Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

GENESIS
made higher than the heavens.” Note the saying, Such a
High Priest is becoming to us, that is, appropriate, befitting.
Not that it is fortuitous that we have such a
High Priest, but that it is necessury: no other could fill
the office of the eternal Priesthood. Consider, then, the
High Priest of our Christian profession. “Living on
earth, yet undefiled with sin; keeping company with the
outcast, but only to bless and save them. Our purity is
soon lost; we leave it in our cradles. We lay off our
innocence with our child garments. But the Son of Man
lived a holy and undefiled life. How beautiful! How
wonderful! that human life of pain, hunger, sorrow,
thorns, temptation, and death, without sin!” (Heb. 2:18,
4:14-15, 10:19-25).
3. The true priest must be chuyacterized by sympathy.
Perhaps cornpassion would be the better word: pity for
the undeserving and the guilty (cf. Luke 23:34, Acts
7:60). “We need a priest who can be touched with the
feeling of our infirmities. He must be pure, to appear
before God. He must be filled with all human sympathies,
to win our love and bear our burdens.” It is the human
heart of Jesus that qualifies Him for the eternal priest-
hood. “It behooved him in all things to be made like unto
his brethren,” that is, to take upon Himself their human
nature, “that he might become a merciful and faithful high
priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation
for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2: 14-18). “These words
declare, not simply that he was made in all things like unto
his brethren, but that it was necessary that he should be
made in all things like unto his brethren, that he might
be a merciful and faithful high priest.” It was absolutely
necessary for Him to assume our human nature and ex-
perience its frailities, in order to qualify for this eternal
Priesthood. Heb. 13 :8--“ Jesus Christ is the same yester-
day, and today, and for ever.” Men sympathize with
own class or kind, but the rich can hardly
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