Advent - God With Us
This week in our Advent series while thinking about the birth narrative, we focused on the humility and difficulty that Jesus intentionally stepped into, meeting us in our brokenness. In doing that we spent some time looking at what the author of Hebrews says about Christ as Savior, the perfect High Priest, and our spiritual elder brother.
We previously looked at Christ as the Great High Priest from Hebrews in our Matthew series, in regards to His temptation in the wilderness. The birth narrative is the start of that journey to being the Great High Priest, experiencing the weaknesses of broken humanity so he is able to sympathize with us in every respect. This is an important point of doctrine to understand for a deeper grasp on the Gospel, because it is some of the key aspects to why our Savior was God incarnate, being 100% God and 100% man simultaneously. And for that aspect of His humanity to hold weight in its legitimacy, He had to come like us, to suffer, be tempted, experience hurt and loss, and yet remain without sin. These spiritual realities are shown throughout scripture especially in some key verses in Hebrews:
“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. 11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,” Heb 2:10–11.
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Heb 2:17–18.
“14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Heb 4:14–16.
This is the significant realization that we need to take away from the birth narrative. It’s so much more than just a quaint story with miraculous happenings. It’s the Creator of the universe, Jesus, stepping into our brokenness as shown being set up through the genealogy and birth narrative, then later through the temptation in the wilderness. Jesus, our Savior, is like us in every way through temptation and life's difficulties, yet without sin. This is the master plan of God’s salvation for creation, in particular for His image bearers.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
Through Jesus Christ being like us in every way yet without sin, He created a deeply united human family by paying for our sin in order to unite us again to himself and to each other by tearing down the walls of hostility our sin built between us and God and our fellow man.
John Piper has a good podcast/blog that takes a brief look at this topic of Jesus being our spiritual elder brother. He makes the point that it wouldn’t work to create a family where everyone had experienced the brokenness of the world except for one, “and so, for the sake of a common spirit of unity and sympathy and camaraderie, even in suffering, Christ takes on human nature and he leads many sons to glory and into his brotherhood through suffering and death.” “...what adds weight and wonder and affection to our worship of Christ is that it is the combination of the exalted uniqueness of Jesus as the Son of God on the one hand, and his utter condescension to share our nature as humans and our suffering as fallen mortals, all so that he could be included and we could be included in the divine family, with Christ as the ever-exalted and superior, unique, divine older brother.”