Hebrews 2:10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory… How was it that the discipline of suffering improved the unimprovable Saviour? Not in the way of pruning off tendencies to anything bad: for in Him there never were any. There was no self-conceit there to be purged out: no arrogance to be taken down: no hardness to be softened by experience of pain. No higher degree was possible, in the scale of moral excellence — of purity, kindness, unselfishness, truthfulness. But round this central core of unimprovable perfection, there might gather special qualifications fitting for the fulfilment of His great atoning work, such as not even He could have without passing through that baptism of suffering which was implied by His life and death. Christ was "made perfect through sufferings," in the sense that He was made more completely equipped and prepared for the work He came to do, by the sufferings He underwent. L By His sufferings, HE ATONED FOR SIN, AND TOOK IT AWAY. II. Another respect in which Christ became through sufferings the Saviour we know Him for — Is IN THE MATTER OF HIS BEING AN EXAMPLE FOR US IN OUR DAYS OF SORROW. III. Then, again, sufferings perfected our blessed Saviour and made Him what we know Him for, In THE MATTER OF SYMPATHY WITH US. "He has felt the same ": how that brings the Divine Redeemer close to us; as nothing else could! IV. Now, does the text mean more? Is there an uncomfortable feeling in any mind, that in all this we have been evading a plain statement of God's Word, because it seems as though it would not fit in with our theology? Does any one think that if we really read the text honestly, IT WOULD CONVEY THAT SUFFERING IMPROVED CHRIST MORALLY, made Him better, just in the same sense in which suffering improves us, and makes us better? The idea is startling. Yet good men and wise men have held it and delighted in it. One such (Archer Butler), a firm believer in our Lord's Divinity, has maintained that all those long nights of prayer, all that endurance of contradiction, the agony in the Garden, the final struggle on the Cross, had power(I quote his words) "to raise and refine the human element of His Being beyond the simple purity of its original innocence; so that, though ever and equally without sin, the dying Christ was something more consummate still than the Christ baptized in Jordan." I confess at once, I cannot venture to say so. The Best could never grow better. One cannot bear to exalt even the dying Redeemer by saying what seems to cast a slight on Him who preached the Sermon on the Mount. And yell it as you may in more skilful phrases, it comes to that, when you speak of sorrow as working "a refining and exalting change" upon Christ! Yet perhaps without irreverence it may be said that the human in Him must have learnt, daily, intellectually: and (so joined are they together) in some sense, thus learning, have morally grown. And true it is, doubtless, that "Virtue tried and triumphant ranks above untried innocence." (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. |
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