The word of God, above all price, and powerful though it be, is not the only declared means for our safe conduct through the wilderness. No instrument is so effectual to sift and deal with not outward ways only, but all that is of man. Yet we need and have far more: even the active grace of Christ's priesthood, occupied with us in every sorrow and trial of our pilgrimage.
“Having then a great high priest passed, as He is, through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession. For we have not a high priest unable to sympathize with our infirmities, but having been tempted in all things, in like manner, apart from sin. Let us then approach with boldness to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace for seasonable help” (ver. 14-16).
It is not surprising that Tyndale made the fifth chapter to begin with three verses which ordinarily conclude chap. 4. For such is their direct connection. Nevertheless, following up as they do, the power of the word in detecting the flesh even in its subtlest forms, which is the death of the spirit practically, one can understand their more usual position.
Here the “great high priest” is presented in His normal position, not exceptionally as in Hebrews 2:1717Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17). That extraordinary action, the effecting of propitiation, was the basis of all for God's glory and man's salvation; but here we have the only due place of His intercessional functions. We see Him gone on through the heavens, not simply “entered,” as in all the old English versions, save Wiclif who, adhering to the Vulgate, was here kept fairly right. Christ's immense superiority to Aaron and his succession is thus set out for the Christian's assurance. Hence is the great High Priest enabled most effectually to meet our every need, He being before God evermore on high, we encompassed with infirmity in the wilderness, exposed to trial, danger, and sorrow. But it is the same “Jesus the Son of God,” Who made purification of the sins He bore in His own body on the tree, before He set Himself down on God's right hand. The question of our slavery and guilt is therefore settled everlastingly for all that believe; as there was no claim of Egypt or its prince on Israel after passing the Red Sea.
Yet the wilderness was full of snares and perils, as is our Christian path through the world. Only we in a higher meaning and the fullest sense are the redeemed of the Lord, needing no more for the soul's redemption, awaiting that of the body at His coming. Still we are here in this wilderness, with nothing but the dreary barren sand if we have not God with us. Therefore to sustain us and sympathize with us in our weakness He has given us a great High Priest, Whose love to us we have already proved when there was nothing to love in us, Whose blood cleansed us from every sin, Whose death and resurrection set us free, and raised an impassable barrier against our old enemies, thus seen again no more forever. We are not of the world, as Christ was not, slaves of Satan never more through His victory.
But we are not yet, as He is, in the heavenly land. We are journeying through the dry and howling wilderness, and though we are not in the flesh (Rom. 8:99But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Romans 8:9)) but in the Spirit as the Spirit dwells in us, none the less the flesh is in us, ever ready to listen to the tempter, if our eyes be not set on Christ so as to walk after the Spirit. Hence the all-importance of our blessed Saviour for us on high, to which the presence of the Holy Spirit in us answers here below. Without both we should fall in the wilderness, as in it all flesh is judged and perishes. Nor do we as saints want sympathy with the evil thing in us. We have learned to discern it by the Word of God, and to hate the mind of the flesh as enmity against God and death. We have learned too that self and will are always and only evil; and therefore, by grace, we sit in judgment on ourselves, as now able each to say, “I am crucified with Christ, and live, no longer I but Christ liveth in me; and that which I now live in flesh, I live by faith in [lit., of] the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2).
Here then we now need constant vigilance and prayer, as we submit to that word which divinely scrutinizes us and calls us to cut off every snare. But we have His gracious oversight where it is of chiefest efficacy, Who feels for and with us, the Sanctifier with the sanctified, in every difficulty, danger, and suffering, as at the commandment of God we halt or march. But the cloud of the direction, however precious, is not enough, nor the warning or winning and cheering voices of the silver trumpets. We need a living Person, inflexible for God's glory, unerring as to God's will, unfailing in gracious power for us in our weakness and exposure; and all this we have, and incalculably more, in Jesus the Son of God, passed through the heavens as a great High Priest. He is man as truly as you or any. He was not alone perfectly man, but the perfect man. He knows therefore by experience what the world is, what Satan is, but that evil in the flesh which He by His supernatural birth never had, He by dependence on God never let in for a moment. “The Holy Thing” born of Mary, He was and ever lived the Holy One of God.
Hence Him only could God make sin for us on the cross that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Hence now as the ever-living High Priest He is exactly and exclusively the One to intercede for us and to sympathize with us. Had there been (I say not the blasphemy of sin or failure on His part), but ever so little of what scripture calls the mind of flesh or indwelling sin in Him, it would have both tainted fatally the offering for sin and blunted that heart of holy love from its sympathies with us in our desires and opposition by the Spirit against the flesh. But there was absolutely none. Taking part in blood and flesh as we had both, in Him was no sin, as in us there is: not merely no acts, but no root, of evil. Satan found nothing in Him (John 14:3030Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. (John 14:30)), nor God (Psa. 17:33Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress. (Psalm 17:3)). Therefore could He die effectually for our sins and for sin; therefore does He live to plead no less efficaciously for us and sympathize with our infirmities. Death, and His death alone, could avail against sin; and God has accepted it in the fullest way, setting Jesus (Who glorified Him in all things and in this the deepest of all) at His own right hand, and sending down His Spirit that we might know His estimate of its effectual value for us now and henceforth and forever.
But we want One who lives and every moment interests Himself in all our difficulties and weakness as now living to God in an evil world, and not yet divested of that evil principle, the mind of the flesh which was never in Him but in us. This draws out for us His sympathies so much the more, because we have, not only to resist Satan as He alone did perfectly, but an inward enemy, or traitor, which He had not. And He is absolutely competent, being God and Man in one Person, and this after Himself treading all the way through as completely as none else ever did or could in heaven or earth. For us then, passed as He is through the heavens, He pleads and feels with us perfectly. “Let us then hold fast the confession.” Such is the demand and the cry of the new man against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Had the Son of God been simply above the heavens, there could have been no such motive to simply hold fast, no such comfort in our trials as Christians. But here He lived, suffered, and died, knowing each and all as no one else ever did, or can, but Jesus the Son of God. Hence He was fitted, being man, and of unequallable experience. He is able, as none else, to sympathize, not with our sins which as saints we dare not seek but most heartily repudiate, but with our infirmities. Not even a Paul who gloried in them (certainly not in sins!) could do without His sympathy, Nay, it was because he knew and appreciated His sympathy so much better than we, that he could exult when we are too often depressed. It is not however in flesh or on the earth that He exercises these functions for us, but as passed through the heavens where neither sin nor infirmity can ever come. Thus does He bear us up, and with tenderest feeling for us, for each as truly as if none other existed to share it, being God no less than man. To allow a priest on earth, yea to conceive Him such, is to Judaize. Save for the wholly different work of laying the foundation of all in atonement, His priestly work is exclusively on high, as we are partakers of a heavenly calling and are called to hold fast that confession and none other.
But, in order to such a priesthood, Jesus had been tempted in all things in like manner, sin excepted. Here we need to be on our guard. For the foisting in of “yet” in the last clause is apt to convey a notion wholly contrary to the truth and most derogatory to Christ. Most readers would gather thence that, though Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, yet He never sinned. Now one may boldly affirm that this is altogether short of the true meaning and indeed quite another thought, so as to miss the mind of God in the passage. It is not sins or failures excepted, but “apart from sin.” We have evil temptations from within, from fallen humanity; Christ had none. This was absolutely incompatible with His holy person. By a miracle He was even as to humanity exempt from taint of evil, as no one ever was since the fall. And it is of these holy temptations that the Epistle to the Hebrews treats, not of our unholy ones. The Epistle of James distinguishes them very definitely in chap. 1. Compare James 1:2,122My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; (James 1:2)
12Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. (James 1:12), on the one hand, and James 1:13-1913Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. 16Do not err, my beloved brethren. 17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 18Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. 19Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: (James 1:13‑19) on the other. We know the latter too well, Jesus never. But He knew the former as no other before or since. He was in all things tempted according to likeness, i.e. with us, with this infinite difference, “sin apart.” He knew no sin, He had no inward sinful temptation. He is therefore the more, not the less, able to sympathize with us. For sin within, even if not yielded to, blinds the eye and dulls the heart, and hinders from unreserved occupation with the trials of others.
Having then such tender and efficacious intervention in our ever living Intercessor at God's right hand we are exhorted to draw near with boldness to the throne of grace. Carefully observe that it is not coming to Christ to plead for us, which supposes a soul not at ease before God and doubting the grace in which we who believe habitually stand through redemption. Christ did not go on high till all was cleared for us on earth, and ourselves, as we know from John 20, placed in the enjoyment of His own relationship with His Father and His God (His Deity of course always excepted), children, and saints quickened together with Him, being forgiven all our trespasses (Col. 2:1313And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; (Colossians 2:13)). “Let us approach therefore with all boldness unto the throne of grace.”
We are entitled thus to come with all boldness to God on His throne. To us through the redemption of Christ it is a throne of grace. Early in the Revelation we see a throne whence the expressions of judgment proceed. Toward the close it is a throne of glory, the throne of God and of the Lamb, whence issues a river of life clear as crystal; so will it be known when the marriage of the Lamb is come and His wife has prepared herself. Need we add the solemnity of the great white throne, of everlasting judgment? The throne of grace, though of the same God, has a totally different character toward the many sons that are being brought to glory.
To this then we are now told to approach with all boldness. Some prefer what they call “a humble hope.” But this is mere human sentiment or worse. In ourselves we have no ground even for the faintest hope; if we have Christ by faith, we wrong both His work and God's grace, now righteously and perfectly vindicated, if we do not approach with all boldness to the throne of grace. Is this to exaggerate the word of God? or is not that unbelieving? Alas, the unbelief of believers! And see what the aim is when we thus approach: “that we may receive mercy and find grace for seasonable help.” Our weakness needs that mercy; and God's pleasure is that we, engaged with the enemy in His Name, may find grace for seasonable help. He sits there and invites thus that we may depend on Him for help in good time. Having such a Priest, let us approach the throne of grace boldly. God and His Son are pledged to bless us, as also we can look to Him without doubt or fear. Such is His word, no less than His will.