Commentary - Hebrews 5:5-10

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Hebrews, the author is continuing his argument for the supremacy of Christ's priesthood. He has just established the qualifications for a high priest taken from among men, and now he demonstrates how Christ not only meets but infinitely exceeds those qualifications. The central point is that Christ's priesthood is not a self-appointed office. It is not a glory He grasped for. Rather, it was a divine appointment, declared and ordained by God the Father Himself. This passage weaves together two crucial Old Testament texts, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, to establish both Christ's sonship and His eternal priesthood. Furthermore, the author gives us a profound glimpse into the humanity of Christ, showing us His suffering, His prayers, and His tears. This is not to diminish His divinity, but to magnify the nature of His priestly work. He learned obedience, was made perfect, and thus became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. This is a rich passage that grounds our salvation in the divine appointment and the perfected obedience of our great High Priest.

Outline

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 5 In this way also Christ did not glorify Himself to become a high priest, but He who said to Him, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”;

The author begins by connecting directly to the previous point about the honor of the priesthood. No man takes this honor to himself, and this principle applies preeminently to Christ. Christ did not glorify Himself. The incarnation was not an act of self-promotion. He did not come down from Heaven to seize an office. This is the very opposite of the spirit of our age, and the opposite of the spirit of the first Adam. Christ's entire ministry was one of submission to the Father's will. The glory He received was glory given to Him by the Father. The author immediately grounds this in Scripture, quoting Psalm 2:7. This quotation establishes the unique relationship between the Father and the Son. Christ's priesthood is founded upon His sonship. The phrase "Today I have begotten You" refers not to the eternal generation of the Son, but to His installation as King, which in the context of Hebrews, includes His priestly office. His resurrection and ascension were the public declaration of this begetting, this appointment to His royal and priestly throne.

v. 6 just as He says also in another passage, “YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.”

Having established Christ's divine appointment as Son, the author now establishes His divine appointment as Priest. He quotes from another Messianic psalm, Psalm 110:4. This is a crucial text for the entire book of Hebrews. The priesthood of Christ is not in the line of Aaron; it is of a different order entirely, the order of Melchizedek. This priesthood is "forever." The Aaronic priesthood was temporary, a shadow, but Christ's priesthood is eternal and unchanging. The reference to Melchizedek is introduced here, and the author will unpack it in much greater detail later in chapter 7. For now, the point is simple and powerful: Christ's priesthood, like His sonship, is not a human invention or a personal ambition. It is a direct, sworn appointment from God the Father. This gives us unshakable confidence in our High Priest.

v. 7 He, in the days of His flesh, offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence.

The author now pivots from Christ's divine appointment to His earthly ministry, "the days of His flesh." This verse gives us a startlingly intimate portrait of the Son of God in His humanity. This is likely a reference to His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. He offered up prayers and supplications, not with quiet dignity, but with "loud crying and tears." This is the reality of the incarnation. The Son of God took on our frail humanity and experienced the full weight of sorrow and anguish in the face of death. He prayed to the One "able to save Him from death." This does not mean He was trying to escape the cross. His prayer was that He would be delivered through death, that the grave would not hold Him. And He was heard. The Father did not remove the cup, but He gave Him the strength to drink it, and He raised Him from the dead. He was heard "because of His reverence," or His godly fear. His prayer was not the demand of a petulant child, but the reverent submission of an obedient Son to His Father's will.

v. 8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.

This is one of those verses that can cause us to stumble if we are not careful. How could the sinless Son of God learn obedience? We must understand that this is not learning obedience in the sense of moving from disobedience to obedience. Christ was never disobedient. Rather, this is the learning of experience. It is one thing to know the theory of obedience; it is another thing entirely to live it out in the crucible of suffering. As a true man, Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and this included the experiential reality of obedience under trial. His obedience was tested and proven at every stage of His life, culminating in the ultimate suffering of the cross. Even though He was the Son, with all the rights and privileges that entailed, He willingly submitted to this process. His suffering was the schoolroom in which His perfect, human obedience was fully demonstrated and brought to maturity. This is not a case of going from imperfection to perfection, but from untested perfection to tested, proven, and matured perfection.

v. 9 And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,

The result of this process of suffering and obedience is that He was "made perfect." Again, this does not imply any previous moral imperfection. The word for "perfect" here carries the meaning of being completed, or being fully qualified for the task. Through His suffering and death, Christ was perfectly equipped to be our High Priest and the source of our salvation. He has gone through the entire course of human experience, apart from sin, and has emerged victorious. He is now the "source," the author, the cause of eternal salvation. But notice the condition: this salvation is "to all those who obey Him." This is not to say that our obedience earns our salvation. That would contradict the entire gospel. Rather, true faith is obedient faith. Those who have been saved by Christ will, as a necessary result, obey Christ. Our obedience is the fruit of our salvation, not the root of it. It is the evidence that we are truly connected to the source of eternal salvation.

v. 10 being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

The author concludes this section by returning to the main theme. Christ's qualification as the source of salvation is directly tied to His priesthood. He was "designated by God." The word here is stronger than a simple statement; it is a public address, a formal proclamation. God has declared Him to be what He is. And what is that? A high priest, not after the pattern of Aaron, but "according to the order of Melchizedek." This reiterates the point from verse 6 and sets the stage for the extended argument that will follow in chapter 7. The entire process described in verses 7-9, His suffering and perfection, was the pathway to His installation into this unique and eternal priesthood. Our salvation rests on the fact that our Priest was not self-appointed, but divinely designated, and that His qualification was not a matter of lineage, but of perfect, suffering obedience.

Application

First, we must be struck by the humility of Christ. He "did not glorify Himself." In a world that screams for self-promotion and personal branding, the Son of God shows us the true path to glory: submission to the will of God. If Christ did not grasp for this honor, how much less should we? Our calling is to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and He will exalt us in due time.

Second, we should take immense comfort from the humanity of Christ. Our High Priest is not a distant, stoic deity who cannot understand our struggles. He has been through the fire. He knows what it is to cry out to God in anguish. He has felt the crushing weight of sorrow. This means we can come to Him with confidence, knowing that He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because He has experienced them Himself, yet without sin.

Finally, we must see the connection between suffering and obedience. Christ learned obedience through suffering, and we are called to follow in His steps. Our suffering is not meaningless. God uses it as a tool to shape us, to test our faith, and to teach us what it means to truly obey. Just as Christ was made perfect through suffering, so our sanctification is advanced through the trials God brings into our lives. And as we learn to obey Him, we experience more and more the reality of the eternal salvation He has secured for us.