OUR GREAT HIGH PRIEST
B. His Sympathy and Compassion
Having attempted, then, to show the nature and prevalency
of the intercession of Jesus at the right hand of the Father, and how
mercifully and graciously it meets our case as burdened with countless sins
and pressed down with innumerable infirmities, we come now to the
consideration of the blessed Lord as our most compassionate and
sympathizing High Priest in the courts of heaven. Sympathy and
compassion are necessary qualifications of a high priest, as sustaining the
office of a mediator. A priest implies a sacrifice; a sacrifice implies a
sinner; a sinner implies a guilty, burdened wretch, justly deserving of the
wrath of God, and therefore in a most pitiable condition. For such a one the
high priest offers a sacrifice, that he may obtain thereby the pardon of his
sins. He must, therefore, compassionate the case of this guilty sinner,
that, as feeling sympathy with him, he may present prayer and supplication
on his behalf, that the sacrifice offered for his sins may be accepted. The
apostle, therefore, says, "For every high priest, taken from among men, is
ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts
and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on
those who are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with
infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people so also for
himself, to offer for sins." Hebrews 5:1-3. The high priest under the law
differed in this point from the blessed Lord in that he was himself a
sinner, and as such had to offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for
the sins of the people. By this offering for his own sins two things were
intimated—that as a sinner he himself needed a propitiating sacrifice; and,
he was reminded thereby that, though a high priest, he was really no better
than the sinner for whose sins he offered sacrifice. By this sense, then, of
his own sinfulness, thus vividly and distinctly brought before his eyes, he
was taught to have compassion on his fellow-sinners, and especially on those
who had sinned ignorantly, and were "out of the way" through backsliding or
infirmity, for there was no sacrifice provided for presumptuous sinners. Nu
15:27-31.
Our blessed Lord, then, as the great High Priest over the
house of God, would not have been suitable to us, as encompassed with
infirmities, unless he could compassionate our case, and sympathize with us
in our troubles and sorrows. It is true that, as perfectly free from sin,
both in body and soul, he had no necessity to offer sacrifice for himself;
but, as a most loving and tender High Priest, he could compassionate the
sinner without partaking of his sins. But this was not all—for even in
eternity, before he gave himself for his people, he had pity on them; and we
read that, apart from electing love or saving grace, in the days of his
flesh, he had compassion on the hungry multitude. But that he might become a
merciful and compassionate High Priest he had to learn sympathy with his
people in a very different way. In the wondrous depths of the wisdom and
grace of God, he learned to sympathize with us in our afflictions by a
personal experience of them. This is the apostle's declaration—"For we have
not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities;
but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Hebrews
4:15. And what a most encouraging conclusion does he draw from this most
blessed view of the compassion of our once suffering Head—"Let us therefore
come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find
grace to help in time of need." Hebrews 4:16.
We showed in the last chapter the close and intimate
connection that exists between the two main branches of our Lord's priestly
office—the sacrifice which he offered in the days of his flesh on earth and
his present intercession in heaven. So there is a similar connection between
the personal experience of suffering and temptation which the Lord endured
here below and his present sympathy above—with his tempted and suffering
people still in the wilderness. We must not, however, suppose the personal
experience of suffering was essential to his knowledge of it. As omniscient
in his divine nature, the Lord perfectly knows what his people suffer, for
"he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust." Psalm 103:14. In this
sense he searches and knows us, for he understands our thought afar off; he
compasses our path and our lying down, and is acquainted with all our ways.
Psalm 139:2,3. As the all-seeing, heart-searching God, he sees and knows all
our afflictions and sorrows as he knows everything in heaven and earth. But
he could only have the personal experience of suffering by becoming himself
a sufferer. This is a deep mystery; but as it is revealed to our faith in
the word of truth and is full of blessed consolation to the afflicted family
of God, we will approach it with all reverence as a part of our Meditations.
It was the eternal will of God that his dear Son should
take the flesh and blood of the children, and that he should take it without
sin, but not without suffering. Suffering was a part of the atonement—"For
Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he
might bring us to God." 1Pe 3:18. Our blessed Lord was "a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief," not only that by these sorrows and griefs he might
redeem us from the depths of the fall—but that he might experimentally learn
to feel for, and sympathize with us in our troubles and afflictions.
None can really sympathize with the afflicted but those
who have passed or are passing through similar afflictions. We might as well
expect an unmarried woman to sympathize with a bereaved widow, as for the
unafflicted to sympathize with the afflicted. The very word "sympathy" means
a "suffering with"; but how can there be a suffering with another if the
suffering itself be personally unknown? The primary element of the whole
feeling is lacking, if suffering be absent on the part of the sympathizer.
Thus, in order that our blessed Lord might personally, feelingly, and
experimentally sympathize with his suffering people, there was a necessity
that he must himself suffer. O mystery of mysteries! O wondrous heights and
depths of redeeming love! that the Son of God should suffer, not only that
he might redeem, but that he might personally feel for and experimentally
sympathize with his suffering people!
But though we feel our inability and inadequacy to open
up this sacred subject, yet, as we have proposed it as a part of our
Meditations, let us now examine this point a little more closely, and see
what sufferings the blessed Lord endured that he might learn thereby to
sympathize with his afflicted ones, who drink of his cup and are baptized
with his baptism.
In viewing these, we cannot well distinguish between the
Lord's sufferings as meritorious and his sufferings as intended to teach him
compassion and sympathy; for all his sufferings were a part of his atoning
sacrifice—"By his stripes you were healed." 1Pe 2:24. He that was "wounded
for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities" has also surely
"borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." Isa 53:4,5. In fact, by the
sorrows and sufferings of the blessed Lord several purposes, according to
the sovereign will and wisdom of God, were at once accomplished, and
principally these following:
1. God was glorified, as the Lord himself said, "Now is
the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." John 13:31. "I have
glorified you on the earth; I have finished the work which you gave me to
do." John 17:4. By his meek endurance of the sufferings laid upon him, and
by his voluntary and patient obedience to the will of his heavenly Father,
through the whole course of his suffering life, from the manger to the
cross. God was supremely glorified.
2. The work of redemption was fully accomplished.
3. He learned obedience by the things which he suffered.
Hebrews 5:8.
4. He left us an example, that we should follow his
steps. 1Pe 3:21.
5. He was made perfect; Hebrews 5:9; that is, he became
by suffering perfectly qualified to sustain his high office as a merciful
and faithful High Priest, who, "in that he himself has suffered being
tempted, is able to help those who are tempted." Hebrews 2:17,18.
It is the last point which chiefly demands our present
consideration, as contemplating him now in our nature at the right hand of
the Father. The sympathy and compassion of the blessed Lord, as now
exercised in the courts of heaven, are chiefly shown under the following
circumstances:
1. To his people under affliction.
2. To his people under temptation.
1. The Lord's people are all, without exception, an
afflicted people. This was their promised character from the days of old—"I
will also leave in the midst of you an afflicted and poor people, and they
shall trust in the name of the Lord." Zep 3:12. Their afflictions, indeed,
widely vary as regards nature, number, length, degree, but all find the
truth of that solemn declaration that we must "through much tribulation
enter into the kingdom of God."
1. Thus, some are afflicted in body, racked with
continual pain, or suffering perhaps for years from some severe illness
which may not much shorten life, yet render life often a burden. If health
be the greatest, as all must admit, of temporal blessings, the lack of it
must be the greatest of all temporal miseries. The blessed Lord, indeed, had
no personal experience of sickness, for in his holy, immortal body there
were the seeds neither of sickness nor death; but he experienced bodily
pain, as when scourged by Pilate's command, when he wore the crown of
thorns, when struck and buffeted by the crude Roman soldiery, and more
especially when nailed to the cross. Thus, even in the matter of bodily
suffering, our gracious Lord can sympathize from personal experience with
his poor afflicted family still in the flesh who are racked with pain on
their bed of languishing.
2. Many again of the Lord's people are deeply tried in
providence. Poverty is the daily cross of many of the excellent of
the earth. But what a personal experience their gracious Lord had of this
sharp trial, who had neither purse nor bag, but was maintained by the
contributions of the women who ministered to him of their substance. Luke
8:3. Did he not hunger in the wilderness, and before the barren fig-tree?
Did he not thirst at Samaria's well and on the cross? And did he not say of
himself, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the
Son of man has nowhere to lay his head?" Matthew 8:20. He who for our sakes
became poor that we through his poverty might be rich, not only spiritually
made himself poor by laying aside his divine glory, but actually and
literally made himself poor by voluntarily submitting to the pain and
pressure of bodily poverty.
3. Others of the Lord's people are subject to cruel
persecutions. This, indeed, has been the lot of all the saints from the
days of righteous Abel, and will be to the end of time, for "all that will
live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." Fire and faggot are
now unknown, and the spirit of the times, at least in this country, will not
allow fine and imprisonment, and the other acts of violence which our godly
forefathers endured for conscience sake; but the scourge of the tongue is
still wielded, heads cut off instead of ears, and reputations branded
instead of foreheads. But what a deep and personal experience had the
blessed Lord of persecution from the day that Herod sought his life until he
was nailed to the cross! How every word was watched which fell from his
lips, every action misinterpreted, his character calumniated as a glutton
and a wine-bibber, and shame and contempt poured upon him until, as the
consummation of hatred, and to cover him, as they thought, with everlasting
ignominy, they crucified him between two thieves.
4. Others of the Lord's people suffer from the
treachery of false friends. Had not our blessed Lord an experience of
this in the treachery of Judas, so that he could say, "He who eats bread
with me has lifted up his heel against me."
But it is not necessary for us to dwell longer on those
temporal afflictions which press down so many of the Lord's people, but in
which their gracious Head still sympathizes with them. He who wept at the
grave of Lazarus; he who had compassion on the widow of Nain, Luke 7:13, on
the beseeching leper, Mark 1:41, on the man possessed with a devil, Mark
5:19, on the blind, Matthew 20:34, and on the fainting, scattered
multitudes, Matthew 9:36, surely pities and sympathizes with his people in
all their temporal sorrows, however diversified.
These, though heavy, are not the severest afflictions
which befall the saints of the Most High. We will now, therefore, divert our
thoughts to those spiritual sorrows and troubles which all the family of God
experience, though these, too, vary widely in number and degree, yet are
allotted to each living member of the mystical body of Christ, according to
the appointed measure. In these, as peculiar to the Lord's people, Jesus has
a special sympathy with his afflicted people, for of this cup he drank to
the very dregs, and with this baptism he was baptized with all its billows
and waves rolling over him. Whatever spiritual troubles and sorrows the
Lord's people may be called upon to endure, their gracious Lord and Master
suffered much more deeply than their heart, however deeply lacerated, can
feel or their tongue, however eloquent, can express. But we will look at
some of these SPIRITUAL AFFLICTIONS, and endeavor to show how the blessed
Lord had a personal experience of them, and thus learned to sympathize with
his people under them.
1. The chief burden of the Lord's living family is sin.
This is the main cause of all their sighs and groans, from the first
quickening breath of the Spirit of God in their hearts until they lay down
their bodies in dust.
But it may be asked, what experience could the blessed
Lord have had of sin. Seeing he was perfectly free from it both in body and
soul? It is indeed a most certain and a most blessed truth that our gracious
Redeemer "knew no sin;" 2Co 5:21; was "a lamb without blemish and without
spot;" 1Pe 1:19; and was "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from
sinners." Hebrews 7:26. Still, sin was so imputed to him, and the Lord so
"laid on him the iniquities of us all," that he felt them just as if they
had been his own. "He was made sin for us;" its guilt and burden were laid
on his sacred head, and so became by imputation his, that it was as if he
had committed the sins charged upon him.
Take the following illustration. View sin as a debt to
the justice of God. Now, if you are a surety for another, and he cannot pay
the debt, it becomes yours just as much as if you had yourself personally
contracted it. The law makes no distinction between his debt and yours; and
the creditor may sell the very bed from under you to pay the debt, just as
if you were the original debtor. So the blessed Lord, by becoming Surety for
his people, took upon him their sins, and thus made them his own. How else
can we explain those expressions in the Psalms, which are evidently the
language of his heart and lips, such as the following? "For innumerable
evils have compassed me about; my iniquities have taken hold upon me, so
that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head;
therefore my heart fails me." Psalm 40:12. Does not the Lord here speak of
his iniquities taking hold upon him, so that under their weight and burden
he could not look up, and that they were more in number than the hairs of
his head?
2. With the burden and weight of sin comes the wrath
of God into the sinner's conscience; and this is the most distressing
feeling that can be well experienced out of hell. So the blessed Lord, when
he took the burden and weight of sin, came under this wrath. This was "the
horrible pit" into which he sank, Psalm 40:2, "the deep mire in which there
was no standing," "the deep waters where the floods overflowed him." Psalm
69:2. This made him say, "For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones
are burned as a hearth. My heart is smitten and withered like grass, so that
I forget to eat my bread. For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my
drink with weeping, because of your indignation and your wrath; for you have
lifted me up and cast me down." Psalm 102:3,4,9,10. None who read the word
of truth with an enlightened eye can doubt that these Psalms refer to the
blessed Lord, and that it is he who speaks in them.
3. Then there is the curse of the law, which peals
such loud thunders, and sinks so deeply into the heart and conscience of the
awakened sinner. But did not Jesus endure this too? Surely he did, both in
body and soul, as the apostle declares, "Christ has redeemed us from the
curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written. Cursed is
every one that hangs on a tree." Ga 3:13.
4. Then there are the hidings of God's countenance,
the withdrawings of his presence, and his forsakings of the soul that still
hangs upon him and cleaves to him. But cannot our gracious Lord here deeply
sympathize with his people who are mourning and sighing under the hidings of
God's countenance, for was not this the last bitter drop of the cup of
suffering which he drank to the very dregs? Did heaven or earth ever hear so
mournful a cry as when the darling Son of God, in the agony of his tortured
soul, cried out, "My God, my God! why have you forsaken me?"
Thus, whatever in number or degree be the spiritual
griefs and sorrows of the Lord's people; whatever convictions, burdens,
sorrows, distresses, pangs of conscience, doubts, fears, and dismay under
the wrath of God, the curse of the law, the hidings of his face, and the
withdrawings of the light of his countenance they may grieve and groan
under. Jesus, their blessed Forerunner, experienced them all in the days of
his flesh, and to a degree and extent infinitely beyond all human
conception. Can any heart conceive, or any tongue express what the dear
Redeemer experienced in the garden of Gethsemane, when his soul was
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; when he thrice prayed that the cup
might pass from him, and being in an agony, prayed more earnestly, so that
his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground? Might
he not truly say, "Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold and
see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, with
which the Lord has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger." La 1:12.
An awakened sinner, under divine quickening, has to bear
but the weight of his own sins; but Jesus had to bear the sins of millions.
It is at best but a few drops of the wrath of, God, and that wrath as
already appeased, that fall into a trembling sinner's conscience; but Jesus
had to endure all the wrath of God due to millions of ransomed
transgressors. It is but the distant peals of the law which sound in a
convinced sinner's soul; but the whole storm burst upon the head of the
Surety. In a little wrath God hides his face from his Zion for a moment; but
in great wrath he hid his face from his dear Son. Thus, whatever be the
spiritual sorrows and troubles of afflicted Zion, even though she be "tossed
with tempest and not comforted," in all she has a Head who suffered
infinitely more than all the collective members. They do but "fill up what
is behind of the afflictions of Christ;" Col 1:24; but O how small is that
measure of affliction compared with his! It was, then, his personal
experience of these spiritual afflictions which makes the blessed Lord so
sympathizing a High Priest at the right hand of God. Though now exalted to
the heights of glory, he can still feel for his suffering saints here below.
The garden of Gethsemane, the cross of Calvary, are still in his heart's
remembrance, and all the tender pity and rich compassion of his soul melt
towards his afflicted saints; for,
His heart is touched with tenderness.
His affections melt with love.
But the gracious Lord can also sympathize with his saints
under all their TEMPTATIONS. This is a deep mystery, but not more
deep than blessed; and as it is pregnant with consolation to the tried and
tempted children of God, we will attempt to unfold it to the best of our
ability. The Holy Spirit expressly declares that our blessed Lord "was in
all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Hebrews 4:15. This,
then, we must accept as a most solemn and, as viewed by faith, a most
blessed truth. Nor must we limit the language of the Holy Spirit, but as he
has said "in all points," so must we receive it on the testimony of him who
cannot lie.
But as the word "temptations" has in the original two
significations, including in its meaning "trials" as well as "temptations"
properly so called, we will extend the sense of the term, and view our
Lord's trials, and our Lord's temptations. The distinction between them is
sufficiently evident. Trials may have God for their author, but not
temptations, for we are expressly told that God tempts no man. James 1:13.
Indeed, as temptation implies the presentation of sin to the mind, it would
make God the Author of sin to make him the Author of temptation. But do we
not read, it may be asked, that God "tempted Abraham?" Genesis 22:1. The
word "tempted" there should be rendered "tried," for in Hebrew as well as
Greek the same word means to tempt and to try. God did not tempt Abraham to
sin, as Satan tempted Eve, or as he tempted David, but "tried" him, as the
apostle speaks, Hebrews 11:17, whether his faith was genuine.
Thus our blessed Lord was tried, and tried by God
himself; for he is "a stone, a tried stone," of God's own laying. Isa 28:16.
When the Father provided him with a body in which to do his will, he became
God's servant, as he speaks, "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; my elect, in
whom my soul delights." Isa 42:1. As a servant he yielded obedience, for he
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Php 2:8. His
obedience was a tried obedience. God tried it; men tried it; devils tried
it; enemies tried it; friends tried it. The weakness and ignorance of his
disciples; the treachery of Judas; the desertion and denial of Peter; the
craft and malice of the Scribes and Pharisees; the unbelief and infidelity
of the people; the sins by which he was surrounded; the sinless infirmities
of the flesh and blood which he had assumed—as hunger, thirst, and
weariness, the long journeyings, nightly watchings, the daily spectacle of
sickness and misery—all these, and a thousand other circumstances beyond our
conception tried the blessed Lord during his sojourn here below. But he bore
all that was laid upon him. The purity of his human nature, in which were no
seeds of sin actual or original, the strength of his divine nature with
which it was in union, and the power of the Holy Spirit, which rested on him
without measure, all concurred to bring him through every trial, and give
him victory over every foe.
But by these trials he learned to sympathize with his
tried people. He is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Hebrews
4:15. We may then freely go to him with our trials, may spread them before
his face, as Hezekiah did the letter of Sennacherib in the temple, may feel
a sweet persuasion that he sympathizes with us under our heavy burdens, and
will alleviate them, or support us under them, or if they be not removed
will sanctify them, and make them work for our spiritual and eternal good.
Thus faith in the sympathy of our blessed Lord is wonderfully calculated to
subdue fretfulness, murmuring, and self-pity, to teach us submission and
resignation under afflictions, and to reconcile us to a path of sorrow and
tribulation. It brings before our eyes the sufferings of the blessed Lord
here below, the trials which he endured, and his holy meekness and
submission under them when he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a
sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. If we compare
our sorrows and troubles with his—how light they seem! This works submission
to them, and when we can look up in faith and love, and see the once
suffering Lord now sympathizing with us under our afflictions, it makes even
sorrow sweet.
A conformity to the dying image of Jesus is hereby
wrought into the soul, a fellowship given of his sufferings, a crucifixion
of the flesh with its affections and lusts, a deadness to the world, a
mortification of the whole body of sin, a separation of heart and spirit
from everything ungodly and evil, and a communion produced with the blessed
Lord at the right hand of the Father.
Thus we may bless God for our afflictions and trials, our
sicknesses, our bereavements, our losses and crosses, our vexations and
disappointments, our persecutions, our being despised by the world and
graceless professors, our doubts, fears, and exercises, our sighs and groans
under a body of sin and death, and, in a word, for every footstep in the way
of tribulation which brings us nearer to Jesus, and opens to us more and
more of his love and blood, grace and glory, sympathy and compassion, and
all that he is as a merciful and faithful High Priest, whom God has raised
from the dead, and seated at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far
above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that
is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and has
put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things
to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all.
Eph 1:21-23.