Hebrews 5:4-10 “What Christ’s Calling Does For You”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 16 Dec. 2018

Introduction

• As I was scrolling through the U.S. Postal Service website, looking to purchase stamps for my Christmas cards, I was struck at the political correctness of this government entity. The heading was “holiday stamps” and there were: 2 Hannukah stamps for Jews, 2 Kwanzaa stamps for the African religionists, One Eid stamp for the Muslims, One Diwali stamp for the Hindus, Two Santa stamps for the Atheists, 4 Bird stamps for the Nature-worshippers, 2 Roman Catholic Madonna stamps, and nothing for Protestant Christians. The message it conveyed is that all religions are the same and interchangeable. If you don’t like Jesus, just remove and insert Santa. If you don’t like Santa, then remove and insert Mohammed or Bhudda, or whatever suits your fancy. It makes no difference. But that message couldn’t be more wrong.

• Jesus is not one among many options for human happiness and peace. He is unique among world religions, and His mission was unique. The book of Hebrews poignantly makes the case that Jesus is the only viable candidate for saving us from eternal death.

• The passage we’re going to look at today examines further the qualifications for taking on this role of priest and shows how Jesus preeminently fulfills them. The first qualification in v.4 is that of a divine call to the role:

v.4 Furthermore, one does not take this honor for himself, but rather one who is called by God does, even as Aaron was.

• The concept of “calling” is introduced in v.4, with the statement that priests don’t arrogate to themselves the office of high priest, rather it is God who calls men to this honor.

• Furthermore, the calling to the honor of an office implies responsibility to the One doing the calling. The high priest must not carry out his office under any human authority (much less his own) but rather under the authority of God Who called him and Who will hold him accountable to what He called him to do.

• The way Greek grammar works,

  • the participle “called” could legitimately be viewed as the temporal condition under which a person could take the honor, as the NASB and ESV rendered it (“he can only take it WHEN he is called by God”),

  • however, “called” could also legitimately be viewed as the subject of the sentence (as the KJV and NIV rendered it), and I prefer that, because it is nominative case, masculine, and singular, matching the parallel word translated “one/man,” as in: “one who is called takes the honor, it is not taken to oneself.”

  • Both ways of translating it bring out the same message: not just anybody can be a high priest. The high priest has to be chosen by God Himself – not by any human agency, and he also must conduct his ministry under the authority of God – not according to his own wishes.

• Verse 4 ends with the comparative phrase, “as Aaron¹.”

  • It was God who told Moses to set Aaron up as high priest. This was not done by popular vote.

    • Exodus 28:1 "Now take Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister to Me as priest, Aaron and Aaron's sons...”

    • Psalm 105:26-27 “He sent Moses His servant, And Aaron whom He had chosen. They performed His signs among them, And wonders in the land of Ham.” (NKJV)

  • Then throughout subsequent history, the choice of who would perform the high priestly duties was determined by throwing of dice so that it would not be a human decision but a decision determined by God -

    • Who could cause the dice to roll whatever way He wants, as it says in Prov. 16:33 “The lot is cast into the lap, But its every decision is from the LORD.”

    • Thus it was with priests at the opening of the N.T. Luke 1:5-9 “There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron… 8 So it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.” (NKJV)

• Now that the norm has been stated as to how high priests were selected by God, our author turns to proving from two passages of scripture that Jesus was indeed called by God as priest:

v.5 so also the Anointed One did not tout Himself in order to become high priest, but rather it was the One who said to Him, “As for You, You are my son; As for me, I have begotten you today.”

• This is a quote of Psalm 2:7 “I will record the decree of Yahweh. He said to me, ‘As for you, you are my son. It was I who gave birth to you today.’” (NAW)

  • The “one who said” this is God the Father, and He is speaking to God the Son, who is called “Messiah” in Hebrew, which translates as “Christ” in Greek, and “Anointed One” in English.

  • This profound statement from the Psalms on the relationship between God the Father and God the Son was already introduced in Hebrews 1:5 “For, to which of the angels did He ever say, ‘You Yourself are my Son. Today I have begotten you’? - or even, ‘As for me, I will be in [the relation of] a father to Him, and, as for Him, He will be in [the relation of] a son to me’?” (NAW) There is no other such relationship in the universe.

  • Furthermore, in Acts 13:33, the Apostle Paul explained: “God has fulfilled this to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm.” In other words, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead was the fulfillment of Psalm 2!

  • Romans 1:4 says, “He was declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.” The resurrection is an event that makes it clear and obvious to all who know history that this person Jesus is the unique Son of God.

• Now, that's when the declaration was made, but that's not when the relationship started. The relationship started in eternity past. Think about that timing: “Today I have begotten you.”

  • What does “today” mean to an eternal God who is outside of time?

  • God is always a life-giver; it's always been part of His nature.

  • In a sense it is always “Today” with God, and Jesus is always His “Son.”

• The point is, Jesus did not ἐδόξασε ἑαυτὸν/tout/take glory/exalt Himself/sing His own praises.”

  • He didn’t have to be His own “hype man” and mount a big campaign in order to win a popularity contest, nor did He have to stage any kind of coup in order to win the title of High Priest.

  • God the Father initiated Christ’s appointment as High Priest without Jesus having to do any lobbying for it. “You are my son; today I have begotten you.”

  • God freely expressed His good faith in Jesus the Son all along and wanted all along for Him to be the High Priest for mankind. “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.” There never was any question about it.

• Unlike the Jewish priesthood which, at the height of its corruption, could be bought by the highest bidder, the ultimate high priesthood was decided by God Himself, based upon the person who was most like Himself in character and therefore the person who would be the most effective at reconciling humans to Himself. That person is Jesus.

• God the Father is also the speaker in the second text offered in proof that Jesus was called by God to be priest:

v.6 He also says similarly in a different [setting], “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedek.”

• Who is Melchisedek? He is an obscure character who only shows up in one history account in the Bible, and that’s three little verses in Genesis 14: “And the king of Sodom went out to meet him, after he [Abraham] returned from the slaughter of [Chedarlaomer] and the kings with him, to the valley of [Shavah]; this was the plain of the kings. And Melchisedek king of Salem brought forth loaves and wine, and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed Abram, and said, ‘Blessed be Abram of the most high God, who made heaven and earth, and blessed be the most high God who delivered thine enemies into thy power.’ And Abram gave him the tithe of all.” (Genesis 14:17-20, Brenton)

• The only other place in the Bible (besides the book of Hebrews) that we run into Melchise­dek is in Psalm 110, “a Psalm of David,” of which Hebrews 5:6 is a quote: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool... I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning [or as the Hebrew reads, “you have the dew of your youth”]. The Lord sware, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec.” (Psalm 110:1-4, Brenton)

• Jesus clearly interpreted Psalm 110 as referring to Himself, and so did the apostles Peter, Paul, and Mark², so this is proof positif that Jesus was called by God and fits the pattern for a priest.

• So, what does it mean to be a priest according to the order of Melchisedek?

  • I intend to get more into that later Hebrews goes into more detail on Melchisedek in chapter 7, but for the time being…

  • scripture portrays Melchisedek as a true priest, even though he was not of the Levitical priesthood (which were all descendants of Aaron).

  • What this means is that being a Levite was not the main qualification for being a High priest. Rather, being chosen as a go-between by God between God and Man was the main qualification, and that is the point being made here in Hebrews 5.

  • Jesus is the chosen person to be high priest from here on out. It doesn’t matter who his Daddy was; God appointed Him, and therefore He is qualified, because the qualification is that God made the choice. Q.E.D.

• Now, after these two quotes of passages where God the Father placed a calling upon God the Son, the subject changes back to the Son – the Christ – and what He did as a priest.

v.7 This [Anointed] One, in the days of His flesh, offered both pleas and petitions with a mighty cry - and tears - to the One able to save Him from death, and He was listened to as a result of His devotion,

• The word “Jesus” is not there in the original verse, but is supplied by the editors of the NIV & ESV to make it clear that the “he who” is the subject of v.7 is “Christ/The Anointed One” from verses 4-5.

• The other puzzle that is a little harder to solve is the question of what event (or events) in Jesus’ life this verse refers to. There is no account in the Gospels that uses these exact words to describe what Jesus did.

• But if you consider synonyms, an awesome series of events in Jesus’ life comes into view:

  • First the “practice run,” as it were, in John 11:32-44 ...Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to Him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept³. Then the Jews said, "See how He loved him!" ... And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard⁴ Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me." Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice⁵, "Lazarus, come forth!" And he who had died came out... (NKJV)

  • Then comes the main event: Matthew 27:46-53 “Jesus, after crying out in a loud voice⁶, released His spirit. [The parallel passage in Luke records the very words He cried out in that loud voice: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Continuing with the Matthew account...] And, behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth was shaken – and the rock-strata were ruptured, and the memorial-places were opened up – and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep [in death] were resurrected...” (NAW)

  • Do you see that when the tears of sorrow roll down Jesus’ face and He cries out in a loud voice to God, God hears and the very dead are raised?!!!

  • You know where that happens again? It’s all over the book of Revelation! This is the encore: Rev. 21:3-4 And I heard a loud voice⁷ from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear [δάκ­ρυον] from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying [κραυγὴ]..."

• The “pleas/prayers/supplications” that Hebrews 5:7 says Jesus offered up were consistent with the work of a priest to intercede before God on behalf of needy individuals.

  • We see the same Greek word used throughout the New Testament in this way, to pray for the healing, blessing, and salvation of someone else:

    • Luke 1:13 "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.”

    • Luke 2:37 “this widow [Anna] … served God with fastings & prayers night & day.”

    • Romans 10:1 “...my heart's desire and prayer to God... is that they may be saved.”

    • Ephesians 6:18 “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints”

    • Philip. 1:19 “I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer...”

    • 1 Timothy 2:1 “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men...”

    • James 5:16 “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. (NKJ)

  • So, what is it that Jesus prays for when He intercedes for us as priest? The Gospel of John records His template in chapter 17: v.11 "...Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are… v.15 keep them from the evil one… v.17 Sanctify them by Your truth…. v.24 Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me...” (NKJ) Jesus prays like that for you still today; that is part of His calling as our great high priest!

• There is also a second part to Jesus’ priestly ministry: He not only does the intercessory praying that a priest should do to save His people, He also lived a perfect life so that He could provide the righteousness by which His people would be saved. Heb. 5:7 tells us that, “He was heard because of/as a result of His devotion/His godly fear/His piety/His reverent submission.

  • Every English version seems to have chosen a different word to translate this Greek word εὐλαβείας (which literally means to “receive well”), but when you put them all together, you can see the range of meaning of this word.

  • Looking at the other forms of this word throughout the Greek Bible can nail down the meaning even further⁸:

    • In Josh. 22:24, eulabeias is the opposite of false worship.

    • In Prov. 28:14, it is the opposite of having a hard heart.

    • In Leviticus 15:31, it is the opposite of uncleanness.

    • In Micah 7:2 it is equated with “orthopraxy/living “according to what is right.”

    • In Luke 2:25 it is equated with being “righteous.”

    • In Acts 2:5, it is equated with worshipping God in the right way at the right time.

    • And Acts 22:12 specifies that this kind of “devotion” is “measured” by obedience to God’s “law.”

    • Imagine what would happen if the wrong person were sent to do the intercessory work. Imagine the President of the United States sending Rush Limbaugh to be his ambassador to North Korea. Instead of calming down Kim Jong’s threats to nuke us, it would probably just stir them up! Why? Because Rush has been outspok against Communism and dictators, and he isn’t known for speaking diplomatically, either! Whenever he came to Pyongyang with a request to dismantle nuclear missiles, the North Koreans would not even pretend to listen to that guy. Now, I’m not saying I know who the right person is to communicate with the “Dear Leader” over there, but I am saying that if you want to curry favor with somebody, you don’t send their political enemy to speak to them for you, instead you find somebody that they like, who can speak for you.

    • And that is exactly what we (who have offended God) need in our high priest: someone who is not himself offensive to God – someone who, when we have been false and hardened and unclean, He has obeyed God and been righteous and done what is right, so that He can enter God’s presence with favor and then propitiate God’s wrath against us. Jesus is the one for that job!

• Now, at the end of verse 7 we see the RESULT of Jesus’ ministry of intercession and His life of righteousness: “He was heard!”

  • This doesn’t mean that God just audibly heard Jesus’ petitions; it means God paid attention to Jesus’ requests and did what Jesus asked for.

  • When the same verb is used in Acts 10:31 to say that God “listened to” Cornelius’ prayers, it meant that God was already sending the apostle Peter over to Cornelius’ house to give a divine oracle to his whole family!⁹

  • When the same verb is used in Luke 1:13, saying that God “listened to” Zacharias’ prayers for a son, it meant that his wife Elizabeth was already pregnant with John the Baptizer¹⁰.

  • Forget E.F. Hutton! When Jesus speaks, God listens, and we get saved! That’s good news!

• Now the next three verses are all dependent upon verse 7 grammatically, since they have no indicative verb like v.7 does. Verses 8, 9, and 10, each revolve instead around a participle which further describes Jesus’ devotion in fulfilling His calling as priest for us. The first participle has to do with His sonship role and involves learning from new experiences.

v.8 seeing as, while being a son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered,

• What did the Son suffer? Whenever this same Greek verb “pathein” occurs in relation to Jesus it only ever refers to Jesus’s crucifixion (and the events immediately leading up to it). e.g:

  • Mat. 16:21 “...Jesus began to show His disciples that it was necessary for Him to go into Jerusalem and to suffer many things from the elders and high priests and scribes, and to be killed, and to be resurrected during the third day.” (NAW, cf. Mk. 8:31, Luke 9:22)

  • In Luke 22:15 He said to them, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” Then Acts 1:3 says, “...He also presented Himself alive after His suffering ... during forty days...” (NKJ) The words “before” and “after” clearly narrow this particular suffering to Jesus’ atoning death.

  • We’ve also seen this verb in Hebrews 2:18 “for He Himself has suffered, having been tested; by such means He is able to come to the rescue with those who are being tempted.” (NAW) Jesus’ suffering of death as the punishment of sin is the way that He can be our priest to reconcile us to God.

  • 1 Peter 3:18 “Christ also suffered concerning sin, [only] once – the righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, in order that He might lead us to God, after having been put to death in the flesh, but having been made alive in the Spirit” (NAW).

• Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus “learned obedience” from His suffering/affliction.

  • Nowhere else in the entire Bible does it speak of Jesus “learning” anything except in the Messianic interpretation of Psalm 119:71-75, which reads, “It is good for me that thou hast afflicted me; that I might learn thine ordinances... instruct me, that I may learn thy commandments. They that fear thee will see me and rejoice: for I have hoped in thy words. I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are righteousness, and that thou in truthfulness hast afflicted me.” (Brenton)

  • Then when we look at how the word “obedience” is used in the New Testament, it becomes apparent that in almost all of the 14 occurrences of this word, it is a synonym for faith. We have to look no further than the book of Romans to see this:

    • Romans 1:5 “Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name” (NKJV)

    • Romans 14:26 “now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith” (NKJV)

    • Romans 15:18 “...what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed” (NASB)

    • Can you see that during “His days in the flesh” it took faith for Jesus to trust God for what He could not see? Especially while suffering agony on the cross under the totalitarian powers of Rome and under the juggernaut of Jewish traditions – even then, in spite of it all – to trust God’s providence to raise Him from the dead on the other side of that all-consuming suffering and to reconcile Himself to us and to present us to Him as His bride. That took SOME faith! I think that this passage is saying that Jesus “learned” from that experience what it is like for us to trust God to save us. In heaven, Jesus probably didn’t experience much temptation to doubt God’s promises, but He sure experienced that temptation on earth... and He conquered it, and that makes Him all-the-more perfect to represent us and to be pleasing to God.

    • Furthermore, that very suffering is the means by which Jesus can make us right with God, as it says in Rom. 5:19 “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous.” (NKJV)

• Now, the second participle that describes Jesus’ devotion in fulfilling His calling as priest for us focuses on how Jesus, in His maturity/perfection which resulted from these experiences as a Son, took action to save us.

v.9 After He was thus matured, He became legally-responsible for eternal salvation to all those who obey Him.

• Jesus’ earthly life of total trust in and obedience to His heavenly father together with His experience of suffering death (which is the punishment for unbelief and disobedience) put the finishing touches on His preparation to be our great High priest and became the legal grounds of our salvation.

• There is a special adjective to describe this “legal grounds” here in v.9, and that is the Greek word αἴτιος, which I translated “legally-responsible,” the KJV translated “author,” and other English versions translated “source.”

  • Interestingly, it is only used in civil court proceedings in the Bible, including Pontius Pilate’s trial of Jesus (in which he found no aition in Him and therefore could not pass a sentence on Jesus), and it’s also mentioned in the city meeting at Ephesus which was whipped up on the spur of the moment by an irate silversmith whose idols were not selling so well after Paul converted a bunch of Ephesians to Christianity. The clerk of the city counsel of Ephesus called the crowd out for assembling unlawfully, since they had no aition – no legitimate legal grounds or responsibility to call a city meeting without the authorization of the city counsel.

  • In the case of Christ here in Hebrews, the court proceedings are against us. God has found us guilty of violating His law, but Jesus, the One with whom God was perfectly pleased, intervened on our behalf, took on the legal responsibility for our sin and suffered eternal death in our place, offering that payment to God to clear our record. In this way, Jesus became “legally-responsible” for us, becoming the “source/author” of our eternal salvation!

• I keep saying “us/our,” under the assumption that I am generally talking to God’s people in the church. God’s word doesn’t promise that everybody without exception will be saved; the word “all” is always limited by its context, and the limiting phrase in this passage is that the people Jesus saves are “all those who obey Him.”

  • “Obey” is in the Present tense, that is, their ongoing lifestyle is one of obedience to God. Is that true of you?

  • Remember what is generally meant by “obedience”? It is the “obedience of faith” which trusts Jesus to make you right with God.

  • (Faith does, of course, go on to obey His specific commands to “love one another” and to “make disciples” and so forth, but trust is where obedience starts.)

• So you could write it out as an equation: Jesus’ perfect Sonship + Jesus’ earthly suffering + Jesus priestly intervention on our behalf + Our obedience of faith (which is a “gift from God” according to Eph. 2:8¹¹) = our eternal salvation.

• Take away Jesus’ calling as a priest and there is no hope of being safe with God. That’s why v.10 rounds out this trio of verses describing Jesus’ devotion with a participle describing His calling as a priest:

v.10 having been publicly-called by God as high-priest according to the order of Melchisedek.

• Again, hold the thought on Melchisedek until we get to chapter seven, and look at the other interesting word at the beginning of verse 10.

• In Greek, the participle is προσαγορευθεὶς, and, although it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, it is used in the Apocrypha to denote calling someone by their name.

• Since this unusual word consists of two roots meaning “in front of the marketplace,” I take it to refer to a name or an office which is presented publicly.

• In the case of Jesus, for about a millennium, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 had proclaimed publicly God’s calling upon His Anointed One to be the priest who would intercede with Him on behalf of His people.

Conclusion

• So Jesus’ calling as priest was publicly declared in the Psalms (and those Psalms prove that His calling was divine and not human in origin), His decisive intervention on our behalf accomplished the work of a priest, and His experience of suffering and death made Him the perfect candidate to get heard by God and to successfully achieve eternal salvation for us! When He raises His voice, the dead come to life!

• Mohammed doesn’t qualify. Bhudda couldn’t do it. Santa is a hollow fiction. It doesn’t matter how many whales you save, you’ll never measure up. The celebrated Atheistic philosophers as well as the sports superstars commemorated on U.S. Stamps are so far below the plane of Jesus that comparison would be an insult to Him. What we have in Jesus, brothers and sisters, is a treasure beyond comparison.

• Keep your eyes on Him, the Son of God, the Babe in the manger, the Teacher and feeder of the 5,000, the Man on the cross, the Great High Priest whose petitions are listened to, the King of Kings on the throne of heaven. He is your only hope of salvation from eternal death. He is the only One worth honoring this Christmas

APPENDIX: Side-by-side Greek Text and English Versions of Hebrews 5:4-10