Hebrews 5:2-4
2 November 2025
He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.
Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people.
And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
When we started last week in chapter five, we were beginning a very lengthy study, unpacking the key argument, if you like, in all of the book of Hebrews. That argument is how the Lord Jesus Christ fulfils the office of the priesthood. Last week, in our introduction in verse one, we considered the spiritual and religious significance of the priesthood. Now, it is important just to remind ourselves of a couple of key things that we drew out.
First of all, something that is articulated again and again is that there is the Creator God, who created us perfect in His image, and we are fallen in our sin. Therefore, we are cut off and we are separated from God. This is important to understand, because this identifies your sinful condition.
It is also crucial for us to understand why the priesthood is of such importance. As we noted from verse one, it speaks of a specific chiefest of priests, the high priest, who would once a year be chosen from among men to act on behalf of man in relation to God. What is this high priest doing? He is offering gifts and sacrifices for sins, the sins that separate you from God. This priest would go in and offer sacrifices for that. The purpose was to give an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the people.
What does an atoning sacrifice mean in the context of the Old Testament? This would mean that the sins of the represented people, which is Israel, God's chosen people, would be transferred to this animal sacrifice that is given, and it would act as a covering for the sins of the people. Also, this sacrifice given would satisfy the wrath, the righteous anger of God. Why is God righteously angry? Because of man's sin. With that premise, we can begin to see why this is so important, because the priest is literally representing a sinful people, a chosen and set-apart people, and he goes representing them by bringing the sacrifice for them. He does this before God.
Another thing that we must consistently and unashamedly continue to proclaim throughout the book of Hebrews, especially as we deal with this subject, is that the picture of the priesthood in the Old Testament is not the picture in and of itself; rather, it is pointing to and painting the picture of what will be fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. As we have already noted in the book of Hebrews, Christ is the Great High Priest, and these chapters unpack what this means and why it is so significant.
Now, concerning what we are dealing with in today's text, in these subsequent verses, qualifications are given regarding the priesthood. A series of qualifications are given, mainly starting in part of verse two. The first qualification that we will spend quite a bit of our time dealing with today is that the priest is to deal gently, to have compassion for his people. So, the first qualification is that the priest is to deal gently, to have compassion for the people. The second thing we will deal with more briefly is that the priest himself is sinful. The third thing we will unpack in the closing minutes is that the office, the calling of the priest, is a sacred calling of God. We are therefore dealing with compassion, sin, and the sacred calling of the priest.
Compassion for the Ignorant and Wayward
Let us get to this first point in verse two, which is where we are spending most of our time: the compassion of the priest. You will notice in verse two it begins with that he can deal gently, which we will come to in a few minutes. But who is he dealing gently with? We have mention of the ignorant and the wayward. This is the first thing we need to spend a few minutes dealing with: what type of people is this high priest dealing with?
On one level, this is just the other side of the same person, as it is basically a description of sinful man. But there are two key elements here that give distinctions we need to draw out.
First, we deal with the ignorant. What does it mean for someone to be ignorant? "Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults?" (Psalm 19:12). Then we have "The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble" (Proverbs 4:19). Note, this man does not know over what he stumbles; he cannot discern. There is an ignorance. Who can discern his errors? I do not know. This is a fundamental problem of man in his sin: "I know not what I do." Yet man stands accountable before the Most High God.
We do not even need to look at the unrepentant sinner in the streets of this city. We know how great a danger this is even in our hearts as professing Christians, when so often we may be confronted with an issue, an area of sin, and we may be scratching our heads and saying, "Well, I did not know." Why is this? So often it is because we are caught up in the outward concerns of this world and our affections are corrupted, where we become slothful, apathetic, or zealous for the fleshly. This is because we do not have a focus on the living God, and so our focus is on sin and sinful things, sinful dispositions. Therefore, we are acting in ignorance, yet it is a wilful sin-driven ignorance, because ignorance is sin here. This is the ignorant person whom the priest, this high priest, is representing.
Second Corinthians 4:4 states, "In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Here we see even more the nature of the spiritual warfare before us. There is an enemy out to devour you, and one of the ways is by blinding you to the truth through pleading ignorance, even the truth of the existence of Satan. He will happily skirt along in the shadows, being seen to be unseen, unknown, and not believed in, as long as it blinds the hearts and minds to the truth. And there we have the ignorant.
What would be the direction of travel of the ignorant mentioned here in Hebrews 5:2? It goes on to say not just the ignorant, but the wayward, or more literally translated as "out of the way," which basically means we move in all sorts of directions. We move in directions of evil; that is what it means to be wayward. We know not which way we go, we know not what we do, and we know not which way we go. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray; each one has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6).
Here we see the painful toil and the reality of earthly wisdom, which means death, that we are so often flirting with, even in our Christian lives. We look out at people all around us—our family, our friends, our colleagues, the people we seek to evangelise to—and they are wayward. What way? What direction are they going? Blinded to the truth, living according to the flesh. This is the spiritual reality of the corrupted man in his or her flesh. As we noted regarding the reality of sin, it is because man is separated; man is cut off from the living God. This is the ignorant and the wayward we are dealing with here in Hebrews 5:2.
The question we may then wonder is: if we have somebody who is going to be representing and dealing with the ignorant and the wayward, how is he going to go about doing that? I wonder if you had not read this verse already and were asked that question without having looked at the text, if the word gentle would be the first word you would have thought of concerning all that we just considered about the ignorant and the wayward.
Look at the calling of the priest as he represents the people. It says at the beginning of verse two, "he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward." This is to have compassion, because the priest is literally called to enter into the feelings of those he represents, to have a pity and a compassion for those people. Think how counter-fleshly this is when we look at the ignorant and wayward behaviour of people, even, and maybe sometimes especially, of our fellow Christians. Are we looking at them with gentleness and compassion, or can we not just wait to start ripping in, cutting them to shreds for the way in which they are behaving? Yet, what is the priest doing? It is the framework of grace, folks. This is the framework of grace because we are dealing with people who are ignorant and wayward. The Bible is not saying that does not matter, so let us be nice and gentle. No, this does matter. And yet still, this is how the priest is to deal with these people as he represents them before God.
As we begin to unravel the richness of the priesthood system, we remember time and again its limitations, but also the picture it is painting of what we will find with Christ. Here we have the priest dealing gently with the people. "And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions, all their sins" (Leviticus 16:21). So in his compassion and gentleness, the priest ministers on behalf of this people, the sinning people, the ignorant and the wayward.
Unintentional vs. High-Handed Sin
One other point that should be addressed here is regarding the hearts of the sinners within Israel. Is it simply a case of the priest bringing a sacrifice for everyone in Israel's sin without exception, in a way that people today argue that Jesus is the sacrifice for everyone's sins without exception and you need to ask Jesus into your heart?
Turn with me to Numbers, chapter 15, and we will read from verse 26 down to verse 31.
"And all the congregation of the people of Israel shall be forgiven, and the stranger who sojourns among them, because the whole population was involved in the mistake. If one person sins unintentionally, he shall offer a female goat a year old for a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement before the Lord for the person who makes a mistake when he sins unintentionally, to make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven. You shall have one law for him who does anything unintentionally, for him who is native among the people of Israel, and for the stranger who sojourns among them. But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from among his people, because he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken His commandment. That person shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be on him" (Numbers 15:26-31).
It is interesting that the distinction is made here because we again have this principle of sacrifice being made for sinful Israel, and we even have the example of those who have sinned unintentionally; that could be in your ignorant bracket. But then there is mention in verse 30 of the person who does anything with a high hand. What is this in reference to? This is in reference to somebody who does something with a blatant disregard for God's law. So that means it is premeditated, it is calculated, and there is no repentance in the heart of that man or woman. Look what happens to the one who sins with a high hand: they have reviled the Lord. Here we have not just the seriousness of sin and its consequences where there is a need for a sin offering, but for those who are hardened in their heart, who are acting with a high hand and reviling the Lord, they shall be cut off.
Again, with that framework of grace where the high priest is representing the people gently, we also have the need for repentance and forgiveness. Where will the repentance that leads to you being forgiven be secured? Again and again, may it be that you would know the sweet, living, eternal waters, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who entered into our native waters for this very purpose.
Sinfulness of the priest and Christ's perfection
As we consider these priests, though they had this calling, as it says in verse two at the end, "he himself is beset with weakness." So this was what he was called to do, how he was called to represent the people before God. But the priests in the time of the Old Covenant were themselves, as we are going to think about in more detail soon, sinful men. Often they did not represent their people or understand or have the compassion that was needed. Think, for example, of Eli, when Hannah is in tears as she prays in the house of the Lord. Eli has not a clue what is going on.
This is where we see the absolute and fundamental need of a perfect priest, a Great High Priest, One who can do these things perfectly. Because these priests in this old system, even though this system is so rich and profound and it is right and pleasing in the sight of God, it in and of itself saves no one. What is needed is the coming of the perfect Man who would fulfil this very office.
If you are perfect, the one without sin, you might be wondering, "Surely if it is a perfect Man Who knows no sin, then He will be the strictest and the harshest of all with sin." We have the priest here dealing gently with sinful people in Israel, so surely we would think, with Christ, He is perfect in His coming, He is not going to be softer on sin. No, He will not be. "His eyes are like a flame of fire" (Revelation 19:12). What that means is that He, the Lord Jesus Christ, has the best, most profound view of sin, its ugliness and its horror.
When we look to the message of Christianity and the Gospel, there is no downplaying of what sin is, nor any sense of ignorance or belittling of sin; Christ Jesus is not soft on sin. We just need to look at His life and see what He faced. Look at the anguish that He faced at Gethsemane. Why was He sweating blood drops of tears? Because of the horror of what sin is. Yet, brothers and sisters, with the horror of what sin is, of what Christ would face, He still came to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward sinful you and I, as sinful people, are often so intolerant of sin because of our sin. But when we look to Christ, this is not the case. Jesus Christ is the very definition of love. There can be compassion and grace in the face of something so serious and so vile with the one who is the very definition of love, the one whose grace is displayed in such a rich and unfathomable way.
As we look to the very heart of the Cross, Jesus beholds the sinner in His heart—that is you and I, Christian. He beholds the sinner in His heart according to the perfect divine standard, knowing the poor wretched sinner and the struggle of the unreconcilable damnation caused by sin. This is what Jesus is bearing. He comes with compassion. He possesses perfect divine compassion for us, for you, sinner. This is what He has done for you. As we begin this new week on the Lord's Day, as we come into this place, the compassion, the grace, the love of Christ is for you. This is why you belong to the kingdom of the Beloved Son, because there is one who has done this for you, literally by becoming that sin-bearer, sacrificed on a Cross in order to eternally deal with and put away your sin and eternally satisfy the righteous anger and wrath of the living God. It is eternally done by this Great High Priest.
Note one other thing. In verse one, it says, "Every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men." With Jesus coming to gently bear with this people, His chosen people, His Church, He had to Himself become a man completely involved and related to the human situation. He must feel with them, relate to them, understand them. He is not like us morally, being without sin, but He relates to us and He has a love for us. He knows our names, our hearts. He has literally done this in a very intimate, relational, and gloriously gracious way. This is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ: that the Great High Priest would do this for us. And here we have the compassion of the priest.
The Sin of the priest (Hebrews 5:3-4)
As we come to verses three to four, we will be much more brief with these other two points, but it is still very important to note. Verse three is dealing with the realities of these limitations, namely the sin of the priest: "Because of this, he is bound to offer sacrifice for his own sins, just as he does for those of the people."
If you have been following not just the nature of the calling of a high priest, but the reason why a priest is needed—namely sin and man being separated from God—the obvious question would be: okay, you have a priest representing the people, bringing sacrifice for them. That is great. But what about this sinful priest? What is happening to him?
"Then Moses said to Aaron, 'Draw near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself and for the people, and bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them, as the Lord has commanded'" (Leviticus 9:7). So what does the priest need to do? Not only is he representing the people, he also needs to make atonement for his own sin.
Stop and think for a moment how serious and how dangerous a place this is for that priest, because we are not talking about something that is just like a quick tick-box and then, "Yeah, sin's covered, let us get on with our day." Remember what the priest is called to do. He is called to go into the Most Holy Place of the temple of the living God, into the presence of God before the Ark of the Covenant, where there is a curtain which separates the Most Holy God from sinful man. This is the most dangerous place for a sinful man to be.
To understand the extent of this, turn with me now to Exodus, chapter 28. We went there last week when we considered the breastplate of judgment that the priest wears, which represents the twelve tribes, the people he represents before God. But it is near the end of the chapter that we consider the level of danger the priest is in. Exodus 28:33 states, "On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet yarns round its hem, with bells of gold between them—a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate round the hem of the robe. And it shall be on Aaron when he ministers, and its sound shall be heard when he goes into the Holy Place before the Lord and when he comes out, so that he does not die."
We are talking life and death here for this priest and this holy calling. He needs a bell so people outside can hear: Is he still alive? Is this man who is coming to not only represent our sin, but his own sin, even alive in there? Do we hear the bell? That is what we are dealing with. You might wonder, "Yes, this man should die. This man is deserving of death. He stands in the presence of God, and he is a sinful man." So why does he not die?
Well, let us turn to one other chapter in Zechariah, chapter three. If we turn to Zechariah, chapter three, the second last book in the Old Testament, verses one to five. This is a vision of a specific high priest, Joshua. If we are thinking that we have perhaps reached a seemingly logical conclusion that this high priest should die, who is certainly going to come and bring that charge? Satan.
"Then he showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, 'The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord Who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?'" (Zechariah 3:1-2). Now, Joshua was standing before the Angel, clothed with filthy garments. "And the Angel said to those who were standing before him, 'Remove the filthy garments from him.' And to him He said, 'Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.' And I said, 'Let them put a clean turban on his head.' So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments, and the Angel of the Lord was standing by" (Zechariah 3:3-5).
What do we have here in this text? First, we have Satan knowing that this high priest has filthy garments. Why? Because he is a sinful man. How dare he stand in the presence of the Most High God? You see, the way Satan frames it, he deals with many truths. How dare any sinful man stand in the presence of God? Well, yes, on one fundamental level that is true, because we revere God, the one Who is perfect, holy, just, and cannot in any way accept any sin.
Here we have this sinful priest coming, and yet, with the picture of these filthy garments that this priest is wearing, note what the Angel—these ministering spirits, these messengers who have come to care for and protect and uphold the people of God—notice what the Angel does for this priest: He removes the filthy garments, verse four, taking away the iniquity, clothing him with pure vestments and a clean turban. Why would He do such a thing? Because our God is a gracious and merciful God.
Because, brothers and sisters, we have in such a clear and explicit way here in Zechariah 3 the fact that this priesthood here in the Old Testament cannot possibly be the system in and of itself to save anyone, because even these priests are in such a perilous condition. But, brothers and sisters, it is pointing forward to the reason and means by which anyone can have these filthy spiritual garments of what we once were taken off, and we can be given that which is clean and right. And it is because of Christ.
In the Gospel of John, when we have mention of garments being divided, it is in John 19:23. It is because He wore a seamless, woven, one-piece tunic from top to bottom, a purple robe; He was wearing the priestly garments because His life would be laid down in these seemingly desperate circumstances. We need a High Priest, a Great High priest, a perfect priest, a sinless priest who would become the perfect, sinless sacrifice to take away all the blemishes, all the dirt, the filthy garments. That is ultimately how any of these priests can stand, because what they are doing is a picture of the very great reality of the Gospel.
It is because of the very great reality of the Gospel that these men are not struck down dead just like us. We stand here today and we are alive. Our life is not first and foremost found in the fact that we are breathing air here in this room; no, it is the life that we have in Christ.
The Sacred Calling
We are dealing in this passage with qualifications for the priesthood, and all of these qualifications show the limitations of the priesthood. Again and again, verse after verse, it draws out the beautiful picture of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this, brothers and sisters, is why for the final point: the office, the calling of the priest, is a sacred one. Verse four lays it out in no uncertain terms: "No one takes this honour for himself."
What does that mean? It means we do not have a group of people in Israel where someone is saying, "Yes, I fancy being a priest. Yes, I will do it, I will wear the bell." No, note: the verse says, only when called by God. This is not something that can be taken away by sinful man.
To see this, we are going to go to one other passage in Numbers, chapter 17. Turn with me to Numbers 17. This is where we see an example in the Old Testament of just how sacred the calling of the priest was. There is a situation here where the authority of the priesthood is being questioned. Let us read Numbers 17:2-5:
"Speak to the people of Israel and get from them staffs, one for each father's house, from all their chiefs, according to their father's house, twelve staffs. Write each man's name on his staff, and write Aaron's name on the staff of Levi, for there shall be one staff for the head of each father's house. Then you shall deposit them in the Tent of Meeting before the Testimony, where I meet with you, and the staff of the man Whom I choose shall sprout. Thus I will make to cease from Me the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against you" (Numbers 17:2-5).
In the previous chapter, they have been grumbling against the priesthood. Here, God is calling for them all to get together—all the heads of these different tribes, get your leader, get their staff, write their name on it—and God is going to do something miraculous. A picture will become very much visible here: the authority rests with God, given to this one man, Aaron.
We see it in verse 8: "On the next day, Moses went into the tent of the Testimony, and behold, the staff of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms and bore ripe almonds" (Numbers 17:8). This should be of absolutely no surprise to those who read the first few books of the Bible and get a picture of how God deals with Israel. When God says something is to come to pass, it will exactly as He has decreed. This coming to pass of His staff sprouting is the sign for the people: this is the Lord's anointed one, the priest who is the very foreshadowing of that Great High priest.
Brothers and sisters, as we consider the importance of such a calling, as we look to the time of the New Covenant, we are praying even here in Aberdeen in Scotland that the Lord would call and save sinful men and call labourers to the harvest (Matthew 9:38). But what is the emphasis that God would be calling? It is why in Romans 10:15 it talks of the preacher must be sent. It is why the disciples had to be called by the Lord Jesus. Even for anyone who is to be saved and become a Christian, it is only when they are called. "No one comes to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44). Our God is sovereign, Lord over all, and He calls those whom He calls according to His good and right purpose. That includes, in the time of the Old Testament, the sacred calling of the high priest.
The sacred calling of the high priest from this Levitical line, the tribe, the house of Levi, is, as we saw last week, the line which is the priestly line, which takes us to the coming of the Great High priest. The significance of what the Great High Priest has done in laying down His life for sinners like us is that He has eternally dealt with our sin. Therefore, the curtain is torn top from bottom; there is no veil which separates us from the living God. We can approach the throne room of grace with boldness, knowing that we worship the great merciful High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. And now we can come to God, our Heavenly Father.
All of this is wrapped up in what the Gospel is and what it means for your life, and the system of the priesthood is crucial to that. What these priests are doing with sacrifices and blood and all of these things is not archaic language which makes Old Testament stuff quite redundant for modern day. No, it is at the heart of the very Gospel we believe. The Gospel by which we are saved, by which blood has been shed in order to cleanse you, that you, as a repentant sinner, could stand forgiven in the sight of God justified. Now, knowing that you have eternal life with Him, it is all because of Christ, all because of the Great High Priest who lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose victorious and triumphant, is seated on the throne, and will return to call His people home. This is the hope we have as the Christian, and that is the hope we have in the Great High Priest, Jesus Christ. From verse five of chapter five we will then get into more explicit language of Christ, what He does as our Great High Priest.