Hebrews 5:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Hebrews 5:3

Comments

‘And by reason hereof’ – by reason of his infirmity, and his own sinfulness – ‘he ought,’ – and the word ‘ought’ in the Greek is very strong: he is bound to – ‘as for the people, so also find himself, to offer for sins.’ Yes, he must make offerings for himself, because like the people he is a sinner. But in the case of Christ, the real high priest when he came, he did not offer for himself, he was the offering pure and holy and qualified to be our substitute, our sin bearer. He offered up himself. The fact that the high priests of old were beset with their own infirmity meant that they could never be the perfect high priest that Christ was. It is obvious that if the task of a high priest is to remove sin by offering up sacrifices, then he cannot be selective about that sin: he must remove all sin. But if he himself has sin, which every man born into the world apart from Christ has, then part of the atonement that he makes must be to cover his own sin. This means that he is disqualified from being an effective high priest, since no one can effectively atone for his own sins. But this was the situation that the priests of old found themselves in. They were appointed to do a task which they were not fully qualified to do. Why then did God appoint them? – for they certainly were appointed under the law. He did it to show sinful human beings what is the only way that their sins can be removed. There must be a priest; there must be a sacrifice for sin. But only a worthy priest could offer up an effective sacrifice, and that could not happen until the true high priest, Jesus the Son of God, came into the world. In the meantime God indicated what he would do in the future, but he prevented any solution to the problem of sin before then, by appointing flawed priests to offer up imperfect sacrifices. The Aaronic priests were only a shadow of what was to come. In setting out the qualifications and operation of the Old Testament priests, the writer points not only to similarities with the priesthood of Christ, but also to dissimilarities. Christ offered for the sins of the people, but unlike the Aaronic high priest, he did not have to offer for himself, for he had no sin. This is stated explicitly in Hebrews 7:27.

Application

There has only ever been one effective sacrifice provided by the Lord: the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. All previous gifts and sacrifices pointed forward to Christ’s work, and in Old Testament times the Mosaic sacrifices were to be seen as an earnest of God’s provision in the future. We may draw hope from God’s ordinances, for he starts nothing that he does not finish, but we must distinguish between God’s earnest and his real provision and not lean too heavily on the former when only the latter is intended to bear our weight.

Questions

Were the people truly forgiven under the law by the Mosaic sacrifices? That depended on whether they exercised faith and whether they had understanding of what God was providing for them. Those who depended on the earthly sacrifice carried out by earthly priests in an earthly tabernacle received only external, ceremonial forgiveness under the law. They were accepted under the terms of the Mosaic covenant and did not break it, but that covenant did not itself offer salvation, their sin was not truly taken away, and they were not justified before God, for that has only ever been through the covenant of grace and by faith. On the other hand, those who saw in the Mosaic sacrifices a promise from God that he would provide a way for their sins to be removed, and who trusted him to do this; they were forgiven on the basis of Christ’s future sacrifice for sin, however sketchy their understanding.

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Hebrews 5:3 Commentary and Bible Study