We have been looking at the implications of the incarnation. So far, we have looked at the first two:
1. Jesus came to reveal God to us.
2. Jesus came to defeat death and take the fear of death away from us because He has also defeated the devil.
The third implication is that Jesus came to be our great sympathetic High Priest.
We are looking at Hebrews 4 that talks about this in the clearest detail. Have you ever had someone come to you when you were going through a difficult trial? They said to you, “I know how you feel.” Yet, if that person has not gone through the things that we are going through they do not know how we feel or what we are going through and that can be a bit disingenuous and we might even recoil against that and say, “No, you don’t know. You have not been there. You haven’t seen what I have seen. You haven’t felt what I felt. You really don’t understand.” So, that could have the same idea with God. If God is so different than us; He is so holy, powerful, and knowledgeable, then how can He understand in any sense what you and I go through? How could He empathize with us? He is wholly other.
We come to this passage of Scripture and the Lord wants us to know that He does sympathize and understand because Jesus Christ has been there. He has been there because He was incarnate. Hebrews 4:14-15 says, “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 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.” When Jesus Christ was on earth, He faced the same kind of temptations as you and me. That does not mean He had every detail and type of temptation or every circumstance possible, but every kind of temptation. Every issue of temptation, and everything that temptation of sin can come against and bombard us with, Jesus faced. He faced it in its full fury because He was the holy Son of God, and He had the devil working against Him as well. So, He was constantly under the bombardment of the highest level of temptation possible. Our passage tells us He faced all that temptation without sin. So, no matter the level of temptation that came His way, He never faltered, never failed, and never gave in. Although He has been where we have been and has felt what we have felt to the highest intensity possible, He never faltered and never failed. That should give us great comfort.
In fact, it goes on to make an application of this in Hebrews 4:16. It says, “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.” The first part of this verse tells us that because Christ has been there and He is our Great High Priest, we can go to Him and to the Father through Him. We can draw near with confidence to the “throne of grace.” What a beautiful way of expressing it. The throne of grace. Coming before God Himself, His throne, described as grace, through Jesus Christ our High Priest is a precious promise and opportunity. He says we can do so with confidence . . .
