Hebrews 5:10

Hebrews 5:10. Being called of God; rather, being addressed (not the same word as in Hebrews 5:4) by God as High Priest: the title of honour wherewith the Son made perfect through suffering was saluted by the Father openly and solemnly when He made Him sit at His own right hand. Christ was Priest on earth (see Hebrews 5:6) when He made oblation of Himself unto God; but having now entered the heavenly sanctuary, He was publicly received by God as High Priest, the priestly and high-priestly offices being united in Him.

After the order of Melchizedek, there being a resemblance in many particulars between the two, and especially in the antiquity, the dignity, the perpetuity of their respective offices, with the usual fuller depth of meaning in the antitype, the reality, than in the shadowy symbol.

The exact nature of the obedience which Christ learned through suffering has been much discussed. Many commentators hold the view that it was His obedience as Priest whereby He became qualified for His office and the consequent sympathy of which He became capable. He learned to feel what obedience involved, and so became a merciful High Priest in things pertaining to God. The idea that His obedience to the Divine law generally was increased by suffering seems to many inconsistent with His Divine nature and His personal holiness. But the language of the 8th verse seems to mean more than this explanation allows. He learned His obedience, not sympathy merely, nor merely priestly fitness for His work. Though Son, with all the love and trust of a Divine Son, He yet acquired and manifested a measure of obedience which else had been unattainable. Our Lord was man, proper man as well as God, and we must not so confound the two natures as to modify the attributes of either. As man He had an intellect like our own. He grew in wisdom, nay, even in favour with God and man. He had the faculty whereby He perceived the relation in which as man He stood to others, and felt the duties that relation involved. He had a will to decide His choice, and affections to impel Him to act. He was subject like ourselves to the great law of habit, whereby active principles become stronger through exercise, and are freed from exhaustion or made mighty through meditation and prayer. As man, the second Adam was as capable of growth in holiness as the first. He was made, moreover, under the law subject to its requirements. Created under it, He was to be judged by it; and though this subjection was His own act, it was as complete as if He had claimed His descent entirely from the first transgressor. In this condition He was personally liable for all His acts. To Him the warning came as to us: ‘Indignation and wrath upon every soul of man that doeth evil.' Under this law, and subject to this condition, Christ appeared. If He fulfil the law with absolute perfection He is accepted, and for us there is hope. If He fail, if through His own weakness, the force of temptation, the subtilty of the tempter, He be seduced in thought or in feeling, even for one moment, from the narrow path of perfect holiness, our ruin becomes irremediable and complete; and the blessed God is left to deplore the ruin which His own frustrated benevolence has made only the more touching and profound. One impatient desire, one selfish thought, one sinful feeling, would have done it all. His suffering was obedience, His obedience was intensest suffering from the beginning of His public ministry even to its close; and if He was subject to the laws of human growth, faculties strengthened by reason of use, emotion made more mighty and more tender, obedience more easy by repetition, we may say that as Christ was truly man His obedience was learned and perfected by suffering. This view of the human life of our Lord, and the awful responsibility which attached to every act and feeling of His life, amid forces of evil unparalleled in human history, gives us a higher conception of His sufferings than anything besides. Such suffering strengthened, developed, perfected His own nature, even as ours is to be perfected, while it fits Him in the highest degree to understand our struggles and to sympathize with them.