Divine Compassion
H. W. Beecher. Hebrews 5:1-3 For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God… There was no person in the Hebrew economy that was so revered as their high priest. He became more corrupt in the political times preceding Christ; but the name high priest, as interpreted by the whole history of the Hebrew people, was one that was not only reverenced, but loved. He was ordained, it is said, to have compassion; he was their highest ideal of purity; he stood in the grandeur of a supposed inspiration; he represented God, or, still better, he represented the people to God; he was their advocate; he stood in their place officially, and in every way helped to bring men up without any oppression; he was a minister of mercy to them; and you could not have struck a bell that would roll through the air with such melodious sound as by saying that Jesus Christ stood as a high priest to the people, and that compassion was the great attribute of Jesus; that He not only represented the people in their wants, but that He was a forthcomer of the very God Himself, and represented God to mankind as far as men obscured by the flesh are capable of understanding God. You cannot measure the infinite wisdom, and you cannot measure the eternal glow and glory of love, and you cannot in the infirmities of human life in all its relationships have any satisfying representation of the richness and infinite element of the Divine nature. So, in searching for some emblem the apostle strikes through to the centre, and says that Jesus Christ is a High Priest to represent — what? On the one side to represent the infirmities of men. He is clothed with them Himself; He is touched with a feeling of our infirmities; lie knows the height, and depth, and length and breadth of human experience and human need, and He is gone up to stand before God, our High Priest there; and not only to represent the wants of mankind, but in doing that He represents to us what is the interior character of God Himself, and what is the economy of the Divine love. In the earlier periods of the world's history God was revealed in those aspects that would be most powerful to restrain animalism. The revelation of God's motive power was toward the part that the man could understand; it was a physical manifestation of God as a God that governs the material world, which has certain fixed laws that cannot be broken without penalty immediate or remote; and so He was represented in the earlier periods of the world as the all-compelling Governor of the world. Pain in this world and suffering are God's merciful ministers to keep men in the road. "So," says God, "I will by no means count it a matter of indifference whether a man lives right or wrong. He shall live right or he shall suffer, because I am a God of mercy and love." So the Old Testament had a sublime conception of God, but when you come down to the prophets, when lust immeasurable threatened to overwhelm society, when the great curse of idolatry was licentiousness, then God says: "I will not relax one particle of My eternal law; I will wait till the crooked grows straight, till the inferior is exalted, I will have compassion on men; when they are transgressing their own nature and My moral law and all things pure and holy, I will still have patience, that I may bring them back again." There is the ideal of the Old Testament. But, coming down to a later period, when men were brutal they needed a little thunder, and the prophets gave it to them. They developed the regent character of God. "I abhor wickedness and My fury shall burn to the lowest hell, I will not tolerate it; I have not built the world for this: wicked men and devils shall not desecrate it; I will put forth a hand of strength, and I will clothe Myself in garments of blood! I will walk forth so that the land shall tremble in My indignation; wickedness shall not prevail; purity in manhood and Divine excellence shall prevail." And so the thunder of God's justice and the threatenings of God's law were sounded out continually because men were on so low a plane that they needed just that development of the Divine nature. But that has given a disproportionate idea of God's character. Men have been taught that He is the implacable thunderer. Another reason is that it is easier for us to thunder than it is to love. But it was not until the sun rose at the Advent that there came a morning outburst that gave us sight, not of the administration of God's government among men, but of the heart of God Himself in Jesus Christ. There we see the inside of God; and what was that? If Calvary does not teach it, if His walk among the poor and needy does not teach it, if all the acts of mercy do not inspire you with the knowledge, if you need it shaped into a doctrine, then hear it here. He represents that the inner nature of God, as represented by Jesus Christ acting in place of the high priest, was one that could "have compassion on the ignorant and on those that are out of the way" — all error, all stumbling, all sin, all violation of the ideal of duty. The infinite bounty of Divine love is not savage nor partial, it is universal, it is intense beyond description. What is infinite? That beyond which the thought of man cannot go; that that has, to our thought, no boundary, extent beyond ending. What is infinite compassion? That that would wrap this globe round and round a thou. sand times, like the folds of a garment round the body, with Divine thoughtfulness, Divine mercy, Divine love. What is infinite love? What is a mother's love? The purest and tenderest thing that is known on earth is the overhanging heart of a mother upon the cradle that has in it that little nothing which we call a babe, that can give nothing back, that receives everything arid returns nothing. Yet the love of the mother is but one drop of the ocean as compared with the love of the great Father of mankind — infinite, infinite! (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: WEB: For every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.