![\"20140821_jesushighpriest2\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/04\/20140821_jesushighpriest2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
\n(Hebrews 2:17-18)<\/p>\n
Several of the earliest controversies and key battles in church history were over Christ\u2019s divine and human natures. One of the classic texts to explain why Jesus Christ had to become fully man is\u00a0Hebrews 2:17-18. Essentially, He came so that He might perform priestly service before God on man\u2019s behalf. Through this priestly ministry, Jesus propitiated\u2014or turned aside\u2014God\u2019s wrath against man\u2019s sin. The classic explanation of this doctrine was given by Anselm of Canterbury nine hundred years ago in his towering work\u00a0Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man).<\/em><\/p>\n Speaking of the payment that must be made for man\u2019s sins, Anselm wrote:<\/p>\n It could not have been done unless man paid what was owing to God for sin. But the debt was so great that, while man alone owed it, only God could pay it, so that the same person must be both man and God. Thus it was necessary for God to take manhood into the unity of his person, so that he who in his own nature ought to pay and could not should be in a person who could.[i]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anselm of Canterbury gets to the heart of Hebrews 2:17: \u201cHe had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest.\u201d<\/p>\n The Old Testament priest represented God before man, which was why the high priest was garbed with glory and honor (Ex. 28:2). The high priest\u2019s apparel gleamed, to portray the righteousness\u2019 of God before the people of God.<\/p>\n He also represented man before God, which is why the high priest wore an ephod of gold, upon which were fastened twelve stones, bearing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel (Ex. 28:9-12).<\/p>\n The purpose of the Jesus’ incarnation is so that\u2014as the God-Man\u2014He might bear His people\u2019s names upon His shoulders. As the true high priest, Jesus Christ is garbed in His own perfect righteousness, which He now presents on behalf of His redeemed people. Jesus went forth as the minister and representative of His people, offering His own precious blood\u2014His divine and infinitely valuable life, which alone atones for the debt of not only man\u2019s sin, but the sins of the world.<\/p>\n The work of Christ was one of turning aside God\u2019s wrath against man\u2019s sin. Christ\u2019s work of propitiation gets to the reason why He was born into the world, so that by His death as the God-Man, He might break the hold of death on sinners, and set His people free through the Cross and resurrection.<\/p>\n While this explains the first and second reasons why Christ had to become a man and die,\u00a0Hebrews 2:18\u00a0gives the third reason, \u201cBecause he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.\u201d<\/p>\n Jesus is able to help His people in whatever circumstances they find themselves because He suffered on the cross in His people\u2019s place, dying for their sins. The fact that Christ has done all of this is proof of His full humanity, in that\u00a0\u201che himself has suffered when tempted.\u201d When we think of Jesus being tempted, we often think of His temptation in the desert wilderness (Matt. 4). There, Jesus afflicted with great hunger and the temptation to accept the crown without the Cross. While these were great temptations, Jesus overcame them all. As a result of Jesus temptation and suffering He knows what His people are going through whether they are struggling their own sin or outward circumstances. Jesus knows what it is like to go through hardship because He endured the sins of humanity in the Cross. Jesus understood. As the great High Priest, He has real sympathy and compassion for what His people are going through.<\/p>\n Some people think Jesus didn\u2019t know the full range of human experience because He wasn\u2019t a sinner. This questions whether or not He can have full sympathy for sinners. Far from Jesus knowing less than His people do about temptation, Jesus knows far more about temptation than His people do because He endured it to the point of sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane where He felt the weight of man\u2019s sin in preparing to die on the Cross for the sins of humanity.<\/p>\n B.F. Westcott is correct when he observes: \u201cSympathy with the sinner in his trial does not depend on the experience of sin but on the experience of the strength of temptation to sin, which only the sinless can know in its full intensity. He who falls yields before the last strain.\u201d[ii]<\/p>\n In other words, Jesus has real and knowledgeable sympathy with those who are tempted. This is why He is able to help. Jesus is not merely \u201cjust like us.\u201d He is the Redeemer, and His people are the sinners in need of such a Savior. Jesus’ work is hardly impersonal or mechanical; it is heartfelt and sensitive. In order to rescue sinners from death, He felt nails as they were driven into His hands and feet. The quality of mercy of Christ\u2019s work is intimate, personal, and knowing. This intimate, personal, and knowing work calls His people to love Him as a Savior who has gone to such lengths to know His people in the midst of their trials, to have the fellowship of suffering even as He calls His people into the fellowship of His suffering.<\/p>\n Jesus’ suffering means that He is able to both help His people and understand all of what they are going through. Whenever God\u2019s people encounter difficult circumstances or trials, they have a sympathetic and merciful High Priest who hears when His people cry out to Him. Understanding Jesus as High Priest ought to be a great encouragement to God\u2019s people that they can turn to the Lord in prayer in whatever circumstances they find themselves in.<\/p>\n One of the major aspects of Jesus High Priestly ministry is His ability now to save His people. Because of His ability to save, His people can trust Him, knowing that death will bring them no harm. Instead, it will bring them to Jesus.<\/p>\n His people can trust Him for today, knowing He knows and understands any and all present temptations and struggles. Jesus is able to help His people, by praying for them at the throne of His Father in heaven and by sending the Holy Spirit into their hearts, giving them spiritual strength for daily living. This is why Paul said, \u201cI have been\u00a0crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives\u00a0in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,\u00a0who loved me and\u00a0gave himself for me\u201d (Gal. 2:20). Despite his many personal trials, Paul possessed knowledge fo Christ\u2019s personal power and could therefore declare, \u201cI can do all things through him who strengthens me\u201d (Phil. 4:13).<\/p>\n Jesus Christ, God\u2019s own Son, became like man to be a total Savior, sufficient for the whole range of their need. How hollow, then, ring the world\u2019s complaints against God? Today, people are saying all the time today, lamenting in this world of woe, \u201cWhere is God? Why doesn\u2019t he do something?!\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, He has done everything, indeed, more than they ever could ask or imagine. God has entered into man\u2019s world. He has walked through the dust of this earth. He who is Life has wept before the grave, and He who is the Bread of Life has felt the aching of hunger in His belly. He has taken the thorns that afflict this sin-scarred world and woven them into a crown to be pressed upon His head. He has stretched open His arms in love, that the hands that wove creation might be nailed to a wooden cross. Then He rose from the dead, conquering all that would conquer His people, setting His people free to live in peace and joy before the face of God.<\/p>\n [i] Anslem of Canterbury,\u00a0Why God Became Man<\/em>, in Eugene PR. Fairweather,\u00a0A Scholastic Miscellany<\/em>:\u00a0Anselem to Ockham\u00a0<\/em>(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), 176.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [ii] B.F. Westcott,\u00a0The Epistle to the Hebrews<\/em>\u00a0(London: Macmillan, 1903), 59.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-misc","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6622"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6938,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions\/6938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n\n\n