Hebrews 5:1-14
5:1 Fellow-workers with God offer their positions and talents, character and spirituality to the service of others. We are given to in order that we may give: 1 Corinthians 12. We are here to be impactful, to use our potential to journey toward our purpose of promoting, inspiring, defending, and creating justice and love.
That which pertains to God are the elements of this philosophy of faith: love, wisdom, truth, justice, and compassion/empathy.
5:2 Empathy is a necessary element in a child of God. Empathy provides the avenue of humility through which one can find understanding and relation with others. To help any person or circumstance, one must be able to understand it (them). To empathize with it (them).
We are each here as souls in these vulnerable and fallible earthly vessels. It is imperative that we relate to others by acknowledging our own flaws.
5:3 Workers of God are loved as equally as all of God's children: Romans 2:11. We work while we are here not to rise in status but to ensure compassion for all of humanity. Even though we may be fellow-workers with God, we are still on personal-spiritual journeys (making changes and attempts, and striving to grow our faith and edify our character).
5:4 Aaron worked with Moses (and Aaron and Moses worked with God). Even though Aaron was a mouthpiece for Moses, and Moses a mouthpiece for God, they each had deeply personal relationships with God. A fellow worker of God is still a student. Rather than masters, we are His apprentices: working, hopefully sagaciously, under His guidance.
5:5-6 Our ever-present and living example is that of Jesus, whose devotion to this faith was done so in complete humility and servitude. His commitment to this faith was without personal agenda, was instead born and sustained out of complete and authentic compassion for humanity. Jesus was claimed and established throughout the Bible (Psalm 110:4 and Psalm 2:7 are referenced here) not for having a meaningless, fancy title or position but because He became selflessness. He embodied humility. What distinguishes children of God is not a high status but rather a commitment to proudly claim a low one for the benefit of others.
5:7 Jesus's empathy and prayer for others was expressed vehemently: zealously, passionately. For all of the pomp and fame surrounding Him and directed at Him, Jesus never celebrated Himself. As He encouraged us to do, He sought courage, wisdom and ability from our Creator. He drew from His not fear but reverence* in order to accomplish each of His selfless objectives.
In what can be seen as strategic irony, the words "fear" and "revere" are the same in the original scripture. God's children are urged to bask in the wonder of His love and simultaneously, evil and opposition are urged to fear the power of Compassion as it works expertly against evil.
*Original Word: εὐλάβεια
Transliteration: Eulabeia
Short Definition: Reverence, Piety
Definition: Reverence, Fear of God, Piety
5:8 This fourth chapter of Hebrews works particularly to disintegrate any sense of superiority one might have within their faith. Jesus, a proclaimed child of God, was made vulnerable and fallible by being born as we have been: into these earthly bodies. Having shared the same environment, tribulations, and emotions as we have, Jesus learned obedience. Obedience in the sense that He understood the benefit and the responsibility of living with compassion.
5:9 With perfect grace, Jesus exemplified this philosophy of life and faith on earth. He mastered humility and compassionate servitude and thus became the author and pillar of spiritual salvation. The word obey has negative connotations because of what humans have done to do but to obey God in this sense of faith is to strictly align yourself with truth and justice, love and wisdom.
5:10-11 The imploration of this verse is for us to listen. The natural order of wisdom and spirit is all around us, is exemplified and perfected around us in nature and universe. We must be perceptive and objective humans, contemplative. We must not stifle our inquisitive nature... rather we must promote it, allow it to constantly be inspired and driven. When we do these things, become people with these characteristics, we inevitable arrive at this philosophy of life and faith.
5:12 This verse is a reprimanding, a constructive criticism aimed at those who have been corrupted by a superiority complex. We are fellow-workers with God, not fellow loungers. This milk and solid food reference is a metaphor: in the spiritual journey of faith, those in the beginning stages are fed with what is easily digestible and elementary in nature. Those who progress further in faith begin to receive more complex and dynamic, solid concepts to mull over and contemplate. The further we go and grow, the more we are expected to do and be. An arrogant person is a novice in faith, having not learned the foremost foundational truth: we are workers in humility and servitude.
5:13 Therefore, an arrogant person is not qualified as a teacher of this spirituality. They are not yet matured enough personally in the fundamental concepts.
5:14 Those who are given the more complex and dynamic concepts and situations are prepared to work on and within them in order to accomplish the universe's intention: an inevitable arrival at compassion for all. Children (workers) such as these are prepared, focused, impassioned, empathetic, humble leaders and advocates of everything this faith represents: justice, truth, compassion, wisdom. Humility is the qualification as well as the lens required to perceive both the personal as well as the collective condition of humanity and spirit. Through humility only is one enabled to become great.
