Jesus is our great priest
14 Jesus, the Son of God, helps us as God's most important priest. He is our great priest who has gone up into heaven. We say that we believe in him. So we must continue to show people that we trust him. 15 Jesus, our great priest understands us. He knows how weak we are. He knows that we sometimes want to do wrong things. The Devil tried to make him do all those same kinds of wrong things. But Jesus never did anything wrong. 16 So we should come near to God and we should not be afraid. God is our King. We can ask him to help us when we need help. We know that he will forgive us and he will be kind to us in whatever way we need.
4:16Jesus died to save us from our sins. Now he is with God in heaven. So we can come to God and we can pray to him. We do not need to be afraid, because Jesus is there. We can ask God to help us. We can be sure that he will help us when we ask him.
Hebrews 5
1 Every leader of God's priests comes from among the people. That special priest's work is to serve God on behalf of God's people. He offers gifts and sacrifices to God, so that God will forgive the people's sins. 2 That priest himself may often do wrong things, because he is weak and human. As a result, he understands other people who make mistakes. He can be kind to people who do wrong things. 3 But, because he himself does wrong things, he must offer sacrifices to God on behalf of himself, as well as on behalf of the people.
4 Nobody decides for himself to become a leader of the priests. God himself must choose him. That is how Aaron became a priest.
5:4Aaron was Moses' brother. He lived many years before Jesus was born. He was the first priest for Israel's people. After that, everyone who became a priest needed to be from Aaron's family. See Exodus 28:1; 1 Chronicles 23:13. 5 It is the same with Christ. He did not choose himself to be God's special priest. He did not choose to make himself important like that. God chose him. God showed that Christ was very important. God said to him:
‘You are my Son.
Today I have become your Father.’
6 And in another place in the Bible God says this:
‘You will be a priest for ever,
in the same way that Melchizedek was a priest long ago.’
7 When Jesus Christ lived on earth as a man, he often prayed to God. He asked God to help him. He prayed strongly and he cried loudly with many tears. He knew that God could save him from death. And God listened to Jesus when he prayed, because Jesus served God.
5:7In this verse the writer remembers when Jesus prayed in the garden. Jesus knew that he would die soon. He was very sad. He asked his Father to make him strong. And God did what Jesus asked. See Luke 22:41-44. 8 Jesus is God's Son. But he still had trouble and pain. In that way, he learned to obey God completely. 9 As a result, Jesus became the person who can save everyone who obeys him. Because of Jesus, God forgives their sins for ever. 10 God has chosen Jesus to be his special priest in the same way that Melchizedek was.
