Hebrews 5:2

I used that verse because I want you to see a relationship here between God and man. Man is an intelligent being with a spirit that shares with God many of His characteristics and feelings. Have you ever felt this way toward somebody? Compassion, mercy, concern, desire. Can you think of an animal that is capable of these kinds of characteristics, that is part of their personality? At least some of them might have it in a very shallow way, but nobody is able to have characteristics like God except the man. We are concerned here with some empathetic feelings.

In order to begin to see this you have to understand a little bit about what the book of Hebrews is about. It is the book of the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ. There is much in here about how Christ qualified to become High Priest. How did He qualify? He became a man. He did not become an ox. He did not become a lion. He did not become a dog. I use the term dog because dog is associated as being man's best friend, is it not? It is associated with having feelings toward man. It is associated with terms of compassion, being able to accept its owner without qualification.

When God became something other than what He was, He did not choose to be any of those. He chose to be a man, because man shares characteristics with God. He is in His image.

When we see this figure applied to Christ, expect to see Him portrayed in terms of having human feelings, mostly in terms of characteristics that animals simply are not capable of. They may have types of them—how about empathy? Can a dog really feel with you? Or a cat, or a cow? Can they really share your feelings? But another human being can. In order to be High Priest, Jesus Christ had to become one with us.

So the man figure here represents feelings—empathy, sympathy, mercy, compassion—but it is seen in a certain narrow relationship (as we are going to see in a little bit), in a universal sense. We will explain this as we go on, a little bit further into the series. This will begin to make sense a little bit down the line here.