Hebrews
Lesson 45 March
2, 2006
NKJ Hebrews
13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and
forever.
Hebrews
5
We are
getting into the core doctrine of the book of Hebrews which has to do with superiority
of Christ’s priestly ministry. We have seen that in the first 4 verses the
writer is establishing the fact that every high priest is appointed by someone
else or in this case should be because that is the general procedure. God is
the one who appoints high priests. Men
do not appoint themselves. This is a direct
reflection as to some things that were going on in
The
point of the first four verses is that Aaron did not appoint himself. He was appointed by God. We saw this in Exodus 28:1. It was verified and further established and confirmed
by God in Numbers 16:11 where we see the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. They
were duly punished and lost their lives due to their violation of the authority
of the high priesthood and their rebellion against Aaron. Even in the next chapter in Numbers 17:1f we
see that the very next day the Jews continued to complain against Aaron’s
leadership. So God set up this test
where each of those contending men would put their walking sticks into the tent
of meeting. He regenerated Aaron’s
walking stick, his rod. People lose the
meaning of that. We always talk about
Aaron’s rod that budded. We use that
word so much. People don’t know what it
was. It was a staff. It was his walking stick. It was a dead piece of wood that he has been
using for a long time. They put it in
the tent of meeting and God regenerated it so that it brought forth green shoots
and leaves. It became alive again. That was how he indicated again that He had appointed
Aaron. He confirmed Aaron in his
leadership.
So
the principle is laid down that no man takes this honor to himself.
NKJ Hebrews
5:4 And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called
by God, just as Aaron was.
Point
of comparison, Christ’s appointment to His high priestly ministry fits this
same principle. We studied this last time. Jesus Christ did not come to glorify Himself. In fact He made this point several times in
the time of His incarnation.
NKJ John
So
He did not come for the purpose of self glorification.
Furthermore
Jesus said.
NKJ John
“The
One” is Himself. He is not seeking His
own glory but the glory of the Father.
Again
and again He emphasizes the fact that He is not seeking to glorify Himself.
NKJ John 8:42 Jesus said
to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded
forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.
Jesus
Christ is not the initiator in His role even as the eternal Second Person of
the Trinity. He is under the authority
of God the Father. That is the essence
of humility which we studied last time when we looked at the passage in Philippians
2:5-11 that focuses on the incarnation and the hypostatic union.
Again
Jesus said.
NKJ John 9:4 "I
must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is
coming when no one can work.
The
reasons I am going through these verses is for us to get the impact of how many
times Jesus made statements related to His own authority orientation and that
He was not seeking His own glory but that of the Father.
NKJ John
He
does His works in His Father’s name as the representative of the Father not for
His own benefit.
NKJ John
Again
and again and again He is demonstrating that the purpose for the incarnation is
for Him to glorify the Father. He didn’t
go through the incarnation and become flesh and dwell among us for the purpose
of glorifying Himself. As we come to
understand what took place during the incarnation, it’s obvious there wasn’t
any self glorification involved. It meant
excruciating suffering for the Lord Jesus Christ when you think in terms of the
cross. He would go to the cross.
NKJ 2
Corinthians
The Father imputed to Him all the sins of
mankind. At that point He became judicially guilty. They were imputed to Him.
“He
carried in His own body our sins on the cross,” Peter said.
He
was separated judicially from the Father.
We struggle with trying to understand just how that would take place
because here you have the eternal Second Person the Trinity who is more closely
united with the other members of the trinity than anything that we can comprehend
in our own experience. Yet during those
three hours on the cross, because He is receiving the imputation of our sins He
is judicially separated from the Father.
This brings excruciating pain.
All of the other pain that He went through leading up to that and I
don’t know how many of you saw the film that came out last year on the “Passion
of Christ”. I didn’t see it but I heard enough descriptions of it. All of the extended beatings that He went
through that were excruciating and would have killed a lesser man, He goes
through all of that - the whippings, the beatings, and all of the torture - and
yet like the lamb before the shearers is dumb so He opened not His word.
NKJ Acts
Why
is it that He didn’t say anything?
Because, a point is being illustrated.
As painful and as excruciating as all of that physical suffering was, it
was nothing compared to when that first sin hit our righteous Savior. When that first sin hit Him, He screams out in
agony. That is to demonstrate how
horrible, how horrendous this whole thing was of bearing our sin. Not only is He made sin for us, but throughout
His ministry He goes through consistent rejection by the very people that He
had come to save. He is rejected by
them. He has a history with them where He has led them through the
wilderness. He loved them. He called them. He chose them. He redeemed them from slavery in
Philippians
2:5-11 is a mandate to be humble. That
is the issue in the first four verses that we saw. The issue that Paul is emphasizing is unity. In
order to demonstrate this he says that there has to be true and genuine
humility. The only example of that is the
Lord Jesus Christ who is fully God.
NKJ Philippians
2:6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery
to be equal with God,
So
He became a man in the incarnation.
NKJ Philippians
2:8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself
and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
That
is the essence of genuine humility or meekness.
It is not being a doormat. It is
not letting people take advantage of you.
Genuine humility is strength. Moses
was the most humble man in the world in the Old Testament. Numbers states that. Remember that Moses was the most humble man
in the world. Yet Moses wasn’t this person that could be rolled over by people
even though he was dealing with probably 2 to 3 million spiritually rebellious
people in the wilderness. But he is
humble because he is obedient to God. That
was the whole point in that particular episode to reinforce the fact that as the
Jews are rebelling against Moses’ authority; God is asserting the fact that
Moses is authority oriented. That is
where real strength lies is in being properly oriented to divine authority and
thus to every other sphere of authority.
Therefore
God has also exalted Him. Jesus did not
enter the position of High Priest in order to exalt Himself or glorify Himself. He did it to glorify the Father. As He focused on the mission to pay the
penalty for the sins of the world, then because He is completely oriented to the
authority of God the Father and completes the mission; it is God who exalted Him
and God who glorified Him. That is the
point for us in terms of application. It
is not about self glorification in our lives (getting the credit), it is about
giving the credit to God (driving forward in our Christian life under the
authority of God) and then it is God who exalts us in the proper time. We don’t exalt ourselves. The
result of that is in the future Jesus Christ will be honored as the King of
Kings and Lord of Lords.
NKJ Philippians
NKJ Philippians
So
we went to Philippians 2 last time to show that Jesus Christ did not become
incarnate to glorify Himself. This is
the purpose for the hypostatic union. That
is the background for understanding the passage in Hebrews 5 as well as
Philippians 2. To understand where the
writer is going, we have to understand the hypostatic union.
So
here we have a definition of hypostatic union.
The hypostatic union describes the union of two
natures, divine and human, in the one person of Jesus Christ. These natures are inseparably united, without
loss or mixture of separate identity, without loss or transfer of properties or
attributes, the union being personal and eternal. Jesus is undiminished deity and true humanity
in one person forever.
The
Greek word is hupostasis which refers to the
substantial nature, the essence, the actual being, or reality of a thing. So you have the substance or the nature of
something. So Jesus Christ in His deity
has a divine nature. Then when He is
incarnate He adds to that His human nature.
He doesn’t give up any deity. We
saw that last time in Philippians 2. It
is not talking about the fact that He gives up anything; but He takes on, adds
to His deity the form of a bond servant and comes in the likeness of a man. There is a joining of human nature to the
eternal divine nature.
So
as a definition we say that the hypostatic union describes the union of two
natures, divine and human, in the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now
that is important to understand the difference between nature and a
person. The nature has to do with His
deity and His humanity whereas person has to do with the entirety of His
personality. You don’t have two
persons. So it is somewhat confusing and
wrong to articulate it by saying that Jesus did X is out of His deity or that Jesus
did Y out of His humanity because it is as if He is a split personality. He is one person. Everything that He did came from the one
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. There
are some things that He did that demonstrated that He is fully God. There are some things that He did that demonstrated
that He had undiminished deity as part of His person. One nature was undiminished deity. For example He changed the water into
wine. That was an indication that He is
the sovereign creator and He is able to manipulate and to change the elements
of creation. He forgave the paralytic of
his sins indicating that He is God and He heals him. These are to demonstrate that He is God who He
claims to be.
Some
people have the idea that Jesus Christ did everything in the power of the Holy Spirit. That is not quite right. He did not do everything in the power of the
Holy Spirit. He had to do some things in
His own divine power to demonstrate that He was who He claimed to be and that
is the divine Messiah and that He was fully God. Where you have to draw the distinction is
that Jesus never relied upon His deity to solve the problems He faced in His
humanity. Let me say that again. He never used His divine power and resources to
solve the problems in His humanity. If He
was hungry, He wasn’t turning the stones into bread. If He was thirsty, He wasn’t turning the
rocks into water. He didn’t turn the
water into wine to satisfy a personal problem from outside pressure of
adversity or anything in His life. He
did it to demonstrate who He was. So when
He uses His deity to perform various miracles, it was to demonstrate who He was
not to solve a problem or a test or an area of adversity in His own life. He is doing it to demonstrate that He is God and
He has power over creation. For example when He spoke to the storm when the
disciples are pressing the panic button and they are running all over the ship
and thinking about how they will die. Jesus
is sleeping down in the bottom of the boat.
They
woke Him up. Jesus asked them, “Why are
you afraid?”
He
commands the storm to be still and instantly it is still. The water is smooth and everything is
fine. That is from His deity. He is not doing it to solve a personal
problem in His own life. That is where
you draw the distinction. When it comes
to His personal growth, when it comes to His dealing with a temptation, testing
or adversity in His life then He relies on the Word of God and the Spirit of
God to the to problem solve just as we do setting that precedent. That is the background for where we are going
in this passage. That is what qualified Him to be our High Priest because the
priestly nature of His ministry is related to His being a human being.
So
we see in Philippians 2 that humanity is added to deity. He has two natures, divine and human, united
in one person. So everything that He
does comes from the one person of Jesus Christ.
That was the Nestorian heresy of the 4th century AD to think
of these two natures and two persons. You
don’t have a split personality here – two natures, one person.
We
go on to say in the definition that these natures are inseparably united. That means you can’t separate them. They are united. But they are united in such a way that there
is no loss or mixture of separate identity.
In other words they are not flowing from one to the other. His humanity doesn’t flow over into the
divine side. The deity doesn’t flow into
the human nature. They are brought
together. They don’t mix. They are united inseparably.
These
natures are inseparably united, without loss or mixture of separate identity. It is clear where the deity is and where the
humanity is.
Without
loss or transfer of properties or attributes.
He doesn’t lose any attributes of His deity. He is still omnipresent even though He is localized
in one physical human body. Now that
stretches our ability to comprehend that. He is still omnipotent and holding
together the subatomic mass throughout the universe when He is a little baby 6
minutes old. In His deity He still
functions, but He is localized in His humanity.
The
union being personal and eternal. It is
a personal union. It is a person, not a
force. It is a person, the one person of
Jesus Christ. And it is eternal. It is
never going to stop. From now throughout
the rest of eternity Jesus Christ is going to be pure humanity. His deity is united with His humanity. But you see deity didn’t change.
NKJ Hebrews
13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and
forever.
This
is because the deity never changes because there is no loss or mixture of
attributes. We glibly run through this
definition and you have heard it I don’t know how many times. Yet we don’t realize that it took about 150
years for this definition to be hammered out between the Council of Nicea in 325 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 - about
126 years. There were some real battles over
this. But it distills into one precise
technical definition everything that the Scripture says about the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ after the incarnation.
The implication for this is profound when it comes to understanding His
priesthood which is His current ministry and His role or operation as the
incarnate Jesus Christ on the earth in setting the precedent for the spiritual
life today. We see this in the book of Hebrews
back in Hebrews 2:10. This is the first
time the writer introduced this theme.
NKJ Hebrews
2:10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things
and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the
captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
That
refers to God the Father because this is the one who is going to perfect the
author of our salvation.
That
is the plan of salvation viewed in its final result in bringing us to glorification. Remember that you have three stages of
salvation.
NKJ Genesis
What happened? They ate and they died right
then. It was spiritual death and separation
from God. They died spiritually. They lost that human spirit. Every subsequent generation after that is born
is without the human spirit. They have a
human soul and a human body; but that immaterial element that allows the soul
to communicate with God, relate to God and to understand the things of God is
missing. They are born without the human
spirit so they begin to die physically from the moment they are born because
they are separated from the source of life which is God. Now Jesus Christ comes, He dies on the cross
for our sins, we trust in Him and what happens at that instant? We are born again. We are regenerate. We receive what? Spiritual life. That is the penalty reversed. That is justification salvation.
NKJ Hebrews 2:10 For it
was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all
things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation
perfect through sufferings.
In
order to do that God the Father had perfect or mature or bring to maturity or completion
the author or pioneer or pathfinder or trendsetter or pacesetter. All of those ideas are present there. He is the one who sets the precedent for our
salvation through suffering. You see salvation
is the goal. He is matured.
He is the author or pioneer of our salvation. The ultimate goal was through suffering so He
had to go through suffering as well.
That
is then connected in 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.
He
can’t be a High Priest if He is not truly human. So he had to be truly human to be the sacrifice. He is not only the priest, but He is the
sacrifice. His sacrifice satisfies the
righteousness and the justice of God.
Next
time this concept is brought in.
NKJ Hebrews
There
the testing relates to His suffering. It
is not limited to the suffering on the cross.
It is related to all of the testing that He went through from the
incarnation all the way to the point of the cross that prepared Him for the
cross.
Then
the writer leaves that idea and he comes back to it at the beginning of this
next section where He talks about Christ as our High Priest in Hebrews 4:14.
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.
Here
he connects those two ideas - the deity of Christ on the one hand and His
priesthood on the other hand. That is an
important connection to make. That on
the one hand Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
That’s His deity. On the other
hand we have an emphasis on His priesthood. That’s His humanity. They are jointed together in hypostatic union.
There
are 5 things that we emphasize in understanding the hypostatic union.
NKJ Jeremiah 17:9 "
The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
We have a fallen nature. So in some sense we are less than what God
intended us to be. Jesus Christ as the Second Adam is everything that God
intended man to be. So He is more of a
real human being than we are at least when we are unsaved at the point of our
birth. So He had full humanity, true humanity and unfallen
humanity.
NKJ Colossians 2:2 that
their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to
all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the
mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,
NKJ Colossians 2:3 in whom
are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
The mystery of God is a hither to unrevealed truth
and it’s not the easiest thing to understand.
The mystery of truth is related to both the Father and Christ.
Then you skip down to verse 9.
NKJ Colossians 2:9 For in
Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;
That
is in Jesus Christ.
Back
to Hebrews 5.
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."
He
is exalted by the Father. The Father
appoints Him to High Priest. This is the
point of the next two quotations.
“He”
is God the Father. “Him” is God the Son.
Now
when did He say this? This declaration
is made according to Acts 13:33 at the time of the resurrection.
NKJ Acts
Literal
translation: Today I declare you My begotten one.
That
is important to understand because if you read it the way it is normally
translated, it is as if at this time – that is the resurrection – where He is
begotten. No, it is at this time that a
declaration is made that He is the begotten one. He is eternally begotten. Jesus Christ was always the Son of God. In eternity past He is always the Son of God. If He is not the Son of God, then think about
it. What would you call the First Person
of the Trinity a billion years ago if there is no Son?
If
there is no Son, there is no Father. The
Father is eternally the Father. The Son
is eternally the Son. He is eternally
the Son of God. It applies to Him
throughout all of eternity. He doesn’t
become the Son at the incarnation. He
doesn’t become the Son at the resurrection.
He doesn’t become the Son at the
ascension. He is always the Son, but the
declaration of His sonship occurs at the resurrection. That
is what Acts 13:33 is all about. It is
that declaration of His sonship as the Son of God because He has qualified in His
humanity. This is what we studied in a
lengthy study back in Hebrews 1:2-3 that Jesus Christ has the authority over
the angels because of His position as the Second Person of the Trinity.
But
that is not what the writer of Hebrews is arguing in the first chapter. He is saying that He became flesh. He dwelt
among us. He goes through tests. He
goes through suffering. He passes the
test. He qualifies and He is then
declared the Son of God and put in position over the angels. He qualifies not only by virtue of His
eternal deity but He qualifies in His humanity because He passed all the tests.
He goes to the cross and dies for our sins and God the Father then promotes Him
in reference to His humanity over the angels so that He has authority over the
angels from both His innate deity and His qualification as man. This places Him over the angels. It is this joining of eternal sonship with
His human priesthood that is the basis for His present ministry as High Priest.
So this connects these two ideas.
NKJ Psalm 2:7 "I
will declare the decree: The LORD has said to Me, 'You are My Son, Today
I have begotten You.
This
is declaring His eternal Sonship and then linking that with the declaration of His
priesthood in Hebrews 5:6 which connects not to the Aaronic priesthood which
was a limited priesthood related to Jewish descent, related to genetics that
was related to the temporary covenant that temporary law code, the Mosaic Law
Code. It is a limited priesthood. It is just for
I
want you to note that it says you are a what forever? You are a priest forever. This
isn’t going to stop at some point. Priesthood relates to His humanity. You are a priest forever. So a billion years from now into the future Jesus
Christ is still going to be a Melchizedekean priest. It is part of His role in His humanity. We will be serving under Him as kings and
priests according to the book of Revelation.
So
this starts pulling all of these different ideas together and then the writer
goes on in verse 7 to talk about what happens during the period of the incarnation
and how that qualifies and prepares Him to serve as our priest. Remember that part of the role of the priest back
in 5:2 is to have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray. He represents us.
NKJ Hebrews
5:7 who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up
prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to
save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear,
That
is during the time of the incarnation before the resurrection.
We
have to do some corrected translation there.
NKJ Hebrews
5:8 though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the
things which He suffered.
Let’s
clean up the translation a little bit in verse 7.
He
offers up prayers and supplications. This
was something that characterized Jesus Christ’s life in His humanity. He was
consistently going to God in prayer over and over again. You can go through a number of passages in
the Scripture to demonstrate this. For example Mark
Now
if prayer is a priority in perfect spiritual life of the Lord Jesus Christ, how
much more significant prayer should be in our life because we need that
dependence on God the Father even more. So
prayer expressed Christ’s dependence on God.
The Scripture makes it a point of showing how He is continuously going
to the Lord in prayer. For example, at His baptism when John the Baptist baptizes
Jesus to initiate Him into His public ministry we are told in Luke 3:21.
NKJ Luke
That
is when the dove comes down and you hear the voice of God the Father. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove
descends upon Him. But what is Jesus doing?
You never hear anybody emphasizing that.
He is in prayer at that particular time.
The
same kind of thing happens again on the
NKJ Luke
Again
the Father speaks from heaven and we see the Holy Spirit descend like a
dove. So He is in prayer at His baptism. He is in prayer at His transfiguration. He is consistently in prayer.
When
His hour was at hand He goes to the garden to pray. This is important passage – what happens in
the
Hold
your place in Hebrews and turn to Luke 22:39.
NKJ Luke
He
goes up the
NKJ Luke
Why? That they may not yield to fear. He knows that the Roman soldiers are coming
to arrest Him. There will be tremendous pressure.
Yield
to testing is the idiom.
NKJ Luke
So
he goes off about 30-40 feet and He knelt down and prayed.
NKJ Luke
This
is where we see the picture of what is going on in Hebrews 5:7. He is praying to God to remove this
pressure. He knows what is going to
happen. He understands the pressure, the
trauma, the pain, and the misery that He is going to go through. Not physically. He is anticipating that separation from the
Father. He is praying out of His
humanity.
“If
there is any other way to do this, remove this from Me.” Nevertheless- this is where He passes the
test. The test is - are you gong to bail out?
He
prays to the Father, “If there is anyway out, let Me out.”
He
is focused on the will of the Father.
NKJ Luke
So
while He is in the garden He is being strengthened by an angel.
NKJ Luke
This
is talking about the physical agony that He is going through in anticipation of
the spiritual agony He will go through on the cross.
He is
under such pressure. He is feeling the pressure physically that the blood in His
corpuscles is actually being forced out through his cells so that he is
sweating blood. You and I have never
felt pressure like that. There is documentation of this happening with people
in some circumstances. This is facing the
outside pressure of adversity. This is when
you are about to get stressed out. You
are really under the pressure. He is anticipating this so much that He is
feeling this physically in every pore of His body.
NKJ Luke
It
is so emotional. They are emotionally
wrung out. They are sound to sleep. They are wasted.
NKJ Luke
So
He spends this time in prayer knowing that the only way He is going to make it
through the events of the next 12 hours is going to be His relationship with
God, His prayer lifeline.
Let’s
turn over a few pages to the Gospel of John.
I just want to look at the first 4 or 5 verses of His prayer in John
17. John 17 is what we normally refer to
as the real Lord’s Prayer. Not that
prayer over in Matthew that everybody recites as the Lord’s Prayer. That was a model prayer for the disciples. This is the real Lord’s Prayer - His high
priestly prayer. He is representing the
church in this prayer. This comes prior
to the events that we just read about over on the
NKJ John 17:1 Jesus
spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the
hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
What
is His concern? It is the glorification of God.
That is what I have been pointing out.
It is why we went back to Philippians
2 and went through all of the various passages in John earlier. His focus is on glorifying God.
When
He says “glorify your Son” here it is a prayer that the Son would be
strengthened in His hour of testing.
NKJ John 17:2 "as
You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life
to as many as You have given Him.
NKJ John 17:3 "And
this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom You have sent.
NKJ John 17:4 "I
have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given
Me to do.
That
is His mission, not self glorification.
He
was appointed by God in this priestly role.
NKJ John 17:5 "And
now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had
with You before the world was.
Jesus
expresses His dependence upon God continuously in prayer.
Now
back to Hebrews 5:7.
NKJ Hebrews
5:7 who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up
prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to
save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear,
Literally
this is strong cries - screams. This
indicates the intensity of His prayer in the
He
is not only sweating drops of blood, He is also weeping. He is under incredible pressure and emotion
as well. His soul runs the whole
gamut. We can’t even imagine what He is
going through during this particular time.
In the midst of all this pressure He doesn’t yield. He doesn’t give up. He doesn’t go off course. He stays the course in obedience to God and
to fulfill God’s plan for His life.
It
is a bad translation in the King James – the idea of heard for His godly fear. The word there that is translated “Godly fear”
actually has the meaning of His concern, His respect for God’s honor. That is the idea that is there. It is not because of His personal piety or
spiritual strength. It is respect or
honor for God. It is one word in the
Greek. He is heard because of His
concern for God’s honor and glory. He is
focused on God’s plan for His life not His plan for His life. It is not about self glorification.
NKJ Hebrews
5:8 though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the
things which He suffered.
Learning
is the aorist active indicative of manthano. In His humanity He is learning. Deity doesn’t learn. Deity is omniscient. It never grows. It never acquires knowledge. It never learns anything new.
We
have the concessive clause “that although He was a Son” that indicates that He
is omniscient yet in His humanity He learns obedience by the things that He
suffers.
Pascho means at its root to undergo an experience. It has the idea of a negative experience
which is to go through physical suffering.
So He goes through adversity and He learns obedience. That is the crucible in which spiritual growth
takes place.
NKJ Hebrews
5:9 And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal
salvation to all who obey Him,
Poor
translation of the participle there. The
word translated perfected is our familiar word teleioo
meaning to be made complete, to be made mature, or to be made perfect. Here
it has the idea of being made mature. It
is a temporal adverbial participle. When
He had been matured. When He was
matured. When He had been brought to
completion. It indicates the
timing. When He was matured. When He had
finished the process in His humanity of reaching spiritual maturity He became something
-the author, the aitios. This is a word that is only used here in the
New Testament. It means the cause, the
source, or the reason for something. You
may be familiar with the word etiology which is the study of the reason of things,
the author, or the source. That is how
we are going to translate it.
Literal
translation: When He had reached maturity He became the
source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.
He
became the source of soteria. That word soteria
translated salvation here isn’t talking about phase 1 justification. It is talking about the end product. He is the source of what we get as the end
result. That has to do with our rewards
and our inheritance and everything that we are going to have in terms of our
position of ruling and reigning with the Lord Jesus Christ in the
But
we are not talking about phase 1 justification going to heaven when you die
here. That’s not the idea. It is talking about the end result. Salvation doesn’t have to do with obedience,
that’s works.
NKJ Ephesians
2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that
not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
NKJ Ephesians
2:9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
It
is not about works. It is about trusting
in Jesus Christ.
In
John 3:14-15 we have greatest illustrations of saving faith in the New
Testament. Very few people ever go to
this as an example.
NKJ John
It
refers to the event in Numbers 21 when the Israelites are going through the
wilderness. Once again there is a whole
series there from chapter 15 on of complaining and rebelling and complaining
and rebelling. They complain about God’s provision so He sends the grass fire
that threatens them. Then they complain about
the food and He sends the quail. They
over eat the quail. They have a
plague. And then they complain again
about Moses. They don’t follow the leadership of Joshua and Caleb into the
land. I mean it is just one event after another. In every chapter is says that they complained
and they complained. So God again sends
discipline with the fiery serpents. There is this infestation of these vipers
in the area. They are getting bitten and
dying very rapidly. So Moses goes to God
to intercede for the people.
God
says that the solution is simple. “I
want you to make a brass image of a serpent.
You are going to put it up on a pole (which is a picture of Christ on
the cross). Anybody who looks at it will
be healed instantly.”
That
is a picture of salvation. It is not committing
your life to Christ. It is not inviting Jesus into your heart. It is simply looking in trust to the cross to
save you. It is very simple. It doesn’t involve any of these other things
that people want to pull into it. It
doesn’t involve works. They didn’t have
to travel anywhere. They didn’t have to
change anything. They just had to put
their focus on the serpent for a second and they will instantly heal.
The
solution is available to everybody. It
is an unlimited salvation offer. It goes
for everybody. It is sufficient for everybody. Anybody can be saved. It is not just for those who look. It is available to everyone. It is unlimited salvation solution. So Jesus goes to that. We are not sure where Jesus stops and John
starts. That is another issue.
NKJ John
That’s
it. Belief is analogous to looking to
that serpent. It is a simple act of
trust. That is all that is needed for
salvation. It is not by works. When it says that He is the author of eternal
salvation to all that obey Him, it is not about obedience to get saved. It is about that Christian walk of obedience in
the spiritual life in order to grow to maturity to be prepared to rule and reign
with Jesus Christ in the future when we get the final soteria
salvation package.
So
in verse 10 the writer concludes.
NKJ Hebrews
He
restates the quote from Psalm 110:4 that he stated in verse 6. It is His priestly ministry that provides the
precedent for our spiritual life and provides the perfect solution to our sin
at the cross and then establishes the path to the fulfillment of that salvation
package in the future
We will come back to wrap this up and go into the next section in a couple of weeks.