By: Gen. Jim – 6/28/26
“Who in the days of His (Jesus) flesh, having offered up prayers & supplications with strong crying & tears unto Him (Father) that was able to save Him from death, & having been heard for His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered”. – Heb. 5:7,8
Are we to believe that there was a time when Christ Jesus was not obedient?…He had to learn obedience? These verses refer, of course, to His experience in the Garden of Gethsemane which is recorded in all 3 synoptic Gospels, Mt.26:36-46; Mk. 14:32-42; & Lk. 22:40-46.
Scholars point out that “prayers” point to the particular petitions; “supplications seem rather to hint at the cavalier rank of the petitioner, who does not prefer a request as of title but as a suppliant. This is the way some Bible scholars believe is meant. Jesus, the Son, having become human/man felt & owned His dependence upon God the Father. He felt also & intensely the urgency, the desperateness of His position; it constrained Him to “strong crying & tears”.
The Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon once wrote: “Gethsemane was no light affair, but a terrible ordeal causing sweat like blood to drip from His veins upon the ground. Yet were ‘the sufferings of His body the body of His sufferings, & the sufferings of His soul were the soul of His sufferings’?” He continues: “From what did He so earnestly cry to be saved? Not from the act of dying; that He had recently faced, & had challenged Himself whether He should ask to be saved from being as a grain of wheat that falls into the ground & dies”. (see Jn. 12:24).
But Jesus did not cry to avoid death, No sir!, He spoke boldly “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground & dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces MUCH grain (i.e. “fruit”).” Jesus did not stop there, No sir! He said, “Now My soul is troubled, & what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I come to this hour”, v.27. (See also Lk. 22:53).
For This Cause
We take the words “able to save Him out of death” to mean deliverance from death, but He was willingly surrendering Himself to death – the Prince of Life! Jesus died! Jesus arose! Jesus was glorified!
So, how did Jesus LEARN OBEDIENCE? Hebrews 5:8 speaks of “learned obedience” & v.9 speaks of “learned obedience” & v.9 speaks of “made perfect”. Some scholars believe Jesus learned what obedience to the Father’s will costs in a world ruled by that Father’s enemy & sin. He did not learn to obey; that He knew from the first by the instincts of His sinless heart: but He LEARNED the nature & the benefit of obedience, for thereby He became PERFECTLY, experimentally fitted to be the “cause of eternal salvation” to those who in their turn learn to obey Him as He obeyed the Father.
Having Been Made Perfect
It has been said & believed by men & women of God, that the ‘perfecting through sufferings’, which is here declared to take effect upon the Lord, does not mean the addiction of anything from His moral nature. You & I are refined by the (fire) of suffering, which PURGES out dross, if we allow the “Fire to Burn”. We are ennobled by suffering, which adds to us, if we rightly accept it. I use the “IF” word, meaning, “on condition that; in case that; supposing that; allowing that; granting that.” NO FIRE NO PERFECTION (meaning maturity).
But Christ’s “perfecting” is not the “perfecting” of His moral character, but rather the “completion” of His equipment (as one has said) for His work of being the Captain of our salvation. [Captain: Greek άρχηγός / archegos = chief leader, author, prince, from arche, of order, time, place or rank, beginning, rule etc., see Heb. 2:10]
He Himself, though He learned obedience by the things that He suffered, was morally perfect, ere yet one shadow of pain or conflict had passed across the calm depths of His pure spirit, wrote one preacher.
So, the Captain who comes to make the soldiers (see 1 Tim. 1:18; 6:12; 2 Tim. 2:3,4 etc.) like Himself can only accomplish His purpose by becoming like the soldiers. The necessity for Jesus’ sufferings is mainly based in the text here upon the principle that He who is to deliver men/women must be a human – God in flesh.
The scholar Alexander Maclarem once wrote: “If He is to be a leader, He & we must go by the same road”.
Some believe that sufferings do not perfect, but embitters its victims. True, but not wholly true, There will always be those, after great, even small suffering, become bitter. We’ve had out share of them in our corps. If anyone was to grow bitter over “sufferings” it would be Jesus. But He didn’t, hence, He became the author, leader, captain of our salvation. Had He not endured the sufferings, the cross, I would not be writing this article. He opened the WAY of access to God the Father to all that believe in & upon the Son. Jesus said in Jn. 14:6, “I am the WAY, the TRUTH, & the LIFE. No one comes to the Father except through me”.
Captain or Pioneer?
Some translations have “Captain”; some have “Pioneer”. We’ve looked at the Gk. Word for “Captain”: the work “Pioneer” as a translation of άρχηγός is vivid, but not quite accurate, for the idea of “perfection”. Here (Heb. 2:10) there is no thought of a moral process leading to moral perfection, but only of a completely adequate qualification for leading men/women to the final & complete salvation. The author of Hebrews was concerned to how that only by enduring the depths of human suffering could the “Captain”, or leader of men’s salvation, be perfected for precisely this work of salvation. Amen.