Hebrews 5

Today’s Passage: Hebrews 5

The letter has just handed you one of its great sentences, that we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens and who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, and now the writer slows down to show you what he means by the word priest. The chapter falls into two halves that feel almost like two different rooms. The first ten verses are a careful piece of teaching about the office itself. Two things make a high priest, the writer says. He must be taken from among men, so that he can deal gently with people who are ignorant and going astray, because he knows human weakness from the inside and has to bring a sacrifice for his own sins before he can bring one for anybody else’s. And he must not appoint himself. The honor has to be handed to him by God, the way it was handed to Aaron. Then the writer holds both of those requirements up against Christ, and he takes the second one first: God said to Him, You are My Son, and God said to Him, You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. Only after that does he come back to the first requirement, and when he does, the sentences turn into some of the most astonishing in all of Scripture. Loud cries and tears. Learning obedience. Being made perfect. Then, at verse eleven, the tone breaks off. The writer says he has a great deal more to say about Melchizedek and cannot say it, because his readers have gone dull in the hearing. They ought to be teaching by now, and instead they need the alphabet again. That rebuke is not a change of subject. It is the ramp down into chapter six, and you should read it as one unbroken run.

As you read, hold this: Jesus did not seize the priesthood but was called to it, and He learned obedience in the school of suffering, so that He might become the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.

Hebrews 5:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Every high priest is appointed from among men to represent them in matters relating to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. ² He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and misguided, since he himself is subject to weakness. ³ That is why he is obligated to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people. ⁴ No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was.

Notice the direction the office runs. A high priest is “appointed from among men to represent them in matters relating to God.” He faces two ways. He stands with his own people, one of them, sharing their blood and their frailty, and he stands before God on their behalf with something in his hands. Not with advice, and not with an opinion, but with “gifts and sacrifices for sins,” because sin is the thing that put the distance there in the first place and nothing less than a sacrifice was ever going to close it. Then the writer names the quality that makes such a man bearable to come to. He “is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and misguided.” The Greek behind “deal gently” is a lovely, measured word that means neither to blow up nor to shrug, but to hold your feeling at the right temperature toward a person who has gone wrong. And why can he do it? “Since he himself is subject to weakness.” A man who has never staggered has no patience with a stagger. The Law even set the boundary of his ordinary work at the sins of ignorance and straying, the sins of people who wandered rather than the sins of people who shook their fist, and any priest with a memory knew he had wandered himself.

Which brings the third verse, and it lands like a stone. “That is why he is obligated to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people.” Before Aaron could do a thing for Israel he had to do something about Aaron:

"Aaron is to present the bull for his sin offering and make atonement for himself and his household." Leviticus 16:6 (BSB)

Sit with that a moment. The holiest man in the nation, on the holiest day of the year, going in through the curtain, and the first blood that flows is for him. Israel’s whole priesthood came with a built-in confession that it could not finally solve the problem, because the man carrying the remedy needed the remedy. And then verse four adds the second requirement, and it is about honor and who may take it. “No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was.” The Scriptures are full of men who forgot that. Korah and his company decided the priesthood looked like a thing a determined man could reach for, and the ground answered them. Centuries later King Uzziah, who had been a good king, walked into the temple with a censer in his hand, and eighty priests came in after him and stood in his way:

"They took their stand against King Uzziah and said, “Uzziah, you have no right to offer incense to the LORD. Only the priests, the descendants of Aaron, are consecrated to burn incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you have acted unfaithfully; you will not receive honor from the LORD God.”" 2 Chronicles 26:18 (BSB)

Nobody drafts himself into the presence of God. That is the rule, and it is about to be applied to Christ, which is the last place we would expect it to be needed.

Hebrews 5:5–10 (BSB)

⁵ So also Christ did not take upon Himself the glory of becoming a high priest, but He was called by the One who said to Him: “You are My Son; today I have become Your Father.” ⁶ And in another passage God says: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” ⁷ During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. ⁸ Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered. ⁹ And having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him ¹⁰ and was designated by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Take verses five and six slowly, because there is something in them we can easily walk past. “Christ did not take upon Himself the glory of becoming a high priest.” He of all people had the right. He is the Son through whom the worlds were made, the radiance of God’s glory, and He did not reach out and take the office. He waited to be given it. Everything about our Lord in this letter is like that. He does not grasp, He receives, and He receives from His Father. And the two lines the writer quotes are the two great royal texts of the Old Testament laid side by side. The first is from the second Psalm, where the LORD installs His King on Zion, and the second is from Psalm 110, the psalm the Lord Jesus Himself used against the scribes. Hear the whole of that second line, because the writer has left off the front of it and the front of it will matter enormously before this letter is done:

"The LORD has sworn and will not change His mind: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.”" Psalm 110:4 (BSB)

The LORD has sworn. Not appointed, not arranged, but sworn, and He will not change His mind. Aaron’s sons were installed by ceremony and removed by death, one after another down the centuries, but this priest holds His office by the oath of God and holds it forever. Keep that word in your pocket. It is going to come back at the end of the next chapter and become an anchor.

Now the writer turns and looks at the other qualification, the human one, and the room goes quiet. “During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence (εὐλάβεια) eulabeia, pronounced yoo-LAH-bay-ah. Strong's G2124, reverence, godly fear, careful awe before God. The word behind “reverence” is eulabeia, and it is a rich one. In older Greek it described the caution of a man carrying something precious, the carefulness that will not be clumsy with what matters, and by the time of the New Testament it had become one of the words for holy fear, the awe that takes God seriously. It is used only twice in the whole New Testament, and both times in this letter: here of the Lord Jesus in the garden, and again at the very end, where we are told to worship God with reverence and awe. Think about what it means that this is the word chosen for Christ in Gethsemane. His prayer was heard, the writer says, because of His godly fear. It was not the volume of His crying that opened heaven, and it was not the intensity of His agony. It was that even in the worst hour of the world, His whole being was still bent toward His Father in reverence, unwilling to be careless with the will of God for a single moment. And that same word is then handed to us as the way to come and worship. We are not asked to manufacture emotion. We are asked to take God seriously, the way our High Priest did, and to bring what we carry to Him with both hands. .” Read it again. Loud cries. Tears. This is not a serene philosopher meeting death with folded hands. This is a real Man in real anguish, and the Gospels tell us where it happened:

"“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Then an angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him. And in His anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground." Luke 22:42–44 (BSB)

And then comes the line worth stopping the whole day for: “and He was heard.” He was heard. Yet the cup was not taken away. He went to the cross the next morning and He died there. So what does it mean that the Father heard Him? It means that being heard by God is not the same thing as being handed the thing you asked for, and that our Lord Himself proved it in the deepest prayer ever prayed. He asked, honestly and out loud, for the cup to pass. He asked with His whole heart, and He asked with a submission underneath the asking, yet not My will, but Yours. The Father did not remove the cup. He answered the prayer underneath the prayer, and He raised His Son out of the death He did not spare Him. Understand what that means for you the next time you pray with tears and nothing changes. You are not standing outside the circle of the heard. You are standing exactly where He stood, and you have a High Priest who has prayed that prayer before you and knows the taste of it.

Now the two hardest and most glorious clauses in the chapter. “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered. And having been made perfect (τελειόω) teleioō, pronounced tel-i-OH-oh. Strong's G5048, to bring to the goal, to complete, to make perfect. Teleioō does not mean to mend a flaw. It comes from telos, the end or goal of a thing, and it means to bring something all the way to its intended completion. A road is teleioō when it finally reaches the city. Interestingly, in the Greek Old Testament this very verb was used for the ordaining of a priest, for filling his hands and bringing him fully into his office, so the writer’s readers may well have heard it as a word about qualification rather than about repair. That is exactly its sense here. Christ was not made good, for He was always good. He was brought to the completed end of the course He had been sent to run, and by running it He was fully qualified as our High Priest, having suffered everything a priest for sinners would need to have suffered. The letter has said it once already, that it was fitting for God to make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering, and it will say it again in chapter seven, where the Son is described as having been made perfect forever. So when you read that Jesus was made perfect, do not hear a repair. Hear a completion, and hear a door opening, because the sentence goes straight on to tell you what the completing was for: He became the source of eternal salvation. That is the point of the whole ordeal, and you are the reason for it. , He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” Say plainly what these words do not mean, because a careless reading has troubled honest people for centuries. They do not mean that the Lord Jesus was ever disobedient and had to be corrected. They do not mean that He was ever defective and had to be repaired. He is God the Son, of one being with the Father, and He was without sin from the manger to the tomb, and this same letter has already told us so: tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin. So what did He learn? He learned obedience from what He suffered, which is to say He came to know from the inside, in the flesh, in the actual cost, what it is for a man to obey God when obedience hurts. There is a knowing that only comes through the doing. A boy can be told what it is to carry a heavy thing up a hill, but until he has carried it he does not know it in his shoulders. The eternal Son knew obedience perfectly as God knows all things; the incarnate Son now knows it as a Man knows it, having walked every step of the road with a body that could bleed and a soul that could be sorrowful unto death. And there is a lovely sound in the Greek here that a translation cannot carry: the words for learned and suffered rhyme, emathen and epathen, an old proverb turned to holy use.

And so the promise: “He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” Weigh every word. Eternal salvation, not a season of safety but a rescue that runs the whole length of forever, and the writer will use that adjective again and again in this letter, of eternal redemption and an eternal inheritance and an eternal covenant, because what Christ does He does once and it does not wear out. He is the source of it, the origin and the cause, which means salvation is not a thing we find in ourselves and bring to Him. And it comes to “all who obey Him,” which is not a payment schedule but a description. The obedience Christ learned in suffering becomes the obedience He works in the people He saves. This letter has been showing us that faith and obedience are two names for the same posture: unbelief is what kept Israel out of the rest, and trusting God is what looks like following Him. Then verse ten sets the seal on the whole argument. He “was designated by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” Not self-appointed. Named by God. Blessed be His name for a High Priest like this, who was called and not grasping, who wept and was heard, who obeyed all the way down and finished the course, and who now stands before God for us.

Hebrews 5:11–14 (BSB)

¹¹ We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain, because you are dull of hearing. ¹² Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to reteach you the basic principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food! ¹³ For everyone who lives on milk is still an infant, inexperienced in the message of righteousness. ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained their senses to distinguish good from evil.

And now the preacher stops mid-flight. He has just laid the name of Melchizedek on the table and he wants to open it up, and he says he cannot, and the reason is not that the subject is too deep. Look at how carefully he words it: “it is hard to explain, because you are dull (νωθρός) nōthros, pronounced noh-THROSS. Strong's G3576, sluggish, dull, slow to move or to hear. Nōthros is a wonderfully physical word. It means slow, sluggish, heavy in the way a body is heavy when it has not moved for a long time, and the Greeks used it of a lazy animal or a numb limb. The writer says these believers have grown nōthros in the hearing, and the tense of it suggests something that has happened to them over time rather than something they always were. But here is what you should not miss, and it is the whole reason this paragraph belongs to the chapter that follows it. He uses the same word again a few sentences later, in the very heart of the warning, when he says he wants each of them to show diligence to the end so that they will not become nōthros but will imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. The sluggishness of chapter five and the sluggishness of chapter six are one condition, and the writer is chasing it from both directions. That is why these four verses are not a scolding tucked in before a new topic. They are the top of a slope. A believer who stops listening starts drifting, and a believer who drifts long enough stops moving at all, and the next chapter is going to tell you, in the most serious language in the letter, where that road goes. So do not read the milk and the meat as a mild rebuke about study habits. Read it as a warning bell. of hearing.” The difficulty is not in the doctrine. It is in the ears. That is a hard thing to say to people you love, and he says it anyway, because a man who only ever comforts is not much use to anybody in the long run. Then he tells them how far behind they are: “Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to reteach you the basic principles of God’s word.” By this time. They had been believers for years. There had been enough seasons and enough Sundays that some of them should have been carrying others by now, and instead somebody has to sit down with them and go back to the beginning. Notice, too, that dullness is not where they started. Something set in. They had not grown backward by accident; they had drifted, they had stopped pressing in, and the ear that is not used goes deaf by degrees.

Then the picture of the milk and the meat, and it is worth handling gently, because it is not a slur on new believers. Milk is exactly right for an infant, and there is nothing wrong with a baby drinking it. The trouble is a grown person still on it. “Everyone who lives on milk is still an infant, inexperienced in the message of righteousness,” and the word behind “inexperienced” means unskilled, untried, a person who has never actually handled the thing. And the remedy is not cleverness. Read the last verse again and see what makes a mature believer: “solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained their senses to distinguish good from evil.” Constant use. The word for trained is the one you would use of an athlete in the gymnasium, the daily, unglamorous, repeated work that turns a soft body into a strong one. Spiritual discernment is not a gift that falls on you one morning. It is built, slowly, by a believer who keeps coming back to the Word of God and keeps obeying what he finds there, until his senses have been schooled and he can tell the difference between what is good and what only looks good. There is real hope in that for anyone who feels slow. You do not need a finer mind. You need constant use.