John Brown, Hebrews Quote 5
From Hebrews by John Brown p. 136
Every high priest for men must be “taken from among men.” Expiation is not a work for angels, nor even for God, merely as God. The duty which He had to perform as the Great High Priest, who was to “give Himself a sacrifice, the Just One in the room of the unjust,” made it necessary that He should be conformed to His brethren by assuming their nature.
And as He could not have been a high priest at all, as He could not have made reconciliation, without being conformed to His brethren as to nature, so He could not, in the degree and manner in which they required mercy and fidelity, have been “a merciful and faithful high priest,” if He had not been conformed to His brethren in His condition. It is finely observed by Dr. Owen, “that in a perfectly holy human nature He should exactly discharge the will of God, was all that was required in order to His being a high priest. But this was not all that the estate and condition of the brethren required. Their sorrows, tenderness, weakness, miseries, disconsolations were such, that if there be not a cotempering of His sublime holiness and absolute perfection in fulfilling all righteousness, with some qualifications inclining Him to condescension, pity, and compassion, and tender sense of their condition, whatever might be the issue of their safety in the life to come, their comforts in this life would be in continual hazard.”
To be a “merciful high priest,” is to be a tender-hearted, compassionate manager of all our religious interests—to be ever ready, under the influence of a tender sympathy, to support, and comfort, and deliver. To be a “faithful high priest,” does not, I apprehend, mean, as some interpret it, a true, a legitimate high priest; nor, as others, a high priest who is generally faithful to God and man both in the discharge of his duties; but a high priest who is trustworthy, exact, constant, and careful in attending to his people amid all their varied temptations and sufferings.
To be such “a merciful and faithful high priest,” it behoved the Divine Saviour not only to be conformed in nature, but in condition, to the brethren. There is a kind and degree of compassion and fidelity in giving comfort and relief which nothing but fellowship in suffering can teach. Suppose two friends, equally benevolent in their temper, equally attached to you; the one, a person who had never suffered under the afflictions to which you are exposed; the other, one who had experienced the same, or at least a very similar course of trials; would there not be a tenderness, a suitableness, and a minuteness of appropriate attentions and consolations experienced from the latter, which, in the very nature of things, it is impossible that the former, however kindly disposed , should yield? Who is not struck with astonishment and delight at observing in the plan of salvation such an intimate knowledge of all the peculiarities of our nature, and such a benevolent use made of this intimate knowledge, in securing for man not only the great substantial blessings of salvation, but their being conferred on him in the way best fitted to soothe and comfort him amid the remaining evils of the present state?
This idea of the capacity of the Saviour to sympathize with and relieve His people under their trials, in consequence of His having Himself been tried, is very beautifully amplified in the verse with which this division of the Epistle closes. 18. “For in that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted.”
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