Hebrews Lesson 38 December 22, 2005
NKJ Psalm 23:1 A Psalm of
David. The LORD is my
shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He makes me to lie down in green
pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. 3 He restores my
soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake.
Hebrews 4
We
are wrapping up this section of Hebrews which began in
2:5 down through the end of chapter 4, 4:16. The last part from 3:7 to 4:16 is
a warning passage. Hebrews is constructed around these warning passages that drive
home the application from the didactic sections. Each one of these 5 warning
passages that you get in Hebrews is built around a didactic section that
teaches something, brings out some points from the Old Testament text and the
life of Christ. Then you get this point driven home in terms of a serious
warning to the believer, a challenge that we need to do something. It is not
just a matter of learning interesting data about the priesthood of Christ or
the ascension or something like that. This has moment-by-moment relevance to
every believer’s life.
Furthermore
what we see in the development of the Hebrews (so you can read it with a little
more intelligence) is that as you go through a section certain ideas and themes
are brought out usually in the didactic section, usually with a warning. Then
that theme is pulled out and expanded in the next section. So there is a
development of the basic themes of the epistle down through the chapters. So as we see in this section in Hebrews
2:5, we started talking about the fact that God the Father did not put the
world to come (that is the future Millennial Kingdom of which we speak) in
subjection to angels.
Then
there was a quote from Psalm 8:4-6 talking about the fact that it is Jesus
Christ as the Son of Man and the fact that He is true humanity that is the one
to whom the future kingdom will be given. His qualification to rule and to
reign is related to His suffering and coming to the earth and the mission
during the First Advent to go to the cross and die as a substitute for us on
the cross. Part of that was to bring many sons to glory. That doesn’t just end
in the concept we have of justification and ending up in heaven. It is the idea
that He is preparing us for our future destiny to rule and reign with Him as
priests and kings. In order to fulfill that we are told that He went through a
process in His humanity where He suffers, He goes through adversity and He was
tested so that He can demonstrate how a human being is to handle problems,
adversities, and difficulties in life. In contrast to Adam who failed, Jesus
Christ as the Second Adam succeeds. Therefore we were told in 2:17.
NKJ
Hebrews 2:17 Therefore,
in all things He had to be made like His brethren,
that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation
for the sins of the people.
He
had to be made like us in order to be a faithful high priest. This then leads
to the challenge that begins in 3:7.
NKJ
Hebrews 3:7 Therefore,
as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you will hear His voice,
We
are to use the faith rest drill so that we will be prepared to enter that
future rest as those who rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ unlike the Exodus
generation that failed. That’s the analogy that was at the core of the entire
section from 3:7 through 4:10.
Starting in 4:11 we see a series of applications indicated by the phrase
“therefore”.
NKJ
Hebrews 4:11 Let
us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the
same example of disobedience.
That’s
what we studied last time that in light of all that has proceeded we must be
diligent and work hard. We must be alert and vigilant in order to make sure
that we enter the rest – entering the rest is not equivalent to entering
heaven. Entering the rest, God’s rest, is entering the
Millennial Kingdom as one who is honored and rewarded at the Judgment Seat of
Christ and is prepared to rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then
we see in that context verse 12 that it’s the Word of God that is living and
powerful. The Word of God is used by the Holy Spirit to expose the arrogant
agenda in our souls and our arrogant human viewpoint so that we can replace the
human viewpoint with divine viewpoint. Only by doing that does it build the
character and integrity and capacity so that we can rule and reign with Christ
in the Millennial Kingdom. Then we come to the conclusion to the section in
verse 14. That is where we start this evening.
As
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we have to recognize that we are not
guaranteed that because we are Christians it is going to be a
life ease and a life of happiness without sorrow, difficulty, pain and
adversity. In fact if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ trying to
grow anywhere in the Christian life, then what is going to happen is you will
find yourself in the vortex of the angelic conflict. You are going to find
yourself at a place where it seems like all hell is trying to break lose around
you. No matter what you try to do it always seems to be very difficult. People
look at you and wonder what in the world is going on. I have always noticed
that when it comes to computers and travel. No matter what can go wrong it will
go wrong and it will go wrong in spades.
We
just went through this process of closing on our house and getting ready to
move. My realtor made the comment that he had never had such a difficult
closing. It’s too bad he didn’t understand the angelic conflict because I could
make it clear to him. That is what happens sometimes. The Lord allows us to be
tested and examined. We go through adversity in order to be examined and to
demonstrate what we have learned in the Christian life.
So
we have to rely upon the resources that God has given us. He has given us
tremendous resources. The whole idea is for us to learn to rely on those
resources. This leads to the doctrine of sufficiency in Scripture. Sufficiency
means that what God has supplied is enough. You don’t need anything else. You
don’t need to take the Bible and add something to it.
Often
I am reminded of the conflict that frequently occurs in churches between those
who believe in the sufficiency of Scripture and those who believe in
psychology. What in the world would Christians do to handle problems in their lives
– marital problems, family problems, economic problems and whatever they
were - before Freud came along? All of a sudden in the late 1800’s and into the
1900’s Christians got enamored with psychology that the Bible is nice “but now
we understand the dynamics of personality and interaction and behavior so now
we can really solve our problems.” Too bad that all those Christians for 1800
years didn’t know that before so that they could have happiness in their lives.
So they had to wait for Freud or any other of the psychological theorists to
come along before they could have real happiness. The Bible says that the Word
of God is sufficient. We have the sufficiency of the Word of God. We don’t need
to know anything else. So God’s Word has given us everything we need to know so
that we can handle the problems and issues of life.
The
problem for most Christians is they don’t think deeply enough about the Word of
God to be able to addresses the problems in their life. Actually they don’t
think deeply about two things. They don’t think deeply about the problems in
their lives and how they originate from the old sin nature and secondly they
don’t think deeply about the Word of God to see how it applies to their issue,
their problems, and their difficulties. I hate that word issues. It is such a
postmodern way to avoid the question of problems.
The
other day I was watching a news report and they were running a ticker tape
across the bottom. There was an airplane that came in and had to make an
emergency landing out of JFK. I am reading about it on the
ticker tape as it went across the bottom of the screen. It said that this
airplane had landing gear issues. I thought, “Oh my!”
We
have problems in this world. We can’t escape them. We live in a fallen world. We
have the sufficiency of God’s Word. It gives us all the information we need to
know to handle the problems. Not all of the information we would like to have
sometimes and not all the information we like to speculate on, but it gives us
everything we need to know to handle whatever faces us.
We
have the sufficiency of grace. God in His kindness has given to us everything
we need to know. It is not based on who we are or what we have done. It is
based on His character, on His goodness, and on His kindness.
Third,
we have the sufficiency of the cross. The sufficiency of the cross is that
Jesus Christ paid the penalty for every single sin in human history. That
negates the whole problem of guilt, which is what motivates so many people.
They are just trying to deal with the guilt over something they did wrong or
something that happened to them that they feel guilty about. So we have the
sufficiency of the cross.
Fourth
we have the sufficiency of the God the Holy Spirit. If we are walking by means of the Holy Spirit, then God the
Holy Spirit plus the Word of God is going to produce in us spiritual growth and
we will experience that abundant life that Jesus promised. The foundation is in
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and His example or precedent
that He set during the First Advent.
That is the backdrop in understanding these last 3 verses in Hebrews
4.
NKJ
Hebrews 4:14 Seeing
then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus
the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
That’s
the command. That is the main idea there. There is a foundation to it that is
given in the first clause; but the mandate, the punch, in verse 14 is that we
are to hold fast our confession. Holding fast to our confession is predicated
upon something. That is what is given with the participle at beginning in verse
14. It is a conclusion. It should be translated a little stronger than the word
“then” of the New King James. It should be translated like the New American
Standard has it, “therefore”.
NAS
Hebrews 4:14 Since
then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the
Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
It
begins to capture the sense of this participle that begins the phrase in the
Greek. It is an adverbial participle of cause. So we are to understand it to
say, “Therefore because of something”. The “therefore” really comes with a
command.
But,
there is something that comes between the “therefore” and the command. It’s
because of something. - because of a reality. Because we have a High Priest in the heavenlies who is standing there
interceding for us who represents us to God the Father. He has made a complete,
finished sacrifice for our sins. Because of all of that we have an incumbent
responsibility that is to hold fast to our confession.
So
we look at the foundation for the command. That is the high priestly work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a lot said in Hebrews about the high priestly work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve barely had an introduction to it. It really
gets developed in the next chapter. In some ways what we are getting ready to
go through is an introduction to the first part of the next chapter. As I said
earlier when you look at these sections they will bring in a few themes. Then
the next section unpacks those themes.
That
leads to the next development. What we have learned already is that Jesus
Christ had to be made exactly like His brethren. He had to be made in true
humanity. I want you to notice Hebrews 2:17.
NKJ
Hebrews 2:17 Therefore,
in all things He had to be made like His brethren,
that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation
for the sins of the people.
In
order for Him to be a merciful and faithful high priest, He had to be made like
His brethren. What is the presupposition of that verse? The presupposition of
that verse is that Jesus was fully God. He is the Son of God. He is already the
eternal Second Person of the trinity, but He had to become like us. It is not
assuming that He was human and became divine. It is assuming that He was
already eternal God and He had to become human. It assumes the reality of the
deity of Christ. The deity of Christ is not some doctrine that the early church
fathers cobbled together in the 3rd and 4th centuries in
order to make the Bible mean something in order to juxtapose Jesus to Caesar or
anything like that. It was already there. The very assumption from the
beginning was that Jesus was who He claimed to be - the eternal Second Person
of the trinity who became flesh. He is called Emmanuel.
It
is a term you often hear in Christmas carols and Christmas hymns. Few people
today understand that the term Emmanuel means “God is
with us.” This is one of the titles for Jesus Christ. He is God in the flesh.
So He didn’t tack on deity. His deity tacked on or added humanity. So He had to
be made like us in order to fulfill the purpose and all of the objectives in
the First Advent. The primary objective was to provide propitiation, atonement
for sin. One of the secondary objectives was to establish the basis for the
Christian life in the Church Age. This is what is seen in verse 18.
NKJ
Hebrews 2:18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being
tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.
The
idea is the Jesus Christ went through every category of adversity
as we will see in our passage. These two verses Hebrews 2:17-18 become the
backdrop for understanding the last three verses of chapter 4. They both come
at the conclusion of the two internal sections of this division of 2:5 through
the end of 4. So He has suffered. He has gone through adversity. In that
adversity He was tested. Of course we know of the three testings
in the wilderness. But beyond that, there were other
situations and circumstances in His life where He was tested whether He would
trust the Lord or not. We will see that as we get into our passage.
First
of all, He had to be made exactly like His brethren. He had to become true
genuine humanity. He didn’t just look like a human. He wasn’t just some phantasm that floated through space. He
didn’t just take on the façade of humanity. He had to become true genuine
humanity. As true humanity we learn from these verses that Jesus Christ went
through every category of adversity. It wasn’t just some wraith.
That
is what the Gnostics said. They were also called docetics.
That may be a new word for some of you. It is based on Greek word dokeo. It means
it seemed to be there. He wasn’t actually a human he just seemed to be a human.
He was just a phantasm. They didn’t really nail a body to the cross. It was a
divine deception. That is what the Gnostics said because God couldn’t die. God
couldn’t become associated with anything material because that would destroy His
deity. So they rejected the true humanity of Jesus Christ. But what the Bible
teaches is that Jesus had to go through every category of adversity in human
experience in order to demonstrate certain things. When He went through those
circumstances He experienced in His humanity all the mental and emotional
things that go along with that. He experienced the thoughts and emotions that
we experience. That made Him true humanity. But He didn’t sin in the process.
So we learn the Jesus Christ in His humanity set the standard, the precedent
for the Christian life of the Church Age.
The
Church Age spiritual life is not based on the Old Testament Mosaic Law. It is
based on what Jesus Christ did in the power of the Holy Spirit. So He lives the
spiritual life through the filling of God the Holy Spirit and walking by means
of the Holy Spirit. His mind is completely oriented to the Word of God.
Remember when He was 13 years old He went to Jerusalem with His parents. They
leave and are headed back home and they discover that He is not in the caravan.
They go back and find Him sitting and having a theological discussion and
disputation with the rabbis in the temple.
They
ask him, “What are you doing?”
He
tells them, “Don’t you know that I need to be about My Father’s business?” His
mind is so oriented to His mission and to what the Word of God says that He is
not being distracted by what would normally distract children. So He sets the
precedent for the spiritual life in His humanity through the filling of the Spirit
and walking by the Spirit. He is completely oriented to the Word of God and He
is going to handle the problems that He faces in life not on the basis of His
deity (that is the foundation here).
He doesn’t face these tests by relying on His deity. He doesn’t rely
upon His omniscience, His omnipotence, or any of His other characteristics in
order to solve the problems. He deals with these problems totally as a human
being. He does so by relying upon the Holy Spirit and applying the principles
of Scripture.
This
is where we get into the idea of priesthood. A priest is someone who is
qualified according to a standard (God sets the standard) to serve God in the
sanctuary, whether it was the tabernacle or the temple. He is a priest who is
qualified according to a standard to serve God in the sanctuary, to offer
sacrifices at the altar and to act as a mediator or a go-between between man
the creature, and God the Creator. So we see that Jesus Christ served man in
relation to God by offering a sacrifice for sin. This is seen in Hebrews 5:1
where we will be next week.
NKJ
Hebrews 5:1 For every high priest taken from among men
is appointed for men in things pertaining
to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
That
one verse incorporates the function of a priest. He is appointed for men in
things related to God. A priest represents man to God. In this function he
offers gifts and sacrifices for sins. That is what the Lord Jesus Christ did.
He offered Himself as a sacrifice.
He died as a substitute for us. The sins of mankind were imputed or
poured out to Him on the cross so that the penalty was completely paid for.
Jesus Christ as a priest was appointed the only true mediator between God and
men. A mediator is a go-between who is able to represent both sides of a
conflict to the other side. He could do this because He had become true
humanity.
NKJ
1 Timothy 2:5 For there
is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,
It
emphasizes His humanity in that verse because as a true human being He could
represent us to God. So the emphasis is again on His humanity.
Jesus Christ as a priest was appointed by God Himself. This was in
contrast to what was happening in Jewish history at the time. There was a period of years, of decades
where the high priestly family who was dominated by Annas
who was a high priest during the time Christ was on the earth. He was replaced by his nephew Caiaphas. Then there were a
number of other grandsons and other cousins who were all brought into the high
priesthood. They were all appointed by political powers, the Roman governors.
It was in complete violation to the Word of God to the scriptural mandates
under the Mosaic Law. But that was the priesthood. In contrast to that Jesus Christ is appointed a priest by God Himself. This is
seen again in the next chapter.
NKJ
Hebrews 5:4 And no man takes this honor to himself,
but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.
NKJ
Hebrews 5:5 So also Christ did not glorify Himself to
become High Priest, but it was He who
said to Him: "You are My Son, Today I have begotten You."
Aaron
was the high priest in the Levitical system under the
Mosaic Law. As a high priest He was appointed high priest by
God Himself.
It
was not something Aaron sought after. Christ did not seek after it Himself.
Have
we heard that verse before? This takes us right back to Hebrews 1:5.
NKJ
Hebrews 1:5 For to which of the angels did He ever
say: "You are My Son, Today I have begotten You"? And again: "I
will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a
Son"?
This
is a reference to the declaration of Christ’s sonship
at the ascension. This is a quote from Psalm 2:7. We will dig that out when we
get there.
Verse
6 has another Old Testament quote. It was quoted in Hebrews 1.
NKJ Hebrews
5:6 As He also says in another place: "You
are a priest forever According to the
order of Melchizedek";
This
is a quote form Psalm 110:4.
So
Jesus Christ is appointed a priest by God Himself. It
is a priesthood that is distinct. It is like the Aaronic
priesthood in some ways, but it is not the Aaronic
priesthood. The Aaronic priesthood was dependent on
genetic factors in birth. You had to be in the tribe of Levi. Jesus Christ was
from the tribe of Judah. His priesthood is not of the Aaronic
priesthood. It is a priesthood of Melchizedekean
order. As a mediator it was Christ who offered true sacrifices to God and made
intercession for us.
This
brings us to the next point. There were 3 types of priesthood in the Old
Testament.
Note
the priesthood of Christ as we look as this passage. What do you notice about
that verse? He is a priest forever.
I
remember not long ago somebody came up and asked me, “Well, a thought really
hit me tonight when you was talking about the hypostatic union that Jesus
Christ was true humanity united with undiminished deity in one person forever.
A million years from now a physical human body with scars and everything will
be in heaven with us in His humanity”. In His deity He will be omnipresent but
in His humanity He will be localized. There will always be a human body that is
part of the incarnation and never ends. This is related to it in Psalm 110:4.
NKJ
Psalm 110:4 The
LORD has sworn And will not relent, "You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek."
He
never will stop being a priest. So the priesthood of Jesus Christ is eternal.
This is brought our in Hebrews 5:5-6 and verse 9 as well as Psalm 110: 4.
So
Christ’s priesthood though it is eternal does not function in that priesthood
at all times. Even in the incarnation He did not function as a priest. The
activation of that priesthood really occurs at the ascension. There were times
that He functioned in similar ways early on. For example we have the high
priestly prayer of Jesus Christ in John 17 and other places where He prayed on
behalf of His disciples. That was part of His priesthood. But it doesn’t come
into its full blown activity until the ascension takes
place. That is why you have this reference here in Hebrews 4:14 to His
ascension. Our Lord assumes His full priestly function at the ascension. He passes through the heavens.
(Robby
shows a picture of the ascension.)
Then
we have one of my favorite pictures of the ascension because it captures the
great humor in the moment. Remember that those disciples had never seen anybody
fly. We have seen people fly. We take it for granted. We were all sitting
around (most of us) when the first manned space craft went up and then promptly
came down. It wasn’t up there that long. He popped up and came down. That was Alan Shepherd. I think we got
to stay home from school to watch that. Most of you remember that. We are so
used to watching people blast off, take off, or fly somewhere that we lose the
wonder and the awe that those disciples must have experienced when they were
standing there and all of a sudden Jesus just took off through the heavens.
They stood there with their mouths open until watching Him until He was a
little speck and disappeared through the clouds. They had no idea where He
went. They stood there with their
mouths open until an angel finally came along and asked them what they were
doing. The way Jesus left is the way He will return so we know something about
how He will return at the Second Advent.
He
passes through the heavens. This is the Greek verb dierchomai which means to
come through, to pass through or to travel through a place or location. It tells
us that He is leaving planet earth and is going to a specific location at the
right hand of God the Father.
When
it says “passing through the heavens”, the Bible views the universe in terms of
three heavens. The first is the atmosphere around the earth. The second heaven
is the stars and the universe. The third heaven is the throne of God. According
to evolutionary theory the universe is infinite. It just keeps going and going.
There is no end to it. But biblically speaking we have to recognize that the
universe is finite. There is an end to it. Beyond there is where the throne of
God is located. Jesus is going to a location. He did not dematerialize to
another dimension. He is going from point a to point b. The language is very
graphic in this regard.
NKJ
Hebrews 4:14 Seeing
then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus
the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
That
is the ascension of Christ when He went into his full-blown high priesthood
ministry.
“Jesus
the Son of God” emphasizes His deity. Earlier there has been the emphasis on
His humanity. Now the emphasis is on His deity. The Son of God is one who is
fully divine.
The
word for hold fast is the verb krateo
which means to hold on to something for dear life, to not let go.
That
is a word that we are used to hearing, homologeo. It means a confession or an admission of what you
believe. It came to be the body of doctrine that somebody held to. The idea
here is not to give up what you believe. That was the problem with the Jewish
readers of this epistle was that they were being pressured through persecution
through their friends and family who had not trusted in Jesus as their messiah
were trying to get them to come back into the fold of Judaism. Because of this
external pressure and persecution and rejection they were on the verge of
giving up and going back to Judaism. That is why in 2:1 they are warned.
NKJ
Hebrews 2:1 Therefore
we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift
away.
Notice
the urgency that this author has. He is stressing the emphasis in the
applications.
NKJ
Hebrews 3:7
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you will hear His voice,
NKJ
Hebrews 3:15
while it is said: "Today, if you will hear His voice, Do
not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."
NKJ
Hebrews 4:7
again He designates a certain day, saying in David, "Today," after
such a long time, as it has been said: "Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts."
There is a sense of immediacy and
urgency.
NKJ
Hebrews 4:11 Let
us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the
same example of disobedience.
NKJ
Hebrews 4:14
Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our
confession.
Don’t
give up on your confession. Don’t give up that body of doctrine that you have
been taught and that you believe. Don’t fade out and give up when things start
getting rough.
NKJ Hebrews
4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with
our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted
as we are, yet without sin.
We
have an explanation. What is the explanation? It is explaining why we shouldn’t
give up or grow weary in the midst of battle.
That’s
a double negative in the English. He is saying it in the negative in order to
make a point. What he is saying is that we do have a high priest who can
sympathize with our weaknesses. He is telling them that they don’t have a high
priest like the other religions that have no real value or no real meaning
– they are just human beings. But we have a high priest who is the Son of
God (as he said in verse 14). Yet
because of His true humanity He can sympathize with us in our weaknesses.
This
is an interesting word to deal with. We think of sympathy as feeling sorry for
somebody. That is not the idea in the Greek. It is a combination of the Greek
preposition sum meaning with and patheo which has to do with emotion or feelings. So we have a
common bond in the feelings that somebody else is going through in certain
circumstances. So the verb sumpatheo means to show a disposition to help (Jesus is the
one who encourages us, comes to our aid) because of shared or common
circumstances. He is willing to help us and aid us because He has gone through
the same circumstances that we have gone through. We don’t have a Savior who is
untouched by the traumas of human life. This is what you have in the other
world religions. In Christianity you have a God who became flesh, a God who
sweated, a God who had to eat, a God who had to sleep, and a God who grew
weary. He would look upon the suffering of a crowd who had lost a friend
Lazarus. As He saw the misery in their life because of the grief of death, He
wept. This is a God who is touched by the commonalities of our human
experience. The definition of sumpatheo would go on to say that it is someone who is
affected like another by the same sufferings or emotions. So He is affected by
His circumstances the same way we are. When we have certain emotions, we react
to those emotions or we react on the basis of those emotions and it leads us
into sin. But Jesus doesn’t (if there were certain emotions generated as a
result of certain experiences) use them as a justification to then sin. It is
someone who suffers or has the same experiences as someone else. That is what sumpatheo means
in the Greek.
The
idea of sympathy in the English means to have an affinity, an association or a
relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly
affects another. That is Merriam Webster’s definition.
Jesus
Christ is not some distant God who is way out there somewhere and does not
understand what we are going through. There is that level of commonality. He
understands. He is there to help and aid and strengthen us in times to testing.
So
let’s go on. What is testing?
NKJ
Hebrews 4:15
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but
was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Weakness
is astheneo
meaning to lack strength. We are not strong enough spiritually.
Tempted
is the Greek verb of peirazo.
Whenever we think of temptation we think of being enticed to sin because
frankly you and I can’t think of temptation in any other way than subjective
terms. We are fallen creatures and can’t think of temptation in any other way
than being drawn and attracted to the bait in the sin trap. That is the imagery
that James uses in James 1. Sin is like the bait in the trap. Temptation is
that attraction that we have to the bait. We always want to go for the bait. We always get suckered by it. But Jesus Christ didn’t.
There
are two aspects to testing or temptation that we need to talk about to properly
understand this. There is an objective aspect to it and there is a subjective
aspect to it. I have never found any other way to try to communicate this other
than talking about a diet. If you have never been on a diet then you don’t have
a lot to sympathize with in this definition. If you ever have been on a diet
you know that at times you get pretty hungry. If you eat and your appetite is
satiated and somebody offers you a piece of chocolate cake or baked potato
loaded with lots of butter and sour cream and all of the other stuff we aren’t
supposed to have, then there is not much inner draw or attraction to that. It
is nevertheless a temptation because somebody is offering you something that is
desirable. You aren’t drawn to it
because your appetite is satiated. On the other hand if it is 3 o’clock in the
afternoon and all you have had a rice cake for breakfast and somebody puts a
loaded baked potato in front of you, you know that you are lost. You are so
hungry that you are going to gobble it up before you even think about it. There
is a tremendous draw and attraction to that baked potato. That is the inner
subjective dimension of attraction to sin. Jesus never experienced that. What
He went through was the external objective circumstances that in essence baited
the trap for Him. He didn’t have a sin nature. He wasn’t born with a sin nature
so He is not internally drawn to the bait in the trap. The bait in the trap is
nevertheless real and there is a test in front of Him.
Now
the word peirosmos
has the idea of entangling a person to sin or to discover what good or evil is,
what weakness or strength is in a person. It offers the possibility of
entangling a person to sin, but its ultimate purpose is to reveal or to
demonstrate or to prove or to test what a person is made of. In that sense it
means to assay, to evaluate or to prove or to test or examine or demonstrate a
person’s character. What are they made of? So the tests that were put in front
of the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated that He was sinless. He never operated
independent of the Father. He never violated the Father’s righteous standard. He
never broke with the Father’s plan. So He never committed sin. He was born
without a sin nature. Because of the virgin conception, He didn’t receive the
imputation of Adam’s original sin. Then throughout His life He met with these
various adversities and tests, but He never committed sin in those
circumstances.
This
is known as the Doctrine of the Impeccability of Christ. The impeccability of
Christ refers to the fact that He is sinless. Now let’s break this down a
little bit. A lot of people get confused about this because they say, “How in
the world could Jesus be genuinely tempted if He never sinned? Then, if He is
God how could there be any real opportunity to sin?” If He is God, He can’t
change.
It
is sort of like welding a copper wire to a steal beam. The humanity of Christ
is like that copper wire. The steel beam is like His deity. No matter how much
potential there is for that copper wire to be twisted, turned and tied up in
knots, as long as it is welded to the steel I-beam; it can’t. So how can these
be real temptations or tests if He can’t sin because of His deity? Let me give
you some ideas.
Doctrine of the Impeccability of
Christ
NKJ Philippians
2:5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
NKJ Philippians 2:6
who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
This isn’t just some abstract
theological exercise to try to deal with a complicated subject. It is very
practical.
NKJ Philippians
2:7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a
bondservant, and coming in the
likeness of men.
That is their attempt to
translate the idea of kenosis. The verb kenao means not that He gave up something, but it is defined
by the next phrase.
What happens in the kenosis? The
way you have probably heard this defined in the past is that Jesus Christ did
not act willingly, voluntarily or independently of the Father’s plan. God the
Son did not act independently of the Father’s plan. When did He act independently of the Father’s plan? He never
did. It didn’t have anything to do with His humanity. I think that the
traditional definition of kenosis falls apart because Jesus Christ never acted
independently of the Father’s will. I think the point in the kenosis is that Jesus as the Son of God is never going to rely on His deity
to handle the problems of His humanity. Think about that. When it says that He
voluntarily restricted the use of His deity, the idea is that He restricted His
deity so that He didn’t rely on His omnipotence to turn the stones into bread.
He is not going to rely on His omnipotence to jump off the pinnacle of the
temple and land and not be killed in the process. He never solves the problems
of the pressures of adversity or temptation in His humanity by relying upon His
deity. So He sets up this distinction between His deity and His humanity such
that He builds a wall of separation between the two so that He is not going to
depend on His divine attributes to deal with the problems in His humanity. Thus
He is going to demonstrate in true humanity how to handle all of the pressures
of life and all of the adversities of life. Whatever the circumstances are
going to be, Jesus Christ in hypostatic union relied on His humanity, the Holy
Spirit and the filling of the Holy Sprit, and the Word of God to solve the
problem. He never leaped over and borrowed a little omnipotence or borrowed a
little omniscience in order to solve a problem in His humanity. There were
times when He clearly demonstrated He was God in His omnipotence by turning the
water into wine. But did He solve
a spiritual problem in His spiritual life that way? No, He was demonstrating
that He was the Creator. There were other times that He fed the 5,000. He was
demonstrating His deity, but He is not solving problems, temptations, or
adversity in His life by leaning over or relying upon His deity. He is solving
all of His problems by relying exclusively on His humanity. Thus He set the
precedent for us to handle the problems of testing in our lives.
So
we come to the conclusion in Hebrews 4.
NKJ
Hebrews 4:16
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.
There
are two commands. They are present active subjunctives. They are first person
exhortations - we should or we ought to. That is the idea of the first person
plural.
We
can have confidence in going before the throne of grace because we have a High
Priest who was tested in every area just as we are. That High Priest
commiserates with us in our struggle. There is a relationship between us and Him so that He sympathetic with us in our
testing.
Mercy
is grace in action.
When
we face adversity, whatever the problems are and whatever the struggle is, we
have a High Priest who ascended to the right hand of God the Father who knows
exactly what is needed to solve the problem. He is the source of grace to help
us, to strengthen us in that time of need whatever it may be. This is part of
His function in His high priestly ministry.
So
there are two closing mandates. Let us hold fast to our confession and let us
come boldly before the throne of grace.
That sets us up for the next section. This sets us up for 5:1 and following where there is a development of the whole doctrine of the high priesthood of Christ.