Did Our Heavenly Father Share In the Painful Experiences that Jesus Endured While on Earth?
Hebrews 2:17-18 says: Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.
I must confess, I’ve never really thought of the role of high priest as being one who “comes to the aid” of the people. Sure, that’s exactly what the high priest does when he offers up the sacrifice for the entire nation on the Day of Atonement, but as I have reread those words, they took on a much more personal, one-on-one tone. The high priest was not a one-on-one type of guy.
And I think that’s the point of what the writer to the Hebrews is communicating. In Christianity, it’s hard not to think of God in Jesus Christ as a relatable God, but for most other religions, and I believe Judaism would fall into that category, God is a much higher entity than us common folk. Jesus, in human flesh, was a common kinda guy. For a long time. He didn’t start His earthly ministry with a mega-church following. Which means to me that He spent a lot of time being rather normal.
What god wants to be considered “normal”? What god wants to be indistinguishable (for the most part) from that which he/she/it has created? The concept of God is one of distinction.
So when Jesus came to earth and all of the hoopla died down and His family blended into relative obscurity, it was an entirely new category. The high priest, who was supposed to be holier than life, in Jesus Christ, was now truly holier than life, but also just like you and me in so many ways. So much so, that He understood what it meant to be tempted to retaliation at the hands of bullies. He understood the hardship that came with the ritual work of providing for a family, participating in his earthly father’s work. He understood the desire to want to make the pain go away by any means necessary. He’d probably seen atrocities done to His countrymen by the Romans or other soldiers. He’d probably strained a muscle or two, stubbed his toe, hit his thumb with a hammer. Yet, our response in sin was His opportunity to feel that struggle and overcome. So, His coming to our aid is a personal intervention.
Our doctrine of the Holy Trinity makes it difficult for us mere mortals to grasp that one person of the Trinity that shares so much with the other persons of the Trinity would have to come to our aid. Doesn’t the Father feel and experience what the Son endured on the cross, or at the hands of those who threw stones at Him? To a degree, but the reality of how it truly exists between the different members of the Trinity is beyond our understanding, and so we take it on faith and with great joy that our Lord Jesus Christ has taken on that mantle of talking with our Heavenly Father to aid in the process of forgiveness. We believe He fervently pleads because He has fervently felt. He has been with us, and He really does understand and know our hurts.
Be confident that our experiences and our pains are worth the time that God puts into hearing them and responding to them. Amen.
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