Heb 2:17-18 - Humanity required for His High Priestly ministry — Phil Coulson

Now, we'll read, please, the last two verses of Hebrews and chapter 2, the last two verses of Hebrews chapter 2. The subject matter, as you know by now, that has brought us up to these verses are these reasons for the essential humanity of the Lord Jesus, the recovery of man's forfeited dominion, verses 5 to 9, that he might be the pioneer, the leader, the captain who would bring many sons to glory, verses 10 to 13, to defeat the devil and deliver those sons of glory from the bondage of death and its consequences, 14 to 16.

Christ’s Humanity and His High Priestly Ministry

Now we're coming into verses 17 and 18, and what we have in these verses is a statement now concerning the necessity of the humanity of the Lord Jesus in relation to the high priestly ministry that he now undertakes.

Verse 17 says, wherefore, in all things it behoved him, it imposed a personal obligation upon him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people, for that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted.

And we trust God will bless, again, the reading and study of his good Word. There are two chapters which very specifically deal with the matter of our identification with Christ. The emphasis in Hebrews 2 is on how the Lord Jesus identified himself with us, but in Romans chapter 6, the emphasis is not on how he identified himself with us, but how we are identified with him.

Believers’ Identification with Christ in Romans 6

Paul speaks to the Romans in that chapter of the moment that they were baptized into Jesus Christ. That is an expression to do with that moment of conversion, that moment when we first trusted him and we became so entirely linked with Christ that we're seen as being immersed in him.

We are in Christ. As surely as water baptism sees us immersed in that element, as surely as the spirit baptism of Acts chapter 2 sees us immersed in that element, then when we were baptized into Jesus Christ, we became wholly identified with him on that moment of conversion.

The reason Paul makes that point is because he wants his readers to see that salvation doesn't end with the wonderful truth that Christ has died for our sins. There's many Christians want to stop there.

There's many Christians want to be confident that Christ has died and in his sufferings on their behalf has borne the consequences of their sins, they've been delivered from the penalty of them, and they know they're going to heaven.

But that's certainly not where the doctrine of the gospel finishes. Yes, it's true that the death of Christ delivers me from my sins and their consequences. But if we take the Old Testament picture of Israel and their redemption, when in Exodus 12 the Passover took place and they were delivered from under the judgment of God because by faith they applied the blood of the lamb to the doorposts and the lintels, that sheltering beneath the blood, the destroyer passed over them, and when the morning light came of a new day, they had been delivered from judgment, but they were still in the land of their bondage.

Pharaoh was still their master. Their redemption was not yet complete, and it wouldn't be complete until they had been removed from the domain of their bondage. And this is the truth Paul takes up in the Roman Epistle.

So in the early chapters, having established the guilt of all, he then shows how that that guilt can be removed through faith in the person of the Lord Jesus and on account of the death of Christ for us.

But then he moves into chapter 6, and he speaks about our identification with Christ, and he said that identification with Christ is so total that when he died, I died. When he died, you died. My beloved young brother or sister here today, young in the faith, probably young in years as well, do you understand that not only has Christ died for you, but you have died with Christ?

You've died to this world, you've died to the things that once held you in bondage, and you've now been brought with Christ through the grave to walk in a new kind of life. That's where the victorious Christian life begins, not with the recognition that Christ has died for me, but with the recognition that I have died with Christ.

And so the emphasis in Romans is on my identification with him. Here in Hebrews 2, it's on his identification with me. He came to where we were. He came to be like we are, sin apart. And one of the reasons for this, being made like unto his brethren, was that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest, merciful toward us, faithful toward God, and that he might now function as a high priest, now that he has gone through death, now that he's risen and glorified, he has a high priestly office.

The Day of Atonement and Propitiation

You'll see in verse 17 that it says, of things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. Now, that's an unfortunate choice of word. It might be different in whatever version you're reading, but of course, sins can never be reconciled, sins have to be dealt with.

So the thought is really that he might be a faithful, a merciful and faithful high priest, with a view to offering that sacrifice for sins of the people, which would perfectly meet the demands of divine justice, so that he would be able to totally deal once and for all with the matter of the people's sins.

We haven't time today to go into the truth of the great day of atonement, but that day of atonement you'll read of in Leviticus 16, and again in chapter 23, there's more detail. But, that day of atonement is the background to this epistle.

It was the day when, on behalf of the nation, a sacrifice was made to satisfy the claims of divine justice. The sins of the people would be dealt with for another year. And uniquely on that day, one sin offering was made up of two animals.

And, those two goats were taken, one was for the Lord and one was going to be the scapegoat. And the one which was for the Lord was slain, his blood was taken into the sanctuary and sprinkled before and on the mercy seat.

And thus the ground was laid for God to move out in mercy to repentant people. It has to be on the ground of sacrifice. Now, the divine justice was satisfied the moment that goat was slain. But the blood was taken in and sprinkled before and on the mercy seat so that there might be evidence before the custodial eyes of those symbolic cherubim as they looked down and upon the mercy seat, it could be seen that God was righteous in what He was doing.

It's a wonderful thing that a God who is and can only be righteous in all that He does, nevertheless wants it to be in clear evidence that everything He does is righteous. In the gospel therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.

So once that blood had been taken in and sprinkled, the ground was laid for God to move out in mercy toward His people. Ultimately, the other goat was going to have the sins of the people confessed upon its head.

It was going to be taken out by the hands of a fit man into the wilderness and there left. But very significantly, and this is why you need to read Leviticus 23 as well, very significantly when the first goat had been slain and before the second goat could bear away the sins of the people, several times over we read that they had to afflict their souls.

There had to be affliction of soul. There had to be an acknowledgment of sins and the consequences of sins. Now these things are not just for Israel. The principles of them come across into the gospel today.

Finally, the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus at Calvary has laid that righteous foundation whereby God can remain just and yet be the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus and that extends, praise God, to the whosoever.

It extends to you. That's what we would call the propitiatory work of Christ, a work that enables God to move in mercy toward you whoever you are. But until there is affliction of soul, until there is a recognition that this is for me and that I have a responsibility in this, until there's that affliction of soul, then it's not possible for those sins to be carried away, as it were, by the hands of a fit man into a place uninhabited.

That's the difference primarily between what we would call propitiation, which is for all, and substitution, which is when by faith the needy sinner has repented and put their trust in Christ. They have a personal Savior, and the Christian can say, who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree.

The Christian can say from a full heart, the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. These things are only potential for those who are not yet saved. There has to be that affliction of soul. And again, for the nation, they are at a condition at the moment where at Calvary the Lord Jesus fulfilled, he became the anti-type, he became the reality of which that first goat was only a picture.

He's laid the foundation for the nation to be restored, but they're not restored yet, nor will they be until the end of the tribulation period when he appears in power and glory and suddenly, says Zechariah, they shall look upon the one whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for him.

There will be affliction of soul, and from the heart of that nation will come the confession, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement with a view to our peace was upon him, by his strike we are healed.

And as soon as there's that affliction of soul and repentance, immediately, God will give them a new heart, he will cleanse them from all their filthiness, they will be cleansed, they will be purified, they'll be restored, and their sins, well, he says they'll be as far as the east is from the west.

So far have I removed thy transgressions from thee. You see, the subject of the Day of Atonement is a very, very great subject indeed, and it's the background to this epistle. It required the work of the high priest.

It was effectively the only real work of the high priest in a year, and I'm not saying the high priest didn't work, he did, he worked to do, but this was his big day. This was the day when it was essential for a high priest to do his work.

Christ Appointed as High Priest

And here we read in verse 17, that the Lord Jesus took this obligation upon himself to be made like unto his brethren, so that he might be fitted to be a suitable high priest. This thought's going to be developed later in the epistle, and you'll see in chapter 5, we'll just touch on this, you can fill out the flesh for yourself, but in chapter 5, speaking of the fact that high priests aren't just made because someone wants to be one.

They have to be born into it, they have to be appointed by God. Verse 5 of chapter 5 says, so also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest, but he that said unto him, thou art my son, today have I begotten thee, as he saith also in another place, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Then look at verse 10, or verse 9, being made perfect, complete, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him, called of God and high priest after the order of Melchizedek. You say, so what?

Well, were you reading carefully? Why in verse 6 is he a priest, and in verse 10 he's a high priest? Thou art a priest forever, thou art a high priest forever. Why? Well the answer comes, I suppose, because of the intervening verses, and the intervening verses are all to do with the one who in the days of his flesh offered up prayers and strong crying and tears unto the one who was able to save him out from death, and so on.

So before his cross work, there was a man, a real man, our Lord Jesus Christ, and of him it could be said, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Now the Lord was never a priest after the order of Aaron, came from the wrong tribe to start with.

In that sense, he was never a priest down here, although his behavior was ever priestly, as Luke's gospel would bear out. But here he is, not now a priest after the order of Aaron, but a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

He's a priest. Then there comes an account of his sufferings, and then he's described as a high priest. Why? Because as a consequence of his sufferings, he's brought many sons unto glory. And where he was solitary in verse 6, he's now the head of a whole order of priests in verse 10.

You see that? Those sufferings, well, the other picture you have is in John 12, I suppose, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

So, had it not been for the crosswork of Christ, that blessed man must forever live in isolation. His sinless humanity meant that there was nothing to debar him from going back to heaven at any point in his earthly ministry.

It's hypothetical, of course. But he could have taken humanity into glory at any time. But if he had done so, he must be solitary for eternity. If he's going to bring many sons unto glory, if he's going to be a high priest over a whole order of priests, if he's going to be the first fruit of a great harvest, if the one who is solitary in Psalm 22, when he cries, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

If he's to be the one who later in Psalm 22 says, in the midst of my brethren, will I sing praise unto thee, it can only be by way of the cross. What a work Christ did at Calvary. And the priest has now become a high priest.

The Believer’s Holy and Royal Priesthood

Well, who's the order of priests? Well, Peter tells us, doesn't he, in the second chapter of his first epistle, that those who've been saved by the grace of God, those who've been born again by the Word of God, he said, you're holy priests, and you've got a responsibility to offer up sacrifices that are acceptable to God, you've a Godward ministry.

And then a few verses later he tells us you're a royal priesthood, and as royal priests you have a manward ministry, and that is to show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

My brother, my sister, we're priests before God. Every one of us has been constituted a priest. How much do you know about your priestly ministry? How much do you know about your priestly responsibilities?

Do you consciously exercise them? Do you ever think on a day, I am a priest before God, both a holy priest and a royal priest? And you're certainly not a priest after the order of Aaron, because that was only ever a temporary priesthood that was terminated at Calvary.

The character of our priesthood is that of Melchizedek. We have a high priest who's a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Is this a new avenue of your Christian life that you've never considered?

What should I as an individual brother, what should I as a sister, how should I be thinking about and exercising my holy priesthood and my royal priesthood? What a dignity about the whole thing. Who was this Melchizedek?

He's going to be made much of in chapter 7 of Hebrews. But we need to know something about him because our high priest is a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, and we are amongst that priestly family that is the product of his strong crying and tears in the days of his flesh.

Melchizedek as a Picture of Christ

You know, one of the most interesting verses of the Bible, I think, is Genesis 14 and verse 18. And in that verse, you've heard brethren speak about the law of first mention, haven't you? You know, if you get an important subject, I know love, for example, something, a subject that's going to run right through the Bible, the first mention of it is often significant.

It kind of sets the theme of how this is going to be used. So for example, if I said, what's the epitome of love as far as the Bible's concerned, we look at the first mention of it, and it's not the love of a mother for her child.

We might think that at the human level, but the first mention of love in our Bible is when God said to Abraham, take Isaac, thine only, whom thou lovest, and get thee unto a place that I will tell thee of.

It's the father's love for a son is the way that love is first mentioned in the Bible. And the first time you read of love in Matthew's gospel or in Mark's gospel or in Luke's gospel, it's when heaven opened for the father to declare his love of the son.

Very beautifully in John's gospel, the first mention is, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish. Wonderful truth, isn't it?

That son whom he loved, he gave. So the law of first mention, it's not a law in that sense, it's just, it's a principle. It's an observable principle as we study our Bibles. Now you come to Genesis 14 and verse 18, and you have not one, you have five very important biblical subjects, and they're all mentioned in the one verse.

They're all clustered together. The verse says, and Melchizedek, so it's the first mention of him, king of Salem, Psalm 76 tells us that Salem would become Jerusalem, so it's the first mention in our Bibles of that city.

Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and you say, wait brother, no bread's been mentioned before in the Bible. You're correct. Good. I'm glad you're listening. Genesis chapter 3, in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, correct.

And you say, well wine's been mentioned before as well in Genesis 9, full marks. But when bread is mentioned for the first time, and wine is mentioned for the first time, both are identified with a curse, the one on Adam, the second on Canaan, or at least on creation, and the second one on Canaan, it was to do with Noah getting drunk.

No, this is the first mention in our Bible of bread and wine together, and it's associated with blessing. So, we've got this person, Melchizedek, we've got this place, Jerusalem, we've got this provision, bread and wine, and he was the priest of, oh, first mention of priest in the Bible, that's a handy P, and he was the priest of the most high God, El Elyon.

The first time that title is used in the Bible, it is used on a number of occasions, and particularly to do with the glory and the power of God as it will be seen in delivering His people and bringing them into their promised millennial rest.

Five important subjects then, and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the most high God. So, we find the first priest in the Bible, if we read on through chapter 14, we would find he's a man who blesses God in the name of Abraham, and he blesses Abraham in the name of the most high God.

He's got a mediatorial role. He's between Abraham and God. He is blessing one way and blessing the other. And that's the mediatorial work of a priest. He's got a manward ministry. He's got a Godward ministry.

Well, that's what Peter taught us in 1 Peter 2. And so, all those subjects together mean that if we had had time to look at them in more detail, you would find that really it's a wonderful foregleam of the millennial reign of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Right there, in Genesis 14, because the man who's king of Salem, which means peace, his own name, Melchizedek, Hebrew 7 tells us, means king of righteousness. So he's a king priest. He's associated with righteousness and peace.

He's associated with the fellowship of bread and wine. He's associated with the blessings of that age to come. This is our Lord Jesus who's being spoken of in this verse. And then when we come to Hebrew 7, the writer says, well, you're exactly right because the Spirit of God took Melchizedek and He made him to be a picture of Christ.

He said the man was without father and mother, without beginning of life or end of days. Now, Melchizedek did have a father and a mother, and there was a day that he was born, and there was a day that he died, but they're not recorded.

And we're told they were not recorded, these details of this important personage, because he was being made like unto the Son of God. He was a picture of Christ in His eternality. This must have come like a smack between the eyes to these priestly men to whom this epistle was written.

Everything of their lives had been wound up in the Aaronic priesthood. And they've now been told that God has finished with the Aaronic priesthood and all its display and trappings, and they're being reminded, look, there was a priesthood that predated Aaron's priesthood, a priesthood that goes a long ways further back than even the nation itself.

There was a day when this man Melchizedek met Abraham as he returned from the slaughter of the kings. We've got links with this, my brother, my sister. And the Melchizedek priesthood of Christ is of one who is a king priest.

Now, you know of the three anointed offices, prophet, priest, and king, God never allowed other than in Melchizedek, because he's a picture of Christ, God never allowed any other man to be a king priest.

Uzziah tried it, he died a leper. Saul tried it, and he lost the kingdom. God says, I'll have prophets who are priests, and I'll have prophets who are kings, but I'll not have priests who are kings. The role of king and priest belongs to Christ alone.

That incidentally is why God judged Babel so harshly, because Nimrod was setting himself up to be a king priest. The city he built was going to be the capital of the world's administration, and it was going to be the capital of the world's worship.

He'd built a temple city, that's what Babel was. It wasn't built to extend unto the heavens, not to reach the heavens that way. They weren't stupid, they didn't think they could touch the sky. The tower of Babel, when they said, let us build this so that we may reach unto the heavens, it wasn't in its extent, it was in its purpose.

They were going to start worshiping the created thing rather than the Creator, and all the Babylonian mysteries that came out of that. And this godless, violent man was going to set himself up in that temple city, if it was going to be the administrative capital of the world, then it demanded a king.

But if it was going to also be a temple for worship, it demanded a priest, and he was going to be that king priest, and God said, I'll not have it. I'll not have this counterfeit of Zion. I'll not have this counterfeit of Christ, and He judged the whole thing, and He divided the people, and He divided the very land that they stood upon.

God intends one temple city, it will be Zion, Psalm 48, beautiful for situation, the city of the great king, and the one who will rule and reign in Zion is both a king and a priest. It is the one who fulfills all the characteristics of the Melchizedek priesthood, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ’s Sympathy with the Tempted

Now, in order to be that high priest, and to fulfill that ministry, it was necessary that he himself would suffer being tempted, so that he would be able to succor those who are tempted. Because you see, the main role of the high priest was that he should be able to sympathize with the people.

So, I've been speaking to one or two folk this weekend, who very recently, relatively recently, lost their life's partner. My heart goes out to them. Tears come readily to my eyes when I speak to dear friends like that.

But you know, I can't sympathize with them, not in the true meaning of the word, because in the kindness of God, I haven't gone that way, at least not yet. My heart can be moved in empathy toward them.

You know, you feel sorrow for their sorrow. But I can't sympathize with a man who's lost his wife, because by the grace of God, I still have mine. And one of the reasons why Moses could never be a high priest over the people was because, well, they had grown up amongst the brick kilns and known the whip and the lash of the taskmaster.

He'd been in the palace. He didn't know what it was like to suffer in those circumstances. Moses wasn't equipped to be a high priest among the people. And every high priest that followed him, they weren't suffered to continue, the Hebrew epistle says, by reason of death.

That was a problem in itself. Suppose you could ever get to meet the high priest in a population of a couple of million folk. Suppose you could ever get to meet him. You would introduce yourself. You would tell him who you were, what tribe you were from, who your father was.

See if he could remember that the next day. And even then, you could tell him what your problem was, and he probably wouldn't be able to do anything about it. And suppose years later, you came to see the high priest again.

This time it's a different man, because the first one's died, and so it went on. We have a great high priest, and because he's a real man, he can sympathize with us. You say, can he? Yes. Verse 18 says, in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted.

And for amplification of this, we turn the page to chapter 4, and in that double negative of chapter 4, verse 15, we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we, apart from sin, yet without sin.

Really? I shudder when I think of some of the things I'm tempted to do. Was he ever tempted like that? You say, well, look, you've told us, brother, that you've emphasized the fact that the Lord Jesus is truly a man, but he's sinless.

You've said that he cannot sin. And perhaps some of you, and some of the younger ones especially, keen, eager, and so you spend perhaps a fair bit of time at your computer screen, and you're looking at all kinds of websites and soaking up all kinds of stuff, being extremely careful, by the way, with what you're doing.

If you've got a website that seems to be teaching the Bible, before you take anything else off it, run it by your overseers. Would you do that? They're the ones who watch for your soul, because otherwise there's a lot of stuff going under the radar of the men who are responsible for looking after you.

They don't know what you're looking at. They don't know what you're imbibing. And with deep respect and love for you, you don't know either, because you don't know enough yet. So be very careful what you're soaking in.

And you will find some of these websites, and they'll say, you know what? You get these boys who go on about the fact that Christ couldn't sin. There's no big victory in that. You see, the great thing they would say, the great thing about Christ was that though He could sin, He didn't.

You see, there is a clear victory in that, isn't there? Someone who withheld Himself back, no matter what temptation you threw at Him, and they would look at this verse, and they'd say, look, it tells us He's been tested in all points like we are.

And we've all got our own particular weaknesses, and well, you just think what you might be tempted and what thoughts run through your head in the course of a day. Is that how it was for our beloved Savior?

Emphatically not. Emphatically not. You say, well, what's the point then? If Christ couldn't sin, what was the point of Him being tempted? Surely the devil knew that Christ couldn't sin. Well, yes, he'd know that.

The prince of this world cometh, said the Lord Jesus. He's got nothing in me. But of course, what the devil did try to do with the Lord Jesus was try the same tactic as he tried with our first Father, and that was just simply to get Him to move in independence of the revealed will of God, not so much to tempt Him to do something that we would consider bad, a bad act, but just to do something in independence of the will of God.

Of course, that would be a bad act in itself, but he didn't make that out when he tempted our first parents. So what was the purpose of the temptation of the Lord Jesus? Well, the principal purpose, it was twofold, I would judge.

Christ’s Sinlessness and the Wilderness Temptation

Our brother Larry has taken us into the first chapters of the book of Matthew, and in Matthew chapter 1, as helpfully pointed out, that in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus, there's women who shouldn't be there ordinarily.

There's kings who ought to have been there and are excluded. And I judge what Matthew's showing us by the Spirit is that he's saying, now look, we're going to look at this man who's destined for the throne, and he's a real man.

That means he's body, soul, and spirit. In a previous meeting, we spoke about how what we are spiritually determines our morality and our morality will always govern our behavior. We're body, soul, and spirit.

So now, the Spirit of God says, now look at this genealogy, and in the genealogy of Christ, there's very clear spiritual taint. The spiritual taint is in the kings, like Amaziah, who are missing. These were the men who took the nation into deepest depths of idolatry.

There's spiritual taint in the lineage of Christ. There's moral taint in the lineage of Christ. It's been pointed out. There's Bathsheba, and there's Tamar, and there's Rahab. Very clear moral stain on the genealogy of Christ.

Then he points to that lovely woman, very different in character, but she's called Ruth, the Moabites, and because of the opposition of the Moabites to the progress of God's people, God said, a Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord until the tenth generation, nor even forever.

There was a physical taint. Though she was a lovely woman of character, there was a physical taint. She was a Moabites, and the Spirit of God says, here's the genealogy of Christ, physical, moral, spiritual taint, all down through it.

And then we see the Lord Jesus come, as has been referred to already by our brother. He comes to the banks of Jordan. He's going to come to be baptized. He read the Scripture. We read it carefully with him, didn't we?

That the people from the area and all around, they came and they were baptized of John. What does the next bit say? Confessing their sins. And when they were baptized of John, confessing their sins, suddenly a hush came upon the whole audience.

I can see them. I expect you can too. They're all up there at the banks of the Jordan. They're all round about, big throng of people, and suddenly there's clearly a stir. And they see this man. Some recognize him.

He's Jesus of Nazareth, and he's coming and he's speaking to John, and you could have heard a pin drop. There's some little private conversation which is recorded for us because John's saying, I can't baptize you.

I need you to baptize me. And the Lord's, come on, John. You've got a work to do. We've got to fulfill all righteousness. Get on with it. So, John and the Lord Jesus, they go out into Jordan and everyone's listening because everyone else who got baptized that day and the day before and the day before that had been baptized confessing their sins.

What's this man going to say? Silence was never so eloquent, was it? Not a word. And in Matthew's gospel, the Lord laid claim to his messiahship by not uttering a word. If he has come from the nation, and yet if he's without sin, then he must be the messiah.

But you see, if he's made that silent claim in Jordan, then the Spirit of God is going to immediately put it to the test. He's going to be put to the test so that he might be proven to be without sin.

And so in Matthew's gospel, immediately the Spirit led him into the wilderness. In Mark, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. No men were there to witness what was going on. This was one man, and he was under the gaze of angels for 40 days and 40 nights.