Our Great High Priest

Hebrews 4:14–5:10

Read Hebrews 4:14–5:10 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Therefore let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need help.

Hebrews 4:16

The Word We Have Been Waiting For

At the end of the last session, we were left standing under the exposure of the living Word. Everything was naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must render an account. The warning was serious. The road was long. The wilderness generation was a real cautionary tale. And some of us, if we are honest, came out of that passage slightly shaken. The writer of Hebrews meant to shake us. It was not a failure of his pastoral art; it was its success.

But the writer is not a hammer. He warns in order to keep his readers with Christ, not in order to drive them from Him. And so, having let the exposure of the Word do its work, he turns immediately, in the very next sentence, to the comfort that only the Word can bring. “Therefore since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.”

This is the word we have been waiting for. The warning was needed; the warning has done its work. And now, on its heels, comes the invitation. The same letter that has just told us that we stand naked before the God to whom we must render an account is now telling us that the God to whom we must render an account has given us a high priest, and the high priest has already passed through the heavens, and we can draw near, with confidence, to the throne of grace. The warning and the gospel belong together. The pastoral pattern of Hebrews is the pattern of the whole Bible. Law exposes; gospel covers. The exposure is real. The covering is more real.

The passage before us, Hebrews 4:14 through 5:10, is one of the great pastoral texts in the New Testament. It does two things together. It issues the invitation to draw near to the throne of grace. And it begins the sustained treatment of Christ as our high priest that will occupy Hebrews for the next several chapters. The invitation and the priesthood cannot be separated. We draw near because there is a priest. And the priest is sympathetic (merciful toward us, tempted as we are, yet without sin), so that when we come near, we find welcome.

Let Us Draw Near

“Therefore since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.” The first move of the passage is a call to hold fast. It echoes the call from Session 4: “We are of his house, if in fact we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope we take pride in.” But now the call is grounded in a particular reason. Hold fast, the writer says, because we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. The holding is not bare determination. The holding has an object. We hold fast to a confession that is attached to a living priest who is seated at God’s right hand.

Notice the phrase “passed through the heavens.” The earthly high priest of the old covenant passed through the curtain of the tabernacle, into the Holy Place, and once a year into the Most Holy Place beyond the second curtain. Our great high priest has passed through a greater curtain than any of those: through the heavens themselves, into the presence of God. The geography is cosmic. The work is done in the heavenly sanctuary, not in a tent on earth. And the priest who has passed through is Jesus, the Son of God: fully divine, fully the One who made purification for sins, fully the One seated at the Majesty’s right hand. The priest we have is not a lesser figure. He is the greatest figure.

“For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.” The double negative is worth pausing over. The writer does not say, simply, “We have a sympathetic priest.” He says, “We do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing.” The construction is careful. He is anticipating the doubt some readers will have: “Surely the risen Son of God, who is now seated at the right hand, has moved too far beyond my weakness to really understand it. Surely He has forgotten what it felt like. Surely my small human struggles seem, from His throne, petty and beneath notice.” The writer answers: no. The priest you have is not that kind of priest. The priest you have is one who has felt the pull of temptation from within the human experience, and He has not forgotten.

“Tempted in every way.” The thought echoes the text of Session 3, where Christ “had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect.” In every way, Christ was tempted as we are. Not in every particular circumstance (He did not face every situation any human has ever faced), but in every kind of temptation. The ordinary human temptations are not foreign to Him. He was tired. He was lonely. He was misunderstood. He was told to take shortcuts. He was tempted to avoid the suffering that was His calling. He knows. And He was without sin: not because the temptations were unreal to Him, but because He, the holy Son, met every one of them in perfect obedience and never once gave way. The Christ who sits at the right hand is the Christ who knows.

And so comes the invitation. “Therefore let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need help.” This is one of the most gracious sentences in all of Scripture. Let it be said slowly. Let us. Confidently. Approach. Throne of grace. Mercy. Grace. Whenever we need help. Every word is weight-bearing.

The throne of the universe, the throne from which God rules all things, is, for those who come through Christ, a throne of grace. It is not a throne of mere justice, before which the sinner would be destroyed. It is not a throne of indifference, before which the suppliant would be ignored. It is a throne of grace. The God who rules all things, who judges all things, who sees all things: this God has made His throne into a throne of grace for us, through the priestly work of His Son.

And we are invited to approach. Confidently. The word behind it is boldness, sometimes translated freedom of speech: the confidence that a child has with a loving parent, the confidence that a friend has with a friend. Not the confidence of presumption, which thinks no reverence is needed; but not, either, the anxious hesitation that thinks access is not granted. Access is granted. The curtain is torn. The throne is gracious. Come.

Come to receive mercy: the pardon for what is past, the forgiveness for what we have done and left undone. Come to find grace whenever you need help: the strength for what is coming, the sufficient grace for the particular trial of the particular day. Mercy for what is behind; grace for what is ahead. The throne gives both. The priest who serves at the throne gives both. We have only to come.

Coming to the Throne

Before we press on into the rest of the passage, it is worth pausing over what this invitation actually means for the Christian life. Hebrews is not speaking here about some distant spiritual reality accessed only in rare moments of deep prayer. The throne of grace is where the Christian lives. We are always before it. Our access is constant. The question is not whether we have permission to come; the question is whether we will come.

And for many Christians, the coming is the hard part. We know, in our heads, that Christ has opened the way. We know that the priest is sympathetic. We know that the throne is gracious. But when we have actually sinned (when we have actually failed, actually spoken unkindly, actually lost our patience, actually given way to the temptation we have given way to a hundred times before), the instinct is not to draw near. The instinct is to pull back. To hide. To wait until we have done better before approaching God again.

Hebrews says: no. The moment of weakness is precisely the moment to draw near. The time of need is not the obstacle to access; it is the occasion for access. The throne of grace is not open for the times when we are doing well; it is open for the times when we are not. If we had to be in good spiritual order before we approached, the invitation would be hollow. But the writer does not send us to a throne of merit. He sends us to a throne of grace. We come because we need to, not because we deserve to. We come at our worst, because grace is given to those who come at their worst. And we do not have to guess where that grace is found. The priest who sits at the throne hands it out here below, in His Word, in the absolution spoken to us in His name, in the promise of our Baptism, and in His body and blood at His Table.

This is the Lutheran pastoral instinct at its purest. The gospel is not for the strong who do not need it. The gospel is for the weak who do. Christ did not come for the righteous, but for sinners, and not just for sinners in general, out there, but for you, in the specific condition in which you find yourself today. The priest who sympathizes is not a priest for polished saints. He is a priest for tempted, tired, stumbling pilgrims who have nowhere else to go. If that is you, you are the one for whom this invitation was written.

What a High Priest Is

Having issued the invitation, the writer now turns to develop what he has begun: what it means, exactly, for Christ to be our high priest. Chapter 5 opens with a general description of the priesthood. “For every high priest is taken from among the people and appointed to represent them before God, to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.”

A priest, in the old covenant, was appointed for a specific purpose. He was taken from among the people; that is, he shared their nature, shared their weakness, shared their humanity. And he was appointed to represent them before God: to stand between, to bring their sacrifices to the altar and their prayers to the throne. The priest’s orientation was two-directional: he belonged to the people below, and he served before the God above.

And because the priest shared the weakness of the people, he was “able to deal compassionately with those who are ignorant and erring, since he also is subject to weakness.” The earthly priest was a sinner. He knew what it was to fail. He knew what it was to need a sacrifice himself. And this made him sympathetic, or at least it was supposed to. A priest who looked down on the worshippers he served, who did not feel in himself the same weaknesses they brought to him, was not functioning as the old covenant intended.

The writer notes, with almost clinical precision, that the earthly priest was “obligated to make sin offerings for himself as well as for the people.” This is a detail worth noticing. On the Day of Atonement, before the high priest could offer sacrifice for the people’s sins, he first had to offer sacrifice for his own. He was not above the congregation he served. He stood among them, a sinner like them, and offered first for himself and then for them. The sympathetic priesthood of the old covenant was built on the priest’s own need for atonement.

And no one chose the role for himself. “And no one assumes this honor on his own initiative, but only when called to it by God, as in fact Aaron was.” The priesthood was not a career path, not a matter of personal ambition, not something a man decided he was suited for. It was a calling. The priest was the priest because God had called him to be one, and without that calling, the office was closed to him. The legitimacy of the priest came not from his own self-assessment but from God’s appointment.

So Also Christ

“So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming high priest, but the one who glorified him was God, who said to him, ‘You are my Son! Today I have fathered you,’ as also in another place God says, ‘You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.’”

Christ, the writer says, did not seize the office. He did not declare Himself a priest. He was called to it by the Father. And the writer gives us two Old Testament witnesses to that calling. The first is Psalm 2, which we have met before, quoted here as “You are my Son! Today I have fathered you.” The Father who declares Him Son is the same Father who appoints Him high priest. His sonship is not a title He received by appointment; He is the eternal Son. But His sonship and His priesthood are not separate things: the priest the Father appoints is His own Son.

The second witness is Psalm 110, quoted here as “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” This is the first appearance in Hebrews of a name that will dominate the next several chapters: Melchizedek, the strange priest-king of Genesis 14, whom the psalmist invokes as the pattern of the coming Messiah’s priesthood. The writer does not explain Melchizedek here. He will come back to him in full in chapter 7. For now, it is enough to know that the priesthood Christ holds is not the Levitical priesthood that was descended from Aaron. It is an older, deeper, more permanent priesthood, a priesthood that goes back to Melchizedek, the priest who served before Levi was ever born. Christ’s priesthood is not a branch of the priesthood Moses knew. It is the priesthood the priesthood of Moses pointed toward.

Hold that thought for now. The full exploration of Melchizedek will come in its own session. Here the point is simpler: Christ’s priesthood has Scriptural warrant. The Father’s appointment of the Son to the priesthood is not a new idea; it is prophesied in the psalms themselves. When the writer goes on, in the coming chapters, to argue that Christ’s priesthood supersedes the Levitical one, he is not making an innovation. He is unfolding what the Old Testament itself had already declared. The old covenant contained, within itself, the seed of the new.

With Loud Cries and Tears

The writer now brings us, for a moment, very close to the suffering of Christ. “During his earthly life Christ offered both requests and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his devotion.”

The reference is to Gethsemane, though it may also encompass the whole sweep of Christ’s prayers during His earthly ministry. In the garden, Jesus prayed with loud cries and tears. He asked that, if possible, the cup might pass from Him. His sweat was like drops of blood. Luke’s account records that an angel came to strengthen Him. The Son of God, at that moment, was not serene in a philosophical calm above human feeling. He was in anguish. And He prayed out of that anguish, urgently, tearfully, to the Father who was able to save Him from death.

We should not skip over the shock of this sentence. The Son of God prayed with loud cries and tears. The incarnation, as we saw in Session 3, was real: not a costume, not a disguise. The suffering was real. The prayer was real. The tears were real. Jesus in Gethsemane was not acting a part for our benefit. He was bearing, in His humanity, the approaching weight of what was about to happen, and He was asking the Father to take it from Him if there was any way.

“And he was heard because of his devotion.” The Father heard Him. This is a surprising thing to read. We know how Gethsemane ended. Jesus went to the cross. The cup was not taken from Him. How, then, was He heard? The writer’s answer is not spelled out, but it seems to be this: He was heard in that He was delivered through death, not from it. The resurrection was the Father’s answer to the Son’s cries. The Father did not prevent the death; the Father defeated it. And the Son was heard because of His devotion (the word can also be rendered “reverence” or “godly fear”): even in the depth of His suffering, He prayed as the obedient Son, willing to do the Father’s will, even when that will cost Him everything.

“Although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered.” This is another sentence that has puzzled readers. How can the Son, who is fully God, who is the very representation of the Father’s essence, need to learn obedience? The answer goes back to what we saw in Session 3: “learn” here does not mean that Christ was previously disobedient or previously ignorant. It means that He experienced obedience, in His humanity, as a true man experiences it: through specific moments of submitting His will to the Father’s, through specific acts of doing what was given to Him to do. He did not learn that obedience existed; He learned obedience by doing it. And His doing of it took Him through the full weight of human suffering, culminating at the cross.

“And by being perfected in this way, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, and he was designated by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” Here again we meet the language of perfection. It does not mean that Christ was ever morally imperfect; He was always sinless, always the holy Son. It means made complete, brought to the goal, fit for purpose. Through the whole human experience, through the loud cries and tears, through the obedience learned in the doing, Christ was brought to the goal as the pioneer and the priest. And having been brought there, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. “Obey him” here means the obedience of faith, holding fast to Christ, and the life that flows from such faith. It is not obedience as a contribution to our justification. Christ is the source of the salvation; faith receives it, and the new life that follows is its fruit, never its price.

Gathering the Threads

A short passage, but a rich one. Three movements, and they belong together.

The first is the invitation. Because we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, who sympathizes with our weakness, let us hold fast and let us draw near, with confidence, to the throne of grace. We come to receive mercy for what is past and grace to help in what is coming. The invitation is the resolution of the warning with which the last session ended. The Word that exposed us is the same Word that now ushers us to the throne.

The second is the nature of priesthood. A priest is taken from among the people, appointed to represent them before God, able to deal compassionately with those who are ignorant and erring because he also is subject to weakness. And no one assumes the honor on his own initiative; the priest is called by God. These are the features of every legitimate priest. Christ shares them all: He was taken from among us in the incarnation, He acts on our behalf, He is able to sympathize (without, as we will learn, any sin of His own to atone for), and He was called by the Father.

The third is Christ’s priestly formation: His loud cries and tears, His devoted submission, His learning of obedience through what He suffered, His being made perfect and becoming the source of eternal salvation. This is the priest we have. He is not a priest who became one in the safety of the divine throne room. He became one by passing through the full depth of human suffering and holding fast in trust. The priest who invites us to the throne of grace has knelt in Gethsemane. The priest who says, “come,” is the priest who prayed, “not my will but yours.”

And woven through all three movements is the name we will meet again: Melchizedek. Christ is a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. We have not yet been told what that means. The writer drops the name and moves on, trusting that we will carry the question with us. Chapter 7 will take it up in full. For now, it is enough to know that the priesthood we have is not a temporary or provisional one. It is an older, deeper, permanent priesthood, and the priest who holds it holds it forever.

So as we close this session: come. The invitation stands. The throne is gracious. The priest is sympathetic. Mercy is there for what is behind you. Grace is there for what is ahead. And the One who calls you is the One who prayed with loud cries and tears, who learned obedience through suffering, who was made perfect as the pioneer and priest of your salvation. Come. You are not intruding. You are coming to the place He has made for you.

For Discussion

1. Hebrews pairs the warning at the end of chapter 4 with the invitation that opens 4:14–16. Why does the writer arrange the two side by side? What goes wrong when Christians receive only one of the two: only the warning, or only the invitation?
2. “Therefore let us confidently approach the throne of grace.” Where do you find it easy to come to God with confidence? Where do you find it difficult? What does the sympathetic priesthood of Christ say to the places where you find it difficult?
3. Christ “has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.” What is the difference between the help offered by someone who has never struggled similarly, and the help offered by someone who has? Where have you experienced Christ’s help as the help of One who understands?
4. The earthly high priest was “subject to weakness” and had to offer sacrifice for his own sins before offering sacrifice for the people. How does Christ’s sinlessness make His priesthood different from the old priesthood, and what does that difference mean for us practically?
5. Jesus prayed in Gethsemane with loud cries and tears. What does it mean for our own prayer life that the Son of God prayed this way? Are there places in your own experience where you have needed to pray with loud cries and tears? What did you find?
6. The writer introduces the mysterious name Melchizedek and then moves on without explaining him. What do you know about Melchizedek already? What questions are you carrying into the later chapters of Hebrews where he will be developed?

Looking Ahead

Session 6 turns to Hebrews 5:11–6:20, a passage that contains the third of Hebrews’ four warning passages, and the most controversial of them. The writer will rebuke his readers for being slow to learn, urge them toward maturity, and then issue the stern warning of Hebrews 6:4–6 about those who have been enlightened and fallen away. The passage has, in church history, caused more pastoral anxiety than any other in the letter. We will read it carefully, with the Lutheran handling of warnings that we have been building throughout the volume, and we will see that the passage ends not in despair but in one of the strongest affirmations of God’s faithfulness in the New Testament.

Before next session, read Hebrews 5:11 through 6:20 slowly. Notice how the warning is framed, who it is addressed to, and how the passage ends. Bring your questions (there will be many), and we will take them up together.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest, who has passed through the heavens and sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high: we thank You that Your throne is a throne of grace, and that You have made the way for us to come. Give us the confidence to draw near. Meet us with mercy for what is behind us and with grace for what is ahead. You are the priest who prayed with loud cries and tears; You are the priest who learned obedience through suffering; You are the priest who knows. Help us, as we come, to find in You what You have promised: grace whenever we need help. Amen.