Hebrews 5:1 Commentary and Bible Study

This fifth chapter of Hebrews is just an introduction to Christ’s priesthood. The subject moves to the great exhortation of chapter 6 and then it proceeds more fully from chapter 7 on to deal with the high priesthood of Christ. The inspired writer goes into a great deal of detail. This probably reflects the fact that the Jewish converts to whom this letter is addressed were being drawn a little bit back to Judaism and to a sort of works salvation – it’s difficult to make out whether they are truly saved or not. Some of the exhortations here are very firm warnings about continuing in an unsaved state, and yet other sentiments say, we are persuaded better things of you than this, and the people who receive this letter are regarded as those who truly love the Lord. So it’s difficult to see quite where the balance lies. One thing is fairly certain: these people with Jewish backgrounds would have been great lovers of the detail of the law. There are so many small observances with great significance, and they loved all that. We look in this chapter at Christ's great compassion and our obedience to him. It begins with a picture of Christ seen in that great Old Testament type: the high priest and his offices and work, and there is a running comparison between the high priest of olden times and Christ. The epistle begins by persuading them that Christ is far higher than the angels – he is the eternal Son of God – and now it switches to the priests. The Jewish converts were too taken up with the priests, the high priests in particular, and their role in time past, and he is going to show the superiority of Christ to the high priests of old. Because everything here is in the present tense it is likely that the work of the priesthood was still going on and that the letter is written before A.D. 70, which marked the destruction of the temple and the ending of the ancient priesthood of Israel. It was about to cease in practice, but even now it was already ended in that Christ had come and all the types and the shadows had been fulfilled.They are ‘taken from among men’. This is not an incidental observation, because it shows how necessary the incarnation was. High priests were human beings and they were called of God and taken from among men, of the tribe of Levi and of Aaron’s descendants in particular. Christ also, although he was God, although he was the second person of the glorious Trinity, took upon himself human flesh, and he became truly a man: the God-man, divine and human. And it had to be so in order that he could be our true representative, in order that he could live a life of perfect righteousness on behalf of all those who would be saved and that his righteousness could be imputed to them. He must be born under the law as we are born under the law. He must be mortal as we are mortal in order that he could suffer and die as we do, as we should have suffered eternally. He had to bear the punishment of our sin in his own body on the tree as God, but he had to bear it as a man, for sin must be punished in the same nature in which it has been committed. No high priest appoints himself, but he is appointed by God to represent the people before God. He is set aside and ordained to a life which is wholly taken up with the service of God, and that service chiefly has to do with offering gifts and sacrifices for sins. What we see in shadowy form in the offerings made by the Jewish priests, we see in perfection and in reality in Christ, who gave the type of the Old Testament priesthood to teach us, and who fulfilled that type in his own person and work. The high priest was a revelation of what Christ would do and how we would be represented by a great high priest who would come. He offered both gifts and sacrifices for sins, and Christ was himself the ultimate sacrifice, for he took our place, and our sins and our guilt were laid upon him and he bore them all away.