ACC ~ Hebrews 4 v14 - 5 v10

OVERVIEW:

To understand this passage in the light of Jesus’ resurrection or his passing through the heavens, Origen points out that Christ is everywhere and runs through all things, and we are no longer to think of him as being confined to a body as he was on earth. This view of the risen Christ’s ubiquity would not have been accepted by the Antiochene school. Origen believed that the saints, in departing this life, would ascend according to the purity of their spirits through the spheres and heavens to a clearer understanding of the mysteries. Nevertheless, as we become “friends of God” in this life, we will not learn by enigmas, but we will see and understand things clearly. This was Paul’s experience when he was caught up to the third heaven, but we can know even more than Paul and not have to come down from the third heaven as he did, if we take the cross and follow Jesus, who has passed through the heavens. As sons of the Father adopted through the Logos, we glorify the Father (CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA) and learn about him not through the types and enigmas but through the Son himself (ORIGEN).

All the Fathers were clear that Christ took on the form of sinful flesh and assumed all our weaknesses but without sin. He became fully human to procure our salvation by offering himself, the high priest and consecrator as a perfect sacrifice (HIPPOLYTUS, THEODORET, PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS). Furthermore, he suffered all our afflictions and endured grievous sorrows even to the point of death. However, every person of the Trinity plays a role in the mystery of salvation (LEO THE GREAT). God thus compassionately identifies with the weak and the poor, whom the world rejects. Therefore, the Lord’s throne is a throne of grace and mercy, not a throne of judgment (CHRYSOSTOM, EPHREM). “God, who is served by myriads of powers without number, who ‘upholds the universe by his word of power,’ whose majesty is beyond anyone’s endurance, has not disdained to become the father, the friend, the brother of those rejected ones” (SYMEON). What was not agreed upon until the famous Council of Chalcedon in 451 was how to speak about the two natures of Christ, the divine and human, in relation to these afflictions.

There is no consensus in these passages on the christological debate. Theodoret of Cyr states emphatically that no one could be so foolish as to attribute Hebrews 5:7-9 to the divinity; Chrysostom reiterates that point. How would it be possible, he argues, for God the Word to fear death, since he is the creator of the ages, unchangeable, immutable, and free of passion? (See also the comments of Nestorius, Theodore’s student, on Hebrews 1:3 and Hebrews 7:3.) Theodore asserts that Jesus’ suffering and even his cry from the cross ascertain the reality and fullness of his human nature. Cyril of Alexandria, by contrast, sees this as a divine drama performed by the divine nature for our edification: “He wept … to suppress our tears. He experienced fear … to fill us with courage.” He is keen to assert that the Logos did not suffer according to his divine nature. According to Ephrem, salvation is bestowed by the Lord only upon those who obey him.

Using the word intermingling with respect to Christ’s two natures, Gregory of Nazianzus argues that he comes down to our level in the form of a servant and receives an alien “form” to bear “the whole of me, along with all that is mine.” It is appropriate that a selection from Leo the Great ends the comments on this pericope. Pope Leo sent a famous letter from Rome to the emperor Flavian at the Council of Chalcedon that helped to settle the controversy. At the council, rules were established in the form of a definition, namely, that one could say things about the person of Christ that one would not say about the natures. In other words, Christ suffered, but not the divine nature. Jesus was God, but human nature is not divine. Mary was the mother of God, but one would not say that of her nature as a woman. Some of the following sentences from his letter, although not referring directly to Hebrews, help to see the consensus to which the great pope contributed: “Since, therefore, the characteristic properties of both natures and substances are kept intact and come together in one person, lowliness is taken on by majesty, weakness by power, mortality by eternity, and the nature which cannot be harmed is united to the nature which suffers, in order that the debt which our condition involves may be discharged. In this way, as our salvation requires one and the same mediator between God and human beings, the human being who is Jesus Christ can at one and the same time die in virtue of the one nature and in virtue of the other be incapable of death. That is why true God was born in the integral and complete nature of a true human being, entire in what belongs to him and entire in what belongs to us. … Each nature retained its characteristic without defect. … Each ‘form’ carries on its proper activities in communion with the other. … Because of this unity of person, which must be understood to subsist in a twofold nature, we read that the Son of man came down from heaven, … and conversely we say that the Son of God was crucified and buried.” According to Pope Leo the Great, the “mystery of great compassion” filled the whole world.

4:14 | Let Us Hold to Our Confession

A COMPARISON WITH MELCHIZEDEK. THEODORET OF CYR: In what has been commented on before, he made the comparison of the different kinds of rest and brought out that the rest promised to us is better than that pledged to Jews: to them he pledged the land of promise, whereas to us heaven. Here on the other hand he now develops the contrast of high priesthood and brings out that the high priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek is far better and greater than the levitical kind. Adopting once again exhortatory mode, he makes the comparison lest he seem to those still embracing the way of life according to the law to be hostile to the law and not rather defending the truth. … The apostolic verses also teach us this: they present him as having passed through the heavens, whereas the divinity of Christ the Lord has an uncircumscribed nature, is present everywhere and is near to everyone. The Lord himself also taught us this, “No one has ascended to heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven.” Though being here below and conversing with human beings, he claimed also to be on high. It is therefore necessary for us to realize that some names are appropriate to the divinity, some to the incarnation. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 4.

A SCHOOL FOR SAINTS. ORIGEN: I think that the saints, as they depart from this life, will remain in some place situated on the earth that the divine scripture calls “paradise.” This will be a place of instruction and, so to speak, a lecture room or school for souls, in which they may be taught about all that they had seen on earth. They may also receive some indications of what is to follow in the future, just as … in this life they had obtained certain indications of the future, seen indeed “through a glass darkly” and truly “in part,” which are revealed more clearly and brightly to the saints in their proper times and places. If any are “pure in heart” and of unpolluted mind and well-trained understanding, they will make swifter progress and quickly ascend to the region of the air until they reach the kingdom of the heavens, passing through the series of those “rooms,” if I may so call them, which the Greeks have termed spheres, that is, globes, but which the divine Scripture calls heavens. In each of these they will first observe all that happens there and then learn the reason why it happens; and thus they will proceed in order through each stage, following him who has “passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,” and who has said, “I desire that they also may be with me where I am.” Further, he alludes to this diversity of places when he says, “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” He himself, however, is everywhere and runs through all things. And we are no longer to think of him as being confined within those narrow limits in which he once lived for our sakes, that is, in that circumscribed condition which was his when he dwelt on earth among humans in a body like ours, so that it was then possible to think of him as being enclosed in some one place. ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 2.11.6.

FULLY ESTABLISHED AS DAUGHTERS AND SONS. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: The greatest possible likeness to the Logos, the hope of being established fully as adopted sons of the Father—this is our goal, a sonship that constantly glorifies the Father through “the great high priest” who deigned to call us “brothers” and “fellow heirs.” STROMATEIS 2.22.134.

VISIONS THAT NO BODILY NATURE CAN COMPREHEND. ORIGEN: You will ascertain a right understanding of this Scripture and others if in Christ you are fond of learning and you rise above learning “through a mirror” and “in an enigma,” desiring to rush to him who calls. And you will approach knowing “face to face,” as friends of your Father and teacher in heaven. For friends learn not through enigmas but by what is seen or by wisdom stripped of sounds, speech, symbols and types, attending to the nature of things perceived and the beauty of truth. If you believe that Paul was caught up to the third heaven and was caught up in paradise and heard what cannot be expressed, which no one may utter, you will then know the unexpressed things which were revealed to Paul when he descended from the third heaven. At once you will know more and greater things, after the revealing and descent, if you take up the cross and follow after Jesus, in whom we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. And you yourselves will pass through the heavens if you do not fail to follow him, rising above not only the earth and the mysteries of earth, but also heaven and its mysteries. For in God there are many greater things treasured up than these visions, which no bodily nature can attain unless it first is set free from all that is corporeal. For I am persuaded that God has stored up and keeps for himself many greater things than these, which the sun and moon and company of stars and even the holy angels know of, which God made by wind and flame of fire. He has done this so that he may reveal them, when all creation is set free from slavery to the enemy and obtains the glorious freedom of the children of God.” EXHORTATION TO MARTYRDOM 13.

4:15 | In Every Way Tempted as We Are

HE SYMPATHIZES WITH OUR WEAKNESSES. PHOTIUS: From both ways he establishes that “he will sympathize with our weaknesses”: first, because he is great and mighty, being the Son of God and very God himself, and, second, because he also as very man suffered and endured the testing of afflictions and the weakness of the flesh. For both these reasons he is in every respect made a partaker of our weaknesses. FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 4.15.

TRIUNE WORK OF OUR RESTORATION. LEO THE GREAT: By the saving cooperation of the indivisible divinity, whatever the Father, whatever the Son, whatever the Holy Spirit accomplishes in a particular way is the plan of our redemption. It is the order of our salvation. For if human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, had remained in the honor of their own nature and, undeceived by the devil’s lies, had not deviated from the law placed over them for their lusts, the Creator of the world would not have become a creature. The eternal would not have undergone temporality, and God the Son, equal to God the Father, would not have assumed the “form of a servant” and the “likeness of sinful flesh.”

Since, however, “through the devil’s envy death entered the world” and because captive humanity could only be freed in one way, namely, if that one would undertake our cause who, without the loss of his majesty, would become true man, and who alone had no contagion of sin, the mercy of the Trinity divided for itself the work of our restoration so that the Father was appeased, the Son was the appeaser, and the Holy Spirit enkindled the process. It was right that those to be saved should do something for themselves, and, when their hearts were turned to the Redeemer, that they should cut themselves off from the domination of the enemy. In regard to this, the apostle says, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” SERMON 77.

THE WORD SAVED THE FALLEN ADAM. HIPPOLYTUS: So let us in the future believe, blessed brethren, in accordance with the tradition of the apostles, that God the Word came down from the heaven into the holy virgin Mary. … Once he had taken flesh out of her and taken a soul of the human kind—a rational one, I mean—and had become everything that a human is, sin excepted, he might save fallen Adam and procure incorruption for such as believe in his name. AGAINST NOETUS 17.2.

THE ONE IN WHOM HUMAN NATURE WAS INNOCENT. LEO THE GREAT: What has been instilled in our hearts, if not that we should be “renewed” through them all “after the image” of that one who, remaining “in the form of God,” condescended to become “the form of sinful flesh”? He assumed all those weaknesses of ours that come as a result of sin, though “without” any part in “sin.” Consequently, he lacked none of the afflictions due to hunger and thirst, sleep and weariness, sadness and tears. He endured grievous sorrows even to the point of death. No one could be released from the fetters of mortality unless he, in whom alone the nature of all people was innocent, should allow himself to be killed by the hands of wicked persons.

Our Savior, the Son of God, gave both a mystery and an example to all who believe in him, so that they might attain to the one by being reborn and arrive at the other by imitation. Blessed Peter the apostle teaches this, saying, “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” SERMON 63.

UNITED TO THE WORD. THEODORET OF CYR: It was the nature assumed from us for our sake that experienced our passions without sinning, not the one who took our nature for our salvation. And in the beginning of this section Paul teaches us by saying, “Consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, faithful to him who made him.” … No one of orthodox conviction would call a creature the uncreated and unmade, God the Word, coeternal with the Father. Rather the one from the seed of David, who existed free from all sin, became our high priest and sacrifice by offering himself to God for us, having the Word … united to himself and joined inseparably. IN CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA’S LETTER TO EUOPTIUS, ANATHEMA 10.

FRIEND OF THE OUTCASTS. SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN: Almost everyone views those who are weak and poor as disgusting. An earthly king does not put up with seeing them, rulers turn away, wealthy people disregard them as not worthy of their notice, and when they encounter them they pass by them as if they did not exist. No one thinks it is a blessing to live among them. But God, who is served by innumerable millions of powers, who “upholds the universe by his word of power,” whose magnificence no one is able to endure, this God did not shun becoming father and friend and brother of these outcasts. Rather, in fact, he wanted to become incarnate, so that he might be identified as like us in every way, apart from sin, and might make us sharers in his glory and kingdom. O the depths of the wealth of his great goodness! O the depths of the unspeakable lowering of himself by our Master and God! DISCOURSE 2.4.

HE WILL TAKE OUR WEAKNESS INTO ACCOUNT. THEODORET OF CYR: The believers at that time were subjected to constant billowing by trials; so he consoles them by bringing out that our high priest not only knows as God the weakness of our nature but also as man had experience of our sufferings, remaining unfamiliar with sin alone. Understanding this weakness of ours, he is saying, he both extends us appropriate help and when judging us he will take our weakness into account in delivering sentence. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 4.

4:16 | The Throne of Grace

LET US COME BOLDLY. CHRYSOSTOM: Of what “throne of grace” is he speaking? That royal throne concerning which it is said, “The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.”

What is “let us come boldly”? We come boldly because “we have a sinless high priest” contending with the world. For he says, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”; for this is to suffer all things and yet to be pure from sins. Though we are under sin, the apostle means, yet the High Priest is sinless.

How is it that we should “approach boldly”? Because now it is a throne of grace, not a throne of judgment. Therefore, boldly, “that we may obtain mercy,” even such as we are seeking. For the affair is one of munificence, a royal largess.

“And may find grace to help in time of need.” He said well, “for help in time of need.” If you approach now, he means, you will receive both grace and mercy, for you approach “in time of need.” … Now he sits granting pardon, but when the end is come, then he rises up to judgment. For it is said, “Arise, O God, judge the earth.” “Let us come boldly” or, he says again, having no “evil conscience,” that is, not being in doubt, for such a one cannot “come with boldness.” On this account it is said, “At the acceptable time I have listened to you, and helped you on the day of salvation,” since even now, for those who sin after baptism, to find repentance is grace.

But lest when you hear he is High Priest, you should think that he stands, Paul immediately goes on to the “throne.” A priest does not sit but stands. Do you see that for him to be made High Priest is not of nature but of grace and condescension and humiliation?

Thus is it seasonable for us also now to say, “Let us draw near,” asking “boldly”; let us only bring faith, and he gives all things. Now is the time of the gift; let no one despair. Then will be the time of despairing, when the bridechamber is shut, when the king is come in to see the guests, when they who will be accounted worthy will have received as their portion the patriarch’s bosom; but now it is not as yet so. For still are the spectators assembled, still is the contest, still the prize is in suspense. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 7.6.

THE THRONE OF GRACE AND LOVINGKINDNESS. THEODORET OF CYR: As God, Christ the Lord has kingship by nature, an eternal throne: “Your throne, O God, is forever,” Scripture says, remember. But as man, high priest and apostle of our confession he hears the words “Sit at my right hand”; it is to this the divine apostle referred by “throne of grace.” In my view he hints also at the lovingkindness he will employ in judging, adding the comment, “so as to receive mercy and find grace by way of timely assistance”: making our approach in the present life and giving evidence of unalloyed and sincere faith, we shall on the day of judgment attain lovingkindness. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 4.

LET US IMITATE HIM. EPHREM THE SYRIAN: Let us imitate him so that we may be “without sin” like him, so that “we may approach with confidence the throne of his grace” in the hour of retribution. “Let us obtain his mercy,” for instance, through prayers, so that he may be with us in the hour of our fight with the devil. COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 4.