And now (Heb. 5) we enter upon the priesthood; for it is a priest that we want who stand already accepted by sacrifice. Not a priest, but a sacrifice, is the foundation of all relationship with God; but we need along the way a living person, who can deal both with God for us and for God with us. Such a great High Priest who passed through the heavens, yet able to sympathize with our infirmities, we have in Jesus the Son of God. How little these Jews, even when saints, knew the treasure of grace that God had given in Him whom the nation abhorred! As previously, the Apostle takes the proofs from their own oracles. It is not a question of revealing, but of rightly applying, by the Holy Spirit, the word they had in their hand.
“For every high priest taken from among men is established for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” It might see in scarcely credible that these words could be applied to Christ. But there is nothing too bad for the heart of man; and these are mistakes of the heart. They do not arise from intellectual feebleness. It would be folly so to judge of Grotius, for instance. They spring from unbelief. Call it ignorance of Christ and of the Scriptures, if you will, but it is not found only with the ignorant, as men would speak. I am sure we ought to have great compassion for the honest ignorance of simple-minded men. But, as in other sad cases, the error is often combined with ample learning of the schools, though with lamentable lack of divine teaching even in foundation truth. I do not deny that God may deign to use anything in His service; but these men confide in their learning and their powers generally, instead of becoming fools that they may become wise, which is the truest learning according to God, if one may speak of “learning” in respect of that wisdom which comes down from the Father of lights.
Thus men, confident in their own resources, have dared to apply this description of priesthood to Christ, They have failed to see that it is a distinct contrast with Christ, and not at all a picture of His priesthood.
It is evidently general, and sets before us a human priest, not Jesus—God’s High Priest. If there be analogy, there is certainly the strongest contrast here. An ordinary priest is able to exercise forbearance toward the ignorant and erring, since he himself also is compassed with infirmity. “And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.” Did Christ need to offer for Himself, yea, for sins? This blasphemy would follow, if the foregoing words applied to Christ. “And no one taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, even as Aaron. So also Christ glorified not Himself to be made an high priest.” Now he teaches a point of contact, as the other was of contrast. All you can procure from among men is one that can feel, as being a man, for men after a human sort. Such is not the priest that God has given us, but one who, though man, feels for us after a divine sort. And so, we are told, that Christ, while He was and is this glorious person in His nature and right, nevertheless as man did not glorify Himself to be made an high priest; “but He that said unto Him, Thou art My Son, today have I begotten Thee; as He saith also in another place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.”
The same God who owned Him as His Son, born of the Virgin, owned Him also as Priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. And in this order too: first, Son (on earth); next, the true Melchisedec (in heaven, as we shall find). Albeit true God and Son of God, in everything He displays perfect lowliness among men, and absolute dependence on God: such also was His moral fitness for each office and function which God gave Him to discharge. Mark, again, the skill with which all is gradually approached—how the inspired writer saps and mines their exorbitant (yet after all only earthly) pretensions, founded on the Aaronic priesthood. Such was the great boast of the Jews. And here we learn out of their own Scriptures another order of priesthood reserved for the Messiah, which he knew right well could not but put the. Aaronic priesthood completely in the shade. “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.”
At the same time, it is plain that there is no forgetfulness of the suffering obedience of Christ’s place here below; but He is presented in this glory before we are given to hear of the path of shame which ushered it in. “Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared; though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him, called of God an High Priest after the order of Melchisedec.” The Apostle had much to say, but hard to be interpreted, because they were become dull of hearing. It is not that the Word of God in itself is obscure, but that men bring in their difficulties. Nor does His Word, as is often thought, want light to be thrown on it; rather is it light itself. By the Spirit’s power it dispels the darkness of nature. Many obstacles there are to the entrance of light through the Word, but there is none more decided than the force of religious prejudice; and this would naturally operate most among the Hebrew saints. They clung too much to old things; they could not take in the new. We may see a similar hindrance every day. What Paul had to say of the Melchisedec priesthood was hard to explain to them, not because the things were in themselves unintelligible, but they were dull in hearing. “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye again have need that one teach you the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God.”
There is nothing, I repeat, which tends to make dullness in spiritual things so much as religious tradition. The next to it in dead weight, and in other respects more daringly dangerous, will be found to be philosophy. At any rate, it is remarkable that these are the two occasions of this reproach from the Apostle. So he wrote to the Corinthians, who generally admired rhetoric, and had no small confidence, like other Greeks, in their own wisdom. They did not consider Paul, either in style or topics, at all up to the requirements of the age—at least in their midst. How cutting to hear themselves counted babes, and incapable of meat for grown men, so that, being carnal, they must have milk administered to them! The Apostle had to put them down, and tell them, with all their high-flown wisdom, they were such that he could not discourse to them about the deep things of God. This, no doubt, was a painful surprise for them. So here the same Apostle writing to the Hebrew believers treats them as babes, though from a different source. Thus we see two errors totally opposed in appearance, but leading to the same conclusion. Both unfit the soul for going on with God; and the reason why they so hinder is because they are precisely the things in which man lives. Whether it be the mind of man or his natural religiousness, either idolizes its own object; and consequently blindness ensues to the glory of Christ.
Hence the Apostle could not but feel himself arrested by their state. He shows also that this very state was not merely one of weakness; but exposed them to the greatest danger; and this is pursued not on the philosophical side so much as on that of religions forms. We have already seen both at work in Colosse, as I have just pointed out the snare that the wisdom of the world was to the Corinthians. But on the Hebrews he presses their excessive danger of abandoning Christ for religious traditions. First of all these hinder progress; finally they draw the soul aside from grace and truth; and, if the mighty power of God does not interfere, they ruin. This had been the course of some: they had better be watchful that it be not their own case. He begins gently with their state of infantine feebleness; and then in the beginning of the following chapter he sets before them the awful picture of apostasy. “For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the Word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”