<p>7:26 <i>For such a High Priest was fitting for us- holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners- </i>He was and is &ldquo;harmless&rdquo; in His priestly mediation; the same word is translated &ldquo;simple&rdquo; in Rom. 16:8. He was an intellectual beyond compare, morally and dialectically He defeated the most cunning cross-questioning of His day; and yet He was a working man surrounded by masses of daily problems. But He was and is &ldquo;simple&rdquo; in the sense of single-mindedly committed to His priestly work. We are on earth and God is in Heaven, and therefore our words should be few (Ecc. 5:2). Not few in the sense that we don&rsquo;t pray for very long, but few in terms of their simplicity and directness. The Lord warned us against the complicated prayer forms of the Pharisees; and asked us to <i>mean </i>our words of &lsquo;yes&rsquo; and &lsquo;no&rsquo; rather than use more sophisticated assurances. The heart is deceitful and so wicked we cannot plumb its depths (Jer. 17:9); and yet the pure in heart are blessed. This must surely mean that the &ldquo;pure&rdquo; in heart are those who despite the intrinsic self-deception of the human heart, are nonetheless &ldquo;pure&rdquo; or single hearted in their prayer and motives and desire to serve God.</p><p>The Lord Jesus was in His life &quot;separate from sinners&quot;. The Greek word very definitely means 'to actively depart from'- it's used about a partner walking out of a marriage. Yet the Lord is always pictured as mixing with sinners, to the extent that they felt they could come to Him easily, and actually liked to do this. So how was He &quot;separate&quot; from them in the way the Hebrew writer understood? Here again we see one of the profoundest paradoxes in this supremest of personalities. He was with sinners, then and now; His solidarity with us, the roughest and the most obvious and the subtlest of us, is what attracts us to Him. And yet He is somehow totally separate from us; and it is this in itself which brings us to Him. &nbsp;</p><p>It needs to be noted that the Lord Jesus had human nature, and yet was holy, harmless and separate from sinners, and attained 'perfection'. Human nature is not, therefore, an inevitable source of sin and separation from God. The Father is not made at us for being human; it's no sin to be alive.</p><p><i>And has been exalted higher than the heavens</i>- The allusion is to the common Jewish idea of there being various &quot;heavens&quot;. Paul doesn't specifically criticize the idea, but just states that whatever we understand about this, the Lord Jesus has been exalted higher. The Gospels take a similar approach to the wrong ideas about demon possession; the power of the Father and Son is infinitely greater than that of 'demons', however we wish to understand the term.</p>