Hebrews 5:2 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Who can have compassion’ – the word means he can deal gently; he can moderate or measure his passions. The high priest was able to have compassion because he shared a common ignorance and sinfulness, but Christ on the other hand is pure and holy and has compassion out of his mighty heart of mercy. The high priest had compassion on the Jews in general. We remember that when he went before God into the holy place he wore on his vestments, on his breast, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. He was only a type, he was a general representative, and he had compassion in a general sense. But Christ wears on his breast as it were the names of every individual for whom he suffered and died, everyone who would be saved, and his compassion is not a general compassion but an intensely individual, personal compassion. His compassion is not based upon his infirmity; he doesn't feel sorry generally for sinners in their plight because he himself is a sinner, but his compassion is vastly greater because it is generated from the divine heart of love and mercy. And his compassion is constructive, because he is going to dispense eternal life for all those for whom he died, and he looks upon them and desires eternal bliss for them as well as deliverance. So the high priest is only an illustration and an inadequate illustration at that. How much more the real high priest, Jesus Christ, who came to suffer and to die to make an atonement and to save; how much more he has compassion on his people!‘On the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way’. The writer considers two classes of waywardness: those who are ignorant of the things of God and those who are characterised by rebellion against God and departure from him – that is to say, they are astray from the standards of God. The high priest of the Mosaic law could have compassion, and the basis of his compassion was that ‘he himself also is compassed with infirmity’. He is, if he is humble enough to recognise it, a sinner himself, and he has weaknesses and he is defective; he is a depraved man, however much he may strive to please God, and therefore he ought to have compassion and sympathy for other lost sinners like himself. ‘For that he himself [the high priest] also is compassed with infirmity.’ But Christ also when he came would answer these qualifications for priesthood, because he would be compassed with infirmity. But not the infirmity of his own sins: he would not have a sin nature. He would be surrounded with physical infirmity, the weakness of human flesh. He would be one who felt exhaustion and pain, and great disappointment: many infirmities in that sense. He would also be surrounded, particularly in the garden of Gethsemane and on Calvary's cross, with the great weight and sense of human sin, and that would be to him an infirmity. But it was our sin: his infirmity, but our sin. So he also would be compassed with infirmity when he took away our sin.