Hebrews 5:7-11 Who in the days of his flesh… "Though He was a Son, He learned." Though a Son, i.e., though He was so exalted a being, not a mere servant like the angels, but One whom the angels worship. Not a servant like Moses or like Aaron, but the Son by whom God made the worlds, yet even He had something to learn, and learned it in the days of His flesh. There is a mystery here, yet if we are content to inquire instead of speculate we shall find sufficient answer. There is light in the word " obedience." He learned not the art and wisdom of commanding, this belonged to His Eternal Nature. But obedience is an art which belongs of right to lower ranks of being. The Highest cannot, as the Highest, obey, for there is no authority above His own. Obedience may be taught from a throne, but it cannot be learned by one who occupies it. Thus, even the Son of God might learn obedience if He saw fit to empty Himself of Divine prerogative and take upon Him the form of a servant, wearing our human nature and accepting our duties and temptations. Therefore because obedience is so foreign to the Divine nature, it is a thing which the Son of God could learn by becoming incarnate, and could only learn by stooping to share our discipline and bear the Divine will as a yoke instead of wield it as a sceptre. Viewing the Sonship of Christ under another aspect, it might have been thought that a perfect Son would have needed no more teaching, and that when found in fashion as man, His filial spirit, His perfect readiness to obey would have sufficed. But this is denied. Having become a servant, having come down under the yoke of commandments, it is insisted that the Son went right through the actual course of human discipline, evading nothing, missing nothing, until He crowned His obedience by submission, even unto death. Though a Son He learnt obedience by suffering. Could He not learn it otherwise? We know that suffering is needful in our case because our spirits are so faulty, because we are so prone to err and go astray. But a Son, a perfect Son I surely such an One having no share in our defects might have learnt obedience without pain! Can we be wrong in such a view? Perhaps not. If a faultless Son began life in a faultless world; if He were born into a sinless family, or were created in a paradise where no fall had taken place, He might possibly have learned obedience by a painless and unfailing life of conformity to the Father's will. But whatever might have been possible in heaven or in paradise, painless obedience was not possible in the moral wilderness. In a world where sin abounded Christ had constantly to choose between affliction and iniquity. Without using miraculous powers to screen Himself from the natural consequences of His actions, He was obliged to suffer. The suffering was at once the measure and test of His obedience, and thus it was He passed through pain to perfectness as a learner in the school of human life. This must be so, yet still our hearts cry out in pity for One so holy and true — surely it was not needful for Him to suffer so much! Could not the Father have spared His well-beloved Son such extreme agonies while obedience was being learned? The answer is clear. This might have been possible under some circumstances. An easier life might have been laid out for Jesus as it is laid out for most of us. He might have lived obediently in the midst of plenty. Why then should the Father be pleased to set His well-beloved Son such agonising tasks, why be pleased to bruise and put to grief the Son who always did His will? That is a question which admits of many answers. It is one which none but the Father Himself can answer altogether, yet part of His answer shines before us here. The Son of God came not to learn obedience for Himself, but for our sakes. He came not merely to become perfect As a man before God who reads the heart, but to be visibly perfect before men who can only read actions. He came to be made thus visibly perfect not only as a man, but as a Saviour and as the Author of obedience in us. Look at a few reasons why death, the death of the Cross, was needful to this end. Christ came to set us an example. He came to do much more than this, but that was one great object of His incarnation. But if He had stopped short of obedience unto death, He would have left no example how we ought to act when shut up to the dilemma of being obliged to either sin or die. Christ came to magnify Divine law, to make it venerable in our sight, and to declare the entire rightness of God's will. While God's will appoints us a path of flowers, and while duty brings honour and reward, gratitude and trust are easy. But when duty runs straight into a Red Sea! When it leads to a fiery furnace! When the soul, intent on doing right, finds itself alone, misunderstood, and persecuted, then is the time when the enemy finds a listening ear for his slander, "God is careless," "God is cruel," "God is unfaithful to those who are most faithful to Himself." Where then would be the value of Christ's testimony to the goodness of God's will when most in danger of being doubted, if He Himself had been spared this terrible temptation? "Be thou faithful unto death"; we can hear that from Christ. Christ came to reveal the Divine sympathy with us in all our afflictions, but that revelation would have been very partial if destitute of any kindly light to shed on dying eyes. We are not all called to martyrdom, hut we have all to die. But where could we have seen the sympathy of Christ with ourselves as mortal, if He had left the world by a private door of rapture? Wherefore to be our sympathetic Friend in the dark valley, Jesus was obedient even unto death. Christ came to preach the forgiveness of sins, to declare the righteousness of God in the act of forgiveness, to commend the love of God to all men, including the very chief of sinners and the most malignant of His foes; and in all these things He must have failed had His obedience stopped short of death. Wherefore Jesus was obedient unto death. Christ came to bring life and immortality to light, and for this end it was needful He should die and rise again. The mere continuance of His life would have had no revelation of a future life to us. But an emptied grave visibly spoils death, breaks the bars of Hades, preaches resurrection to us, who have to die, and reveals Jesus as the first-fruits of them that slept. Wherefore that He might be the Author of an eternal salvation and bring life end immortality to light, the Son was obedient unto death. (T. V. Tymms.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; |
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