(14) Fixated on Jesus our Perfect Pioneer - Hebrews 2:10, 18 (p42f)

 

(14) Fixated on Jesus our Perfect Pioneer - Hebrews 2:10, 18 (p42f)

 

Fixated: Advent Meditations from the Book of Hebrews

Tim Chester

10 of those, 2020 ISBN: 9781913278953 73pp

https://www.10ofthose.com/uk/products/26683/fixated

 

 It should be a great comfort to us that Jesus our Lord is also Jesus our friend and brother. He was tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin. He knows what it is like to live as a human being from inside, by personal experience, not just by virtue of his omniscient deity.

 

We can sometimes imagine that Jesus’ temptations weren’t real. But the Bible assures us they were. Though he was the God-Man, he was fully and truly human, weak and vulnerable and limited according to his human nature, just as we are. He got tired and hungry and so on. Jesus’ divinity did not detract from his human temptations.

 

Indeed, C. S. Lewis has suggested that Jesus’ temptations were much greater than ours because we so easily give in to them – and for us, in a manner of speaking, the temptation is then gone: we have yielded to it and it is no more. We fail the test. But Jesus never gave in to sin. He always endured and persevered. He always continued to fight the battle against sin and he was victorious. He was tested over the whole course of his perfect life. And he passed that test. His temptations showed him to be tried and tested.

 

Lewis said: ““Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.” (Mere Christianity)

 

Jesus is “perfected” by sufferings in the sense that he is fully proved and tested. He is like a metal that has been through the fire and is shown to be pure. Or like a veteran who has come through combat. He has proven his ability to resist the enemy.

 

Reflect on the wonderful difference Jesus demonstrates and makes possible (achieves) for humanity. He shows us, and wins for us, a new fulfilled, perfected way of being human. We look forward to sharing this kind of humanity with him in the New Creation.

 

On Christ’s pioneering saving work for us, we might think of this quotation from the Puritan Thomas Goodwin: “In God's sight there are two men — Adam and Jesus Christ — and these two men have all other men hanging at their girdle strings.”  (Cited in F.F. Bruce, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries; London: The Tyndale Press, 1963), 127 and elsewhere. Apparently from “Christ Set Forth,”Goodwin’s Works, James Nichol edition, 1862, Vol. 4, p. 31.). See further Romans 5. Our standing before God depends not on us but on Christ our pioneer. He brings us in his wake, with him, dangling from his girdle strings. Whatever a girdle string is!

 

Song: What A Friend We Have In Jesus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SCorW9r_Is