Sunday Hebrews: Preaching Notes on Hebrews 4:14-5:10

We will wait till Hebrews 7 to discuss how we might preach Christ as high priest. Perhaps what is particularly interesting for reflection in 4:14-5:10 is the humanity of Christ. 4:15 says that Christ was tempted in all things as the audience, yet without sin. Indeed, Hebrews tells us that Jesus, unlike other priests, did not need to offer first for his own sins and then for the people.

These statements raise questions for us concerning Christ's humanity. As Christians we believe that Jesus is fully human (Council of Chalcedon, 451). This fact seems to imply that sinfulness is not an essential characteristic of humanity. Both Jesus and Adam before the Fall were fully human and yet not sinful. In the Wesleyan tradition, they are generally taken as hints of what is possible for humanity. That is not to deny that Adam and Christ's perfection probably surpassed what we can attain in this life. But perhaps the Spirit can empower a person to live without intentional sinning even while on earth.

But what does it mean to say that Jesus was without sin? Does it mean that he never forgot where he had left the donkey? Here we get into the very meaning of what sin is. Many would consider sin to be anything that "misses the mark," a definition that might extend sin to anything short of absolute perfection. Such a definition would be hard to find in the New Testament and is usually based on a fallacious understanding of language.

Even if the word "to sin" was used at some point in Greek history relation to archery and missing a target, this would not imply such a meaning stood behind the word's use in the New Testament. How a word is used at any point depends on, well, how it is being used at that point. The history of a word may or may not have any relevance whatsoever to the meaning of that word today (that includes the word's etymology).

Sin for Hebrews is not a trivial matter. It is not even a matter of flaring up and losing your temper. To sin in Hebrews is to disobey and disbelieve in a concrete and observable manner. It is not a matter of introspection, some wavering inside your head. As we will see, even the word conscience in Hebrews does not have this sort of modern psychological sense.

Sins of ignorance in Hebrews should probably not be equated with unintentional sins either in the Old Testament sense or in the way we sometimes speak of unintended sins today. These are primarily sins committed while ignorant of the truth of Christ. 10:26 thus speaks of sinning willfully after receiving a knowledge of the truth and refers to sins against faith toward Christ.

When the author says that Jesus was without sin, he therefore is not likely thinking about mistakes or about the kinds of unintended wrongs we do each other. Perhaps Jesus did not do these either, but these things are not likely what Hebrews is thinking here. Hebrews 4:15 refers to how Jesus behaved when tempted and tested. Like 1 Corinthians 10:13 says believers in general can, Jesus always bore temptation without sin, without making the wrong choice.

Interestingly, most of us likely have more difficulty identifying with the humanity of Jesus than with his divinity. His two natures are difficult for us to combine in a balanced way, and at different points of history Christians have overemphasized one to the detriment of the other.

However, in the New Testament the humanity of Jesus is quite clear. A full understanding of Jesus' divinity would take several centuries to unpack. In the New Testament his divinity is the stuff of poetry and exalted language as God helped the early Christians find categories to describe their exalted Lord. The pendulum would swing so that by the 400's, Eutychus was ready to disregard Christ's humanity as a drop in the ocean of his divinity. The church rejected this perspective. Christ's full humanity must be taken seriously as one of his two natures.