Hebrews #42 - 5:7-10
Speaker Notes Learn Obedience from Suffering
Collect for Ash Wednesday
Almighty and Everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness may obtain of thee, the God of All Mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness: through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, One God Forever and Ever. Amen.
Hebrews 5:7-10
7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Barclay's Daily Study Bible:
The Greek phrase for "He learned from what he suffered" is a linguistic jingle--emathen ( G3129) aph' ( G575) hon ( G3739) epathen ( G3958) . And this is a thought which keeps recurring in the Greek thinkers. They are always connecting mathein ( G3129) , to learn, and pathein ( G3958) , to suffer. Aeschylus, the earliest of the great Greek dramatists, had as a kind of continual text: "Learning comes from suffering" (pathei mathos). He calls suffering a kind of savage grace from the gods.Barclay's Daily Study Bible:
Hebrews: A Commentary, by Luke Timothy Smith (2006), page 151:
Even though Jesus as "Son" came into the world to do God's will, the voice of God was new every day for him also. Like us, Jesus had to respond moment by moment, and therefore "learn obedience" precisely in and through the stress and pain generated by constantly allowing his present understanding of God and of God's will to be challenged and relativized by the voice of God that he heard within the circumstances of his every-day life. Hebrews says that Jesus was "perfected" by this process of experiential learn-ing. In what respect was he perfected, made mature, complete? Hebrews must mean that Jesus grew into his full identity as God's Son. Although he came into the world as Son, he could only "finish" that project moment by moment, in every response of obedient hearing, and could be "perfected" completely only through the final yes to God in the suffering that is death.
Here is the distinctive way in which the author of Hebrews brings together his remarkably high Christology (Jesus is the "preexistent" Son of God) and remarkable emphasis on Jesus' humanity (Jesus is like us in every respect, apart from sin). He under-stands Jesus precisely as growing into his stature as Son through the process of obedient faith, through a process of creative suffering.