(avg. read time: 5–10 mins.)
4:14 Therefore, having a great high priest going through/about the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession,
4:15 for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize [only in Hebrews] with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way like us, yet without sin.
4:16 Therefore, let us approach with confidence/boldness the throne of grace in order that we should receive mercy and find grace for timely help.
5:1 For every high priest taken from humans is appointed over things for God on behalf of humans, in order that he should offer gifts and sacrifices for sins,
5:2 being able to deal gently [hapax] with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness,
5:3 and because of this he ought to offer sacrifices for the people and thus also for his own sins.
5:4 He does not take any honor for himself, but only being called by God, just as [hapax] Aaron was.
5:5 Thus also Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest, but by the one who said to him,
“You are my son, today I have begotten you,”
5:6 just as he says in another place,
“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
5:7 The one who in the day of his flesh offered up prayers/petitions as well as supplications [hapax] to the one who is able to save him out of death with loud cries and tears and being listened to because of his fear of God [only in Hebrews],
5:8 although being a Son he learned obedience from his suffering;
5:9 and having been made complete, all who obey find in him the source [hapax] of everlasting salvation,
5:10 having been designated [hapax] by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
Today, we pick up with the closing segment of ch. 4 in vv. 14–16. Like with 2:5–18, I have written on the section I am covering today elsewhere, and what I say here will largely reflect that previous post. This segment picks up on what the author addressed at the end of ch. 2 and the beginning of ch. 3 as Jesus is once again viewed as the ideal human and the ultimate high priest. The ways the author of Hebrews stressed that Jesus has shared in humanity include in terms of being tempted (2:18; 4:15), suffering (2:9–10, 18; 5:8; 13:12), dying (2:9, 14; 5:7; 13:20), being made lower than the angels (2:7, 9), having shared familial relationship (2:10–14, 17), and being flesh and blood (2:14), and he took up all these capacities and made them to fulfill the will of God as they never had before. He is the representative, intercessor, mediator, and redeemer standing between humanity and the Father. And unlike other high priests, his service is in heaven, wherein he serves as the guarantor of salvation for the faithful by virtue of his singular sacrifice and his execution of God’s will, but the author will return to these points later. For now, it is important for the author to reiterate the exhortation to hold fast to the confession (cf. 3:1; 10:23), persevering in their faithfulness to God through the gospel knowing that they have a heavenly high priest in Jesus speaking for them. And because he has been in human flesh, he can sympathize with human weakness in terms of compassion, but, more importantly, he can also sympathize in terms of providing active help by showing us the way to strength and deliverance. For Christ was tempted, but he overcame temptation every time. Because of him and the way he made for humans, we can therefore approach God’s throne of grace in confidence to ask for and receive empowering mercy and grace, which provide deliverance from temptation and consequent evil in a timely fashion. We can also see a sort of outline of Trinitarian activity here. Believers pray through Christ, who intercedes on their behalf before the Father, carrying their praises, repentance, thanksgiving, and requests to him. The Father answers these prayers, delivers people, and, through the work of the Spirit, empowers people to participate in that deliverance. Simultaneously, this work conforms faithful followers to the image of Christ and makes them into a new creation to fulfill the Father’s will for them.
Chapter 5 consists of two units, one that builds on the argument of 4:14–16 and another that begins a unit extending into chapter 6. For this post, we will address the first part that extends to v. 10. The author begins by making general comments about the high priesthood, from which he derives his primary christological description. The priest’s role as mediator is emphasized—as it was in the old covenant—since the priest is a human appointed over the things of God for God and on behalf of other humans. This mediating position enables the priest to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins to God in worship and to deal gently with the laity who are ignorant and inclined to waywardness. After all, although the priest is in a position of power, the position makes him all the more aware of his own weakness and need for reconciliation and restoration. Because there is a sense in which the high priest “occupies” both spheres of divine and human, but can only occupy the former insofar as he is fulfilling his function and is purified and faithful, the priest has the role of mediating the work of reconciliation and restoration for his people and for himself, since he must sacrifice for his own sins as well. As such, the human high priest is not to take any honor for himself, but he is to acknowledge that he is what he is only because of God’s calling, as was the case with Aaron and all high priests after him. Likewise, Christ was called to be high priest by God. He did not glorify himself, but received glory from the one who called him and declared him to be his Son from eternity past (Ps 2:7 making it second appearance in this text). He could fulfill the high priestly function better than any high priest because he already “occupied” the divine sphere by virtue of being the Son from eternity past, and it was the human capacity he would need to take on by virtue of his incarnation.
The author also goes on to quote another part of Ps 110. This time it is v. 4, once again attributing it as a direct divine speech by God the Father to God the Son, the same recipient of the earlier statement of v. 1. The addressee of the text is a royal figure—as is clear from the earlier citation of v. 1—but now the same figure is declared a priest. The good priest king fulfills the functions God intended for humanity as image-bearing viceregents who maintain God’s will for order in creation. The king is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek because, not being a Levite, he cannot be a priest according to Israelite law and tradition. But he can be a priest like Melchizedek—also the king of Salem—was a priest. He was not priest by genealogy and one who is priest according to his order is a king who faithfully enacts God’s will and attends to the key duties of the priest. The author will address this point in more detail later, so I will save the extra detail for then as well.
The author then further describes how Jesus can sympathize with and thus save those who are tempted to go astray by looking back to the gospel story. When he describes Jesus as offering up petitions and supplications to the one able to save him out of death, he is most obviously referring to the scene in the garden of Gethsemane, although it is possible that the author has in mind other cases of Jesus praying, in which he may well have been praying for the same thing before his time arrived. But again, this most directly fits Gethsemane, especially the description of his loud cries and tears. And we are told that God listened to him because of his “fear of God” (εὐλάβεια, used only in Hebrews in the NT but present in the LXX and several Greco-Roman sources). This is the reverent awe and fear of God that is the root of wisdom and right conduct (Deut 6:2; 8:6; 10:12; 17:19; 28:58–59; 31:12; 1 Sam 12:14; Job 28:28; Pss 19:7–9; 33–34; 103:17; 111:10; 112:1; 128:1; Prov 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; 16:6; 19:23; Isa 11:2–3; Jer 2:19; Hag 1:12; Sir 1:11–30; 19:20; 21:11; 23:27; T.Sim. 3:4; T.Lev. 13:1, 7–9; T.Ben. 3:3–4).
Naturally, it is a common question as to how Jesus was listened to because of his fear of God if his prayer was to have the cup pass from him and yet he was crucified. This question presumes that the cup of wrath that Jesus is asking to pass from him (Matt 26:39 // Mark 14:36 // Luke 22:42) is the crucifixion itself. But this is not the case.1 From the point of view in Hebrews, it makes no sense to suggest that Jesus was requesting to avoid death; given that Jesus voluntarily submitted to this fate, his doing so is presented as a model for other believers, and the author—like all NT writers who reference it—focuses on the positive results of it (2:9, 13–18; 5:7–9; 9:15, 24–28; 10:7–10; 12:2). Likewise, the imagery Jesus uses in the Gospels of the cup of God’s wrath has precedent from several passages in the OT in which it is a reference to God’s wrath on Israel’s enemies, on the wicked in general (Pss 11:6; 75:8; Isa 51:23; Jer 25:15–29; Obad 15–16; Hab 2:16; Zech 12:2), or on the people of Israel in particular (Ps 60:3; Isa 51:17). In many cases, drinking this cup signifies destruction, but it is possible for the cup to be taken away so as to avoid destruction (Ps 60:4–12; Isa 51:22). Since we are told that God heard Jesus and that he was saved out of death via his resurrection, it is likely in this sense that Jesus prayed for the cup to be taken away. As such, this would imply that Jesus was willing to risk annihilation for the sake of others if it be God’s will, but God confirmed what Jesus had expected all along: that he would be raised from out of the dead for the sake of others. Indeed, this was a result of his obedience being so absolute, subjecting himself to suffering even though he was/is the Son of God. He has walked this path of learning perseverance in obedience from suffering and he has done so perfectly. Therefore, he is able to guide others along the path who must persevere in obedience in spite of how much suffering it brings. Since he reached his goal (more literally, “having been made complete”) and attained the resurrection life proper for God’s faithful, those who are incorporated into his story through faithful allegiance that brings union with him find in him the source of everlasting salvation through this same obedience (that is to say, Jesus’s obedience that attained salvation for his followers and his way of obedience in which they follow in their salvation). No other high priest has accomplished these things for the people they represented, nor could they by virtue of being simply human and not the union of God and human in flesh. But this one who is a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, the one who is both king and priest, has brought this salvation to his people.
Cf. similar arguments from Easter, Faith, 120–24; Bruce L. McCormack, “‘With Loud Cries and Tears’: The Humanity of the Son in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, ed. Richard Bauckham et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 64–65; David M. Moffitt, “‘If Another Priest Arises’: Jesus’s Resurrection and the High Priestly Christology of Hebrews,” in A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in Its Ancient Contexts, ed. Richard Bauckham et al., LNTS 387 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 69–70.