Why is the humanity of Jesus important?

He has, in all things, been tempted like ourselves, sin apart; so that He can sympathise with our infirmities. The word brings to light the intents of the heart, judges the will, and all that has not God for its object and its source. Then, as far as weakness is concerned, we have His sympathy. Christ of course had no evil desires: He was tempted in every way, apart from sin. Sin had no part in it at all. But I do not wish for sympathy with the sin that is in me; I detest it, I wish it to be mortified — judged unsparingly. This the word does. For my weakness and my difficulties I seek sympathy; and I find it in the priesthood of Jesus. It is not necessary, in order to sympathise with me, that a person should feel at the same moment that which I am feeling — rather the contrary. If I am suffering pain, I am not in a condition to think as much of another's pain. But in order to sympathise with him I must have a nature capable of appreciating his pain.

Thus it is with Jesus, when exercising His priesthood. He is in every sense beyond the reach of pain and trial, but He is man; and not only has He the human nature which in time suffered grief, but He experienced the trials a saint has to go through more fully than any of ourselves; and His heart, free and full of love, can entirely sympathise with us, according to His experience of ill, and according to the glorious liberty which He now has, to provide and care for it. This encourages us to hold fast our profession in spite of the difficulties that beset our path; for Jesus concerns Himself about them, according to His own knowledge and experience of what they are, and according to the power of His grace.

What a Succourer or Helper this One is. He has walked this path before, He wept at the grave of Lazarus (John 11:35), He has been hungry (Luke 4:2) and thirsty (John 4:7), He has been "tempted in all things in like manner, sin apart" (Heb. 4:15), He was homeless, He did not have place to lay His head (Luke 9:58). As He has been tested in all areas, sin apart, He can succour us. Not only does He succour us but in Hebrews 4:14-16 we are told that He sympathises with us, "Having therefore a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession. For we have not a high priest not able to sympathise with our infirmities, but tempted in all things in like manner, sin apart. Let us approach therefore with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help". So the Lord Jesus in this office as our great High Priest mediates for us, succours us and here He sympathises with us. Who can sympathise more than Jesus (humanity), the Son of God (Divinity). How He, a true Man, can be "over all, God blessed for ever" (Rom. 9:5) goes beyond human comprehension but it is certainly true. This is where faith comes in and lays hold of this truth. So He is human, He is Divine, and He is compassionate, merciful and accessible (you can talk to Him in your car going to work, or in your closet, or in your bed, or coming to the meeting, in fact in any circumstance night or day).

Able to Sympathise. — The excellency of His person, who is Jesus, Son of God, and who has passed too through the heavens, and who remains there, would at once point out how far He surpasses Aaron, and assuredly his successors. Who then would follow them, and continue beholden to such for sanctuary ministrations, when there was, and is, such a High Priest as Jesus, Son of God? But more. Great though He is, He is human as well as Divine; so can sympathise with His people in their weaknesses, for "Touched with the feeling of our infirmities" (4:15) really means that. What a thought for us! What encouragement! We may find some men anything but sympathetic. The very mention of weakness may bore them. The Son of God is different. He can and does sympathise with His people in their weaknesses. Weakness, let us mark, not sins. It is the feebleness of the creature of which He takes note, and for whom in such a condition He can feel. And indeed what are there of difficulties by the way with which He is not conversant? What is there of proper human feeling to which He is a stranger? What power of man, what power of the devil, opposed to God, has He not experienced?

With human weakness He has been acquainted. Witness that time when an angel appeared to Him to strengthen Him. Weariness too from travel and hunger and thirst likewise did He experience. The history of Sychar's well records His weariness and His thirst. The wilderness and the barren fig tree both knew Him as the hungry man. Then rejection by men He was made to feel, and the being forsaken by all His disciples as well. The taunts and jeers of all classes when He was crucified He keenly felt, for He endured them. We know that. For though the Gospels tell us nothing of His feelings in that way at the time, the 22nd Psalm acquaints us by the Spirit of prophecy with the trial all that really would be to Him. Jesus, Son of God, passed through it. He was deeply sensible of it. Hence He can sympathise with His people, if found at any time in similar circumstances. And whether it be the sense of human weakness, or the trials from men, or from the enemy, He knows the full measure of it all. For He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15). True He was holy and undefiled. Satan had nothing in Him (John 14:30). Peter too tells us He did no sin (1 Peter 2:22). And John writes, what is stronger, that in Him is no sin (1 John 3:5). Does that make Him less able to sympathise with us? Nay, it makes Him better able, we must say with reverence. For He has known the full force of temptation, and resisted it to the uttermost. He knows then all it can be, and the grace that we need to stand firm against it. We profit by His sinlessness. For all that the enemy could bring against Him to turn Him aside from the cross, which was then appointed Him, was certainly attempted, but signally failed. Many a one may have resisted temptation much and long, though at length succumbing. Such a one could speak from experience of the enemy's power, but could not, through at last yielding, affirm that he had fully tested it to the uttermost. One alone has done that. And that One is our High Priest, Jesus, Son of God.

The sympathy of Jesus is in scripture based on wholly different grounds. I admit that His divine glory alone suffices not; but it does give lustre and infinite worth to His most real suffering as Man tried, and in every way conceivable, sin excepted. He must have the nature of those whose cause He undertakes, though not in the same fallen state; He must have proved the anguish and bitterness of temptation here below; and so He did incomparably more than any other. In holy humanity He could thus feel sympathy with our infirmities, having felt the wiles and power and malice of the enemy, and so much more than we do, as His dignity and holiness and love transcended ours. Never having known sin (which, if known, narrows and blunts the heart), but having suffered infinitely, His affections are large and free to go out to us, in our sore distresses as saints, who have not only the same outward enemy to try us, but also a treacherous nature within.

Weakness, however excessive, was therefore no occasion for despair. It was rather an occasion for proving divine sympathy and the fulness there is in Christ to supply suitable grace and strength for every sorrow throughout the pilgrimage. Moreover, He has qualified Himself for such priestly ministration by the trials He endured in the days of His flesh. The Lord suffered by reason of His faithfulness to God amid a sinful world. He met the power of Satan. Hence the compassion of our great High Priest in whatever befalls us by the way. He is still the same as when He wept with the sisters of Bethany before He gave them back their dead brother. He enters into our sorrows ere He delivers us out of them.

There is a fourth thing in this chapter. Christ suffered that He should know how to succour them that are tempted. "For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." The believer is looked at as a poor weak creature always in Hebrews. The priesthood of Christ in Hebrews is not about our sins (it could not be, because we "have no more conscience of sins"), but about our weakness. When faith has got hold of the fact, in the power of the Holy Ghost, that Christ has borne my sins, and I come to God by Him, I come in virtue of the work that has purged my conscience. What I do get in Hebrews is, that Christ can enter into all my temptations. I find temptations every moment, the world is a snare; if I want to live godly, I need His sympathy. Christ found none in this world. He, the most accessible and gracious of men, sympathised with everybody, but there was no one to sympathise with Him. He can understand the nature of all these trials and temptations of mine. He knows them a thousand times better than I can, because He has suffered a thousand times more.

The fourth reason is, He is able to sympathise. (v. 18) I do not want sympathy for my sins; I want the hatchet of God's word applied to them. "In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted." (Chap. 4:12.) With Him there is an experimental knowledge of all the difficulties the saints pass through. I know Christ's power, of course; but then I know the sympathy of His heart. I cannot be in a trouble that Christ is not with me, and that He does not understand, and has felt more deeply than me, for a good deal of pride and selfishness often carry us through; but "He suffered being tempted," but never gave way. Here we are, walking through this world, but there is not a single thing that Christ does not see, and know, and feel. His disciples were compassed with infirmity; but He went through infirmity, and felt it, and is now on high. We have first in this chapter where Christ is - at the right hand of God, but not all things put under Him yet; and then these four reasons for which Christ took the capacity of dying.

This brings us to the next point; and that is, Christ suffered that He might sympathise. It was part of His perfection that He was ever dependent upon His Father, "I will put my trust in him." In this way it was that He went through the whole scene. Before going to appoint the twelve disciples, He prayed all night, and so He acted all along the path of opposition and insult that He trod. I know therefore that I have not One who cannot be touched with the feeling of my infirmities, so that in the midst of my infirmities, as Paul says, I can glory that Christ's power may rest on me. You remember what Christ says to him there; He had sent Paul a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, but now He says, "My grace is sufficient for thee." He answers him, deals with him, understands him, and that is all he wanted.

Jesus feels with us as having known all that tries His people. He knew what it was to hunger and thirst, and to be weary with His journey. He knew what it was to shed tears, being rejected by Israel, and sorrowing with His own in the presence of death. Yea, He knew strong crying and tears as none ever knew or could know, both because of the perfection of His humanity, His holy sinless nature, and because of what lay before Him in the cross. All this enables Jesus to feel with His own, for our names are on His breast.

Their "Great High Priest," who was now in the presence of God in heaven, had once walked this earth in perfect subject Manhood, and had experienced all the cares and trials of the pathway apart from sin. Hence His ability to sympathize with them in the pathway of faith into which they had now been brought. Scorn, ridicule and all they were subject to from the nation had been borne by Jesus when He, in this world, had suffered the same things as witnessing to the truth and standing for the rights of God. Who could have a better understanding of their needs than the One who had suffered the same things Himself? The word translated here as "infirmities" is elsewhere translated as "sickness" and "weakness." Whatever the translation it appears to convey the thought of one needing help from another. It is the same word used of our Lord — "crucified through weakness," and although sickness was never recorded of Him yet having suffered the bodily anguish of the cross, how fully He would know what His saints would stand in need of when sickness was allowed to come upon them. "In all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."