Hebrews 4:14

‘Having then a great high priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us keep on holding fast our confession.’

While the verb ‘hold fast’ is different here in the Greek from Hebrews 3:6; Hebrews 3:14, the idea is the same. It ties in with Hebrews 3:6, ‘if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope’, and Hebrews 3:14 ‘if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm to the end’. The first is the requirement of our being His house, and the second the requirement of our being partakers of Christ. Both require that we are faithful in witness and faith from start to finish. And this is again stressed here, again bringing out that Hebrews 3:2 to Hebrews 4:13 are finally wrapped up in these verses.

Here we learn that this ‘keeping on holding fast our confession’ results from having our great High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, as the One Who has passed through the heavens. He has passed into the very presence of God. He is there in the Heaven of heavens itself, in His capacity as our High Priest, as the Son of God. And yet as no ordinary High Priest but as the eternal Son of Hebrews 1:1-3. His being ‘great’ emphasises His superiority to earthly High Priests. And yet He is as High Priest also the Man Who did Himself hold fast to His confession (Hebrews 2:17). He is Jesus as well as Son of God. He it is Who has ensured that through His offering of the sacrifice of Himself once-for-all we are made His house (Hebrews 3:6) and partakers of Him (Hebrews 3:14), and enter into His rest (Hebrews 4:1-11). Thus will we maintain the faith that we confess, for it is based on this solid foundation, and is in the hands of One Who fully understands what we have to face.

‘Jesus the Son of God.’ In chapter 2 Jesus is the One made lower than the angels as Man, and Who was made representative, restored man by being crowned with glory and honour. In chapter 1 the Son is the One Who is the perfect revelation of God Himself. Here the two are combined. As Jesus He can act as High Priest because He acts on behalf of those He represents, but without having sinned, and as ‘the Son of God’ He can pass through the heavens into God’s presence to represent us there.