Hebrews 3:1, commentary and pictures

The address is to holy brethren who share the heavenly calling as God's sons and daughters of one family. They are directed to consider Christ Jesus as the Apostle and High Priest of their professed faith. To consider Him means to study His character closely, feature by feature, and to make Him the pattern for life and character. Believers must know Him individually as Saviour before they can study Him as their example. Through faith in Him His life becomes their righteousness so that they are accepted in the Beloved.

Looking to Him, communing with Him, and copying His holy ways transforms believers into His image, so that they represent Him rather than imitating flawed human beings. Christ was faithful to God who appointed Him, just as Moses was faithful in God's house. He is worthy of greater glory and honor than Moses, for Moses served faithfully within the house while Christ as the Son built the house and rules over His own house. Believers are His house if they hold their confidence and hope firm to the end. This requires guarding against unbelief, hardened hearts and the deceit of sin and encouraging one another daily.

His high-priestly work rests on becoming like His brethren, suffering temptation and making reconciliation for sin. As High Priest He remains close by their side and omnipresent with them to the farthest part of the earth, laboring with them so that He will never forsake them. Because He is near as head over all the church, believers need not imperil their souls by opening the secrets of their hearts to priest or minister. They may in confidence bring every matter small or great to Jesus and honor His invitation by obeying His call to come for rest, as the richest legacy He could give His disciples.

As the Apostle He is the Sent of God, Shiloh, the promised Seed from the tribe of Judah and wonderful Counsellor who sets up a spiritual kingdom and gathers the nations to Himself. That title was fulfilled only at His first advent nearly seventeen hundred years after Jacob spoke, when Judah ceased as a distinct ruling tribe and its scepter departed. He is the divine Leader who accompanied Israel in the wilderness, so rejecting Him brings greater judgment than Israel's unbelief. By taking humanity He joined Himself to humanity so that those who receive and believe in Him may share in the divine nature.

God as the orderer of all things numbers the hairs of the head and is infinitely more watchful over His children than a careful earthly father, being too wise to err and too good to do harm. In wise, great and unbounded love He orders their transfers and fields of service for greater good, breaks up indifference toward others, and kindly educates, trains and disciplines them by His Word and by experience to develop virtues and powers. He does this to make them meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, and to work out a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory for those who surrender to Him rather than looking to men or depending on the finite. Those who do not let Him carry forward His work in their hearts remain in darkness and mystery. But those who learn of Jesus, bring their thoughts into captivity to Him, trust the Lord, walk in obedience, and exercise faith that works by love and purifies the soul become co-workers with Jesus Christ.