Hebrews 5:7-10 - Homilies By C. New

Christ's human experience the second qualification for high priestly work.

The second proof that Christ holds the high priestly position. In Hebrews 5:1 , Hebrews 5:2 the double qualification for this is shown—a qualification Godward and rearward; he must be appointed by God, and able to sympathize with man. Both these are shown to be true of Christ, and that he is, therefore, officially "perfect" ( Hebrews 5:9 , Hebrews 5:10 ).

I. THE NECESSITY THAT THE HIGH PRIEST SHOULD HAVE PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE WITH HUMAN EXPERIENCE . He "must be taken from among men."

1. Apart from this he could be no true representative of mankind. Human obedience to the Divine Law was required of men. Christ undertook, as their Representative, to meet all requirements; that made the Incarnation a necessity. Christ must keep the Law on the same footing on which Adam stood when he came from God's hand. So, likewise, bearing man's penalty, he must assume a nature which could be. That is, he must become man.

2. Apart from this he could not secure the confidence of the people. Christ need not pass through human experience in order to understand it; he understands it by his omniscience. But the infirmity of human faith can better confide in the sympathy of one who, it knows, has personally endured its trials.

II. THE FULFILMENT OF THIS QUALIFICATION IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST . "Who in the days of his flesh," etc.

1. An illustration of Christ's deep experience of human suffering. The reference is, evidently, to Gethsemane. What could have affected the Savior then so intensely? Not the anticipation of physical anguish, for then he would have fallen lower than the martyrs; not the dread of rejection by the people, for he had already endured that with great calmness; not the fear of the act of death, for he spoke of that with joy: "If ye loved me ye would rejoice, because," etc. It could only have been because death would be to him what it could be to none other—the bearing of the world's sin, the experience of sin's doom. But why does the writer refer to this, but because it is the culminating point of our Lord's suffering? He leads them to look at Jesus when he has reached the deepest depth of suffering possible. However deep his people's darkness, Jesus has gone deeper still. He knows the lowest, therefore also the intermediate stages.

2. An illustration of the pain involved in submitting our will to God. "He learned obedience by the things which he suffered." Obedience is submission of the will to God. That was the burden of the prayer in Gethsemane. He laid his will absolutely at the Father's feet. Christ did not learn to be obedient. He came to do God's will; that was his meat and drink. He did always (from the first) those things which please the Father. He learned obedience—came to know what it means for the flesh to submit ever to the will of Heaven; what it is to obey God amidst human frailties, pains, temptations.

3. An illustration of Christ's dependence for fidelity on heavenly helps. He prayed to be saved (not "from") "out of death;" not that death might be averted—for his prayer "was heard"—but that he might be delivered out of it. Divine support was given, and a glorious resurrection. Christ, as man, had no inherent power by reason of his Deity for what, as man, he had to do and bear. He stood on man's footing. Perhaps nothing brings him closer to us than that for all he needed he had to cling to God in trustful supplication as we have, and receive delivering and sustaining grace because thereof as we do.

III. THE WORTH TO HIS PEOPLE OF CHRIST 'S FULFILMENT OF THIS QUALIFICATION . He was thus "made perfect"—perfect as to his fullness for high priestly work. Then:

1. The perfection of Christ's priesthood makes every other priesthood needless. He is "a high priest after the order of Melchizedek;" not in the Aaronic order, not thus for Israel after the flesh, but "for all those who obey him," i.e. submit to him. Christ, High Priest for every sinner who yields himself to him; and for this he is perfect. Then what room for any other mediator?

2. The power of sympathy in a God who has himself suffered. For perfect repose we must have one of whose fellow-feeling we are assured by his experience of our own trials. If we only knew God in heaven, we might revere, obey, trust, love him; but we could not put our head on his bosom and weep there. But when we see that there is not a trial we experience whose counterpart we cannot find in his earthly life, we can rest in the Lord.

3. The humiliation and woe by which alone our salvation was secured. See how Christ shrank from Calvary, and yet how he advanced to it with unswerving willingness, and thus "became the Author," etc. That leaves on the mind two deep impressions:

Verse 11-Heb 6:3

The evil of inability to apprehend the deeper truths about Christ.

This begins a parenthesis continued to end of Hebrews 6:1-20 . The writer has come to the chief illustration of his great theme—the pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus; but he has hardly entered on this section before he feels himself unable to give full utterance to what he sees of the Redeemer's greatness, because of the dullness of spiritual perception in his hearers. He fears their religious condition will prevent their following him as he tries to scale the more inaccessible heights, and he cannot restrain an utterance of sorrow, and a solemn warning of the connection between ignorance of these things and apostasy from the Son of God. The subject of the whole parenthesis, therefore, is —The danger of apostasy which lies concealed in the immature apprehension of Christian truth ; but of the part, in these verses, the following is the subject—The evil of inability to apprehend the deeper truths about Christ.

I. THE TREASURES OF TRUTH WHICH ARE HIDDEN IN THE LORD JESUS . "Of whom we have many things to say," etc. Why should the writer preface this particular part of his subject with a reference to its difficulty, since no such reference is attached to the equally profound truths of previous chapters? There is no necessity to attach this reference only to what follows; it may look backward as well as forward. The apostle is in the midst of his theme—the greatness, the fullness, the preciousness of Christ, which he knows not how to utter—and is more likely to feel its difficulty there than at the beginning.

1. The treasures hidden in Christ are, of necessity, infinitely great, because he is the Revelation of the character and will of God. "In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He is the perfect expression of God's love to man. He is the Fountain of all good. He is the embodiment of what the Father desires us to have and be. He is the utterance of what God would say to man. When we think of Christ, therefore, we are but children standing on the shore of an ocean whose further side has never been seen nor reached, and whose depth no human line can fathom.

2. But, in as far as this is revealed through God's Word, it is intended to be understood. It will require an endless life to understand it perfectly. Growing knowledge resulting in growing gratitude, love, and devotion,—this, perpetuated without end, is the bright future before us. But, however much we cannot know in the present, Scripture contains a revelation of such fullness in the Savior as the wisest and best have not yet understood and appreciated; and what is revealed here and now, is obviously intended here and now to be apprehended. We cannot overrate the Savior's desire to reveal himself, the deep things of his heart, and the best glories of his nature to his beloved, nor the Father's will that, as far as on earth it can be received, that revelation should be theirs.

II. THE HINDRANCES TO OUR POSSESSION OF THESE TREASURES . "How is it that ye do not understand?" Why do we know so little about Christ? Why are the Scriptures to us to a great extent sealed? This passage reveals three reasons for this.

1. Spiritual feebleness. The Hebrews had lost their early religious vigor. "When by reason of the time [since ye became Christians] ye ought to be," etc. Their condition was one of retrogression. (See what they had been once: "Ye endured a great fight," etc) They had become vacillating, and ready to return to Judaism. A feeble and deteriorated piety was one reason for their dullness of hearing. That is natural. Christ's riches are spiritual, and. can only be understood by spiritual perception. Let spiritual power decline, and ability to understand Divine truth declines with it. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;" "The secret of the Lord is with them that feat-him."

2. Intellectual prejudice. They desired to return to Judaism; its ancient glories still fascinated them, and. they were predisposed to accept any teaching aimed to show the untruth of Christianity. That was enough to account for their being dull of hearing. Skepticism is made, more than by anything else, by unwillingness to receive the truth. The mind that allows its personal desires to decide what is truth must become increasingly incapable of discerning truth when it is placed before it. Nothing more surely blinds than prejudice.

3. Sinful inattention. "Every one that partakes of milk [i.e. not able to partake of the solid food of Divine truth] is without experience [i.e. has not made himself acquainted by observation and. study] of the Word of righteousness;… but solid food is for full-grown men, even those who," etc. That is, spiritual discernment, an apprehension of God's deep things, is the result of use. Inability to understand is the judgment on inattention. Scripture is a sealed, book to the heart that neglects it.

III. THE NECESSITY FOR THE REMOVAL OF THESE HINDRANCES OF SPIRITUAL MATURITY IS TO BE ATTAINED .

1. For Christ, as revealed in the Word , is spiritual nourishment. The truth about Christ is "milk" and "strong meat." Christ is the essence of Scripture, and he is "the Bread of life." What nourishing food is to the body, therefore, the Word of God is to the Divine life in man. On participation on it that life depends.

2. There is a distinction drawn here between those truths which merely sustain and those which increase life. What is the "milk"? Those first necessary principles recorded in Hebrews 6:1 , Hebrews 6:2 . There we have the essential life-giving points (not quite such a "simple gospel" as some think!). The doctrines of repentance, faith, the Holy Spirit, Christian service, the resurrection, and the judgment,—these are the "milk." What is the "strong meat"? The deeper, fuller truths about Christ set froth here—his character, work, relation, grace, Son of God and Son of man, our Prophet, Priest, and King, with the height and depth, and length, and breadth of meaning all this involves.

3. Christian maturity depends on the partaking of truth in these higher forms. They ought to be "babes" no longer, but "strong men;" and how? "Let us cease to speak of the first," etc. The method by which this Epistle seeks to arouse a lukewarm and enfeebled Church to higher things is the presentation of these higher truths concerning the surpassing glory of the Son of God. "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge," etc.— C.N.