|
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."-- Hebrews 4:14-16; Hebrews 5:1-10 (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 Hebrews 4:14. 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 Hebrews 8:1
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] "Today" 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.
|