The Lord Jesus is qualified to be the High Priest because He was tried (2:18). If you read the Gospels again, you will see that no other person has been subject to so many troubles, attacks, misunderstandings, and rumors as the Lord Jesus. So many religionists are good rumor makers. There are as many rumors in the sphere of religion as in any other place. These rumor makers are accustomed to twisting your words. They isolate a few words that you say and add something else to it. Sometimes the Lord Jesus spoke a word and the religionists picked on it and twisted it, trying to make a case out of it against the Lord.
The situation is exactly the same today. When Brother Nee and I were working together in China, I saw how many lies and rumors were spread about him. Often Brother Nee would not say anything. A number of times he came to me, saying, “Witness, Christians can lie.” At that time, he was the target, and we were under his covering. The attacks did not reach us because he was the umbrella and we were under him. In 1949, after we went to Taiwan, I spontaneously became the target for the attacks. Now I know from my own experience that Christians can lie. If you were to go to the Lord Jesus and ask Him whether or not religious people can lie, He would say, “They certainly can. I have suffered a great deal of it.” Because the Lord Jesus was different from the dark religion of His day, He was hated by the religionists. All the religious people hated Him. The same thing happened to Watchman Nee in China. From 1932 until the day he was imprisoned in 1952, no denomination in China invited him to speak. Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus is merciful and certainly knows how to sympathize with us and how to suffer the lies. No human being has ever been tempted, tested, attacked, opposed, and misunderstood by the religionists as He was. He is qualified to be merciful to us and to sympathize with us.
Christ is also qualified to be our High Priest because He suffered death (2:9). The death that the Lord Jesus passed through was truly a baptism. Once the Lord Jesus asked His disciples, “Can ye...be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38). That baptism was His death. His death was the real Jordan River. In suffering death, He crossed the river and entered into the region that is full of God’s expression, full of God’s glory.
By suffering death on the cross, Christ made propitiation for our sins (2:17). This means that He appeased God for us. He has appeased God’s righteousness and all of God’s requirements on us. He has settled every problem between us and God.
By His death on the cross Christ has not only tasted death for us and made propitiation for our sins, but also has destroyed the Devil who has the might of death (2:14). He has abolished death. He has solved the problem of our sins. He has also spoiled the Devil. So He is qualified to be a merciful High Priest.
Christ has also released us from the slavery of death (2:15). We have been released by Him from the slavery of sin, from the slavery of the fear of death, and even from the slavery of death itself. No longer are we enslaved by anything.
A further qualification of Christ’s being the High Priest is that in resurrection He has brought forth many brothers in order to form the church (2:10-12). He is the Firstborn Son of God in resurrection, and we are His many brothers in resurrection to form the church. He and we are the same in life and in nature. He and we are all in resurrection. He is the Head of the church, and we are the members of the church. This affords Him so much ground to be our High Priest.
Christ’s being crowned with glory and honor in His exaltation is also a qualification of His priesthood. His exaltation, glory, and honor all afford Him the possibility of ministering to us as the High Priest. With such a position and possibility, He can be merciful and faithful as much as He likes.