Jesus...Our Emmanuel

I have just completed teaching an online class on the Letter to the Hebrews. For a few weeks I am sharing thoughts that came from this study.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.  Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16 )

This wasn’t planned (at least by me), but it works out very well to look at this passage from Hebrews 4 the same week as the world pauses to remember the birth of Jesus. The author of the letter has not yet developed his important teaching on how Jesus is the new and greater high priest, but that doesn’t keep him from going ahead and pointing out that in that role Jesus can fully relate to us.

He was one of us from the vulnerability of infancy to the disorienting changes of adolescence to the temptations and challenges of adulthood. He was tested, tried and tempted. He knows what it is like to be human. He was fully one of us, but without sin.

And so, our writer says, that gives us confidence to come to him at the throne of grace, where we can receive mercy and find God’s generosity in our time of need. There are times when many of us feel “no one understands,” but this Jesus always does.

Pleased as man with man to dwell

Jesus, our Emmanuel

Hark! The herald angels sing

"Glory to the newborn King!"