_THE GREAT HIGH-PRIEST._
"Having then a great High-priest, Who hath passed through the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For
we have not a high-priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of
our infirmities; but One that hath been in all points tempted like
as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with boldness
unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find
grace to help us in time of need. For every high-priest, being taken
from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God,
that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: who can bear
gently with the ignorant and erring, for that he himself also is
compassed with infirmity; and by reason thereof is bound, as for the
people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. And no man taketh
the honour unto himself, but when he is called of God, even as was
Aaron. So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a
High-priest, but He that spake unto Him,
Thou art My Son,
This day have I begotten Thee:
as He saith also in another place,
Thou art a Priest for ever
After the order of Melchizedek.
Who in the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and
supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to
save Him from death, and having been heard for His godly fear,
though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He
suffered; and having been made perfect, He became unto all them that
obey Him the Author of eternal salvation; named of God a High-priest
after the order of Melchizedek."--HEB. iv. 14-v. 10 (R.V.)
The results already gained are such as these: that the Son, through Whom
God has spoken unto us, is a greater Person than the angels; that Jesus,
Whom the Apostle and the Hebrew Christians acknowledge to be Son of God,
is the representative Man, endowed, as such, with kingly authority; that
the Son of God became man in order that He might be constituted
High-priest to make reconciliation for sin; and, finally, that all the
purposes of God revealed in the Old Testament, though they have hitherto
been accomplished but partially, will not fall to the ground, and will
remain in higher forms under the Gospel.
The writer gathers these threads to a head in chap. iv. 14. The
high-priest still remains. If we have the high-priest, we have all that
is of lasting worth in the old covenant. For the idea of the covenant is
reconciliation with God, and this is embodied and symbolised in the
high-priest, inasmuch as he alone entered within the veil on the day of
atonement. Having the high-priest in a greater Person, we have all the
blessings of the covenant restored to us in a better form. The Epistle
to the Hebrews is intended to encourage and comfort men who have lost
their all. Judaism was in its death-throes. National independence had
already ceased. When the Apostle was writing, the eagles were gathering
around the carcase. But when all is lost, all is regained if we "have"
the High-priest.
The secret of His abiding for ever is His own greatness. He is a _great_
High-priest; for He has entered into the immediate presence of God, not
through the Temple veil, but through the very heavens. In chap. viii. 1
the Apostle declares this to be the head and front of all he has said:
"We have _such_ an High-priest" as He must be "Who is set on the right
hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." He is a great
High-priest because He is a Priest on a throne. As the representative
Man, Jesus is crowned. His glory is kingly. But the glory bestowed on
the Man as King has brought Him into the audience-chamber of God as
High-priest. The kingship of Jesus, to Whom all creation is subjected,
and Who sits above all creation, has made His priestly service
effectual. His exaltation is much more than a reward for His redemptive
sufferings. He entered the heaven of God as the sanctuary of which He is
Minister. For if He were on earth, He would not be a Priest at all,
seeing that He is not of the order of Aaron, to which the earthly
priesthood belongs according to the Law.[64] But Christ is not entered
into the holy place made with hands, but into the very heaven, now to be
manifested before the face of God for us.[65] The Apostle has said that
Christ is Son over the house of God. He is also High-priest over the
house of God, having authority over it in virtue of His priesthood for
it, and administering His priestly functions effectually through His
kingship.[66]
The entire structure of the Apostle's inferences rests on the twofold
argument of the first two chapters. Jesus Christ is a great High-priest;
that is, King and High-priest in one, because He unites in His own
person Son of God and Son of man.
One is tempted to find an intentional antithesis between the
awe-inspiring description of the word of God in the previous verse and
the tender language of the verse that follows. Is the word a living,
energising power? The High-priest too is living and powerful, great and
dwelling above the heavens. Does the word pierce to our innermost being?
The High-priest sympathises with our weaknesses, or, in the beautiful
paraphrase of the English Version, "is touched with a feeling of our
infirmities." Does the word judge? The High-priest can be equitable,
inasmuch as He has been tempted like as we are tempted, and that without
sin.[67]
On the last-mentioned point much might be said. He was tempted to sin,
but withstood the temptation. He had true and complete humanity, and
human nature, as such and alone, is capable of sin. Shall we, therefore,
admit that Jesus was capable of sin? But He was Son of God. Christ was
Man, but not a human Person. He was a Divine Person, and therefore
absolutely and eternally incapable of sin; for sin is the act and
property of a person, not of a mere nature apart from the persons who
have that nature. Having assumed humanity, the Divine person of the Son
of God was truly tempted, like as we are. He felt the power of the
temptation, which appealed in every case, not to a sinful lust, but to a
sinless want and natural desire. But to have yielded to Satan and
satisfied a sinless appetite at his suggestion would have been a sin. It
would argue want of faith in God. Moreover, He strove against the
tempter with the weapons of prayer and the word of God. He conquered by
His faith. Far from lessening the force of the trial, His being Son of
God rendered His humanity capable of being tempted to the very utmost
limit of all temptation. We dare not say that mere man would certainly
have yielded to the sore trials that beset Jesus. But we do say that
mere man would never have felt the temptation so keenly. Neither did His
Divine greatness lessen His sympathy. Holy men have a wellspring of pity
in their hearts, to which ordinary men are total strangers. The
infinitely holy Son of God had infinite pity. These are the sources of
His power to succour the tempted,--the reality of His temptations as He
was Son of man, the intensity of them as He was Son of God, and the
compassion of One Who was both Son of God and Son of man.
Our author is wont to break off suddenly and intersperse his arguments
with affectionate words of exhortation. He does so here. It is still the
same urgent command: Do not let go the anchor. Hold fast your profession
of Christ as Son of God and Son of man, as Priest and King. Let us draw
nearer, and that boldly, unto this great High-priest, Who is enthroned
on the mercy-seat, that we may obtain the pity which, in our sense of
utter helplessness, we seek, and _find_ more than we seek or hope for,
even His grace to help us. Only linger not till it be too late. His aid
must be sought in time.[68] "To-day" is still the call.
Pity and helping grace, sympathy and authority--in these two
excellences all the qualifications of a high-priest are comprised. It
was so under the old covenant. Every high-priest was taken from among
men that he might sympathise, and was appointed by God that he might
have authority to act on behalf of men.
1. The high-priest under the Law is himself beset by the infirmities of
sinful human nature, the infirmities at least for which alone the Law
provides a sacrifice, sins of ignorance and inadvertence.[69] Thus only
can he form a fair and equitable judgment[70] when men go astray. The
thought wears the appearance of novelty. No use is apparently made of it
in the Old Testament. The notion of the high-priest's Divine appointment
overshadowed that of his human sympathy. His sinfulness is acknowledged,
and Aaron is commanded to offer sacrifice for himself and for the sins
of the people.[71] But the author of this Epistle states the reason why
a sinful man was made high-priest. He has told us that the Law was given
through angels. But no angel interposed as high-priest between the
sinner and God. Sympathy would be wanting to the angel. But the very
infirmity that gave the high-priest his power of sympathy made sacrifice
necessary for the high-priest himself. This was the fatal defect. How
can he bestow forgiveness who must seek the like forgiveness?
In the case of the great High-priest, Jesus the Son of God, the end must
be sought in another way. He is not so taken from the stock of humanity
as to be stained with sin. He is not one of many men, any one of whom
might have been chosen. On the contrary, He is holy, innocent,
stainless, separated in character and position before God from the
sinners around Him.[72] He has no need to offer sacrifice for any sin of
His own, but only for the sins of the people; and this He did once for
all when He offered up Himself. For the Law makes mere men, beset with
sinful infirmity, priests; but the word of the oath makes the Son
Priest, Who has been perfected for His office for ever.[73] In this
respect He bears no resemblance to Aaron. Yet God did not leave His
people without a type of Jesus in this complete separateness. The
Psalmist speaks of Him as a Priest after the order of Melchizedek, and
concerning Christ as the Melchizedek Priest the Apostle has more to say
hereafter.[74]
The question returns, How, then, can the Son of God sympathise with
sinful man? He can sympathise with our sinless infirmities because He is
true Man. But that He, the sinless One, may be able to sympathise with
sinful infirmities, He must be made sin for us and face death as a
sin-offering. The High-priest Himself becomes the sacrifice which He
offers. Special trials beset Him. His life on earth is pre-eminently
"days of the flesh,"[75] so despised is He, a very Man of sorrows. When
He could not acquire the power of sympathy by offering atonement for
Himself, because He needed it not, He _offered_ prayers and
supplications with a strong cry and tears to Him Who was able to save
Him out of death. But why the strong cries and bitter weeping? Can we
suppose for a moment that He was only afraid of physical pain? Or did He
dread the shame of the Cross? Our author elsewhere says that He despised
it. Shall we say that Jesus Christ had less moral courage than Socrates
or His own martyr-servant, St. Ignatius? At the same time, let us
confine ourselves strictly to the words of Scripture, lest by any gloss
of our own we ascribe to Christ's death what is required by the
exigencies of a ready-made theory. "Being in an agony, He prayed more
earnestly; and His sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling
down upon the ground."[76] Is this the attitude of a martyr? The Apostle
himself explains it. "Though He was a Son," to Whom obedience to His
Father's command that He should lay down His life was natural and
joyful, yet He learned His obedience, special and peculiar as it was, by
the things which He suffered.[77] He was perfecting Himself to be our
High-priest. By these acts of priestly offering He was rendering Himself
fit to be the sacrifice offered. Because there was in His prayers and
supplications, in His crying and weeping, this element of entire
self-surrender to His Father's will, which is the truest piety,[78] His
prayers were heard. He prayed to be delivered out of His death. He
prayed for the glory which He had with His Father before the world was.
At the same time He piously resigned Himself to die as a sacrifice, and
left it to God to decide whether He would raise Him from death or leave
His soul in Hades. Because of this perfect self-abnegation, His
sacrifice was complete; and, on the other hand, because of the same
entire self-denial, God did deliver Him out of death and made Him an
eternal Priest. His prayers were not only heard, but became the
foundation and beginning of His priestly intercession on behalf of
others.
2. The second essential qualification of a high-priest was authority to
act for men in things pertaining to God, and in His name to absolve the
penitent sinner. Prayer was free to all God's people and even to the
stranger that came out of a far country for the sake of the God of
Israel's name. But guilt, by its very nature, involves the need, not
merely of reconciling the sinner, but primarily of reconciling God.
Hence the necessity of a Divine appointment. For how can man bring his
sacrifice to God or know that God has accepted it unless God Himself
appoints the mediator and through him pronounces the sinner absolved? It
is true, if man only is to be reconciled, a Divinely appointed prophet
will be enough, who will declare God's fatherly love and so remove the
sinner's unbelief and slay his enmity. But the Epistle to the Hebrews
teaches that God appoints a high-priest. This of itself is fatal to the
theory that God needs not to be reconciled. In the sense of having this
Divine authorization, the priestly office is here said to be an honour,
which no man takes upon himself, but accepts when called thereunto by
God.[79]
How does this apply to the great High-priest Who has passed through the
heavens? He also glorified not Himself to become High-priest. The
Apostle has changed the word.[80] To Aaron it was an honour to be
high-priest. He was authorized to act for God and for men. But to Christ
it was more than an honour, more than an external authority conferred
upon Him. It was part of the glory inseparable from His Sonship. He Who
said to Him, "Thou art My Son," made Him thereby potentially
High-priest. His office springs from His personality, and is not, as in
the case of Aaron, a prerogative superadded. The author has cited the
second Psalm in a previous passage[81] to prove the kingly greatness of
the Son, and here again he cites the same words to describe His priestly
character. His priesthood is not "from men," and, therefore, does not
pass away from Him to others; and this eternal, independent priesthood
of Christ is typified in the king-priest Melchizedek. Before He began to
act in His priestly office God said to Him, "Thou art a Priest for ever
after the order of Melchizedek." When He has been perfected and learned
His obedience[82] by the things which He suffered, God still addresses
Him as a High-priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Chap. viii. 4.
[65] Chap. ix. 24.
[66] Cf. chap. x. 21.
[67] Chap. iv. 15.
[68] =eukairon= (iv. 16).
[69] Chap. v. 1, 2.
[70] =metriopathein=.
[71] Lev. xvi. 6.
[72] Chap. vii. 26.
[73] Chap. vii. 28.
[74] Chap. v. 10, 11.
[75] Chap. v. 7.
[76] Luke xxii. 44. The genuineness of the verse is not quite certain.
[77] Cf. John x. 18.
[78] =apo tês eulabeias= (v. 7).
[79] Chap. v. 4.
[80] =timên= (v. 4); =edoxasen= (v. 5).
[81] Chap. i. 5.
[82] =tên hypakoên= (v. 8).