Hebrews 5: “Learning Obedience”

April 13, 2008

 

One of the verses of Scripture that has always baffled me is contained in today’s Scriptural passage, Hebrews 5:8: “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.” I have always had a hard time understanding how someone who never sinned needed to “learn obedience” because I always thought of sin as disobedience. I also wondered why someone who never sinned needed to or should have to suffer. I guess subconsciously I somehow equated suffering with doing something wrong.  At both of those levels, this verse haunts me. This morning I ask you to follow me on my journey to understanding, a journey that can only be travelled, never completed.

 

As always, the key to understanding this verse lies in the context in which it is placed. In Hebrews 5, our author is authenticating Jesus’ right to be our High Priest to a Jewish audience. Jewish law required the high priest to be a Levite and the king to be from the tribe of Judah.  In this way, no one could ever unite the nation by controlling both its religious and civil practices.  Before a Jewish audience would accept the high priestly ministry of Jesus, who was born of the tribe of Judah, this obstacle had to be overcome.  

 

Our author says God has a different set of qualifications for being the high priest.  The first qualification rests in the heart of God alone. “No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father” (Hebrews 5:4-5).

 

Part of learning obedience comes in accepting that God created each of us with a purpose.  We were given just the right abilities, blessings, family situations, and time and place in history.  Each of us has something unique that God chose for us alone to accomplish. He oversees our path and gives us every opportunity to carry out God’s plan for our lives first through our salvation and then through our gifting from and abiding in the Holy Spirit. When we struggle against this divine calling we engage ourselves in a personal struggle against God Himself.  This means our spirits cannot find the peace and the fellowship we require and we live outside the joy God offers.  The subsequent conflict in which we live can exhaust us, cause bitterness and/or loneliness, and lead us to walk in circles for years.  When we relent and embrace God’s chosen path for our lives, our worlds are transformed and we receive a whole new set of truths by which we can live. That is the normal way we learn obedience.

 

Jesus, on the other hand, was never created.  He always was, the same as the Father. But the verse quoted here (Psalm 2:7) refers to the Messianic day, here called “today” when Christ became our eschatological high priest. Events in time, specifically the completion of Jesus’ work on earth, led to this on-going ministry. Jesus is now our heavenly High Priest because God has called Him to this office.

 

The second qualification leads more directly to a proper understanding of Hebrews 5:8.  Our author says, “Every high priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness” (Hebrews 5:1-2).

 

The Jewish high priest had two duties: presenting the gift offerings of the Jewish people to God and presenting their sin offerings to God. By the time Jesus walked the earth the high priestly office had devolved to the perfunctory performance of ritualized duties. Jesus dramatically demonstrated His displeasure with the work of the priests when he overturned the tables of the money changers and took a whip to them (John 2:12-23). Instead of such ritualized duties, Jesus and God demanded these duties be performed by one who was able to minister “gently with those who are ignorant and…going astray.” 

 

The original Jewish law was very specific; only certain kinds of sin could be forgiven.  Notice this one example from Numbers 15:22f: “Now if you unintentionally fail to keep any of these commands the LORD gave Moses…and if this is done unintentionally…the priest is to make atonement…and they will be forgiven, for it was not intentional…But anyone who sins defiantly…blasphemes the LORD, that person must be cut off from his people. Because he has despised the LORD's word and broken his commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.”

 

Defiance was rebellion and unforgiven; but a proper understanding of the affects of sin on our lives and an acceptance of our weaknesses leads to a dominating gentleness in the way we relate to each other. A true high priest’s character was dominated by this gentleness. God’s high priest had to be aware of his own weaknesses, and understand the power sin has to entice and deceive us.

 

When Jesus cried out for help in the Garden of Gethsemane, He acknowledged He needed God’s help to carry out the divine assignment God had given Him.  In acknowledging the terrible power of sin, praying for God’s help, and accepting God’s angelic assistance (Luke 22:39-43) Jesus “learned obedience from what He suffered.”  

 

“The point to be emphasized is, not so much that the prayer of Jesus was heard, as that it needed to be heard: that He needed heavenly aid to drink the appointed cup” (A.B. Bruce  footnote 49  on p. 100 in F.F. Bruce’s commentary: The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Epistle to the Hebrews, Eerdmans, 1964). In acknowledging His need for divine assistance to drink the cup of wrath embodied in His death on the cross, Jesus fulfilled God’s second requirement to be our high priest.  Knowing He needed to pray and receive divine help to fulfill His appointed mission shows He knows the importance of His interceding for us if we are to fulfill the mission God has given us.

 

This leads us to ask each other and our Father, “Is suffering truly necessary to fulfill our divine calling?”  God’s answer seems to be, “Yes.”  Deserved suffering is the part of human existence that is not necessary, but undeserved suffering does seem to be necessary.  That is why this verse disturbs me so greatly. 

 

Our minds seem to say, “If we do something wrong and bad things happen to us because of our wrong doing, we can live with that.  It is our fault, we have gotten ourselves into the mess, so we deserve what happens.”  God responds to this type of thinking with mercy and grace; He asks only that we admit our weakness and confess the sin(s) that led to the problems we face. Then He stands ready to begin the process of leading us out of the problems we have gotten ourselves into.  Most of the time there are consequences and the road out takes a while, but the mercy and grace we receive fills the empty times we relive when we recount how we got into the mess. 

 

On the other hand, our minds seem to resist accepting: “Even if we have done nothing wrong, the bad things that are happening to us are acceptable. We can live above them until God acts to give us grace sufficient to overcome whatever we face in the Lord.”  The words of Helen Keller remind us: “The world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.” We succeed when we focus on overcoming rather than our suffering.

 

Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount need to be understood and embraced by all of us: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:10-12).

 

This is not to say we should look for trouble or act in ways that provoke others to wrath.  Most of us have either said or heard someone say, “Every time I try to get my life in order and live how God wants me to live, all kinds of bad things happen to me.”  We intuitively understand trouble finds us, we do not have to look for it and cause it. Jesus went so far as to say, "A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!” (Matthew 10:24).

 

In Luke 6:27-36 He tells us, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

 

Let me leave you this morning with a thought of my own.  “Ultimately, our lives will not be measured so much by the things we accomplish. Rather they will be measured by the things we overcome.  When we combine the unmerited blessings we were given at birth with our own hard work and effort many things can be accomplished. This is the standard by which the world measures greatness. However, it is only by yielding and receiving God’s help that we can overcome the suffering which we do not deserve. Man’s true greatness lies in asking for and yielding to God’s strength—something every one of us can do.”