Remember Christ-like Melchizedek
Key Verses: 7, 9, 12, 14
Have you ever needed someone else to plead your case with a third person? I remember one time a nylon rope connected to our boat was severed. My dad thought I did it. He thought I was lying. Nothing I said could convince him otherwise. Even when I figured out what happened and told him, he didn’t believe me. I desperately wanted an outside set of eyes and a voice to which my dad would listen.
That was the role of the priest in the Old Testament. He was designated as the third party, offering prayers and sacrifices on another’s behalf to God. And God said He would listen and accept. One problem: who would be the third party for the priest? Even the priest needed someone to speak on their behalf.
Jesus didn’t need anyone to speak on His behalf because He is God. God the Father heard his prayers for deliverance from death. This seems rather funny since Jesus died on the Cross. He tasted death, swallowed its poison pill and pass through death back into life. The poison of death did not have any grip on Him. He rose from the grave three days later.
The act of obedience taught Jesus something. That’s right. Jesus had never had to face the temptation of running from taking on the full penalty of the world’s sin. So when He did this unique mission he became perfect. The concept of perfect here is like an apple that is fully ripe being perfect. Even when the apple was tiny and new, it was an apple. It just needed time on the tree in the right conditions and it would become perfect. It was an apple when it was small and green, but when it reached the end of the process of growing it took on the characteristic of being perfect in the sense used here.
Jesus mission was not complete until He died on the Cross. The miracles and teaching were not Jesus’ complete mission. His mission was not perfect until He died and rose again. So when He went through the full mission, then he was made perfect.
The original readers of this letter had skipped out on this process of maturing in their lives. They were not perfect in this sense. Like an apple they stopped taking the nourishment from the tree. They liked the simple truths about deliverance from sin, but didn’t like the process of obedience and maturation. They liked breast milk, but not solid food. They wanted someone else to do all the work of feeding them. They just wanted the benefits.
The writer says that as we mature we have the responsibility to pass along what we have learned, to become teachers of the Truth in the way they apply the Truth to their lives. Mature Jesus-followers know the process of spotting evil. Because they have fed so much on the Word, they know when someone is trying to feed them sawdust instead of food. Can you tell the difference between good and evil?
The Arnold Journey 