest forever,
in the order
of Melchizedek. ”[b]
7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up
prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save
him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Son
though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made
perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and
was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Dig Deeper
I never cared much for my sister’s birds while we were
growing up. We always had dogs and I
loved having dogs but my sister started to have birds as pets, parakeets in
particular, and I really never like it much.
I’m not a bird hater, mind you, but the birds were loud, they were
messy, and I never have appreciated the smell of either birds or bird food for
that matter. Then one day I found myself
at home alone as a teenager and in charge of the house for a few hours. I don’t know if someone left one of the cage
doors open or what exactly happened but I suddenly noticed that one of her
birds had escaped his cage and was fluttering and flying around the house. I wasn’t very tall yet at that point and
didn’t necessarily care all that much for grabbing the birds by hand but I knew
that I had to figure out a way to get that bird back in its cage before our dog
somehow got hold of it and thought it was a new toy. After chasing this bird around for several
minutes and jumping up time and again in vain to catch it, I began to realize
what an exercise in futility this really was.
The bird was frightened by me and had no concept of the fact that I was
trying to help it. The more I chased
after and lunged towards him, trying to rescue him and bring him to safety, the
more he misunderstood and got more frightened, doubling his efforts to keep
away from me. At one point I found
myself trying to reason with this bird to go back in his cage. Okay, the reality is that there was less
reasoning and more just yelling at the stupid bird to get back into its cage
but you get the idea. If only there had
been a way that I could somehow become a bird for just a short time and explain
in my little birdy language and way that I was not trying to harm him but was,
in fact, trying to keep him safe. Yes,
if I could just become a bird then I could have communicated with him in a way
that he would have understood.
Unfortunately for me, that was completely impossible.
Believe it or not, it’s almost as if Job struggled with
this same thought but from the opposite perspective. He did not understand what God was doing in
his life and wished that he could somehow question God as a man so that he
could get to the bottom of why it seemed that God was intent on making him
suffer. Job begins chapter 9 by asking
“how can mere mortals prove their innocence before God? Though they wished to dispute with him, they
could not answer him one time out of a thousand” (Job 9:2). He closes the chapter by lamenting that ““He
is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him, that we might confront
each other in court. If only there were
someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together, someone to remove
God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him,
but as it now stands with me, I cannot” (Job 9:32-35). In other words, “if only God were a man that
I could figure out what he is up.”
What Job longed for had finally happened in the
Messiah. God had come down in the person
of Jesus Christ. He had become a man so
that he could be communicated with. But
it was much like my desire to become a bird for a moment as well. God became one of us so that he could
communicate with us that he did indeed understand. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what it is like
to be human, for he made us and knows us better than we know ourselves. But in Jesus, the high priest, God has shown
us that he understands. We can know that
he knows what we go through. We can know
that he cares and is only offering help and salvation. God himself came and removed the rod of
terror. Through this ultimate high
priest we can now relate to God in a way that we can understand.
The writer of Hebrews, in expounding upon this great
high priest, sets about the difficult task of showing that Jesus is both a
proper and fitting high priest, while at the same time being a completely
different type of high priest than has ever existed. He starts out with a list of qualifications
that were common to a normal high priest and that definitely apply to
Jesus. First, he must come from among
the people. This was part of the
importance that Jesus was a descendant of Abraham. He was from among the Jewish people so he
could represent them as a true representative of Israel, and he was also human
so he could serve as the high priestly representative for all people.
Second, he represented God to the people. Who more qualified to do that than the Son of
God himself? Thus, he could rightly
serve as a mediator between God and humanity, offering gifts and sacrifices for
the sins of his people. Because the high
priest was a regular human being, he was never detached from his people. In the case of a normal high priest, though,
he was as much a sinner as anyone else.
He had to atone for his sins as much as the rest of the nation and so he
would never deal harshly with those who needed atonement. Christ went through the temptations and
weakness and could rightly identify with the struggles but he was an even
greater high priest because although he went through even greater temptations
than most, he never sinned, and thus could offer a perfect sacrifice when he
laid down his own life on the altar for the sins of the people.
Third, the high priest could not appoint himself into
that role. He must be called by
God. Nothing is more suspect than when
someone appoints themselves to a important role and the high priest could never
be allowed to put himself in that position.
Even Aaron, the first and greatest high priest, did not confer upon
himself the office of the high priest.
He was called by God to the role.
In fact Aaron met all of the criterion.
He came from among the people. He
represented God to the people and was gentle in so doing. And God had appointed him high priest. But Jesus also met all of those qualifications. So when did God appoint Jesus as the high
priest? The author of Hebrews returns to
Psalms 2 and 110, two of the most important Psalms in forming the early
church’s understanding of the role of the Messiah. Psalm 2:7 declared that there would be a day
when the Father would declare publicly that the Messiah was indeed his son, the
chosen one. The gospels, of course, all
connected that day with the moment when Jesus was baptized. That’s when God publicly declared that he had
sent his own Son to be his mediator. He
was the high priest.
“But wait a minute,” an astute Jew might have asked,
“there is no evidence that Jesus was a Levite or a descendant of Aaron so how
could he be part of the priesthood?”
That’s where the mysterious figure of Melchizedek comes in. We’ll hear much more about Melchizedek in
chapter 7, but a quick word of introduction will be appropriate here. Melchizedek was a priestly figure who comes
somewhat out of nowhere in Genesis 14 to bless and receive offerings from
Abraham after a successful recovery of his nephew Lot. What Hebrews will unpack in much greater
detail in chapter 7, he only teases at here.
Jesus has every right to the priesthood of God because he comes from a
different order than Aaron. This is
truly a masterful teaching point and would have been an important clarification
for those who were once devout in their Judaism. Melchizedek was a priest outside of the
priestly order of Aaron, demonstrating that that line of priesthood was not the
only or definitive line, and was always intended by God to be temporary. Melchizedek is given no lineage or line of
descent in Genesis. He simply was called
by God, and what is implied here (and will be made clear later) is that Jesus
is like that.
Thus, Jesus was a rightful priest that was not just
equal to Aaron but was superior. Aaron
was appointed from the line of Levi but Jesus was the Son of God himself. Aaron offered sacrifices but was a sinner
himself, while Jesus was a perfect priest forever. Aaron’s priesthood offered temporary
assistance but Jesus’ sacrifice was eternal and complete. On top of the obvious statements, this
passage has a chiastic structure that further demonstrates the author’s desire
to depict Jesus’ priesthood as complete and replacing Aaron’s (chiastic refers
to an ABCD DCBA structure of a passage to show the relation between specific
items):
A
The Old Covenant priesthood (v. 1)
B
The sacrifice of the old priesthood (v. 1)
C
The weakness of the high priest (vv. 2-3)
D
The appointment of the high priest (v. 4)
D
The appointment of Christ, the new priest (vv. 5-6)
C
The suffering of the new priest (vv. 7-8)
B
The sacrificial provision of the new high priest (v. 9)
A
The new office of the high priest (v. 10)
But one should not think that Jesus just got handed the
role of high priest because he is God’s son as though is he some trust fund
baby that is given an inheritance that he never really earned, understood, or
appreciated. The sacrifice that the Son
made was indeed a sacrifice as is evidenced by the cries and tears that Jesus
offered up to the Father throughout his life, particularly in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Through the sacrifice of the
Son he learned obedience and was made perfect.
Hebrews doesn’t, of course, mean that Jesus was made perfect on the
Cross as though he was imperfect before that.
The term means “finished” or “completed.” Jesus was not like an ancient prince or
priest who was given his position simply by lineage and privilege. He was Son, but he was called to walk a path
of obedience and suffering for others, and only when he did that did he
complete his role and become the source of salvation and entrance into the life
of the age to come for all.
The anguish of Job has been answered. God did become a human and spoke to the
questions that mankind has struggled with since before we can even
remember. God is not distant. He came himself as a high priest in the order
of Melchizedek. This high priest
understands us because he is one of us, yet he can perfectly sacrifice for us
because he is greater than us. The point
that Hebrews is carefully and skillfully building up to is that not only is the
Messiah the superior sacrifice for sin, he is the only true sacrifice for sin.
Devotional Thought
Take a few moments this morning to reflect on the phrase
“he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” What gratitude does that provoke within you
heart as you reflect on the role of Jesus as high priest? What does that gratitude do for your resolve
to continue to be obedient to him? What
does obedience look like for you specifically today?
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