In Heb. 2 there are four grounds for the death of Christ.
First, the majesty of God: "It became Him... in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." That is, perfected in the glory is what is meant all through here by "perfect." If He took up our cause, He must go through what was needed for us.
Second, what is mentioned last, but what is foundation truth, "To make reconciliation [or propitiation] for the sins of the people." Sacrifice there must be, and He was that Himself.
Third, He suffers, for He must sympathize with us down here.
Fourth, to destroy the power of Satan.
For all this it was that He was made a little lower than the angels. Christ has gone through all that was needed to bring us to God. And thus He is available for all, for everything in fact.
Then follows the consideration of the shadow (not the very image) of good things to come; under the law, the priests stood in contrast with Christ, specially in respect of their own infirmity, and so of their competency to sympathize. They were in the same things at the same time, and they could have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that were out of the way, for that they also were compassed with infirmity.
That would not do for us, and still less so, because if they themselves were in the infirmity when they had the sympathy, they must always stay down here on earth, and thus through them the people could go no further than earth. If, therefore, that had been so with the priesthood of Christ, it would have ended where it was exercised. Indeed it does so now, for it is in heaven and cannot, of course, go further. The veil indicated that if the high priest only went in once a year, other priests could not go in at all.
But now that redemption is accomplished, the veil is rent; the holiest and the holy are both one, and we are made nigh to God Himself. And so all through this epistle you will find contrast. Thus it is not now priests dying one after another, but the power of an endless life.
Then sacrifices were repeated; now in Christianity we have one sacrifice once for all, never to be repeated. It is the groundwork on which priesthood is to be exercised forever, and it goes on until there is no more need of it. In the glory we shall not need it.
There is also this complete difference: namely, we go into the holiest itself, and our High Priest is not compassed with infirmity (for even in the sense in which He was so on earth, all that is over). And therein we find the connection between the trials and sorrows here, and the place into which we are taken where Christ has gone.
Before going up on high, our High Priest went through everything that was needed in order that He might sympathize with us, help us and lead us on. But now that He is exercising priesthood, all that is over. We have perfect boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood, so much so that I want my heart to be in the place where everything is settled. I want to have done with the things that hinder my heart from being there (and there are plenty of them), dimming the perception of these heavenly things. The Lord, therefore, puts us through various temptations of heart and spirit that we may really know ourselves. We need, not simply the fact of being kept safe, though that is true all along the way, but also the sense we are being kept by the power of God, through faith. That is the way we are kept.
J. N. Darby