He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness.
Hebrews 5:2
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What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin but whether the sinner comes to him.
Whatever our offense, he deals gently with us. If we never come to him, we will experience a judgment so fierce it will be like a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth at us (Rev. 1:16; 2:12; 19:15, 21). If we do come to him, as fierce as his lion-like judgment would have been against us, so deep will be his lamb-like tenderness for us (cf. Rev. 5:5-6; Isa. 40:10-11). We will be enveloped in one or the other. To no one will Jesus be neutral.
Consider what all this means. When we sin, we are encouraged to bring our mess to Jesus because he will know just how to receive us. He doesn’t handle us roughly. He doesn’t scowl and scold. He doesn’t lash out, the way many of our parents did. And all this restraint on his part is not because he has a diluted view of our sinfulness. He knows our sinfulness far more deeply than we do. Indeed, we are aware of just the tip of the iceberg of our depravity, even in our most searching moments of self-knowledge. His restraint simply flows from his tender heart for his people. Hebrews is not just telling us that instead of scolding us, Jesus loves us. It’s telling us the kind of love he has: rather than dispensing grace to us from on high, he gets down with us, he puts his arm around us, he deals with us in the way that is just what we need. He deals gently with us.
Perhaps the most significant commentary yet written on the letter to the Hebrews was the work of John Owen. Of the twenty-three volumes that presently make up Owen’s collected works, seven of these are a verse-by-verse walk-through of Hebrews. This took him almost twenty years to complete, the first volume being published in 1668 and the last one in 1684. What does this great expositor of Hebrews say about what Hebrews 5:2 is trying to tell us? Owen writes that when we are told that the high priest “can deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward,” this means that he can no more cast off poor sinners for their ignorance and wanderings than a nursing father should cast away a sucking child for its crying… Thus ought it to be with a high priest, and thus is it with Jesus Christ. He is able, with all meekness and gentleness, with patience and moderation, to bear with the infirmities, sins, and provocations of his people, even as a nurse or a nursing father bears with the weakness…of a poor infant.
Jesus can no more bring himself to stiff-arm you than the loving father of a crying newborn can bring himself to stiff-arm his dear child. Jesus’s heart is drawn out to you. Nothing can chain his affections to heaven; his heart is too swollen with endearing love.
More than this, Christ’s “meekness and gentleness,” his “patience and moderation,” is not peripheral or accidental to who Christ is, as if his truest delights lie elsewhere. This very care, this gentle dealing with all kinds of sinners, is what is most natural to him. Owen goes on to say that Christ “does not, in his dealings with us, more properly or more fully set out any property of his nature than he does his compassion, long-suffering, and forbearance.” In other words, when Jesus “deals gently” with us, he is doing what is most fitting and natural to him.
Indeed, given the depths of our sinfulness, the fact that Jesus has not yet cast us off proves that his deepest impulse and delight is patient gentleness. Owen says that this gentle dealing by the high priest “as applied to Jesus Christ, is a matter of the highest encouragement and consolation unto believers. Were there not an absolute sufficiency of this disposition in him, and that as unto all occurrences, he must needs cast us all off in displeasure.” That’s Owen’s old-fashioned, clunky way of saying: Our sinfulness runs so deep that a tepid measure of gentleness from Jesus would not be enough; but as deep our sinfulness runs, ever deeper runs his gentleness.
But why? Why does Christ deal gently with us?
The text tells us: “since he himself is beset with weakness.”
Most immediately, this refers to the high priesthood generally.
This is clear from the next verse, which speaks of the high priest needing to offer sacrifice for his own sins (5:3), which Jesus did not need to do (7:27). But remember what we saw a few verses earlier in 4:15-Jesus himself, while “without sin,” is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” (same Greek word as in 5:2) as “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are.” Jesus had zero sin. But he did experience everything else that it means to live as a real human being in this fallen world: the weakness of suffering, temptation, and every other kind of human limitation (see also 2:14-18). The various high priests through Israel’s history were sinfully weak; Jesus the high priest was sinlessly weak (cf. 2 Cor. 13:4).
Contrary to what we expect to be the case, therefore, the deeper into weakness and suffering and testing we go, the deeper Christ’s solidarity with us. As we go down into pain and anguish, we are descending ever deeper into Christ’s very heart, not away from it.
Look to Christ. He deals gently with you. It’s the only way he knows how to be. He is the high priest to end all high priests. As long as you fix your attention on your sin, you will fail to see how you can be safe. But as long as you look to this high priest, you will fail to see how you can be in danger. Looking inside ourselves, we can anticipate only harshness from heaven. Looking out to Christ, we can anticipate only gentleness.
This is an excerpt from Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly.
To keep reading, click here to grab a copy of Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly.
Content excerpted from Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund, ©2020. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, crossway.org.
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