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NOTES for Heb 5:8-9

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8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
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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.

Other notes

 
For Heb 5:1-10
1 For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:
2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.
3 And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.
4 And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.
5 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee.
6 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
10 Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.
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In today's reading the apostle Paul says that Christ offered prayers and supplications to the Father, who was able to save Him from death...  Read more

In today's reading the apostle Paul says that Christ offered prayers and supplications to the Father, who was able to save Him from death, and that He was heard. This does not fit very well with our customary ideas about what an answered prayer is. It would seem that if the Father heard Him, the very miracle demanded by the Jews should have taken place: Jesus should have come down from the cross and appeared in glory. But Paul sees the situation through entirely different eyes. Jesus, true God, became true man—and therefore mortal. He followed to its end the path taken by each of us. And the Father heard the Son: death itself was destroyed by His death, the gates of hell collapsed, and the very moment that seemed to be defeat proved to be His victory.

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For Heb 5:1-10
1 For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:
2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.
3 And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.
4 And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.
5 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee.
6 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
10 Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.
Hide
As he further unfolds the image of the Messiah-High Priest, the author of the letter turns to the Yahwist and Jewish tradition...  Read more

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).

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