5:8 though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered.
Generally when we talk about someone “learning to obey” we are implying that previously that person had been somewhat less than obedient. Here, however, that is not at all the case. Christ had to “learn obedience” because the need for obedience was never part of His experience before the incarnation. For all eternity Father, Son and Holy Spirit had lived in perfect harmony. All were equal, and the Son shared the heart of the Father. The question of obedience never arose because their wills were in perfect harmony. The Son had never known what it was like to have to choose the will of another over His own.
When He became man, whilst His essential relationship with the Father did not change, His position did. He had stepped down to become “a little lower than the angels.” In Himself, Christ always remained equal to the Father, but as our representative He now stood in a lower position, and that position required obedience. In fact, one of the reasons for His becoming man was to be able to give that obedience, and in doing so to reverse the disobedience of Adam. Even though He did not have the sin nature that so readily pulls us into disobedience, He did have a human nature and a human body, and He knew the pull of those to have their needs met. Nonetheless, it was not until the Garden of Gethsemane, when He faced the imminent reality of bearing the weight of sin for all mankind, that a real conflict arose and He had to choose between the destiny that had been planned for Him in the council of the Godhead and the cry of every fiber of His human nature to run from that destiny. In the midst of the most intense suffering ever known to man, the One to whom the obedience of all creation is due learned what it means to bow to the will of another.
Of course, there were other levels of obedience that He also learned throughout His life: obedience to His earthly parents, whom He had created; obedience to the Law, which He had written; obedience to the earthly authorities, which He had set in place (as long as they did not act against the higher law of God.) All these steps along the way gave Him a deeper experiential understanding of people, and better equipped Him as our High Priest.
v. 9. Having been made perfect, he became to all of those who obey him the author of eternal salvation, (10) named by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Again, this is not suggesting that Christ was, in Himself, anything less than perfect. Perfection is part of His nature as God, and even though He laid aside His divine power and privilege to become man, He always retained His divine nature. To perfectly represent us, however, He had to experience what we experience: the tug-of-war between our will and the will of God. To fully bear our sin, He had to experience the effects of that sin. To undo Adam’s rebellion, He had to face a situation in which there was a real choice between comfort for the flesh and obedience to the Lord.
Fortunately for all of us, He passed that test. He chose obedience rather than comfort: “Not My will, but Yours.” That choice qualified Him as the sin-bearer. Because of that choice, He was able to pay the penalty for my sins and yours. Because of that choice, He was able to open for us the doors of eternal life with Him.
In later chapters, the writer goes on to enlarge upon the ministry of Melchisedek, how it differed from the Levitical priesthood, and why Christ was declared to be a priest of the former rather than the latter.