Our Compassionate High Priest

We can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for He Himself is also compassed with infirmity. Hebrews 5:2

Many of us, I trust, have a desire within out hearts to come to God, but we need a high priest. But we need a high priest in order that we may draw near—one who shall be a man as well as God. We may reflect with joy upon the Godhead of our great High Priest. Inasmuch as it is His right, He counts it not robbery to be equal with God, but He communes with the Father as one that was by Him, as one brought up with Him, who was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him. But we ought also to be very grateful that we can come into touch with our High Priest on His human side and rejoice that He is truly man. For thus says the Lord, “I have laid help upon One that is mighty: I have exalted One chosen out of the people.” He is anointed, it is true, with the oil of gladness above His fellows, but still, He and they are one, “for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.”...

He is One who can feel for grief, because He has felt the same. When I have explained compassion as implying meekness of disposition, I have not given you the full meaning of the expression. Not only has our Lord compassion on the ignorant by being gentle towards them, but He sympathizes with them by having a fellow-feeling with them. They got out of the way and into the thorns. They wandered and fell into a maze. They were lost in the dark mountains, but He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” “In all their afflictions He was afflicted.” Because of that fellow-feeling, He is always very tender and full of pity—and if He finds any of His children sorrowing, He has abundant compassion upon them.

 Moreover, He is One who lays Himself out tenderly to help such as come to Him. He did so when He was here in body and He is the same now—all His life was given in tenderness. You never find Christ throwing bread and meat to the hungry crowd as we throw bones to the dogs. He has made them sit down on the green grass—and then He blessed the food, gave it to His disciples, and they distributed it in a quiet, orderly way. And the Lord Jesus Christ has a very loving way now of helping His people. So tenderly does He do it, that the doing of it is almost as great a wonder as the thing that is done. He abounds towards us in all wisdom and prudence, and we may each one say, “Your gentleness has made me great.” Oh, He is a wonderful Savior! There is none like Him for sympathizing with us and dealing tenderly with us.

Our Compassionate High Priest, Sermon 2251 - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Photo attribution: By Nicholas A. Tonelli from Northeast Pennsylvania, USA (White Violets) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons