[On the “Perfection” of Jesus in
Heb 9:14]:
The
claim that Jesus needs first to be made perfect (Heb 2:10; cf. 5:9) does not
mean that he was once ‘imperfect’ – whatever that in itself might mean! In
Hebrews, τελειοω and its cognates (2:10; 5:9; 7:19; 7:28;
9:9; 10:1, 14; 11:40; 12:23) should be understood primarily – though not
exclusively – in terms of the cult. Perfection in ‘that state of purity which
makes contact between God and the worshipper possible, together with the
processes by which that is achieved’ (Isaacs, Sacred Space, 102); thus
the τελειωσις of the high priest was his faithfulness to
which was required of him. Through overcoming the temptation to disobey God,
Jesus is made perfect, that is, achieves the necessary state of cultic purity
that enables him rightly to be the high priest who enters the holy of holies by
his own blood. His own perfection is the condition for the perfecting of those
who approach God through him. (Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh:
Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of Providence [Paternoster
Theological Monographs; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009], 182 n. 71)
Indeed,
Hebrews shows ‘that the Son through whom God made and upheld the world, offers
triumphantly through testing and temptation and by the eternal Spirit, the
sacrifice of praise and obedience that is the human calling’ (Gunton, ‘Martin Kähler
Revisited’, 162) Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness (Mt 4:1-11; Mk 1:12-13;
Lk 4:1-13) and Gethsemane (Mt 26:36-46; Mk 14:32-42; Lk 22:39-46; cf. Jn 12:27;
Heb 5:7) are both key moments by which his appointment as God’s Son (Mt
3:13-17; Mk 1:9-11; Lk 3:21-22; cf. Jn 1:29-34; Heb 1:5) is tested, when his
resolve to act faithfully is tested. Although these testings open Jesus to the
various temptations put before him, they also open him to the possibility of
drawing upon the Spirit’s power to resist them. Unlike any other person, then,
Jesus offers himself in submission to God to forge a few way to him through his
own flesh (10:20) - and did so ‘through the eternal Spirit’ (9:14). (Ibid.,
188)
Importantly,
Hebrews also states that Christ’s self-offering was ‘through the eternal
spirit’ (δια πνευματος αιωνιου; Heb 9:14). The phrase is ambiguous, but we
may understand it to mean, as we have suggested already, that Christ is
strengthened by the Holy Spirit to remain obedient to the will of God and
willingly to offer himself as the ultimate sacrifice for sins. Accordingly, the
Spirit’s involvement in Christ’s life is not limited to any one episode,
however crucial, but rather throughout his entire life, from conception to
resurrection, so that the whole course of Christ’s obedience is established
through dependence upon the Spirit. (Ibid., 194)
[On Matthew’s account of the
temptation narrative]
For
Matthew, then, Jesus must learn to be the Son of the Father through obedient
suffering (cf. Isa 52:13-53:12; Heb 5:8): this is the vocation prepared for
him, a vocation inaugurated by his anointing with the Spirit at his baptism.
The
anointed Jesus is ‘led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by
the devil’ (Mt 4:1). Again, Matthew portrays Jesus as the obedient Son of God
by contrasting him with the Israelites, who were led around the wilderness for
forty years so that God could test their hearts and know ‘whether or not [they]
would keep his commandments’ (Deut 8:2). Crucially, Matthew emphasises that the
Spirit himself leads Jesus into the wilderness; that Jesus follows is a further
demonstration, therefore, of his willing obedience to his calling. He is
responsive to the Spirit’s direction in and sovereignty over his life.
Furthermore, ti is by the power of the Spirit that Jesus resits the three
temptations dangled by the devil before him (Mt 4:3, 6, 9); Gerald Hawthorne
argues that Matthew juxtaposes the two phrases ‘by the Spirit’ and ‘by the
devil’ to imply that ‘the Saviour’s victory over the tempter was due in large
part to his being filled with the Spirit.’ Indeed, Hawthorne continues, the Spirit ‘enabled Jesus to see the subtle
dangers that underlay the seemingly innocent appeals of Satan to exercise his
messianic powers on his own authority’ (The Presence and the Power,
140). Succumbing to the temptations would have deviated Jesus from faithfulness
to his Father; but Jesus emerged victorious from the temptations, not 'simply
because of his own inner strength or because of the set determination of his
’ill', but because he was ‘fortified in his determination to obey the Father by
the strengthening force of the Spirit within him’ (The Presence and the
Power, 139). Though not explicit throughout the account of Jesus’s
temptations in the wilderness, the Spirit’s leading of Jesus to that place
(4:1), coupled with Matthew’s ongoing comparison between Jesus’s testing with
that of Israel, suggests that he understands the Spirit to be guiding Jesus
ceaselessly, just as he also guided Israel (Neh 9:20; cf. Isa 63:7-10). If
Jesus was tested to see how he would respond to the responsibility entailed by
is status as God’s son, Matthew’s conclusion, then, is that he resisted the
temptation to abuse that position by the power of the Spirit of God. (Ibid.,
212-13)
What,
though, does it mean to say that the Spirit enabled Jesus to obey his Father?
We must distinguish carefully between two senses of the verb ‘to enable’ that
can be applied to the Spirit’s role in the life of Jesus. To say that the
Spirit enables Jesus to obey could mean either that he empowers Jesus to do so
or, more forcefully, that he ensures Jesus’ s obedience. This latter sense is
problematic: it invites a dangerous suggestion that Jesus’s faithfulness could
not have been otherwise, that is, although it was always possible for Jesus to
disobey his Father, somehow the Spirit ensured that this would never happen.
There is an echo here of Calvin’s contention that Adam could have remained free
from sin were it not God’s design for him to fall: the integrity of Adam’s
ability to sin or not to sin is overruled by the divine will. Similarly, to say
that the Spirit enables Jesus not to sin could imply that the Spirit prevents
Jesus from sinning; but if this is so, then it is legitimate to question the
degree to which Jesus truly is obedient to God’s will. Does Christ actually learn
obedience, as Hebrews 5:8 contends, if the Spirit removes the need for him to struggle
with temptation? Furthermore, we should not see the Spirit’s enabling as
somehow preserving Jesus from the effects of living in a fallen world, for that
offers the latter a form of protection that other humans are not privileged to
have; the implication would be that Jesus remains faithful to God because the
temptations he faced would not have been real temptations at all.
Against
both of these, it is preferable to see Jesus obeying his Father in the power
and strength of the Spirit: the Spirit enables Jesus’s obedience by prompting
him to accept his vocation and then, by that same Spirit, consolidates that act
of faithfulness by empowering his resolve to continue through to his
crucifixion (This does not mean that the Spirit leads Jesus to a point of decision
only to abandon him for its duration. Jesus’s acceptance of his vocation is a
faithful response not only conditioned by the Spirit but also made in the
Spirit’s power. There is no time when Jesus must rely on his own strength, even
if the decision to remain faithful is his own; and all that he does in
faithfulness to his Father is because he offers himself continuously through
the Spirit). When the Son was tempted to turn away from the Father’s will, ‘the
Spirit was present with him to enlighten his mind, to clarify the issues, to
urge him toward the right choice, but not to make that choice for him’ (The
Presence and Power, 230). It is this conception of the Spirit’s relation to
Jesus that Matthew appears to endorse, and perhaps the absence of an explicit
mention of the Spirit in his account of Gethsemane emphasises that ultimately
it is Jesus who renders the obedience necessary, though not apart from the
Spirit, to secure God’s new beginning for creation by his death. ‘The
righteousness of the cross . . . sprang from the human will of Jesus, fraught
like ours with temptation yet counselled and empowered by the Holy Spirit”
(Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh, 108). By the Spirit’s power,
Jesus remains faithful to God’s will for him and in turn ensures that God’s
will for all things is done as his death renews the life of creation, the
actuality of which is demonstrated supremely by his own resurrection (Mt
28:1-10). (Ibid., 214-15)
