Draw Near to the Throne of Grace

Hebrews 4:14–16
"For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

As a teenager, I was guilty of a cardinal sin of adolescence—assuming adults were simultaneously unaware and, well...dumb. I believed that my experiences—the struggles, the joys, the wrongdoings—were so unique and so far removed from the adults in my life that we might as well have been from different planets. It was impossible to conceive that an adult could truly understand the things I felt, thought, and experienced.

That lack of trust often proved misguided, if not totally wrong, yet the lesson never really sank in. At least, not until I had my own kids, whom I now try to convince that I, too, was once young and encumbered by the raging storm of adolescence in all its fury and beauty.

Humanity Misunderstood

I believe the issue is not a question of trust or experience; it is an issue of humanity.

To my teen mind, adults might have appeared to be the same species as I, but their world was so distant from mine it seemed they had skipped a developmental rung on life's ladder. I saw myself and them, and I believed something was missing; two plus two did not equal four. Their humanity was simply too different from my own, too obscure and foreign to be viewed as authentic.

Christ Our Brother

The author of Hebrews points to Christ's humanity as a means of encouraging us in our weakness. Yet I think we often see Christ as I saw my parents and other adults—appearing human, but with such a completely different experience as to be invalid or at least considered with maximum incredulity.

Even though we recite the Creed, celebrate Advent and Easter, and are otherwise reminded that Jesus is, in truth, a man, when it comes to our individual spiritual lives, I, for one, forget that He is my brother in more than just species.

Hebrews serves to remind us that this kinship was earned because Christ was tempted "in every respect" as we are. He is not qualified to be our Savior because He is Lord of Lords, but because He became the most fully human of any of us—and that crown is not won without the drama and pain of suffering or temptation.

Far from placing Himself on a moral or spiritual pedestal, Jesus' high place above us is abandoned and dying on the Cross—and how much more thorough an understanding of this life and world could there be?

Pride and the Wound of "Not Good Enough"

In insisting on an artificial distance between my humanity and His, I begin to create an idol of myself. In doing so, I utterly ignore the wisdom of Proverbs 3:3:

"Lean not on your own understanding..."

My pride provides dark counsel, suggesting that Jesus is either too busy to bother with my paltry faults and serious sins, or that He, being perfect, cannot possibly understand them.

That pride hides something —a wound that only Christ is capable of healing. It is the wound that whispers:

"If I don't mess up, I will be loved. If I can fix it by myself, I can earn the good things freely given to others."

It is the wound called "Not Good Enough."

The Throne of Mercy

It is in exactly these moments that the author of Hebrews means for us to recall the Son of Man and to trust that Jesus is our brother by the weight of temptation and the struggle beneath its burden.

He is different from us, assuredly, but only different in ways that neither effort nor birthright affects—at least not this side of Heaven. Hebrews encourages us to draw near to the Seat of Mercy in our time of need.

That throne was not given to Christ by the Father but earned in the mud of humanity. Christ is merciful to me because my experience is His, and the letter to the Hebrews confirms this:

"For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses."

And so, when I am tempted to hold Christ at arm’s length, to imagine Him as a distant figure immune from my weakness, Hebrews dismantles that lie. The Son of God did not stand above humanity—He descended into it, felt its weight, and bore its wounds.

To draw near to Him, then, is not presumption but obedience. He has already walked the road of my frailty and sin’s shadow, and He invites me to approach His throne of mercy with confidence, not fear.

It is there, and only there, that the wound of “Not Good Enough” is healed—not by my striving, but by His sympathy and His grace.