“Jesus, Our High Priest, Deals Gently with Us”
Hebrews 5:1-10
4/1/09
Whether by way of personal experience from when you
were a child or from your experience now as parents, most of you know
that there comes a time in the lives of children when they insist on
doing things by themselves, their own way, without your help.
Whether they’re putting together a model, building a clubhouse,
or making a cake, struggle as they may to do it right, they refuse to
let you assist them in any way. Unfortunately, the project
usually ends up not turning out the way it was supposed to in any way,
shape, or form.
As we get older, sometimes this independent “I
can do it myself” spirit is a good thing. We don’t
want to always have to rely on others to help us out.
There’s also a sense of pride and accomplishment when we’ve
achieved something on our own, by our own reason and strength.
It’s not a good thing, however, when this “I can do it
myself” attitude is applied to attempts on our part to fix what
has gone wrong in our relationship with God. Like little children
we have rebelled against our loving heavenly Father in disobeying His
commandments. As the author of Hebrews writes here, we’re
ignorant and wayward people. We don’t know how to fix this
problem ourselves, nor can we, and yet we insist on trying to do it our
own way, by ourselves, without God’s help. Our attempts at
repairing this broken relationship with God are many.
They’re as numerous as there are religions, which are all
manifestations of mankind’s vain efforts at reconciling himself
to God. But we don’t want to be told that we can’t do
it and that all of our attempts are futile. Nor does God want to
help us in any efforts of ours at reconciling ourselves to Him.
He insists on doing it all Himself, doing it for us through His Son,
Jesus Christ, who alone can and has fixed our broken relationship with
God.
He did this by becoming our perfect High
Priest. Now a high priest in the O.T. was a mediator between God
and men. He represented God to the people and the people to
God. In our sin, we cannot approach God without a mediator of
some kind. We may try to get to God on our own merits, by our own
reason or strength, but to do so would only mean certain death for us,
since no sinner can stand in God’s presence and live. Sin
must first be dealt with, and because we’re all sinners,
everything we do is corrupted by our sin. It would be like a
child’s pitiful attempts at building a boat all by himself, not
knowing how to do it, only to find out that it wasn’t seaworthy
in the end. It might look good, but a boat that sinks is no good
at all.
Since we can’t fix the problem of our broken
relationship to God ourselves, God has given us the Mediator, Jesus
Christ, to do it for us. As our High Priest, Jesus makes it
possible for us to enter into God’s presence through Him, because
of what He has done to take care of our sin. The way sin was
dealt with in the O.T. was through animal sacrifices. Through the
shedding of their blood, God forgave His people their sins, so that He
might dwell among them without them dying because of it. The
animal sacrifices were innocent victims, unblemished, untainted by
sin. They served as substitutes for the people, receiving the
punishment that the people deserved in their place. But those
sacrifices were also a temporary fix. Animal sacrifices
didn’t in and of themselves take away the people’s sins
once and for all. God did forgive them, but it wasn’t for
the sake of the blood of sheep, goats, and bulls, but for the sake of
the blood of His Son that would be shed at Calvary.
Jesus is the permanent fix to this problem of sin,
as His sacrifice has taken away sins once and for all. And here
the author of Hebrews tells us what all was included in His sacrifice
for us. First, it included His prayers and supplications, offered
up with loud cries and tears to His Father. This is a reference
to the agony that Jesus went through in the Garden of Gethsemane just
prior to His arrest. We learn from the Gospel writers that there
He became very sorrowful and troubled, to the point that His sweat
became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And
He prayed to the Father that He might remove the cup of suffering that
He was about to drink and save Him from death, which the author of
Hebrews writes that God was fully capable of doing. Yet, Jesus
prayed not that His own will be done, but that His Father’s will
be done. And the Father heard His Son’s prayer. He
did not deliver Him from death, because that was not His will.
Instead, He gave Him into death, in order to save us. And this is
what Jesus also wanted, even though it meant that He would have to shed
His blood for our sins.
And so the writer says that “although He was a
Son, [Jesus] learned obedience through what He suffered.”
Not only did He offer up to God the kind of prayer that we should have
- Thy will be done, not mine - but He also willingly submitted Himself
to the Father’s will and gave Himself into death on the cross,
the death that we should have suffered ourselves. While we
couldn’t even keep God’s command not to eat of a piece of
fruit, Jesus kept all God’s commandments for us perfectly, even
up to keeping the ultimate command of giving Himself into death as the
sacrifice for our sins on the cross of Calvary, so that we might be
spared eternal death under God’s wrath in hell.
In this way Jesus has become the perfect Savior, the
perfect Mediator and High Priest for us, so that He is the source of
eternal salvation to all who obey Him. Jesus has fixed the
damaged relationship between ourselves and God by dealing with sin once
and for all. Now, having obeyed Him by repenting of our sin,
believing the Gospel, and being sprinkled with His blood in our
Baptism, we can approach the throne of God with all confidence and
boldness. We can bring our requests to God, just as dear children
ask their dear Father, knowing that He loves and accepts us for
Christ’s sake and that we will spend eternity in His presence
when He takes us from this veil of tears to Himself in heaven. As
the author of Hebrews writes later on in this letter, “Therefore,
brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the
blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through
the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great
priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in
full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil
conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
Jesus has done what neither you nor I could do for
ourselves. He reconciled us to God with His holy precious blood
and His innocent suffering and death on the cross at Calvary. By
the work of the Holy Spirit this sacrifice of His has been delivered to
you through the Word of the Gospel and the Sacraments of Baptism and
the Lord’s Supper. Even the obedience of faith which
accepts this sacrifice of His has itself been worked in you by the same
Spirit, so that you can’t boast in yourself or any work of yours,
but in Christ and His work alone. God loved you too much to let
you strive in vain to save yourself. He’s done it all for
you through His Son, Jesus Christ, apart from any willing or doing on
your part. Christ’s work is perfect and complete; you can
add nothing to it yourself. It was finished on the cross.
Now, since His resurrection from the dead, He
continues to intercede for you with His prayers and petitions, and with
His blood He continues to speak you righteous before the Father as He
sits at His right hand in glory, so that through Him you might have
access to the Father yourself - now by faith in His promises, and in
the age to come face to face for all eternity. Because of Jesus
and His mediation, no one can bring any charge against you before God
and nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God has not given us ignorant and wayward children
what we deserve - eternal death. He has not dealt with us
according to our sins. Instead, He has dealt gently with us and
had mercy on us, delivering us from His wrath through the obedience,
suffering, and death of His Son on the cross. Jesus is the source
of eternal salvation to all who trust in Him. Receive again this
Lenten season the comfort that God delivers to you for the sake of His
high priestly sacrifice. To Him be the glory now and
forever. Amen.