Hebrews 5:8 Commentary and Bible Study

Though he was the divine Son of God, eternally at one with the Father, yet he learned obedience. This reference to obedience suggests that there is one who commands and another who obeys, and it suggests that the one who commands has greater authority, and the one who obeys is subservient. But of course, in heavenly glory, he was never subservient to the Father. He was equal with the Father in the eternal council, and so when he came to be our representative, he voluntarily became obedient to the Father and lived the life we should have lived, so that his righteousness could be imputed to us. He became obedient as the mediator of the new covenant under the terms of which he undertook to carry out his Father’s commandments. He took on a voluntary obedience by the things which he suffered, which includes all the hostility and the contempt and the violence, but most of all his suffering and death on Calvary's cross when the Father veiled his face as he poured out upon his beloved Son all the divine wrath as a punishment for sin. When he speaks of his obedience to the Father, it is his willingness to go to the cross that he draws attention to. He says, ‘Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father’ (John 10:17-18). And later, in anticipation of the crucifixion he says, ‘But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do’ (John 14:31). None has ever received a harder command to obey, for the command involved making an atonement for the eternal consequences of sin. But we know that because this was done as a matter of obedience, it was done voluntarily.Again, how could the Son of God be said to learn anything that he did not already know? Certainly he knew all that he would have to go through in advance, and the horror of it was a weight upon him (Luke 12:50). But the actual living of it was an experience that was unique to him as the God-man. He knew exactly what he would go through, so he didn't need to learn the knowledge, but on Calvary he learned the experience. That he had never done as the God man: to actually taste the penalty of suffering and death on behalf of everyone. It is in this sense that he learned obedience unto death (Philippians 2:8). He experienced the cost of obedience, the infinite difficulty of it, the setting aside of every other possibility, and the facing of it squarely out of love for his people. In doing this he learned obedience and therefore he submitted his will to the Father’s will, even in this most difficult of all commandments. He did not allow any personal consideration to set aside what his Father had commanded. He did not question the wisdom of his Father, nor did he doubt his Father’s love for him in spite of this commandment. He saw it as necessary to ‘overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals’, in order for the plan of redemption to be implemented (Revelation 5:5), and so he carried out his part wholeheartedly as agreed by the Trinity before the foundation of the world.