Christ the Compassionate

Introduction

Sin as guilt, sin as sickness.

Why We Need a High Priest

We need a High Priest to present us to God as Righteous so that we may know him and his rest and so that he may dwell with us. The end of salvation is God dwelling with us.

What we will see in our text is that this high priest must serve in heaven, and that his service there must be in compassion and sympathy for those whom he represents before God the Father.

We will then see that, In Jesus Christ alone, we have a merciful and compassionate high priest who serves in a heavenly temple on our behalf.

Our response to such a truth is the confidence to draw near our great high priest and find the help we need to enter God’s Rest.

Our High Priest Transcendant

The first thing we are told in this passage is that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, who is Jesus the Son of God. There is great significance here that is easy to miss.

First, we one again have this title the Son of God recalling the things that were said in chapter 1. This great high priest is no ordinary priest, or man, and yet is fully man. We saw in chapter 1 that this title as Son of God includes many implications about who he is. He is the final revelation of God’s plan of salvation, he is the heir of all things, he is the co-creator of the universe. He is the radiance of God’s glory and shares in the same divine nature as the Father, and the providence which holds up the universe is in his hands. Additionally, he sits on a throne above the authority of even the angels.

Despite all of this greatness, he is also possesses a fully human nature and took on flesh and blood so that he might become both an acceptible sacrifice and a high priest who can accurately represent the human race and sanctify them. It’s no good being represented by someone who is nothing like you, since you would need another mediator between you and them.

The purpose of this high priest is, indeed, to sanctify and us bring us as righteous and holy to the Father. Without a priest, there is no approaching God and entering his Sabbath Rest. As we’ve seen, Adam and Eve were the original priests of mankind, and they failed to effectively bring God’s presence to humanity, but were instead cast out. All the OT priestly figures, even the best of them, also failed at this. This is what makes the Son of God a great high priest; he is one who can actually do what humanity needs a high priest for.

Passed Through the Heavens

And so, with this Son of God positively identified as Jesus Christ, our great high priest, we also read that he has passed through the heavens. This line is one that you may have skipped over without realizing it, one of those phrases that you might have assumed was added for some extra flare as an allusion to Christ’s ascendance into heaven, but there is a deeper theological meaning here.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus didn’t stick around after his resurrection from the dead? Afterall, wouldn’t the Kingdom’s goal of unity in Christ and worldwide evangelization be much easier if we have a Jesus around that we could see, feel, and speak to face-to-face as the disciples did during his earthly ministry?

Hebrews 8:4 ESV

Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.

For the author of Hebrews, the earthly Tabernacle, Temple, and priestly ministries were all shadows and copies of a heavenly reality (9:23). In heaven, there is a place where God dwells in a spiritual space, which was represented by the Tabernacle. In that space there is a throneroom, represented by the Holy of Holies. In that place, only those perfected and sanctified can enter, this was represented by the high priest going in on the day of Atonemen, purified, to make purification for the sins of the people through the blood of a sacrifice. If we are to enter God’s presence and be in a place of eternal Rest, we must enter in through the ministry of a high priest who can enter that heavenly temple as perfect and pure and offer a sacrifice that will cleanse us from sin one and for all.

When Jesus died on the cross, he was the sacrifice. After he rose from the dead, his process of perfection through suffering was complete. When he ascended into heaven, he was appointed our great high priest. There, he offered his own blood as an atonement for our sins, once and for all. We didn’t just need a perfect sacrifice for sin, we needed a perfect priest to bring that sacrifice, one in which the marks of death were still visible in his body, into the heavenly temple and offer it to God as an atonement for sins. While the sacrifice was completed on the cross, the offering of that sacrifice was still necessary and so in that heavenly Temple Christ is both the priest, the sacrifice itself, and the God who finds it acceptible who sits at the Father’s right hand.

So, when we read that Jesus has passed through the heavens as our great high priest, this does not speak to Christ abandoning us but rather Christ going to finish the work necessary for us to be with him forever. He passed through the heavens to bring the blood that he spilt to the Father in a heavenly Temple so that we may be cleansed and perfected as well. Through that sacrifice, offered by such a pure and perfect high priest, we are permenantly cleansed from sin, sanctified, and made ready to enter that holy temple through the curtain that is his flesh (10:20). The love of Christ is why he is in heaven today, and because of his ministry there you are able to come to God with his righteousness applied to you and one day he will return to earth to take you there himself. On this basis we are commanded to hold fast our confession.

Our High Priest Imminant

This is then a good time to move on and see that Christ’s heavenly role makes him a suitable and compassonate high priest whom we are free and able to draw near to because of his great compassion for us.

Despite Christ’s heavenly service and glory, verse 15 emphasizes the closeness of Christ to us and our state. Jesus’ experience as a fully human person who experienced temptation through suffering makes him very familiar with our situation to the point where he is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. This word assumes as familiar, experiential understanding of these weaknesses so that he not only feels sorry for us, but can truly say, “I know how you feel”.

What are these weaknesses? For some, it is uncomfortable to think of these weaknesses as our sinful nature, or our propensity to fall into sin, and yet this is exactly what the context suggests. The author follows up by recognizing that Jesus was tempted as we are in every way and yet without sin. It is our temptations, and specifically our weakness before these temptations, that Jesus is able to sympathize with. And while he never experienced committing an actual sin, he did experience the shame, guilt, and punishment for sins as if he had committed them, so that he is even able to sympathize with our suffering the consequences of our own sin.

Now, as I mentioned last week, this doesn’t mean that Jesus was tempted with every single, individual temptation that we have. Instead, it means that Jesus’ experience with temptation when he was on earth as a man makes him able to know the difficulties, struggles, and pain inherent in human weakness when confronted with temptation. Although his divine nature made sin impossible for him, he felt the draw and pull of temptation and he felt the pain of refusing it. Jesus, rather than using this experience in a condescending or dismissive way as we sometimes do, uses it to feel sympathy for those who are weak against temptation and easily fall into its tyrannical hands.

This gives us important insight into how Jesus views his people when they fall into sin. Remember Christ’s opinion of the tax collectors and prostitutes in the Gospels. Far from accepting or overlooking their sins, Jesus interpreted them as victims of sin just as much as their were the ones who sinned. In fact, the only times Jesus is judgemental and speaks of wrath is towards those who are either self-righteous or who do not take their own sin seriously.

If we think if Christ as a docter, the great physician, we can understand that a doctor may speak gently towards those who know they are sick, but with much sterner language towards those who deny it or even spread their sickness to others. Those who know their illness and come to the doctor are not the ones in danger of death, it is those who continue to pretend they are well who will soon end up in the morgue.

So Christ’s attitude towards our sins is not one of condemnation, judgement, and guilt. The day of judgement will come for those who refuse his grace, but for those who believe Christ does not see your guilt. Afterall, he already offered up his once-for-all sacrifice for your sins in the heavenly Temple. When Christ looks at the sins of a believer, he does not see guilt with the eye of a judge, he sees sickness with the eyes of a caring physician. Christ’s heart is one of sympathetic concern, of care, of knowing how hard it is and how weak you are. He also knows the powers of Satan, the pain he can inflict in temptation. Finally, he knows the danger for any believer who is led astray and turns away from the call of discipleship. He knows how easily those who begin the journey of faith can be turned away before they reach the end.

That is why he has made himself so near and sympethetic towards the weaknesses of his people. While he could easily, and justly, simply demand our allegience, he knows that we are too weak and compromised by sin to make it. So in his love, he came to experience that weakness through temptation and suffering so that he can be there, near to us, in our time of need.

The Confidence to Come

This leads us to verse 16, where we are told what to do with this information. We are told to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence for mercy and help.

Draw Near - With our great high priest having cleansed us of sin by his perfect, once-for-all sacrifice, he has opened up a way for us to draw near to him for help. While the priests of the old covenant would bring in animal sacrifices to deal with the guilt of sin, they couldn’t bring sinners to God for help with their slavery to sin. How can a sinner come into the holy throneroom of God for help with the very thing that makes him unable to come into the presence of God? Only a perfect high priest with a perfect sacrifice could do this for us, removing the guilt so that we can come near to God. The Throne of God, a Throne which Christ himself sits upon, is here called the Throne of Grace. The Throne from which the universe is governed, from which angels are ordered, and from which God will judge the world, is for us a Throne of Grace. This Throne is paralleled with the Mercy Seat, the golden lid on the Ark of the Covenant that represented God’s Throne in the Tabernacle. It was literally the seat where God bestowed mercy in response to a sanctifying sacrifice. Christians are told to approach, not the old mercy seat which, again, was a copy or shadow of a heavenly reality, but to approach the heavenly reality. The real Throne where Christ sits, having satisfied the need for our purification and righteousness, is our destination.

With Confidence - Not only this, but we are told to approach this Throne with confidence. Remember that the high priest could only approach the Mercy Seat once a year, and this was a fearful and strictly regulated event. Now Christians are told to approach, not the Mercy Seat, but that which the Mercy Seat represented in heavenly reality. Not once a year, and not only one man chosen every year, but all believers approaching this Throne at any time with confidence, or boldness.

Confidence is not beligerence, its not without respect or even an appropriate amount of fear and awareness of who it is you are approaching. Confidence does not mean being unaware of how undeserving or unworthy we are to be shown such grace. Confidence is simply the conviction that you have a right to be there. It is a right given to you by Christ himself, applied to you by faith, and sealed in his blood. Because of his high priestly work, any believer has the right to come into the Throneroom of God and be welcomed. Confidence doesn’t mean thinking you are good enough for God’s presence, nor is it faithful to refuse to go before God’s Throne because of your awareness of how sinful you are. Faith and Confidence means, despite your awareness of your unworthiness, you are convinced that Christ is a perfect Saviour and a great High Priest and therefore you belong before the Throne of Grace on the merit of his work. In short, it means believing that Christ’s grace is greater than your sin and acting like its true.

Grace and Help - But why do we come before this Throne of Grace? Is it to give praise and adoration? Is it to pledge our allegience? Is it to give thanks for all we have in Christ? All of these are certainly appropriate before God’s Throne in prayer, but none of them are what we are told to do here. Instead, our motive is our need for mercy and grace for help.

Mercy because we are still sinners and in our falls we need a merciful and sympathetic to be our great physician. When our conscience convicts us, when Satan reminds us of our guilt, we must approach our compassionate high priest and know that our sins are covered and our place before God is established by his goodness, not our own.

Grace to help because, in our time of need, whether it be in times of temptation or in the aftermath of our sin, we show our weakness and great need for help. It is hard to show weakness because we live in a world where weakness is so after met with abuse, taken advantage, and carelessness. You cannot be a Christian and not approach God with your weakness and ask for help. Remember that all of those who left Egypt did not make it. You need the help. Remember that Adam and Eve hid their nakedness from God; you need to be vulnerable. Just as a doctor cannot heal you unless you expose the wound or infection, you cannot recieve God’s grace if you do not show him your weakness.

Conclusion

All of this is predicated on a faith which convinces us that Christ is sympathetic to us in our weaknesses. This faith is based on his word, and through fear and trembling at who it is we approach, we can, no must, approach with confidence for the help we need.

Approach in prayer.

Approach at the Table.

Approach in meditation on the Word and this promises of God.

Approach through love and service, being a living example of Christ’s compassion at work in you.

Strive to the end, knowing that a compassionate Saviour is always available, seated a holy throne of grace where you may daily seek help and find it to endure to the end.