Day 22
Our Sympathetic High Priest
We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 4:15–16
In the face of this world’s trials and temptations, Satan doesn’t want us to look to Christ; he wants us to depend on ourselves and our long list of man-made solutions. When we do, he attacks in two areas. First, he’ll cause us to doubt God’s power and view our trials and temptations as too overwhelming, even for God. Once he has us focusing on our impossible circumstances instead of trusting the wisdom, power, and purpose of the Lord and has successfully diverted us from pursuing our relationship with Christ, he has led us into a more desperate condition.
Satan also assaults us by causing us to doubt God’s forgiveness in our ongoing struggle with sin. While Christ’s death and resurrection eradicated the penalty of sin, we have not yet escaped its presence. Daily sin attempts to regain its dominion over us through the flesh. Satan wants us to forget that “having been freed from sin, [we] became slaves of righteousness” (Rom. 6:18). By bringing continual accusations, Satan, if so allowed, will deflect a believer’s focus off the One who already paid the penalty for those very sins and cause him or her to lose heart, assurance, joy, and peace.
As a Christian, you don’t have to succumb to the wiles of the devil (see 1 Pet. 5:8–10). We have a living Lord who is all-powerful, and there is no trial too hard for us in His strength (see 2 Cor. 10:13; Phil. 4:19). And we have a risen Savior who conquered sin and Satan for us and has all the resources necessary to resist the devil and his assaults on us. A couple of days ago we noted that the final phase of Christ’s exaltation is His current ministry of intercession for Christians. It is in this very ministry, as He fulfills the role of our sympathetic High Priest, that our Lord in heaven comes to our aid in everything, so that we are more than conquerors (see Rom. 8:37). Jude 24 says, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy.” And it is that very ministry that ought to motivate you, if you have forgotten all He does for you each and every day, to return to your first love.
For a priest in the Old Testament to truly represent the people, he had to be “taken from among men” (Heb. 5:1). Only another man could be subject to the temptations of men, experience suffering like men, and thereby be able to represent them to God in an understanding and compassionate way. Jesus Christ could not be a true high priest unless He were a man. In sending His Son, Jesus Christ, God entered into the human world and felt everything that men will ever feel that “He might become a merciful and faithful high priest” (2:17). Thus Jesus is our perfect priest, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (4:15).
Jesus has an unequaled capacity for sympathizing with us in every danger, trial, or situation that comes our way, because He’s been through it all: “Since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted” (2:18). Jesus had perfect awareness of the evil and dangers of sin. Contrary to what we are inclined to think, His divinity made His temptations and trials immeasurably harder for Him to endure than ours are for us, because He never yielded, thus feeling their full assault.
There is a degree of temptation we will never experience because we will succumb long before we reach that point. Since Jesus never sinned, He took the full extent of all that Satan could throw at Him. Since He never succumbed, He experienced every temptation to the maximum. And no human has ever been perfectly holy as He was, so no human has ever had the sensitivity to sin He had. He knows everything we know, and a great deal we do not know, about temptation, testing, and pain. The Greek word translated “weaknesses” (4:15) refers to all the natural limitations of humanity, including liability to sin. Jesus knew firsthand the drive of human nature toward sin. His humanity was His battleground. He was victorious but not without the most intense temptation, grief, and anguish.
Despite the intensity of His battle, Jesus was “without sin.” The two Greek words translated “without sin” express the complete absence of sin. Though He was relentlessly tempted to sin, not the slightest bit of sin ever entered His mind, let alone was ever expressed in His words and actions.
Jesus’s righteous response to the temptation of sin qualifies Him to sympathize with us. Because He knows us and our struggles intimately, Jesus leads us down the path of victory over them. “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
Salvation Army evangelist Frederick Booth-Tucker certainly knew the helping hand of Christ. He once preached a message in Chicago on the sympathy of Jesus. Afterward a man came forward and asked him how he could talk about a loving, understanding, sympathetic God. “If your wife had just died, like mine has,” the man said, “and your babies were crying for their mother who would never come back, you wouldn’t be saying what you’re saying.”
A few days later, Booth-Tucker’s wife was killed in a train accident. After the Chicago funeral service the bereaved preacher looked down into the silent face of his wife and then turned to those who were attending. “The other day when I was here,” he said, “a man told me that, if my wife had just died and my children were crying for their mother, I would not be able to say that Christ was understanding and sympathetic, or that He was sufficient for every need. If that man is here, I want to tell him that Christ is sufficient. My heart is broken, it is crushed, but it has a song, and Christ put it there. I want to tell that man that Jesus Christ speaks comfort to me today.”1 The man was there, and he came and knelt beside the casket while Booth-Tucker introduced him to Jesus Christ.
Knowledge and sympathy for another’s struggles are important, but if you don’t have the resources to help someone in that struggle, your sympathy is limited. While I can pray for someone who is going through some spiritual struggle and empathize with his or her pain, I don’t have the power or the resources to change the situation that caused the trouble. But Jesus, our High Priest, does have the resources. “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).
The “throne of grace” is another name for God’s throne. It would have been a throne of judgment if Jesus had not sprinkled His blood upon it and transformed it into a throne of grace for all who trust in Him.
There is a distinction between “receiving mercy” and “finding grace.” Mercy is compassion toward our misery, and grace becomes the source of transforming power to overcome that misery. We can approach God’s throne with eagerness and confidence, because Christ is there interceding on our behalf, having made atonement for our sins. It is a throne of grace because He will dispense the grace we need for every concern of life.
According to 1 John 4:19, “We love, because He first loved us.” Your only hope of reinvigorating your love for Christ is to understand the depth of His love for you.