Hebrews 5:1-8 - Our Sacrificial Great High Priest

Hebrews 5:1-8

Qualifications for High Priesthood

1 For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2 He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. 3 Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins. 4 And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.

A Priest Forever

5 So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him:

“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.”

6 As He also says in another place:

“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek”;

7 who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, 8 though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.

The Son of God, Jesus Christ, is our great High Priest, appointed by God the Father to sacrifice for our sins and offer us as gifts to the Father.  He also offered Himself as a perfect and spotless Lamb as a gift to His Father while simultaneously acting as our priest to mediate between Him and us.  The old priesthood was chosen out of the tribe appointed by God but put in place by men while Jesus as the eternal Priest was chosen and appointed by God directly and not by His own choice or that of any mere mortal.  Because of this position and the mortal side of Jesus, He is able to show us compassion after suffering for our sin while knowing no sin Himself (Isaiah 53:6, 2 Corinthians 5:21) to demonstrate He understands our ignorance in sinning and yet acknowledges our accountability to the Father with a debt to pay.  Sin must be covered as the first animal was slain by God for us in Genesis after the fall into sin and so He shed His own blood in giving His life for ours as the spotless and perfect man and Lamb of God!  He was required as High Priest to offer a sacrifice for sins as called by God the Father according to the mystery of the gospel which was once hidden in the sacrificial animal system of the Old Testament temple and Jesus fulfilled this in Himself as both eternal priest like Melchizedek and the perfect sacrifice not ever needing repeating.  He always was and always will be our great High Priest who forever continues to mediate for us because He suffered willingly even when suffering greatly as a man because His perfect divine nature saw Him through the pain and death to raise Himself from death of the body to eternal life to prove and pave the way for our own confidence in our resurrection at the judgment day we face after death.  Though He is God’s Son He is Adam’s also at the same time so in this sense He learned to obey His Father to endure the suffering (Hebrews 12:2-3) to pay the price for our sin as a perfect substitute and divinely eternal High Priest to offer Himself once for all (Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 10:10) to cover our sins and guarantee eternal life in the Father’s presence by grace as sinless in the righteousness of Christ.  Jesus is our sacrificial great High Priest!