Hebrews 5 - The Teaching on Righteousness
After blogging on righteousness for over a year now, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore when yet another scripture has a fresh insight for me that I never thought about. In this case, I’m suprised learn that not everyone is ready to be taught about righteousness. To me, this means they are not ready to be taught to believe God and obey Him. Strange. Isn’t even the youngest pup in Christ already believing Him? And when they get baptized, aren’t they already believing Him? Well, if you think about, God has more for you to believe than Christ dying for your sins. Don’t get me wrong, Christ’s sacrific is sufficient for salvation, but once you are saved there are more truths to find than that… and God has blessings in store for those who find them, believe them, and obey…
 11We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
So, it would seem that people who receive their initial accounting of righteousness, by believing in Christ, have done so without having been taught about righteousness per se. That makes sense. I know I wasn’t taught about it initially… not until I was ready for solid food. But exactly what topic, that is what teaching about righteosness, was the writer of Hebrews referring to? Let’s go back to verse 1 of our chapter to find out…Â
 1Every high priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. 3This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people.
No first off, notice what it is that the writer is trying to get these immature (not baby!) Christians to understand… it almost sounds contradictory, but the Jewish high priest was appointed to help the weak, because he is weak. BECAUSE he is weak. Apparently, being a man, if he was not weak, then chances are he’d be harsh (not gentle) with the weakness, the sinful. And I have certainly seen this feature, where someone who does no better about something is quite judgemental of those who don’t, calling them fools and treating them with contempt. Frankly, it is the Christian who “has been there”… and then rescued (by God’s grace) that makes the most effective witness to people who are stuck in their sin. Being weak by nature is what lets God use them in the lives of others. So, God chooses recovering addicts to minister to addicts, people who have learned to deal with anger issues to minister to angry people, etc. But, it is also why such people (including your own pastor!) needed a sin-sacrifice every bit as much as you. Now many people who have been rescued from their sin have trouble embracing their past as a ministerial tool, choosing instead to live forever in shame. That’s right. I said “choose”. But, let us read on to see what is going on, at least in regard to high priests, from God’s point of view…
 4No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was.
Catch that? It’s an honor. Not an honor to sin. Not an honor to be weak. But, it is an honor to be used for your weakness by God, which is why you survived it, and were brought through it, and brought to a point of repentence over it… so that God could rescue others through it.
Now, to clarify, I realize that I am turning this teaching back in on us, when the writer is clearly writing about the office of high priest. I know that. But, elsewhere in scripture (my memory fails me as to where), scripture says that we are all high priests now. Furthermore, the office of high priest, as described in verse 1, is to represent the sinful “in matters related to God, and to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.” Now, before Christ, such duties consisted of killing a bull or a sheep or goat, and burning it on an altar to God on behalf of the sinner.  Such acts were intecessory in nature. These days, our role is to intercede through prayer… no sacricifice of life necessary. And why? What changed? Christ. That’s what. It turns out that all of the sacrifices merely covered people’s sins… until Jesus came and died for them, and washed those covered sins away. So, when we pray, we lead men into salvation through the sinner’s prayer, asking Jesus into this person’s heart, and getting them to agree out of repentence for their weakness, which we understand through our own. So now, the key sacrificial action through which our intercession has meaning is no longer a sacrifice we make for the weak, but through the sacrifice of Christ.Â
The funny thing was, Jesus did not actually live the life of a priest… yet He gave the sacrifice. So, how does that jive with what we read above? Jesus could feel temptation, but never sinned. He gave a sacrifice of Himself, yet does not appear to been a high priest during His life here. How does that jive?
 5So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him,
   ”You are my Son;
      today I have become your Father.” 6And he says in another place,
   ”You are a priest forever,
      in the order of Melchizedek.”
So, the writer acknowledges that Jesus is not like the high priest described above. He did not live a life of sin; did not sacrifice for it; did not minister out of His understanding of experience of sin and repentence. But, God called Him a High Priest anyway, freeing Him to give that sacrifice. Well, it would seem that just as the sacrifices of the high priest merely pointed at the sacrifice of Christ, so too did their priesthood merely point at Christ’s priesthood. The priesthood of the sinful, pointing toward the priesthood of the sinless One… Jesus.Â
 7During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
And so we see how Jesus, **the** man of righteoussness lived and died for us. When God told Him “You are my Son”, Jesus believed. And though He sinned not, He learned obedience in His suffering on the cross. Belief and obedience. Christ’s righteousness… leading to God’s justice.  A complicated message to be sure… but it would seem the writer realized that…
 11We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
If you are the trying to teach this truth, be gentle; if you are the one learning it, God’s written it on your heart. Just believe God, and obey.