Hebrews 4:14 – 5:10
Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. NKJ
Hebrews 5:1 For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.
Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins.
And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.
So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.”
As He also says in another place: “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek”;
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.
And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, called by God as High Priest “according to the order of Melchizedek.”
When I did my driver’s licence test, I found there were two kinds of examiners. There was the strict kind, who showed you no sympathy. He marked down the slightest mistake, and looked for ways to fail you. Then there was the other kind. I heard plenty of stories about people who passed by simply placing nice smelling food on the backseat, or some money in a visible place. Those men were happy to be sympathetic, but for all the wrong reasons.
If you were an honest person, you wanted your examiner to be both strict and sympathetic. Strict, so that you were actually safe enough to be on the roads, and sympathetic to how stressful a driving test can be.
In fact, we want that quality in all kinds of people, judges, police, advocates, auditors, invigilators, teachers. We want standards, and at the same time, we want sympathy.
That’s most pronounced when it comes to religion, God, and the things of faith. Here we are not just dealing with strictness or standards, but with sinlessness. Every religion sees God as sinless. And yet for us to know God and reach God, we also want Him to be sympathetic.
When it comes to these two ideas: sinless and sympathetic, they seem to be opposites. In the popular mind, if you have the one, you can’t have the other. Supposedly the more sinless a person is, the less sympathetic and tolerant he becomes. We say, holier than thou, meaning a person who becomes self-righteous, and impatient, and snobbishly unkind towards those who are struggling.
On the other hand, people think that someone who is sympathetic has to be a partner in your crime. He has to be someone just as guilty as you, and it’s just that guilt that enables him to commiserate with you. When he is as messed up as can be, he tells you, “It’s not a big deal. We’re all human, and don’t fret about it.”
And in popular religion, one of the two is compromised. You either have people who tell you God is so sinless that you can never really know Him, nor should you try. Then you have others who tell you that God is tolerant of sin, understands and winks at a bit of sin.
Neither of these is the biblical picture. In the Bible we have a God who is sinless, and yet a God who wishes us to know and love Him. So for as long as men have heard from God, they have understood the need for a mediator, a priest, who has sympathies with both God and man.
Job 9:32-33
“For He is not a man, as I am, That I may answer Him, And that we should go to court together.
Nor is there any mediator between us, Who may lay his hand on us both.”
When God called the nation Israel, and gave them the law, He gave them the sacrificial system, and the priesthood as a symbol of having a mediator who lays his hands on both parties, God and man.
The priesthood, and the High Priest was supposed to be a picture of the ultimate High Priest, who would be God and Man, and be sinless, and sympathetic. If the man is supposedly sinless and has no sympathy for sinners, he is not merciful. On the other hand, if he is sympathetic by way of tolerating sin, he is not faithful.
But if you get either of these, you don’t have a merciful and faithful High Priest.
From our point of view, sinlessness seems to destroy sympathy, and sympathy seems to destroy sinlessness. But to be a faithful High Priest, Jesus needed to be both sinless and sympathetic. And this passage shows us that He was both. Only the God-Man could be both sinless and sympathetic.
As God he was holy and merciful. But to be a man who was sinless and sympathetic, He had to walk a path. This passage shows us how He came to be both.
I. He Is Sinless Having Resisted All Temptation
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, called by God as High Priest “according to the order of Melchizedek.”
The Bible explicitly tells us here that Jesus was tempted in every respect, and yet came out on the other side, without sin. Verse 9 tells us that His earthly walk was a goal He walked towards, and one He reached. He reached a place of human perfection, of human righteousness, by resisting every temptation.
This is repeated by several other authors of Scripture.
- Peter says 1 Peter 2:22 “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth”
- John says 1 John 3:5 “And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.”
- Paul says 2 Corinthians 5:21 “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Jesus Himself was able to look at His enemies in John 8:46 “Which of you convicts Me of sin?”
We tend to think of this negatively, but sinlessness is not only the absence of sin. It is also the presence of righteousness. It is the active, positive acts of obedience. Sin is not only breaking God’s negative commands; it is failing to observe His positive commands.
Jesus, all through His life, kept God’s commandments flawlessly. His enemies could not find two witnesses in the same room to agree on something he had done wrong.
Understand, this was human righteousness. This was a human being obeying. He was doing what no other human had done.
When we think about the temptations of Christ, we are faced with a problem. Theologians call this the impeccability of Christ. Impeccability means unable to sin. If Jesus is the God-Man, then was it possible for Him to sin? Remember, Jesus is not 50% God and 50% man. Nor was He a man possessed by God. There was a full union of two natures, which did not result in the mixing, diluting or modifying of either nature. Now God cannot sin. God cannot lie, Titus 1:2 says. God cannot sin, because sin is everything other than God. God cannot be other than Himself. To speak of God sinning is to speak nonsense. So was it possible for the Person who was Christ, who is fully God, and fully man, to sin? To say that Jesus could have sinned is to say either that God can sin, or it is to say that the union of divine and human natures in Jesus was a breakable union, that somehow, there could be a human Jesus that could split off from the divine Jesus. But this is exactly the kind of heresy which the early church condemned. “two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ”
The God-Man could not sin. But that raises the question. In what way then were His temptations genuine? How could we get any encouragement from Jesus resisting temptation if it was impossible for Him to sin?
Let me give the answer, and then explain it. The fact that He could not sin, is not the same as why He did not sin. He could not sin because He was God. But He did not sin because He was Spirit-controlled.
Let’s illustrate it this way, as Bruce Ware does. Every year, there is a swimming race from Robben Island to the Cape mainland. Different routes can be taken, but the swim averages between 7.5 and 11 kilometres. The distance is a challenge, but more so is the water temperature, of around 12 degrees Celsius. I spoke to one of the men who was doing the challenge, and I asked him about the dangers, the possibilities of sharks, the possibilities of cramping. He told me that each swimmer has a boat that trails a little behind the swimmer, in case of any emergency.
Now because of those boats, it’s safe to say that no swimmer will drown because of cramping or fatigue. It is impossible for them to drown with that support.
But are the boats the reason those swimmers do not drown? No. The reason those swimmers do not drown is that they keep swimming! If you met one of those swimmers on the beach at the finish line and said to him, the reason you finished this race was because there was a boat behind you, he would look at you oddly, and probably be somewhat annoyed. The boat is not why he did not drown and finished. The boat made sure he could not drown. But how many of us could swim across from Robben Island to the mainland simply because there was a support boat nearby? No, he could not drown because of the boat, but he did not drown because of his own swimming. So in the same way, Jesus could not sin because of His divine nature. But He did not sin because He chose to keep fighting temptation, and kept on obeying.
That’s what the writer is alluding to when he says this in verse 8:
though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.
Though He was the Son, with a divine nature, He still walked a path of obedience. He faced suffering. He had divine holiness, but that is not what we needed. We needed human righteousness. He suffered all the afflictions of life to achieve that, and to thwart temptation.
That suffering is exactly what shows us how Jesus completes the second side of a good High priest.
II. He Is Sympathetic Having Struggled Through All Temptation
Hebrews 5:1 For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.
Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins.
The writer tells us that a priest is taken from among men and appointed for men. His appointment is from God, not from selfish ambition.
Hebrews 5:4-6
And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.
So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.”
As He also says in another place: “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek”;
He has to do things pertaining to God, but he is selected from men to represent men, because he is a man. And verse 2 tells us that he has compassion on those ignorant or going astray because he knows weakness. Indeed, the Levitical priests had to present sacrifices for their own sins first. So here is a man who, after his own sins are atoned for, he can be faithful to God, but with the knowledge of His own weakness and failure, he can be sympathetic to man.
Now Jesus can be sympathetic, not because He sinned, but because He struggled. His sympathy comes from the inner knowledge of what it is like to be a man among men, with all the limitations, frustrations, pains, disappointments, provocations, and trials of human life.
Now, someone asks, were those temptations real? Was it a real struggle? How do we know if Jesus wrestled against temptation? How do we know He didn’t just get into the boat and coast?
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,
The Bible tells us how Jesus overcame temptations. He offered up prayers and requests. His requests were vehement, zealous, heartfelt. He prayed to the point of tears. He prayed with an intensity that brought him to cry out, and to cry tears. Does that sound like someone who is simply leaning on the boat? If you can just press a button, and your divine nature makes every temptation seem like nothing, why pray with tears?
Instead, we read that Jesus lived a life among us as a true man. And His resources were our resources. The Holy Spirit. Prayer. The Word of God. Discipline. Desire. He gave himself wholly to trusting, obeying, struggling, fighting, fleeing, and so said no to sin, and yes to God, 100% of the time.
As many Scriptures testify, the life that Jesus lived amongst us was not a fake human life, where underneath the Clark Kent disguise of humanity lay the Superman of deity. No, Jesus gave up the independent prerogatives of deity, and surrendered them to the Father’s will, and to the Spirit’s control. He only did what the Father directed, and He could only do it in the strength of the Spirit.
Now think about it. Doesn’t that sound like the life of a believer? How are you to live your life? By the Father’s direction, and by the Spirit’s control.
How intense were those temptations?
Well, consider that when Satan came to Him, He threw at Jesus quite simply the hardest things to resist: world control, instant acclamation as Messiah. And the Bible tells us that Satan left him for a while. In the Garden, at the Cross, and all through his ministry, Satan was tempting him to give in, to respond with revenge, to give up early, to respond sinfully internally or externally.
And then think of how He needed a perfect record. Jesus could not sin and then confess His sin. Every single victory over temptation was only one more victory, and one less battle. Right after one exhausting struggle with temptation, there would be another one, and only 100% sinlessness would suffice. How would it feel to know that even if you had won ten thousand victories over sin, this very next temptation could ruin it all?
When He sweated drops of blood in Gethsemane, some of that was surely His straining to obey and not disobey, to stay the path to the end, even though it was going to cost Him fellowship with the Father.
Sometimes the best teachers are not those extremely gifted people. Whether it is a highly gifted musician, an incredibly talented athlete, a simply brilliant mathematician, you often find those people are the worst teachers. That’s often the case, because such people are good at what they do with very little effort. Their brilliance comes naturally to them, they have an intuitive, natural ability. And so they find it had to break it down into steps for those who don’t have that natural brilliance. They become impatient, because they can’t understand why others don’t simply just ‘get it’. And this makes them unsympathetic.
Some of the best coaches, instructors, teachers, are not those who went to the top, but those who struggled for years to improve. They remember every difficulty. They remember how long it took them to master just one movement, or one concept. And with that they know how to break things down into one step at a time, because that’s how they learned. They are sympathetic precisely because they struggled.
Once there was a boy who was in a terrible car accident, and his right arm had to be amputated. His teacher at school was concerned about how the other children would treat him when he returned. So, on the day of his return, she told every child in the class to put one hand behind his or her back. Then she went to each child, and using some soft rope, tied that arm to the waist, so that it couldn’t be used. All that day, those children began to understand what that boy would have to go through, when writing, turning pages, sharpening pencils, erasing, eating, playing. By the end of the day, those children had learned compassion.
Our Lord experienced our limitations, and because of it, He is sympathetic. Our Lord Jesus is sympathetic to us, not because in His divine nature sinning was impossible, but because in His human nature, He faced every struggle that we do. He faced every moment the way we have to face it. He had to pray. He had to trust. He had to meditate. He had to remember the promises. He had to flee from temptation. He had to say no, again and again. And He had to say yes, and obey, when it was hard. So much so, that we read this almost mysterious verse in verse 8.
though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.
Though he was God, yet by joining Himself to humanity and living as a human, He learned a kind of submission and dependence that He had not experienced in eternity past. He experienced a fight against temptation within the constraints of a God-dependent man, and this gave him a kind of knowledge that apparently could not be gained any other way.
However, the Lord Jesus fought that fight right through to the end. That’s why He has a place of double honour.
And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him,
In our imperfect justice systems we don’t want to compromise justice one bit, and yet we want judges that are sympathetic. Would we want anything less from God Himself? We want Him to be sinless, but we want Him to be sympathetic. No other religion on earth manages to bring these two together: a Holy God, and a sinful people. Most compromise on one or the other.
A very few, like Christianity, have some kind of mediator between God and man. But in every case, the mediator turns out to be less than sympathetic, or less than sinless. To have both, you need the God-Man.
That’s why we sing:
Arise, my soul, arise; shake off thy guilty fears;
The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears:
Before the throne my surety stands,
Before the throne my surety stands,
My name is written on His hands.
The Father hears Him pray, His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away, the presence of His Son;
His Spirit answers to the blood,
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.