"GOD HAS SPOKEN"
The Education of Jesus
Part Two
(Hebrews Seventeen)[The following outline is that of Kevin L. Anderson, Hebrews: A Commentary In The Wesleyan Tradition,
New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2013), 5-6.
I. Hearing the Apostle and High Priest of Our Confession: Hebrews 1:1—4:13
II. Jesus’ Superior High Priesthood: Hebrews 4:14—10:18
A. The Qualifications of the Great High Priest (4:14—5:10).
B. Preparing for Advanced Teaching on Christ’s High Priesthood (5:11—6:20)
C. The High Priest like Melchizedek: The Son Perfected Forever (7:1-28).
D. The Superior Ministry of the Son’s High Priesthood (8:1—10:18)
III. Call to Persevering Faith and Acceptable Worship: Hebrews 10:19--13:25]
1. The Great High Priest (4:14-16).
2. Qualifications of Ordinary High Priests (5:1-4)
3. Qualifications of the High Priest like Melchizedek (5:5-10)]
Hebrews 5: 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. 2 The high priest can deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, because he himself is also surrounded with weakness. 3 Because of this, he must offer sacrifices for sins for the people, as well as for himself. 4 Nobody takes this honor on himself, but he is called by God, just like Aaron was. 5 So also Christ didn’t glorify himself to be made a high priest, but it was he who said to him,“You are my Son.
Today I have become your father.”[Hebrews 5:5 Psalm 2:7]
6 As he says also in another place,
“You are a priest forever,
after the order of Melchizedek.”[Hebrews 5:6 Psalm 110:4]
7 He, in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and petitions with strong crying and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and having been heard for his godly fear, 8 though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered. 9 Having been made perfect, he became to all of those who obey him the author of eternal salvation, 10 named by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.(World English Bible)
Hebrews 5:8-10: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”
These three verses are our scripture for today and the three quotations that follow capture the essence of our study:
[The Incarnation] is the miracle beyond all miracle. . . . It is the miracle of grace.[P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909), 320.]
They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose
father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”[John 6:42.]
If scholars were able to understand all things, then all things must be very small and probably not worth the effort.[Kathleen L. Housely, “Built on Failure,” Christian Century (May 14, 2014), 33.]
This study is on “the mystery of the Incarnation. We are “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (12:2). In the issues of life that is where the Christian looks first; Christian faith and life is first theological, and then anthropological!
Introduction
The apostle Peter, writing in his second letter to “those who have received a faith as precious as ours” (1:1), stated his intention up front and plain:
Therefore I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already and are established in the truth that has come to you (1:12).
To his readers, the apostle James expressed the same truth with vivid agricultural imagery:
Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” (1:21).
Both apostles give biblical voice to what we week after week are doing here in Bowes; we are reminding ourselves of what we already know; we are inviting you to receive afresh “the truth that has come to you” in the worship and life of the Church and through the “word,” the message that the Spirit of God in Christ has already planted deep in our minds and hearts. You and I are already ”established in the truth” of Christ, but we still need weekly and daily to hear the “implanted word that has the power to save [our] souls.” We are leaky buckets! In this and the preceding hour of worship we give ourselves to this privilege on purpose.
Now in an attempt to plug into where we left off two Sundays past, we review the outline of our study of Hebrew 5:1-10 so far:
Ordinary High Priests
I.
(5:1-4)
1Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.2He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness; 3and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people.4And one does not presume to take this honor, but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
An Extraordinary High Priest
II.
5:5-10
We come now to the writer to the Hebrews prime concern as presents Jesus’ high priesthood first as
One “designated by God”
1.
(5:5-6)
5So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”;6as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
And then second with
2.
How “Jesus offered up prayers”
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud 7 cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
Today we are back to who Jesus was and what he did as focused in three very important words from the text. They are
3.
“Son . . . obedience . . . suffered”
(5:8)
8Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered;
A major question for our faith is, “How human was Jesus really?” Heresies ancient and modern, sophisticated and folk, swirl around this question. For example, Was the anonymous hymn writer on or off target in “Away in a Manger” when he penned the phrase ‘no crying he makes’”?
The cattle are lowing, the Baby awakes
But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.[This Christmas hymn in the past has often been wrongly attributed to Martin Luther.]
We are moving into Hebrews’ articulation of what Anderson describes as “the double, almost paradoxical, truth about Christ’s incarnation.” Jesus at one and the same time “profoundly experienced the depths of temptation shared by the whole of humanity” and yet that “without sin”: “He did not falter in his faithfulness and obedience (3:2, 6, 5:8).” As Hebrews proceeds, it tightens rather than loosens the tension between these two
perhaps “a-logical” but faith-crucial truths.[Anderson, Hebrews, 173. The word “alogical” came from P. T. Forsyth, I think, but at the moment I cannot find where.] A modern writer phrases it:
as God incarnate, [Jesus] assumed sinful flesh. . . . He took on human nature’s damaged state and through his body became intimately acquainted with the complexity and messiness of fallen existence.[Jennifer McBride, “The witness of sinners, Christian Century (December 11, 2013), 32.]
With verse 8 we come to the heart of our passage, and in Hebrews to its profound understanding of Christology and Christian discipleship: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” The writer’s language here is not that
of exhortation, yet, the author indirectly includes the call to his readers also to learn obedience in the midst of their suffering (10:32-34). The question we asked on June 8, however, remains: did Jesus learn to obey, or did he learn what obedience to God really involved? Perhaps both!Archibald M. Hunter, who in 1974 was presenting the thought of theologian P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921), summarizes the latter’s answer to our question:.
As Christ’s personal history enlarged and ripened by every experience, and as he was always found equal to every moral crisis, the latent Godhead became more and more mighty as his life’s interior. As his personality grew in depth and scope. it asserted itself with more power. The more Christ laid down his personal life the more he gained his divine soul. He worked out the salvation he was, and moved by his history to that supernatural world in which he moved by his nature. And the life culminated in the perfection of his own soul and of our salvation in the cross, the resurrection and his glory.[A. M. Hunter, P. T. Forsyth (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), 78. At this point Hunter was apparently working from Forsyth’s magnum opus, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 231-232. Hunter, P. T. Forsyth, 68, writes that this is “his greatest book. We quote from Forsyth’s key paragraphs: “If the incarnation was the result rather than the cause of Christ’s moral action then it was the result either of a great and creative moral decision of his before he entered the world—which preserves his pre-existence,
and seems to require some form of kenosis [emptying]. Or else it was the result of the continuous and ascending moral action in his historic life, wherein his moral growth, always in unbroken union with God, gave but growing effect to God’s indwelling; while the final and absolute union took place when his perfect
self-sacrifice in death completed his personal development, and finally identified him with God. . . . In either of these cases everything turns on moral action (either in the world or before it), whose historic consummation was in the cross and its redemption. Either the cross was the nadir of that self-
limitation which flowed from the supramundane self-emptying of the Son, or it was the zenith of that moral exaltation which had been mounting throughout the long sacrifice of his earthly life, it was the consummation of the progressive union of his soul with God. I do not see why we may not combine the two movements, as I shall hope to show. But in either case the supreme moral act of the cross is the key to the nature of the process.”]
We believe that Forsyth was on target as to the what the author of Hebrews had in his mind and heart when he wrote of Jesus’ incarnate life, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” We attempt an explanation. The proverb or wordplay “to learn is to suffer” (mathein pathein) was common place in the ancient world. Theologically surprising in Jesus’ case, in Johnson’s words, Jesus “learned from the things he experienced/suffered, namely obedience.”[Johnson, Hebrews, 147.] his existence as a human person, living out the very faithfulness that has been announced (3:2, 6; 10:9). Growth is good and was an integral part of his obedient life. Jesus was learning through new experiences, through moving into new territory mentally and emotionally.
“Faith” in Hebrews means more than belief, hope for the future, and perseverance; “Faith in Hebrews is also a response to God that involves obedience.”[Johnson, Hebrews, 150.] And such obedient faith is itself a form of suffering and is a constant learning as one keeps responding. As Anderson interprets, “True humanity is life lived in the image of God.” And “temptation . . . does not create moral excellence, but proves it.”[Anderson, Hebrews, 174.] He then cites theologian Thomas Oden who, using athletic imagery, writes that “one protected
from all forms of temptation will not grow. The moral musculature will not be exercised and will atrophy.”[Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life, Systematic Theology, Volume Two (Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco, 1989), 248. The way is being prepared for 5:11—6:20.]
As Johnson focuses our understanding, the voice of God was new for Jesus every day as for us,
Like us, Jesus had to respond moment by moment, and therefore “learn obedience” precisely in and through the stress and pain generated by constantly allowing his present understanding of God and God’s will to be challenged and relativized by the voice of God that he heard within the circumstances of his every-day life. . . . Hebrews must mean that Jesus grew into his full identity as God’s Son.[Johnson, Hebrews,151.]
The moment of death in the case of Jesus was not “the ultimate closure to human possibility,” but was “in the case of Jesus the ultimate opening to the presence of God, an exaltation to the right hand of the throne of glory.”[Johnson, Hebrews, 151.] We conclude that the writer to the Hebrews believed that Jesus as “a Son” learned “the meaning” of “obedience” to the Father “through what he suffered,” and that also there is a sense in which Jesus learned “to obey”!And the result was, according to the Father’s will,
4.
“a Son . . . made perfect”
(5:9-10)
9and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, 10having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.The high Christology of Hebrews, the preexistent Son of God, “the exact imprint of God’s very being” (1:3), is accompanied by an equal stress on Jesus’ humanity, one who is like us “in every respect, . . . yet without sin” (4:15). As we have suggested, Jesus grew “into his stature as Son through the process of obedient faith, through a process of creative suffering.”[Johnson, Hebrews, 151.] Therefore, “having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”
We come in verse 9 to the second instance of the author’s use in Hebrews of the “perfection” terminology which he applies both to Jesus and to the believer as Hebrews continues. In 2:10 we read that
it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
In the Greek Old Testament (LXX) the “perfection” terminology is used in connection with the ordination of Levitical priests who through sacrifices of consecration or perfection (teleiotēs)[Used in Hebrews 6:1. See LXX Exod. 29:22, 26, 27, 31, 34; Lev 7:37; 8:22, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33.. The writer to the Hebrews uses the verb teleioun (2:10; 5:9; 7:19, 23; 9:9; 10:1, 14; 11:40; 12:23). Other forms of this word family are employed in Hebrews 5:14; 9:12; 7:11; 12:2.] were equipped for their role of priest. Here the “perfection” terminology is applied to Jesus who in his “consecration” through sufferings” was fully equipped and qualified, now “having been made perfect,” as high priest.[Anderson, Hebrews, 171.]Thus, concludes the author, “he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Christ’s role as “source” (aitios) “of eternal salvation” identifies him as one who shares in both the life and the power of God.[Johnson, Hebrews, 149.] Although the word used in 2:10 isdifferent, archēgon rather than aitios as here, the designation connects with that already expressed in 2:10: “it was fitting that God . . . should make the pioneer (archēgon) of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” In 12:2 Hebrews again puts the two terms together: “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”[From an earlier lesson (1/5/14): The Greek word for “pioneer,”
archēgos, is difficult to translate into English. Along with NRSV’s “pioneer,” some suggestions are “leader,” “captain” (KJV), and “author” (NASB). Anderson, examining the term’s usage outside the New Testament, chooses the term “champion”: “Jesus is the ‘champion [hero] who imitates and perfects our faith’” (94). The term combines the noun “beginning” (archē) and the verb “to bring or lead” (agō). The context in Hebrews would favor the sense of leading the way, one who goes before breaking new ground in which others may follow. So “pioneer” is an excellent choice for the earthly career of Jesus, who “by the grace of God” tasted “death for everyone,” and in whose wake we follow.]
The qualification, “all who obey him,” as it prepares the way for the exhortations that will follow in 5:11—6:20, takes us back to, or brings into itself the “he learned obedience” in the previous verse. The grand truth here is that the Christian’s obedience
to God is grounded in the obedience of Jesus to the Father by which he becomes what he is for the believer, One “designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” The Christian’s motivation to “hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope” (3:6) when the going gets tough, to express it theologically, is Christological! Our education as mature Christians flows directly from Jesus’ education as “a Son.”
As first set forth in verse 6, Jesus is now all this as one designated [“a formal and solemn ascription of an honorific title”[Anderson, Hebrews, 172.]] by God as “a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek, a figure “without Father, without mother” (7:3) from the pages of Genesis (14:17-24), who blessed Abraham and to whom Abraham paid a tithe, will merit our full attention by and by.[As mentioned last lesson we will deal more with Jesus’ priesthood “according to the order of Melchizedek” when we come to chapter 7. See the lesson “In the Beginning God” “Genesis Sixteen: Who Was Melchizedek?” (April 22, 2012).]
Conclusion
Our minds have been struggling with the Incarnation, with the mystery of it, in particular the remarkable emphasis on Jesus’ humanity in Hebrews. To fill out our earlier quotation from Peter Forsyth:
nature His own, we must answer . . . that we do not know. We cannot follow the steps of the process, or make a psychological sketch. . . . God has done things for his own which it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive. It is the miracle beyond all miracle. . . . It is the miracle of grace. . . . Let us not be impatient of the secret. Love would not remain love if it had no impenetrable reserves.[Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 320.]
Applied to Jesus, Housely’s comment is truly apt:
If scholars were able to understand all things, then all things must be very small and probably not worth the effort.[Housely, “Built on Failure,” 33.]
Interestingly, some Jews in the very presence of the incarnate Jesus
were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”[John 6:42.]
What we in the Church are most grateful for is that God has granted us the witness of apostles: the Gospel writers, John in particular, Peter and James, and the great Paul of Tarsus—and before us the writer to the Hebrews. Forsyth puts great confidence in these men who wrote from the height of faith to which Christ had raised them: Apostolic inspiration is
a certain action stirred by the heavenly Christ in the soul, by which his first elect were enabled to see the moral, spiritual and theological nature of the If we ask how Eternal Godhead could make the actual condition of human manifestation with a unique clearness, a clearness and explicitness perhaps not always present to Christ’s own mind in doing the act.[Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 176. The introductory statement reflects Forsyth’s expression from page 1612.]
Johnson’s interpretation of the witness of our inspired writer thus far in Hebrews forms a fitting last word and sets us up for what follows:
Since for Hebrews Jesus was the pioneer as well as the perfecter of such obedient faith (12:2), he has shown the path toward maturity also for all those “sons being led to glory” (2:41).[Johnson, Hebrews, 152.]
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3901 Lomaland Drive
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