Thursday, June 10, 2021

R.B. Jamieson on Hebrews and the "Perfection" of Jesus

 

 

I take Christ’s being perfected to designate his process of qualification to become the one who can confer perfection. That is, the process of Christ’s perfection consists in the whole course of prerequisites to Christ becoming the all-sufficient, preeminient high priest. Christ’s entrance into perfection in his acquisition of all he needed to become this high priest. But just what was necessary, and when did Christ obtain it?

 

First, Christ had to suffer in order to be perfected (2:10; 5:8). His faithful endurance of suffering was an essential element in his becoming “a merciful and faithful high priest” who could “help those who are being tempted” (2:17-18). Christ had to suffer in order to become a high priest who could “sympathize with our weakness” (4:15). Prerequisite to Christ becoming high priest was not only his physical solidarity with his human siblings, but his perfect perseverance through the whole desperate course of human life.

 

In 5:7-8, Jesus cried out to God for deliverance, learned obedience through what he suffered, and then, “being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation” (5:9). Since Jesus’ learning obedience is coordinate with his suffering, his being made perfect necessarily follows his whole course of earthly obedience. Only after his sufferings were completed was Jesus perfected; only when perfected did Jesus become the source of eternal salvation.

 

If Jesus’ perfection in his qualification for high priesthood, the contrast between Christ and the Levitical priests in Hebrews 7 sheds further light on what his perfection consists in. The Levitical priests needed constantly to be replaced because death removed each from office (7:23). By contrast, Christ “holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever” (7:24). So Christ’s immortality is key to his superiority to the Levitical priests. But when did he obtain this immortality? The Levitical priests died, and so did he. Hence when Hebrews says that Jesus “has become a priest . . . by the power of an indestructible life” (7:16). I take this “Life” to be the glorified eschatological life he obtained at his resurrection.

 

Hebrews’ discussion of Jesus’ perfecting maps consistently onto a grid of humiliation-then-exaltation. Jesus suffered death and then was crowned with glory and honor (2:9); so, also he suffered in order to be perfected (2:10). Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered, which culminated in his death (5:7-8); when delivered from death he was made perfect (5:9). “For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath . . . appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever” (7:28). Having been perfected includes not just his completed course of faithfulness and his painfully purchased sympathy with human weakness, but also his transcendence of what weakness and mortality, which he overcame in his triumph over death. Since Jesus’ perfection includes his transcendence of mortality, he was, and could only have been, perfected as his resurrection.

 

Understanding perfection as the eschatological fulfillment of God’s saving purposes informs what it means for Jesus to be perfected. Jesus’ perfection is his fitness to become the mediator, the conduit, the source of this eschatological fullness. Only the perfected Christ can perfect others. (R.B. Jamieson, The Paradox of Sonship: Christology in the Epistle to the Hebrews [Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture; Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2021], 90-91)