Fr. Stephen: So we’ll go ahead and get started, and when we get started in just a moment, we’ll be picking up at the beginning of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 5. So, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, as we talked about, is not an epistle in the same sense as his other epistles that we’ve read, in the sense that the other epistles that we’ve read have been letters, either to a church or to a person, and we talked about how St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews is more like a sermon or a homily or a piece of Biblical commentary, we’d call it today, on Psalm 110 or 109 in the Greek numbering, that was then sent. Sent as a letter.



And so, we saw that at the beginning of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews you don’t find the usual things you find in his epistles, but the end of it looks more like the end of one of his epistles because it was sent to certain addressees. And so, we’ve been sort of tracking through as he’s been working through, especially so far, he’s started to segue into what we’re going to get into tonight, which is going to move us a little further in that psalm.

So, he’s been mainly focusing on the first part of it, which, the first verse of that psalm is, “The Lord said to my Lord,” or, “Yahweh said to my Lord,” sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” And we talked about how that had already, by the time of Christ, been given a Messianic interpretation, so that Christ himself could say to the Pharisees, “If the Messiah is the son of David, why does David call him his lord?” So, that means that – everybody had pretty much accepted that Psalm 110 or 109 was about the Messiah. Everybody agreed on that part.

And so, St. Paul has been, in the early chapters, in the first couple chapters especially, he was focused on differentiating Christ as the Son of God from other beings that are called “sons of God” in the Old Testament. And so, that was, on the one hand the angels who are sometimes called the sons of God, like in the book of Job, and how Christ is not just an angel, but that he is God himself, as we’ve seen several times. And then, on the other side, that David and the Davidic kings, which were leading up to the Messiah, were called the son of God when they ascended to the throne; they were sort of adopted sons of God as humans. And then also why Christ is not just that; he is the Messiah, but he’s not just a human who’s been given this important position. So, that differentiation in explaining what that verse means.

And then, from that, it moved on in the last couple of chapters that we went through last time to talking about, because we’re moving on to the next section of the psalm, which is going to talk about Melchizedek and priesthood, and we’re going to get into the thick of that more tonight, but in the segue into that he went from talking about Christ’s humanity in that earlier context to talking about Christ’s humanity enabling him to serve as a priest for us; talking about how Christ was tested – because he shares our humanity, Christ was tested in the same ways we’re tested in life; he never failed, we often do, but he never did. But so, that that qualifies him to serve as a priest in the sense of being an intercessor.

And how St. Paul here shows that Christ is both the one who judges and our intercessor, so it’s like the judge and your defense attorney being the same person. And so, he’s also already started, and this is going to continue later, talking about how Christ and the covenant he brings is greater than Moses and the covenant that Moses brought, and there’s going to be more of that – the reason he brought that up in this context is, that’s related to priesthood, too, because of course there was a certain type of priesthood in the Old Covenant that offered certain sacrifices and those kinds of things, and so there’s now a new kind of priesthood beginning with Christ in the New Covenant, that offers certain types of sacrifices and those kind of things. But that also – he hasn’t moved on to that sacrificial part yet, and that’s where we’re going to start moving now.

In the previous chapters he was mainly focusing on the fact that the Old Covenant had blessings and curses associated with it: blessings that came by obedience and curses that came through disobedience. And if the blessings are so much greater for us in the New Covenant, if the blessings are so much greater, that also means that the condemnation that comes with disobedience is likewise greater. And that – and it’s from that point, of the condemnation being greater, that he’s segued into talking about Christ in this intercessory role. Because the goal of him saying punishments for disobedience are greater was not to terrorize all of us and make us despair, but to warn us that we have to remain faithful and that it’s a very serious matter, but that when we fail we have Christ there to intercede for us as a priest.

Because as we’ve talked about before, in St. Paul’s other Epistles, St. Paul has made this pretty clear: the way that the Torah worked and the commandments of the Torah worked, particularly related to sacrifices but also the whole holiness code about cleanness and uncleanness and all this, was this sort of complex sin-management system that allowed God to remain in the presence of the people even though they were sinful by them continuously being purified. And so, this is the beginning of a segue that we’re now going to go into to how Christ deals with our sinfulness now, and how that, too, is greater than the repetitive, continuous thing, maintenance thing that was going on in the Old Testament, that now things have been dealt with by Christ in a different way in the New Covenant.

So, that’s really – that’s even foreshadowing some of what we’re going to get into tonight. So, unless anybody has any questions or comments or news briefs or alerts on their phone that we need to go over, we’ll go ahead and pick up in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 5 verse 1.

“For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” So, we’ll stop there. He’s talking about “every high priest,” meaning now he’s referring back to the Old Covenant. So, there’s this line of high priests that starts with Aaron, and is not unbroken, because remember the Temple’s gotten destroyed once—and now again—then there’s a whole period in the Babylonian exile where there’s no Temple until it’s rebuilt. But he’s just making a general statement. “Whoever the high priest is, he’s taken from among men; he’s one of the people, who’s set apart for this particular role, to deal with the things of God.” And that is, in particular, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.

So, what’s the difference? Both of these are within the context of sacrifice. We’ve talked before—it’s been a while, probably since back in First Corinthians—but we’ve talked before about how sacrifices fall within the overarching idea of hospitality, and usually are meals, in the vast majority of cases. So, the way that you build communion among humans in the ancient world, and the way you then build communion and community between peoples and their god is through hospitality, through sharing life with each other. And that very often takes the context of sharing a meal. You invite someone into your home, you share a meal with them, that creates a bond between you, or strengthens the bond that already exists. And the same is true with God or, if you’re pagan, the gods. Same kind of idea with sacrifice, this is a way of bringing about communion and community.

So, sometimes everything’s good in your relationship, there’s no problem, and so you’re offering hospitality just to celebrate and deepen your friendship and shore it up and spend time together. That would be in the gift category. Or someone comes to your house and you offer them a gift, if it’s not directly food. And this is why we talk about, in the Divine Liturgy, when we’re offering the Eucharist, we refer to the bread and the wine that are brought to the altar as gifts. As “the gifts,” “Holy Gifts,” because they’re gifts that we’re going to be offering to God in thanksgiving; that’s what “eucharist” means. So then, the second part, sacrifices for sins: sometimes you’re offering hospitality because everything’s not okay. Sometimes, you’re offering hospitality because there’s tension or something’s gone wrong between you, and literally one of the types of sacrifices that’s being referred to here is called, in the Old Testament, a “peace offering.” Sometimes, you’re having someone over to apologize, or you give them a gift and you apologize for something, because you’re wanting to restore and fix that relationship.

Both of those are under the overarching umbrella of what’s called, in our fancy Latin theological terms, “propitiation.” “Propitiation” means, “to make someone propitious,” meaning, “to make them happy.” “To please them.” Sometimes, on my way home, I get flowers for my wife just because I love her; sometimes it’s because I messed up. But either way, I’m trying to make her happy. So, it’s that same kind of idea of an offering. So, St. Paul here is just saying, “You have a high priest; let’s just talk about the category high priest. What is a high priest?” It’s one person who’s set aside, one man who’s set aside, and given this task to be the one who, on behalf of the community and with the community, makes these offerings to God and then brings the people together in community.

Verse 2: “He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.” This is the language that gets used in the Old Testament. “He offers sacrifice for the sins and ignorances of the people.” Because sometimes we go and do evil stuff, either out of evil motivations or just because the passions get ahold of us; we get angry, we’re jealous, we’re proud. Sometimes we just do stupid stuff. Sometimes we hurt people just because we’re dumb and unthinking and careless. This, by the way – a lot of our prayer books and this kind of thing talk about “sins voluntary and involuntary.” Involuntary does not mean, like, a sneeze or something. It’s not saying you can sin without wanting to.

Because remember, sin is not about breaking a rule, committing a crime; sin is about doing actual damage to yourself and other people. So, if I’m walking around, swinging my arms, and my arm hits somebody I didn’t see in the nose and breaks their nose, the fact that I didn’t intend to hit them does not fix their nose. There’s still been damage done. And they’re probably still going to be upset at me even though I didn’t mean to, and I would still apologize. You wouldn’t say, “I’m not going to apologize, because I didn’t mean to do it!” You’d be a real jerk if you refused to apologize. That would be an example of an involuntary sin. If I get mad at somebody and haul off and punch ‘em in the nose, that would be voluntary; even if I’m taken over by rage, it’s still voluntary, because I did exactly what I set out to do: I hurt that person.

Sometimes you say something to somebody deliberately to hurt them because you’re mad at them; sometimes you just do it carelessly and without thinking. Either way, you’ve got to fix the damage that’s been done. You’ve got to make things right; you’ve got to make things better. You can’t just say, “Well, legally I am not responsible, therefore I’m just going to leave everything broken.” The real world doesn’t work that way; life doesn’t work that way. And so, that’s that idea of “ignorances,” that’s what “involuntary sin” is, that idea of something I did just because I’m dumb, rather than something I did because my heart is evil. And I do both kinds of things. And both of those need healing.

And so, the point here is that the high priest – since he’s one of the people, he’s done evil stuff; he’s done stupid stuff, too. And so, when someone comes to him and says, “Hey, I did something really stupid,” or “Hey, I just got swept away in the moment and I cheated on my spouse,” this isn’t saying, “Oh, well, every high priest cheated on their spouse”; it’s not that the high priest committed all those sins. Just that he’s human, and so he gets it. He can imagine a circumstance in which he, too, could be weak and fall into sin. He can understand how that could happen to someone, even if he hasn’t done it himself.

The reason I’m spending so much time on this is, this is going to be very important when we get to Christ. Because, as it said in the past chapter, sometimes people want to translate it as “tempted.” “Christ was tempted in all the ways we are.” And St. Paul is not saying, “Christ was tempted to fornicate,” or something, at some point in his life; that’s why I said it’s better translated as “tested.” So, the point that’s being made, that’s going to be made here about Christ is not that he committed any of these sins, that he entertained any of these thoughts, or any of those things, just that he’s fully human, so he can understand how humans can end up doing that. How a human could end up doing that. He knows what it’s like to be tired. And so, he can understand how being tired could make someone irritable, and how being irritable could make someone say something they regret. Not because he got irritable and said things he regretted, but just because he could understand how that could happen.

Verse 3: “Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins.” And so, with the high priests of the Old Covenant, they weren’t just offering sacrifices for the people, they were also offering them for themselves, and if you read the sacrificial rituals in detail, they all start with the priest offering sacrifices for himself, including the Day of Atonement. The only actual sin offerings in the Day of Atonement ritual—the two goats aren’t really sin offerings in the same sense—are the ones that the priests offer for themselves before they start the ritual. They can’t go and purify everybody else until they’ve purified themselves first.

Verse 4: “And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron.” I don’t know why the had to add that “was” [after “Aaron,” in the NKJV], but okay. So, remember, Aaron was chosen to be the high priest when his rod budded with new life. Meaning God picks the high priest. The tradition was always that God picked the high priest, that there would be some casting of lots and stuff, but in real time a lot of the high priests got it by heredity, and by the time St. Paul would’ve been preaching this, the most common way you became high priest in the first century B.C. and first century A.D. was assassinating the previous high priest. [laughter] So, this is being charitable. St. Paul’s talking about how it was supposed to be. Aaron being an example of how it was supposed to be. You weren’t supposed to take this honor for yourself, even though later on, in the Hasmonean period, people did take it for themselves or give it to family members, that kind of thing. The king would make his brother the high priest; that kind of thing happened later, but that’s not the way it was supposed to be.

Verse 5: “So also”—in the same way—“Christ did not glorify Himself to become high priest, but it was He who said to him: ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You.’ ” So, he’s already quoted that, remember? He’s making the point again, Christ didn’t make himself the high priest. Christ didn’t take honors onto himself, just like we saw in Philippians 2, where St. Paul talked about how Christ did the opposite; in the Incarnation he gave up the honors and the glory that were due to him as God, to take upon himself our weakness and our humanity.

Verse 6: “As He also says in another place: ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’ ” Where’s that place? That’s Psalm 110/109 verse 4, so we’ve moved a little further into the psalm. “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” Meaning – who’s the speaker in Psalm 110? Remember the first verse: “Yahweh said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until–” so God the Father is the one who enthrones the Son at his right hand, at the Ascension, as we saw first, and now it’s also God the Father who says to Christ, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Verse 7 – and, just to press pause, the “order of Melchizedek” part we’re now going to get into, in case that’s the next question that’s coming to mind. Verse 7: “…who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet he learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” Okay, so that’s a lot, and complicated, but we’ll go through it now.

So, notice it says, “in the days of His flesh.” Doesn’t say, “in the days of his body”; we’ve talked before about how there’s a difference with St. Paul between the way he uses “body” and the way he uses “flesh.”

Interlocutor 1: This is Christ he’s talking about?

Fr. Stephen: Yes, he’s talking about Christ. “Body” and “flesh” are not the same thing; when he talks about “flesh” he’s talking about not just meat, but our mortal flesh, our human bodies in this age, qua meat. The reason I’m emphasizing this, he’s not saying, “Jesus took a body and became human and then left it, and is not human anymore, or doesn’t have a body anymore.” Christ still has his body, but his body was transfigured at the Resurrection. So, “the days of his flesh” is talking about from his birth from the Theotokos to his death on the Cross. When he had the kind of flesh we have.

So, “in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to Him who is able to save him from death,” so what’s this talking about? This is talking about the garden of Gethsemane, before his death. “…and was heard because of His godly fear.” That’s not the way people usually read the garden of Gethsemane, right? People tend to read the garden of Gethsemane like, “Jesus didn’t really want to die, but he was willing to.” That’s not how any of the Fathers interpreted it, and that’s because that’s not how it’s interpreted here. How’s it interpreted here? The Father granted his request. How did he grant his request? Raised him from the dead. “Save him from death” doesn’t mean keep him from dying. It means “raised him from the dead”; that’s what it’s talking about.

You also notice, “though He was a son,” they added that “yet,” which is a kind of interpretive addition that assumes those two things are opposed to each other. “…though He was a son, He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” So, the word that’s translated “obedience” there in Greek literally means, “to come under authority.” “To come under authority.” You can see how that’s a similar idea to obedience; if I come under someone else’s authority, that means I’m going to obey them. I’m going to do what they tell me to do. The problem with “Christ learned obedience” is, “Well, what, was he disobedient before?” But if you understand that original idea of coming under authority: if you’re God, you’re not under authority. But in the Incarnation, Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity, places himself under the authority of God the Father during the days of his flesh. So, that’s what it means by, “He learned obedience.” Though he’s the Son, “Son” with a capital-S, the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, he learns what it means to come under authority in the Incarnation, through his suffering.

Interlocutor 1: Can I ask about “godly fear”?

Fr. Stephen: Yes. Yeah, [wryly] “godly.” [laughter] The idea there’s really more, “pious.” And that’s “pious” in the ancient sense of the virtue of piety. The virtue of piety was a moral virtue; it means to comport oneself in the correct way toward God, or the gods, if we’re talking about pagans. And so, what that’s really getting at, the idea of “godly fear,” that fear is like the fear of the Lord, meaning respect, not, “being afraid of.” So, it’s not saying that he was afraid of his Father

Interlocutor 1: Yeah, well, it’s hard not to hear it that way.

Fr. Stephen: Right. It’s saying that he had the correct—that’s the “pious” part—he had the correct respect and honor for his Father, as contrasted to us, most of the time. We’re rather impious and don’t always have the correct respect and awe and reverence.

Interlocutor 1: That’s very different from what I would think just reading this in English, this translation.

Fr. Stephen: Right, yeah. We’re about to get to more of that.

Interlocutor 1: [laughing] Okay.

Fr. Stephen: Hebrews, as you may have noticed, we’re really doubling down on [that] the New King James Version is not real useful, you may have noticed in the past few Bible studies. I’m having to correct it a lot more than usual. And I’m about to do it again.

Verse 9: “And having been perfected—” [pointed pause] “…He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” So, we’ve talked before about the word “perfect,” and why, in our modern, contemporary English, that’s not a good translation. It wasn’t at the time that the original King James used it; it had a different shade of meaning. We understand “perfect” to mean, “perfect means you don’t sin,” or something. We understand “perfect” in moral terms, usually. And so, you say, “Wait a minute, wasn’t Christ perfect all along?” But, as we’ve talked about, when St. Paul, especially, uses the term perfect—“That you may be made perfect”—he’s talking about more the idea of maturity, or completeness.

So, the idea really is not, “having been perfected,” and more, “having been brought to completion.” “The days of his flesh were brought to completion”; his mission, what he was doing, was brought to completion, and then once that’s brought to completion, he becomes the author, then, through what he did—that’s the authorship—through what he did he becomes the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him. So, he accomplishes this and then he offers that through what he accomplished to those who obey him.

Notice, also, “obey him.” We were talking about the whole “faith” versus “faithfulness” translation thing, especially last time. It’s not, “all those who have the right opinion about him,” “all those who believe that he exists,” “all those who identify as Christians.” All who obey him. It’s the same word as the word that was used for him learning obedience, so it’s the same idea: all those who come under his authority, and live under his authority. Remember the psalm we’re talking about: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” And remember how we talked about, “All things are not yet seen under his feet.” This is that “coming under authority.” Even though St. Paul doesn’t overtly use the language of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven that we see in the Gospels, in the Synoptic Gospels, that Christ uses, this is the same kind of idea: coming under Christ’s dominion; coming under his lordship, under his rule. That’s what a kingdom is, so it’s the same kind of idea. That is how you receive salvation, here. By coming under his authority.

Verse 10: “…called by God as High Priest ‘according to the order of Melchizedek,’ of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.” This is another one of those places where you see some rhetorical style. Remember I said there are things through it where it kind of looks like preaching, or a sermon? This is like he’s talking and they’re kind of drifting off; he’s looking out at them and – this happens sometimes when you preach. Many of you may not have had this experience, but there are certain times when you’re speaking and everyone is looking at you and nodding, and you can tell they’re engaged, and then there’s other times where you can tell people are starting to become disengaged. Sometimes even napping. That’s the kind of comment that’s being made here. “I have a lot to say about Melchizedek, but it looks like, uh…” [laughter] “I’m losing some of you.”

Verse 12: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.” This is an analogy you might recognize from First Corinthians, that St. Paul uses. So, you should take this as it is; he’s now digressing a little bit from his sermon to chide them a little. If you read St. John Chrysostom’s homilies, he does this kind of thing all the time. He’ll be preaching on some text of Scripture and something’s goin’ on, and he’ll just digress to [laughter] lay into some of the people a little bit for a while, and then go back to what he was talking about. That’s what St. Paul kind of does here. He says, “as long as some of you have been here in this church, you ought to be teaching this stuff; you should’ve graduated, you should be teaching this to other people, but you still need somebody—apparently, since you can’t even focus on what I’m saying, I haven’t even been going that long yet—you need someone to teach you,” and compares that to babies. “You still need milk from your mom, you’re not ready to start eating the Gerber sweet peas and carrots yet; you gotta stick to the formula.”

Verse 13: “For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.” So, this is, “Y’all are baby Christians.” And notice, that “unskilled in the word of righteousness.” So, he’s saying, [in an American Southern accent] “Y’all don’t know how to interpret the Bible right?” Well, no, there’s no Bible. He’s talking about teaching them the first principles of the oracles of God. Not the details of the oracles of God – “the oracles of God” is a way of referring to the Scriptures. That is a way of referring to the Old Testament. He’s like, “You need to get—” …He’s trying to explain Psalm 110 to them, and he’s like, “You’re not ready for Psalm 110; you need the basic stuff even behind Psalm 110; this sermon I’m giving is really too advanced for y’all; that’s why you’re drifting off. It’s not because I’m being dull, it’s because I’m doing grad school and you guys are like high school. This is – you’re not prepared.” 

Interlocutor 1: The word “oracle” kind of stuck out, I don’t remember that being used very often in…

Fr. Stephen: It’s used a lot in the Old Testament.

Interlocutor 1: It is, okay.

Fr. Stephen: And you find it in a lot of Second-Temple literature from this time, to refer to – because the word that’s translated “oracle” is another word that’s used for “prophecy.”

Interlocutor 1: Okay.

Fr. Stephen: And so, we’re talking about not the Torah, [but] the Prophets, as a major unit. But “unskilled in the word of righteousness,” again, “word” there is not referring to the Scriptures themselves; the word behind it is “logos.” The idea is, again, the first principles. And “righteousness” or “justice” has to do with how you live your life. So, he’s saying, “If you don’t have those basic first principles down, you don’t know what you’re doing.” There are plenty of good Christian people who can’t give you a detailed breakdown of what Psalm 110 means. That’s not the kind of folk St. Paul’s talking to here. St. Paul’s saying, “You don’t have the basic framework of what Christianity is about and who Christ is,” and that kind of thing. So, he’s having a go at them. That’s what I’m trying to emphasize; this is pretty harsh, just for some folks not paying attention while he’s talking. But he’s laying it out for them.

Verse 14: “But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” Remember, “knowledge of good and evil” in the Old Testament is used to mean “maturity.” What we would call the “age of reason” or “age of maturity,” when a child is old enough to know good and evil, but notice, the solid food doesn’t belong to those who have spent their lives studying to be a rabbi. It’s those who by reason of use, who have lived life; this is “wisdom” language, not book learnin’ “knowledge” language. He’s saying, “You guys haven’t lived; you’re like a little kid who doesn’t know what the real world is,” who doesn’t understand their actions and consequences and what they’re doing.