HEBREWS – PART TWO – Lesson 4

“What Price Perfection?”

Kay Arthur, Teacher

What price perfection? That is what we want to talk about today. And I want to tell you what the price is right from the beginning. The price of perfection will be obedience. The price of perfection will be suffering. The price of perfection will be exercise. The price of perfection will be eating meat, and not milk. That is the price of perfection. And yet, I want to tell you that to miss perfection, to not go on to perfection ought to really cause you to doubt your salvation, because I really believe from the Scriptures that you can not help going on to maturity to one degree or another, if you are truly a child of God. I think what the author of Hebrews wants us to see is what price perfection and what need perfection, as we look at Hebrews, Chapter 5.

I want to pick up where I left off, in v. 7, and then I want to take us all the way through Chapter 6:1. I would like to look at the price of perfection, and show it to you from the aspect of the life of Jesus Christ—and then relate it to us. And then show it from the aspect of you, going on to maturity. I realize that those of you who are doing homework with me, either Precept Upon Precept or taking it in and living it out by doing In and Out, that your focus this week has been on Hebrews 5:11-14. You have kind of dipped your toes a little bit into Hebrews, Chapter 6. I need to back up and look at Jesus Christ. But before I do, let me pick up one verse in 6:1, and show you that perfection has got to happen if you truly belong to Jesus Christ. It has got to happen to one degree or another.

Hebrews 6:1 says, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity.” [The word for “maturity” is “perfection.” We are going to look at that word as we read through 5:7, all the way through 6:1. As a matter of fact, you are going to want to look for the words “perfect, mature, and maturity” because they all have the same root. The root word is teleioo. There is a long mark after the last “o”. That word means “to bring to an end by completing or perfecting.” God wants to bring you to perfection; He wants to bring you to completion. He didn’t just save you to leave you as an infant. He saved you, and His intention is for you to grow up and to go on to maturity. It means “to perfect by bringing to full development.” When a child is born, it is never the make-up of the child to ever stay as a child. It is to go on to maturity. When a child is born into God’s family, God’s intention is, not that you stay a child, but that you go on to maturity. When he says, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ. let us press on to maturity…”, that “let us press on to maturity” implies that God is going to bear you along. He is going to carry you on to maturity. In other words, it is something that is just going to happen. A little child can stand there, and say, “I don’t want to grow up; I don’t want to grow up,” but because he is a kid, and because he is made up the way he is, as a human being, it is natural that he is going to grow—whether he wants to grow up or not, whether you want to turn 35 or not. After 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34, then 35 has got to come. You can say, “I want to arrest at 39,” and you can arrest (verbally) at 39, but really, you are going to go on to 40 and 41 and 42—unless something happens and you die.

When it says, “Let us press on to maturity,” it is the same word as is used in Hebrews 1:3. It is talking about Christ, and it says, “And He is the radiance (Christ is the radiance of God’s glory) and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” [When it says, “He upholds all things,” it is not like an Atlas just standing there with muscles flexed, trying to hold up the world. It means that Jesus takes all things, and He carries them to their ultimate conclusion. He lifts them up, and He propels them. For instance, God’s intention for man was that man would rule and reign over the earth, that man would be in the image of God. Satan came along in the garden and enticed Eve. Eve listened to the serpent, ate the fruit of the tree, gave it to Adam, and it seems like God’s plan is thwarted. But because God upholds all things by the word of His power, still He comes back and He carries man to his ultimate conclusion. He takes the world which was cursed, and He is going to bring it to its ultimate conclusion. This is what He is doing with you and with me. God’s will for every child of God, God’s plan for every child of God, the ultimate reality of being a child of God, is to end up in maturity. We want to look at what price perfection or maturity.

I want to read Hebrews 5:7, and as I read you are going to note every use of “maturity, mature, or perfect.” (7) “In the days of His flesh (speaking of Jesus), He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. (8) Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered... (9) And having been made perfect (there it is), He became to all those who obey Him the source the source of eternal salvation, (10) being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” [Now God had a plan for Jesus. When Jesus came into this world, God had a plan for Him, and part of that plan was that He would be prophet, that He would be priest, and that He would be king. Jesus is going to come to that completeness; Jesus is going to come to that perfection; Jesus is going to come to that end. God has a plan for you and for me. That plan is maturity, completeness, perfection also for us.]

(11) “Concerning him (Melchizedek) we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.” [Have you ever had a person that was dull of hearing? I talk about my muscles hanging down, but I had a dear aunt, named Aunt Dutchy, and she was hard of hearing—I mean, you would shout all the time to Aunt Dutchy. The boys would sit there, and play with the muscles that had dropped down on her arms, and just flip them back and forth. But as they would talk to her, they would have to get right up to her ear and yell at Aunt Dutchy, because she was dull of hearing. She wasn’t always that way, but it just came as a matter of age. You are not to become dull of hearing spiritually.] (12) “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. (13) For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. (14) But solid food is for the mature (There is that word for mature or perfect, teleioo), who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (1) Therefore leaving the elementary teaching…”

In v. 12 he says, “You have need for someone to teach you the elementary principles.” It is the same Greek word there. In Chapter 6, he says, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, (2) of instruction about washings, and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. (3) And this we shall do, if God permits.” [What shall we do? What is he saying? We are going to go on to maturity. Going on to maturity is something that we will do if God permits. Who is God going to permit to go on to maturity? If He wants to carry you on to maturity, if He wants to bear you on to maturity, and that is His hearts desire, then there has to be something that would keep you from going on to maturity. There would have to be something that you would resist, or something that you would refuse to participate in. That is what we want to look at. What price maturity, or what price perfection?

Go back to 5:7, and I want to look, first of all, at Christ, because we see that God took Christ on to maturity. God took Christ on to perfection. You say, “How could God take Christ on to perfection or maturity? Was He not perfect already? Was He not mature? Remember that maturity does not mean “to be totally without ___ (?),” or anything like that, but it means “to bring to an end by completion or perfection.” God had a job, God had a work for Jesus Christ to do. In the process of His doing that work, God took Him on to completion, or God took Him on to perfection.

What did it take? Go back to 5:7. “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. (8) Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. (9) And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.” [To put you in context, you have to remember that the author of Hebrews right now is about to show us that Christ qualifies as a priest, even though He is not of the order of Aaron, even though He is not a Levite. Even though Aaron was not in His genealogy, Christ qualifies as a high priest. He has to show them this, because these are Hebrew Christians that he is talking about, and those Hebrew Christians know that no man could intrude into the priestly office without the judgment of God. He has just presented Jesus Christ as their priest.

He started mentioning Christ as their priest in Hebrews 2:17, at the end of that chapter, and then in Chapter 4:14, he mentions Jesus Christ as the priest. He is going to show us (and what we saw last week) is this—the first thing to qualify as a priest is that: #1. You have to be appointed by God. No man could take this honor to himself. Aaron was appointed by God, but because Jesus is of the tribe of Judah, He does not qualify for the priesthood, unless, of course, God would appoint Him. So He was appointed by God, according to the order of Melchizedek. He says, “I want to teach you these things about Melchizedek, but I can’t do that because you are dull of hearing. You are going, ‘Eh-h! I can’t understand.’” He says, “I want to take you on to maturity.” A priest had to be appointed by God. Jesus was a high priest, because He was appointed by God, according to the order of Melchizedek.

The second thing that a priest had to do in order to qualify for the priesthood: #2. He had to be taken from among men so he could deal gently with men, so that he could understand their weaknesses, so that when they came and they confessed their sins, he wouldn’t stand there as “super pious” and cold and callused, but he could understand. Jesus was qualified as a priest because of His suffering, because He was beset with weaknesses also, because He became flesh and blood. He was qualified because He was able to sympathize with His people. He is going to show you to what degree Jesus was able to sympathize, and how God used what Jesus went through to bring Him to perfection.

Go back to v. 7, because God, through the author of Hebrews in Chapter 5, gives us a glimpse of what Jesus Christ suffered. He takes us right into the Garden of Gethsemane, and causes us to bend down and view our Lord and our Savior and our God, the God-man, in the Garden, and let us see him at a point of total weakness of His humanity. He shows us, in this passage, something than none of the gospels touch on. He shows us the suffering that Christ went through. Luke tells us that Jesus suffered to the extent that He sweat great drops of blood, but no gospel tells us that when He was in that Garden, when He was on that rock, when He was saying, “Father, if it is possible, take this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done,” that He was actually crying. It was loud crying, and it was profuse tears that were pouring from Him, because of the suffering that He was going through. This is the Holy One; this is the One that has never known sin. This is the One that has pure eyes as to behold iniquity, and here He is in the Garden, about to be separated from the Father for the first time, because he is about to be forsaken by the Father for you and me, as He who is pure holiness, is made sin for us, that you and I might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

(7) “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying…” [He was not only praying, but He was pleading with the Father. It was not just, “O Father.” It was not a routine in the Garden that He knew that He had to go through. It was not, “O Father, take this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.” It is, “O God, take this cup from Me. Take it from Me.” It is crying, and it is tears, and at the same time it is, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.” He doesn’t pray it once, He doesn’t pray it twice, He prays it three times. Three times He has to wrestle with the pain, with the suffering, with the rejection that He is about to endure.]

Now, what does it mean that “He was able to save Him out of death”? Some people think that He was going to die right there in the Garden, and because He was afraid He was going to die before He ever got to Calvary, that He cried out, and God kept Him from dying in the Garden. But I don’t believe that is what He is saying at all. I believe that He is saying to God, “God, if it is possible, take this cup from Me. Take it from Me; take it from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.” [In other words, “God, I don’t want to die this way. God, I don’t want to experience this separation from You; yet not My will, but Thine be done.” As He cried, He was heard in that God was able to save Him out of death. There is another way that you can translate it. “He was heard because of His piety.”

Now, how did God save Him out of death? Because He did not leave His soul in hell, but because Jesus had always obeyed God, because there was no sin in Him, because He was willing to be obedient to the Father, even though it cost Him death, God raised Him from the dead. He was heard because of His piety; He is the resurrection and the life; and He, as your high priest, conquered death, and offered Himself as a sacrifice (and you will see that as you study Hebrews), and He came out the victor.

It says, (8) “Although He was a Son,” [Some have translated it, “Son, though He was,” or “Although He was a Son,”] “He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” [If you are going to be perfect, if you are going to go on to perfection, it is going to cost you the same thing that it cost Jesus Christ. It is going to cost you obedience, and it is going to cost you suffering. The two go together. There is no perfection, there is no maturity, I believe, there is no completeness, unless in your life there is obedience and suffering. That makes an equation that equals perfection, or equals maturity, or equals completeness. If you are going to go on, if you are going to allow God, who has begun a good work in you, to perform it, to complete it, then that completion, that perfection is going to come through two things. It is going to come through obedience, and it is going to come through suffering. Just as it came for Jesus Christ, it is going to come to you.

Look at v. 9. “And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him…” [It is not, beloved, just those who believe Him. I think that there are so many people in the churches (and we are going to see this as we do next week’s lesson, as we get into that very, very difficult chapter of Hebrews 6). If I really and truly belong to Him, then it is not just a matter of an intellectual assent, but it is a matter of a life that results in obedience. With that obedience there will always come suffering. I think that there are so many people sitting in the churches that have made a mental assent, an intellectual assent, to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They can lay out all the doctrines and everything, and know them, and yet have no evidence of the fact that they are truly a child of God, going on to maturity, or going on to perfection. I want to say something, and I really love Chattanooga, but I will tell that my fear is that in the churches in Chattanooga, (and we have so many churches here that you can take a picture in Chattanooga and get four or five church spires in one picture. We are inundated with churches, but our city is not a city of righteousness or holiness or godliness. There is something wrong. Either the salt isn’t out of the salt shaker, or the light is hidden under the bushel, or all those that are sitting in the churches are really not salt, and really not light, because they are really not children of God.