NOTES for Heb 5:1-10

As he further unfolds the image of the Messiah-High Priest, the author of the letter turns to the Yahwist and Jewish tradition, for which the image of the Messiah was connected not only with royal rule but also with priestly ministry. He reinterprets the corresponding quotations from the Book of Psalms (vv. 5-6; see respectively Ps 2:7 and Ps 109:4) in the context of ideas, widespread in his time in the Church, about Christ as the living Torah. According to views generally accepted in the earliest Christian era among both Jews and Christians, the Torah already existed before God created the world, and the coming of the Messiah was predetermined then as well. It is no surprise that the words about the spiritual birth of the king from Psalm 2, which in all probability speaks of Solomon, were transferred to the Messiah, who, like Solomon, was to be a descendant of David. The author of the letter supplemented the tradition by connecting the eternal nature of God's design concerning the Messiah with the eternal nature of the Torah, of which the Messiah became the living embodiment. He reinterprets in the same way the traditional comparison of the Messiah with Melchizedek.

Already in the pre-exilic period Melchizedek had become a living example of a charismatic figure who blessed a man of God, though Melchizedek himself did not know that man's God. And the Messiah could become high priest only charismatically, since He, as everyone knew, was not supposed to be a Levite, while a high priest, like any priest at all, was always a Levite by definition. The author of the letter confirms this by comparing Christ with Melchizedek (vv. 1-6) and by reminding his readers that, having become human and completed His earthly path to the end, He opened to His followers a possibility that the "lawful" high priests could not give them: the possibility of salvation (vv. 7-10).

For Paul, Christian life is life in the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world. That is why he calls Christians "sons of light": the issue is undoubtedly that light with which, even in pre-Christian times, God's presence was associated and accompanied. And since the Kingdom is permeated with this presence, it is permeated with light as well. The distinguishing marks of a person living the life of the Kingdom, according to the apostle, are goodness, righteousness, and truth. As for righteousness, no special questions arise: indeed, life in the Kingdom is unthinkable without righteousness.

This does not at all mean that one can become righteous by oneself, without God's help, merely by observing certain norms and rules, even the most remarkable ones. Human righteousness always proves to be only a reflection of God's righteousness, and of course the righteous person should be considered not a sinless person, for there simply are no such people in the world except the Savior Himself, but a person who knows how to follow God and bear witness to Him despite his own sinfulness. But all this was known even before Christ's coming into the world. With goodness everything is not so unambiguous: the corresponding Greek word is quite universal; it can denote everything good in general that is found in the world and in human nature. But in its semantic field the idea of soundness, of good quality, predominates, as in the Hebrew word whose equivalent it is.

This is the very "goodness" that belonged to the world at creation, when God, creating the world, looked at what He had made and was convinced that it was "very good," or "good exceedingly" according to the Synodal translation. It disappeared, ceased to be proper to the world after the fall. But in the Kingdom there is no deficiency, and everyone who lives its life is freed from it, first of all with respect to his own human nature.

Previously this was impossible for anyone, even for a righteous person; now this possibility has opened to everyone who has shared in the life of the Kingdom. And the fullness of life is inseparable from truth, which now becomes not speculation, as it had been before, but reality. Of course, the ideal of righteousness always existed, long before the Savior came into the world, but it also always remained unattainable.

Now the ideal has become reality. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of Himself as the way, the truth, and the life: He bears the Kingdom in Himself; through Him one can share in the Kingdom; He is the fullness of life and embodied truth, the embodied ideal of righteousness, and in union with Him every Christian can and must become such an embodied ideal of righteousness. This is what Paul calls the addressees of his letter to do: he understands that Christian life is possible only as the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness.

In calling Christ "a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek," the author of the letter turns to one of the most mysterious biblical figures. Melchizedek is indeed called in Genesis by a word traditionally translated as "priest," although in his time there could, of course, be no question yet of the Levitical priesthood.

The God whom Melchizedek serves is called by the name El Elyon, which appears nowhere else except in the story of Melchizedek's blessing of Abraham; Abraham's God was never called by this name. And this mysterious servant of an unknown god blesses Abraham, whom his God is leading. He blesses by revelation, by inspiration, not belonging to the people of God, appearing as if outside the history of Revelation and at the same time entering it in a completely unexpected way, beyond all frameworks and human ideas of salvation.

In the same way Christ Himself enters the world and the history of salvation: beyond every human framework, unexpectedly, unpredictably, violating and destroying all the messianic ideas and concepts of His era. But there is something else shared by Him and Melchizedek. As in every case when we are speaking of a phenomenon we today usually call charismatic, in the case of Melchizedek's blessing human nature played no very large role in this act.

Such spontaneous actions of a prophetic character are often performed, so to speak, "over" human nature. Of course, this is not what we see in Christ, in whom nature was fully and completely involved in each of His actions. But for fallen man, a charismatic act often turns out to be the only way to minimize the distortions that human sinfulness introduces into spiritual life. Every priest, for example, as one who presides, had first of all to resist his own sinfulness; otherwise, as a presider he could do nothing.

Jesus is simply free from sin; He does not need to struggle with Himself in order to carry out the ministry entrusted to Him by the Father. In this respect the charismatic Melchizedek is closer to Christ than an ordinary priest: he is, of course, not sinless, but in blessing Abraham he in a sense steps over his sinfulness with God's help. Of course, for Melchizedek this is only a brief state, while for Jesus it is normal; He was born this way and lives this way. But at the moment when Melchizedek understands that he must bless Abraham, he is closer to Christ than any priest overcoming his sinfulness in daily service. The sinless High Priest, who for the sake of people shared with them the lot of sinful man - this is how the Savior appears in the letter.