Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Clifford B. Kvidahl on Hebrews 2:17 and the Propitiatory Nature of Christ's Heavenly Intercession

  

After expounding on the necessity of Jesus’s participation in the human experience (2:10-16), the author concludes that such an experience was necessary in order that Jesus might “become (γενηται) a merciful and faithful high priest with respect to the things of God, thus making atonement for the sins of the people” (2:17). Similar language is also used later in chapter five, where the author informs his hearers that “Christ did not glorify himself so as to become (γενηθηναι) a high priest . . . “ (5:5a). Rather than operating as high priest before his incarnation, Jesus becomes high priest at a specific point in time, a point in time after his incarnation. (Clifford B. Kvidahl, “’You Are a Priest Forever’: An Exegetical and Biblical Theology of High Priestly Christology,” in Written for Our Instruction: Essays in Honor of William Varner, ed. Abner Chou and Christian Locatell [Dallas: Fontes Press, 2021], 242, italics in original)

 

In a footnote (ibid., 242 n. 9) we read that “the author [of Hebrews] viewed atonement as something taking place upon Jesus’s entrance into heaven.”